The second part of this report is focused on the workshops in general given by Shri. Murali Kuppusamy and by myself at five Deaf Associations in South India. Besides, I will try to give information about the life of the deaf people and the problems they face in the society in general. I will also give information I have selected and of which I personally think it is important to be outspoken here.

The workshops Murali Kuppusamy and I presented were all educational. Our goal was to give deaf people a chance to gain more knowledge about different topics mainly in the educational area. To give the workshops it was a challenge for me being a Non-Indian deaf person. But all my three speeches seemed to have been very informative and beneficial regarding to many feedbacks from the participants.

The topics of my speeches were "Bilingual Education", "Relay Service", and "Successful Deaf Women worldwide". I will not explain the content of each speech here again as this can be read in the report of Murali Kuppusamy but yet I would like to take the opportunity to select some remarks of each speech which I find important to be addressed here.

Regarding to the speech about "Bilingual Education" not only the method was shown how to teach the deaf children bilingually. Also a very short overview of the development of Deaf Education from the past to nowadays was shown. It is very important to know the date of 1880 that is linked with the Milan Congress in Italy where hearing participants made a decision - without deaf people - that had a great impact on all deaf schools and deaf lives worldwide. From this date on the Sign Language had been banned out of classrooms, so deaf teachers too. That means that before this date, there were deaf schools who had deaf teachers and where Sign Language was accepted in classrooms. The oppression of not being allowed to use the Sign Language by deaf people had begun from there on. So, the oralism/ audism took its victory to the deaf schools. And yet, if looking back it has failed all over the world.

Today, it is a delight to see that several changes have been done so far: the recognition of Sign Language as an equal language to the spoken language proofed by hearing (!) linguistics. In some countries its recognition is even protected by the law. Thanks to the linguistic research the use of the Sign Language is becoming "allowed" slowly at more and more deaf schools., and so hiring deaf techers, too. I found it very important to show this brief overview on this part of our Deaf History so that deaf people in India can understand their situation much better with having a look on the history until today. My impression was that Indian deaf people have no or poor knowledge of the Deaf History. My small overview on that part was truly an eye opening to them.

Anyway, what would have happened if the Milan Congress had supported Sign Language ? I believe that today all deaf people would be doing fine and would have an equal position next to hearing people in the society. But who knows ? So, we have a long path to go to reach this goal.

Another issue from this speech were the terms "deaf mute" and "deaf dumb". I knew before my departure that both terms are still used among the deaf people in India. That is why, I wanted to take the chance to explain the meanings of both terms. It is a fact, that "deaf mute" and "deaf dumb" are discriminating terms to label deaf people. By looking closely to these words, they mean like that deaf people cannot speak or that they are stupid. This is not true of course. Deaf people can speak and they are smart like hearing people are. Both terms were labeld by hearing people a long time ago as there was no knowledge about the Deaf Community in general. But as we have 2004 today, both labels need to be banned out of the vocabulary, so in India, too. I asked the deaf people not to continue these terms any more and suggested to use "Deaf" as it stands for Deaf Community, Sign Language, and Deaf Culture/Deaf History. This label "Deaf" has a positive impact for us. Anyway, it is the Deaf Community right to label itself and not to be labeled by the hearing people. Hearing people in general like to label us with different terms but never ask us for the "permission". This needs to stop. Giving this information was something touching and an awakening up to the deaf participants of the workshops.

After this, I explained what Deaf Culture means by showing a picture. Then, I challenged the participants to think about more situations that are related to Deaf Culture. This was very enjoyable. This was another awakening up. My other speech on "Relay Service" was about a service allowing deaf people to make phone calls by themselves without being depended on hearing people. This is something I am working on to set up in my country. India will need to start on that, too, one day.

The last speech was about "Successful Deaf Women worldwide". Selected deaf women were presented for being a lawyer, actor, filmmaker, chemist, and MP etc. It was my intention to show these women with having a "dark" skin color as they are either African or Americans with an African heritage. I wanted to show that no matter of the skin color, deaf women in India can become successful. To be able to reach this goal, I suggested different qualifications that deaf women should have like having a strong will, being positive, having a strong self-esteem etc. For many deaf women it was something very touching, an eye-opening, too, as they told me. They felt like to have a "re-birth" and want to follow the footsteps of these few deaf women I presented.

To summarize the workshops, I have the impression that all deaf people enjoyed the programs. At the end of the workshops, many participants bombed us with questions. For me, I am very pleased that my speeches were beneficial for the deaf people and that they somehow hit their nerves to wake up from their long "Beauty Sleeping" and to realize that it is time to stand up and work on the improvement their lives. They no longer can not be passive and must become a lot more active and responsible.

Now, I would like to summarize the information of deaf peoples lives from the talks with so many deaf people I met. I just will count the problems the deaf people in general face in the Indian society with the hope to be able to raise a better awareness and understanding of the needs of deaf people in India especially for the hearing reader:

1) Deaf people are not allowed to gain a driving license and drive a car by themselves
->This is a clear discrimination. Deaf people can drive a car. It is said that driving a car 80% of the eyes and 20% of the ears are used. With other words, driving a car is not automatically depended on "hearing" like many hearing people claim.

2) Deaf people in general do not have or have a poor knowledge about the awareness of Sign Language as a fully recognized language with its own grammar.
-> If a deaf teacher wants to teach Sign Language at schools, he must be aware of the structure of Sign Language and its grammar rules. While I was pointing out this during my speech about Bilingual Education, deaf people had no idea about Sign Language having an own grammar which is different from the spoken language.

3) Deaf people in general do not have/or have a poor knowledge about having a Deaf Culture and Deaf History.
-> To my surprise, it is the fact for many deaf people that I gave this information to them for the first time they ever have "heard".

Literacy about lives of Indian deaf people
-> There are hardly books/ videos available about life stories of Indian deaf people in the past and nowadays, for example. The same concerns for the children books/videos with Indian Sign Languages.

5) The TV does not provide Closed Captions.
-> It is the right of deaf people to have closed captions on all films on TV to be able to understand what being said there.

6) The "All India Federation Deaf Association" located in New Delhi is run by a hearing president. The same concerns to the Deaf Associations on state level - to my understanding.
-> This is something that needs to be change very soon. Deaf Associations - no matter if on city, state or national level - must be occupied by deaf people only. Only deaf people can represent themselves and their needs to the hearing society. If the Indian Deaf Community wants to improve their life, then it is due time to take the responsibility and lead the Deaf Associations by themselves and not by hearing people who cannot control us.

These are just some selected remarks I wanted them to be outspoken here. In fact, the list could be continued. Most important is to take the step now to work on the goal to make sure that deaf people can function equally to hearing people in the society. It is a long way to go but it is worth. So many little steps can already be taken now like:

• Organizing Sign Language courses for hearing people (teachers, parents etc.).
• providing a training course for deaf people how to teach Sign Language effectively.
writing small books about stories of deaf people in the past and nowadays (interviewing old people about their lives etc.).
• Creating pictures about Deaf Culture by deaf artists to raise the awareness about Deaf Culture but also about Deaf Art, too.
• Organizing more Leadership trainings for deaf people to be able to take responsibilities in leading more effectively the Deaf Associations.
• Spreading out the Sign Language dictionary to give it access to more hearing people.
• Spreading out information brochures about the needs of deaf people and its Sign Language, etc.
• giving workshops for parents about Deaf Culture, etc., to give them a better understanding of their little deaf child.
• Letting deaf people allow to drive a car.

At this place, I would like to invite the reade to join me to applause those deaf people who have the courage to run own business in spite of the environment they live. Those own a hotel, saree shops, deaf school, business for selling technical devics for the deaf etc. These business should be more supported by the hearing community but also by the deaf community.

To end the report I would like to ask every single reader to support the vision of WFD to assure full equality and quality of life for all Deaf people by 2020. We have over 70 million Deaf people in the world of whom 80% still have no or little education. There is still a lot to work - so in India, too - to let the vision of WFD come true in 2020.

At last, a special thank goes to Shri. Murali Kuppusamy who had organized the wonderful tour to deaf schools in South India. I for sure have learned a lot about the way of deaf peoples lives which is combined within the general Indian Culture. It was a big opening to my horizontal knowledge.

A special thank also goes to the Deaf Associations for all their wonderful and tiresome work to make all the workshops run so well. I am also very grateful to all the deaf people sharing with me about their lives and the obstacles they face daily.

Wishing all the best for India to be able to build up a strong positive Deaf Community that will stand on the same line like the more advanced countries one day. I know for sure that this will happen sooner or later! Deaf people in India have so much potential to use for reaching this goal.

Finally, I would like the reader to keep in mind again, that this report was written by a Non-Indian person and that her intention is not to "tell" Indian deaf and hearing people what to do. The responsibility to improve the deaf lives lay on the shoulders of Indian deaf people themselves.

Thank you for your patience to read this report and your support to the deaf community in India.