How can people with hearing loss be empowered and supported to better integrate into Chinese Society?Intervention-Workshop

I want to further good interaction and communication with people with hearing loss to learn. Through my hearing loss friend, I got together and invited a few people with hearing loss to host a paper cutting art workshop.
Paper-cutting is a kind of folk art that uses scissors or carving knife to cut patterns on paper, which is used to decorate life or cooperate with other folk activities, and it contains rich cultural heritage as well as social value.
During the activity, I invited sign language teachers Lin and Gu to lead participants to understand the basics of paper-cutting in sign language and slide, and to make paper-cutting themselves. With the touch of scissors and paper, delicate patterns appeared on the paper, attracting everyone to take out their cell phones to take pictures.At the end of the day, the participants waited for the heat transfer printing with the finished paper-cutting products from the class. Time flies, but the good memories are engraved on the T-shirts, and they will take the knowledge and skills gained today to better integrate into the society and realize their own value.

After this workshop, contacts between deaf individuals became more frequent and I decided to take advantage of the situation.I organised another flower arranging workshop.In my project, I want to create a monitoring mechanism for children’s speech rehabilitation organisations. So in this workshop, I invited several parents of children whose children are in speech rehabilitation.

During the workshop, I observed them and realized that they have a very rich body
language and constantly use sign language to interact with each other. Some of them are
very sensitive to read the lip shape of the spoken language when interacting with the hearing
people.

After it was over, I noticed that they approached me with caution.With questions in mind, I contacted I contacted some of my stakeholders.

Self-Reflection

With regard to the articulation of the research question, as an outsider, I use the term “integration” in my imagination.As my tutor David said, when you are in a position to be an outsider, you are well dressed, well made up, close to a group and use words that allow them to fit in.I’m already in a very dangerous position.In my proposal I originally wanted to do an INTERVENTION for both the children’s and adult groups, but from stakeholder feedback it seems that the proposal for the children’s group seems to be a failure at the moment! I had no control over everything going as I wanted it to, and at that point I was lost and frustrated. I even wanted to give up on the project at one point. But David encouraged me again that it doesn’t mean failure and to not waste the research I had done before.Fortunately,I still met some deaf people during the event and I think I was still able to make some progress in the process.