Support the Talk Sign Campaign
The community is encouraged to support the Talk Sign Campaign by selling stickers for R10 each.
TALK Sign Day is coming up on 13 March, and the public is encouraged to help support this campaign by selling Talk Sign stickers to schools, businesses, sports clubs and churches.
The campaign, which was initiated by the KZN Blind and Deaf Society in 2014, was launched to encourage South Africans to learn sign language as well as to raise money, through the sale of Talk Sign stickers, to educate and find employment for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. The campaign also aimed to put pressure on government to make Sign Language the twelfth official language of South Africa, and for Sign Language to be taught as a syllabus subject at schools and tertiary institutions.
Shamila Surjoo, director of the KZN Blind and Deaf Society, was delighted with the announcement by the MEC for Education, Peggy Nkonyeni, in August last year that Sign Language would be introduced into main-stream schools, and over the next five years the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education would be training teachers in Sign Language in an effort to improve interaction among pupils. She also announced that she would be engaging Higher Education Minister, Blade Nzimande, to propose that Sign Language be introduced in tertiary institutions as a subject.
With the introduction of Sign Language as a school subject, the KZN Blind and Deaf Society is confident that the Talk Sign Campaign and Talk Sign Day 2015 will receive overwhelming support from schools and corporate bodies. The government will be putting schools under pressure to kickstart the introduction of Sign Language, while corporates will benefit from the substantial goodwill generated by adopting Talk Sign as one of their social responsibility initiatives.
To book a presentation at your school or business or to order Talk Sign stickers for R10 each, contact Ellisha on ellisha@talksign.co.za.
