An Early Start

Sindie’s parents had a wonderful white wedding.  Both the families were involved, and they did all they could to make the wedding a success – the traditional dancing down the aisle, metres of satin material decorating the large hall, huge crowds of guests to feed and a big fanfare as the gifts were announced! The Deaf community from all over Zimbabwe attended – it was an exciting event.

Sindie was born a year later.  She is now only 2 but she already attends Nzeve preschool twice a week.  Both her parents are deaf, and she was noticed to be deaf whilst very young. She is visually aware and watches everything around her.  Sindie is learning to communicate through sign language but she gets frustrated at times and has tantrums- just like any other 2-year-old!

Nzeve programs help her parents to learn appropriate ways of teaching and disciplining her.

Deaf parents do not get the same amount of support from the media, friends, relatives or even their own parents, as most hearing couples do. Their relationships with their own parents (who were often hearing) were sometimes strained and lacked good communication, unless their parents had good sign language skills.

98% of deaf children in Zimbabwe have hearing parents.  The few, like Sindie, who have deaf parents have an advantage for communication because they have access to signed communication from the beginning, but

bringing up a deaf child in Zimbabwe is not easy. 

Services are few and the stresses and concerns of parents of children with special needs are many- inadequate access to information and services, financial barriers, lack of community and family inclusion.

Sindie has already started to learn in a medium accessible to her- using sign language and visual methods.  Many other young deaf children in Zimbabwe are ignored till they reach school age and then are refused school places because they cannot speak. Nzeve seeks to identify and help young deaf children and their parents. 

In order to empower deaf people, we have seen the need to provide interventions from an early age, which includes programs for parents to help them accept their children and communicate with them.