Connecting people: Nick Palfreyman in Indonesia
When Nick Palfreyman found out that less than 20 per cent of deaf children in developing countries go to school, he knew he had to act. Within months he was sharing his skills and knowledge as a volunteer in Indonesia. Now back in the UK, Nick’s life has changed direction forever.
What made you want to volunteer with VSO?
I got involved with VSO because I am deaf, and I have always felt lucky growing up as a deaf person in the UK. My parents and my teachers always had high expectations of me – they gave me support and told me that I could achieve anything I wanted. Then, in 2006, I heard the president of the World Federation of the Deaf give a presentation about how different life is for deaf people in developing countries. Less than 20 per cent of deaf children go to school and abuse is much more common. I was really shocked by that. So I had this strong desire to work with deaf people in another country and share my skills and knowledge.
What were you doing before?
I was working as a campaigns officer for RNID which is an organisation that works for deaf and hard of hearing people. We were campaigning to raise awareness of the needs of deaf and hard of hearing people, and we were also lobbying the government about the treatment of veterans who have lost their hearing as part of their time in service.
What has the situation been for deaf people in Indonesia?
There is a lot of discrimination. Hearing people barely have any expectations of them at all. If they are lucky enough to go to school they won’t learn very much, and they then don’t get choices in terms of what they can do for a living. I think I’m right in saying that over 90 per cent of disabled children don’t go to school, whereas over 90 per cent of non-disabled children do go to school, so there’s a huge gap there.
Tell us about the organisations you worked with?
I was working mainly with two deaf organisations, both of them on the island of Java. One was Matahariku, which means ‘My Sunshine’, and the other is called Gerkatin Solo, which was our local branch of the National Deaf Association. They were both small organisations that didn’t have an office.
What were the main objectives of your placement?
My role was to help make them stronger. This involved helping them to communicate with the hearing people they were working with. They both relied on a number of NGOs and INGOs, and I would meet with them and help to explain what their plans were. I would also give them a lot of information and materials from other countries to give them ideas and to help them work out where they wanted to be, and then help them make the steps to get there. On top of that there were lots of practical things like IT and how to make minutes for meetings. Or how to explain about discrimination to Deaf people who didn’t know what it was. I did all kinds of things!
What challenges did you face?
In the Indonesian culture things did not necessarily go as I would have expected them to! For example people would turn up to meetings two or three hours late, and once they had arrived trying to get everyone to focus and take part in the main activity could be hard, so I had to think of creative ways of getting people’s attention and explaining things in interesting ways.
What was your greatest achievement?
I think making my friends and colleagues aware that they didn’t have to just go along with what hearing people told them to do, and that they had the right to use their own sign language and to communicate in the way that they wanted to.
How has the experience changed you?
I’m still working out how it’s affected me, and I think that will continue for a while. The biggest thing is that now I’ve had that personal link with Indonesia I don’t want to let go of that. So in effect the direction of my life has changed now.
So what are you doing now?
I’ve decided I want to do something that will build upon the experiences and memories I have from Indonesia. I want to continue to aid the development of deaf people there, so I’m going to do a research degree which will look at the sign languages that I used in Indonesia. Hopefully that will increase the amount of information we have about the sign language that deaf people use there, and that will create a viable alternative that can be used for educating children in Java and maybe in other regions in Indonesia as well.
