It has been a remarkably rapid happening to see an abandoned building in the town of Maasin, Southern Leyte, Philippines turned into a dormitory for deaf children. It is now fully operational and being occupied by it first batch of hearing impaired students.
Bohol Deaf Academy’s old, leaky, rust bucket of a van has at long last been replaced by a beautiful, new roomy, air conditioned beauty. At least it is new to us. It is actually a low milage 2007 Mitsubishi L300 that is locally assembled in Manila into what is known as an Asian Utility Vehicle.
Tilt-Bed Trailer for Micro Houses This trailer is a thing of beauty in the way it is engineered. Jim Verploegen of Billings, Montana went over to Bohol for two weeks to lead the IDEA Philippines welders in building this 30’X8.5′ tilt-bed trailer used for delivering our micro or shed homes to the Cohen Village I home
FOLLOW-UP ON HEARING AIDS Dr. Gene Bukowski is a member of IDEA’s board of directors back in Montana. For many years he has worked closely with Dennis Drake to further the cause of providing hearing aids to IDEA’s deaf children. It was because of Dr. Gene that Starkey Hearing Foundation was introduced to the work
Like One Big Happy Family This scene up at Bohol Deaf Academy one evening last week was not staged for the camera. Dennis Drake just dropped in and found the deaf kids sitting around on the stage and at a couple of tables doing random projects and chatting. The atmosphere was so very peaceful and
Visiting Canadian Chefs CESO (Canadian Executive Service Organization)teamed up with IDEA this February to help improve the food and service of IDEA’s various restaurant businesses. Altogether the two Garden Cafes and Dao Diamond Hotel employ 14 deaf cooks and bakers. Some of these cooks have been working with us for almost 30 years and although
A New Hotel Theme We recently discovered that one of IDEA’s deaf carpentry employees has an amazing ability at sculpting. Because our Dao Diamond Hotel has changed its motif to Polynesian it was thought that we needed a Tiki or two around to add to the atmosphere so Arnold the carpenter was given a small
The homes are built in our IDEA shop by our deaf carpenters. We are not able to go down to a Home Depot and buy the lumber. Instead we have to order the lumber rough cut by chainsaw and then bring it into our shop to mill it down to ship-lap siding and studs. It is a very labor and equipment intensive effort. The homes are then either built in knockdown form or totally assembled and delivered to the building site on a trailer or truck.
Gifts for Bohol and Leyte in Christmas 2011
DEAF FESTIVAL BOHOL, PHILIPPINES It has been three years since the last Bohol Deaf Festival. On December 6 & 7 deaf children and adults from all over the island made their way to the Bohol Deaf Academy for the two days of fun, games, presentations and fellowship. For many of the youngsters this was the
