To celebrate this year’s Deaf Awareness Week (1-7 May 2023), The Elizabeth Foundation has released five new videos about its work, published its Listen! Spring/Summer 2023 newsletter, and continued sharing teaching resources on deaf awareness.
About Deaf Awareness Week
Deaf Awareness Week takes place at the start of May each year. This year, Deaf Awareness Week runs from 1-7 May 2023 and with the theme of “Access to Communication” it aims to:
- raise awareness of the communication needs of deaf people
- advocate for greater access to communication tools and services
- encourage people and services to work together to create a more inclusive society where deaf people have equal access to communication
To celebrate Deaf Awareness Week 2023, The Elizabeth Foundation has undertaken a range of activities to show how our work enables deaf children and their families to have better access to communication.
New videos – showcasing how our work helps deaf children to learn to communicate
We are proud to launch five new videos demonstrating the impact of our work – four produced with the help of Solent Sky Services, alongside a further video created in-house by our Digital Media Manager.
We are always seeking ways to add value to our in-house marketing resources so we can better highlight the charitable services and facilities we offer to deaf children – both at our Hampshire Family Centre and all across the UK.
Looking for advice and inspiration, we approached local firm Solent Sky Services. This award-winning multimedia company create outstanding video materials using ground-based camera equipment and small drone cameras.
Solent Sky Services leapt into action, helping us to identify key elements of our services, facilities and talented team members to include in new and engaging video content. Their production team have worked with us to develop films featuring our children, parents, staff and our Chair of Trustees.
“We’ve been working pro bono with the team at The Elizabeth Foundation to produce a series of videos to educate viewers about the amazing work they do and help raise more awareness and funds for their charity. It’s been a heart-warming experience and we’ve enjoyed every second working with them.”
Solent Sky Services
We have included a couple of the new videos below, and you can watch all of the five new videos on our website using these links:
- Julie Hughes, Chief Executive, introduces our work
- Tom Holloway, Chair of Trustees, explains why he supports our work
- Grace’s story, as told by her mother Laura
- Joshua’s story, as told by his mother Tarryn
- Daisy’s story, as told by her mother Sarah
Our Chief Executive introduces our work (created by Solent Sky Services)
Daisy’s story (created in-house)
Listen! newsletter – highlighting our wide range of activities and services
To mark Deaf Awareness Week we have also published our Spring/Summer 2023 Listen! newsletter, full of news and updates about our wide range of services and activities.
The latest issue of Listen! celebrates our achievements over the last year – leading on the front cover with the news of how we are supporting our parents’ communication choices with a new sign language course. Responding to feedback from our beneficiaries and ongoing discussions with families, we have started offering parents who attend our nursery programme the opportunity to complete a Level 1 British Sign Language (BSL) course to extend their and their children’s communication choices.
“Thank you so much for your time last night – I absolutely loved it. I had the whole family signing this morning which was really sweet.”
Parent on our new BSL course
In the newsletter you can also read about how the number of individuals benefiting from our work has steadily grown. We continue to support deaf children and their families from all over the south of England in the nursery sessions we provide at our Family Centre in Hampshire. And an ever-expanding number of families and professionals from all across the UK are accessing our online Let’s Listen and Talk programme – with well over 1,100 subscribers (at the time of writing).
- Click on this link to open or download the Listen! Spring/Summer 2023 Newsletter [1 MB, PDF].
- If you would like to receive a printed copy of the Listen! newsletter please contact us.
Teaching resources – sharing information about deaf awareness
Are you looking for resources to help you teach (or learn) about the human ear, its structure and function, causes of deafness and deaf awareness? If so, we’ve got just the thing for you!
We recently published a set of new teaching resources on our website designed to help support the teaching of deaf awareness to secondary age children. Lessons can be altered to suit either timetabled GCSE Science or PSHE lessons or to fit shorter tutor-based sessions. We have included some guidance on how to use the resources in the classroom but the resources have been designed to be flexible and used as teachers see fit.
There are two lessons covering the human ear, its structure and the function of each part (in Lesson 1); and causes of deafness and deaf awareness (in Lesson 2). These resources were developed by Michelle and Jeremy Rayne – whose children attended our preschool services. Jeremy is a teacher, and has piloted these resources in Year 9 lessons.
