August 30, 2010

Help the flood victms of Balochistan-Pakistan

Dear jicafriends,

As we know flood has effected major part of the country, Balochistan was also effected very much.

Still there are thousands of people without roofs and food, however there are govt. agencess and NGOs working to help them but it is not enough.
New Life is a DPO working for the the rehabilitation of PWDs in district Balochistan.
We, with the help of other local NGOs orgonized a survay of the victms in Loralai district.
We decided to provide them food and clothes in the holy month of Ramadan with the help of our friend DPOs and NGOs.
In this regard we srongly appeal to all of our friend DPOs and NGOs to help us in any shape.

You can send us all basic things for the victms before Eid, so we will be able to provide these to effected areas of Loralai.
Hopping to hear from you soon,

Masood Khan
President NEW LIFE
Saif dry cleaners Ghazi Arsla Khan Road
Loralai Balochistan.
masoodmtn@yahoo.com
newlife_lri@hotmial.com

Posted by jicafriends at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)

May 06, 2010

Can Grade Two Braille Spell Trouble?-Bangladesh

The following information was downloaded from the mailing list of "accessbangla."

When Braille is taught, it is usually taught in steps. First, there is "Grade One" Braille, which consists of the entire Braille alphabet and some punctuation. As a Braille user becomes more advanced and efficient with the language, he or she is taught "Grade Two" Braille.

Grade Two Braille offers a series of contractions, which most people would call short-hand. I suppose that the inventor of Braille decided to designate a series of words as abbreviations and then taught to the blind. For example, each letter of the alphabet in Grade Two Braille, accept for the letters A, I, and O, represents a whole word. The letter B is written as "But", the letter C is written as "Can", etc. To get to the point of this article, I will now give you a letter that stands for a bigger word.

The letter K in Grade Two Braille means the word "Knowledge." Assuming that most blind children who learn Braille are either in first or second grade, many may be learning these Grade Two contractions before they actually learn how to spell the actual real word as sighted children do. Did you know how to spell knowledge when you were 6 years old? If you learned Braille at age 6, and learned how to write the word knowledge by simply writing the letter K, chances are you'd never have to know how to spell knowledge, unless you took up typing or word processing and needed to learn that word.

Grade Two Braille also offers different symbols for other words, such as "And", "The" and "Of". Am I suggesting that little children didn't know how to spell these words before learning these Braille contractions? No, but I actually do know a 35-year-old Braille reader who spells the word "With" as "Width." When I saw that in some of her correspondence recently, I couldn't help think about the possibility that learning Braille contractions at a very young age may exempt some Braille users from ever having to learn the real spellings.

Here is one more example of my concern. Another feature in Grade Two Braille is abbreviated contractions. For example, the word "Could" is taught as "CD", the word "good" is taught as "GD", and the word "Your"is taught as "YR." One day, a young blind boy was in a spelling class. He was about 8 years old, and a very good Braille reader. The teacher asked him how to spell "Good", and he answered, "GD." I'm sure you can imagine the look on the teacher's face when he spelled it that way. Yet, to the little boy's credit, he probably never knew how the word "Good" was really spelled because he learned the Grade Two contraction in first grade, while all sighted first graders would have to learn the real spelling.

For my blind readers, I ask you, am I making too much out of this?
For my sighted readers, I have a suggestion. If you know a young blind child who's learning Braille, it may not be a bad idea for you to make sure that he or she learns the real spellings of Grade Two Braille contractions, if, for no other reason, to avoid embarrassment as he or she gets older. By the way, I have a confession to make. When I learned Braille at 8 years old, I did not know how to spell knowledge until after I learned the Braille contraction for that word.

Posted by jicafriends at 03:31 PM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2010

Earthquake in Haiti

The January 12, 2010, Haiti earthquake occurred in the boundary region separating the Caribbean plate and the North America plate. It struck southern Haiti, knocking down buildings and power lines. Several eyewitnesses reported heavy damage and bodies in the streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince, where concrete-block homes line steep hillsides. There was no estimate of the dead and wounded yet.

We are very much concerned about the persons with disabilities in Haiti, and also worried about those who are suffering from their impairment, disabilities caused by the earthquake.

We express our heartfelt sympathy to our friends in Haiti.

The secretariat of jicafriends

Posted by jicafriends at 02:18 PM | Comments (0)

October 05, 2009

A message of Sympathy to jicafriends in the Philippines and Indonesia

First we would like to express our feelings of sympathy to all the people of the Philippines who have suffered, and who are still suffering by the typhoon. We learned 33,000 people were evacuated from the the east of the main island due to "super typhoon" bore down on Friday, September 25, 2009 and a week after flash floods in and around Manila killed nearly 300 people.
http://jp.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE5910VE20091002

We would also like to express our feelings of sympathy to all the victims of Indonesia who were badly damaged in the earthquake, occurred in Sumatra island on Oct.1, 2009. We heard that 1,000 people are feared dead and many more trapped in rubble.
http://article.wn.com/view/2009/10/01/Thousands_feared_dead_in_Indonesia_quake/

We really do hope that human damage won't be expanded and exacerbated in both countries.
We always pray for you all,

The secretariat of jicafriends

Posted by jicafriends at 01:05 PM | Comments (0)

December 31, 2008

H A P P Y N E W Y E A R - 2009- !!!

Dear jicafriends,

We hope the year 2008 was fruitful one for all of you. In 2008, we saw a number of suffering caused by natural disasters as well as a great loss of Mr. Ichiro Maruyama in international disability field.

We wish the coming year will unite us jicafriends even stronger and our continuous work in respective countries will bring significant changes in the society.

We hope the global efforts in realization of the UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities will bring firm advancement in each country.

In 2009, we will strive for timely provision of disability related information through our website and newsletter. We highly appreciate the contributions made by jicafriends to the website this year.

May the New Year bring success and happiness to each of you.

H A P P Y N E W Y E A R - 2009- !!!

The Secretariat of jicafriends

Posted by jicafriends at 10:10 PM | Comments (0)

March 14, 2008

Report from Ivan-Colombia

Dear Jica Friends:

I was recently in the training course Promotion of Social Participation of Persons with Disabilities Through Sports in Tokyo, Japan.

I was present my action plan “Recreation and Sport for (PWD) in Cali, Colombia (December) in the first International Wheelchair Tennis Tournament, development workshops and promote the social equality of the (PWD) through its participation in competitive sport and recreational events that increase their motivation to the profit, and they improve your quality life. This opportunity was for 11 children with disabilities from 5 cities and the all participants of tournament.

The event was successfully.

PICTURES CALI,COLOMBIA DECEMBER 2007

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA MARCH 2008

The last weekend in Bogota, I had the opportunity to generate spaces for the practice of recreational, playful and sport activities that allow the participant to develop their motor, technical abilities and discipline of a sport. This activity was very important because the people had the opportunity of practice new sports for example Short Tennis, Blind Tennis Table and knew activities for the social integration, The participants of this event were 100 people.

All the best.

IVAN FRANCISCO ANZOLA

Posted by jicafriends at 11:32 AM | Comments (2)

December 31, 2007

Message from The Secretariat of jicafriends.

Another year is coming to end. The year 2007 saw more active information
sharing from jicafriends in the world. We will continue to make improvements
and offer a mutual space for information and opinion exchange in the coming
year.

Posted by jicafriends at 11:31 PM | Comments (1)

December 25, 2007

may God bless you all

Dear and beloved friends,

may God bless you all, I hope 2008 would be a great year. May God heals all the scars and painfull things in our hearts, but letting us to achieve wisdom. The picture is of my pet dog, his name is Elvis Tadeo. He is a pug dog, he is in his "angel mode" hahaha.

Well, I wish you the best

from Chile with love


Carlos

Posted by jicafriends at 03:34 PM | Comments (0)

Mery christmas and Happy new year 2008

Dear all my friends

ME RY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2008
is coming soon

I wish all of you have a good luck and happiness, successfully with your life all the year 2008

I'm continue to work at HIB (Handicap international Belguim)

Love and thinkof all of you forever


Love and high Regards

khemphone Thongsythavong

Posted by jicafriends at 03:16 PM | Comments (0)

Compliment Of the Season

Dear Friends,
The CCoDP wishes you a Marry Christmas and a very properous and happy 2008 !

Raja Marasinghe
- Chairperson, Central Council of Disabled Persons (CCoDP)

Posted by jicafriends at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)

December 21, 2007

To all JICA Friends-Donna from Philippines

Merry Christmas!

2007 is really a year to remember as far as the sector of persons with disabilities in the asia pacific region is concerned. We know that we have done our part to raise our sector a little higher from where we were in the past. Somehow giving hope to our fellow persons with disabilities especially those in the grassroots level.

With fervent hope and prayer that 2008 will be more prosperous for all of us. May we be filled with hope as we work and wait for the realization of our big dreams for the PWD sector. May we continue our commitment despite the challenges ahead of us.

May God continue to bless the JSRPD for your untiring commitment to persons with disabilities particularly those in the asia pacific region. Thank you for making a great difference in the lives of persons with disabilities, for serving as bridge for us to reach each other and for us to dream and work together for the common good.

Looking forward to a more committed and united persons with disabilities.

Let us continue to DREAM BIG... they will soon come true.

Again, Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year to ALL!

GOD BLESS US ALL!

donna - Philippines

Posted by jicafriends at 06:00 PM | Comments (0)

May 02, 2007

Report form Ghana

Michael, a former Ghanaian participant of Leaders' Course 2004 is now working with JICA Volunteer and he sent us the following report and his condolence on his good friend, Justine.

Thank you for given us JICA vulonteer.
He has arrived and has gotten a teacher who is teaching him our local language.
After that we will all sit down and draw the programme for the year.
We will give you the report after drawing the programme.
So continue to help us stand on our feet.

I have head about the death of Mr.Justino Joao Januario from Mozambique so am sending my condolence to the family and the 2004 participants.
Thank you and you will hear from me.

Michael Ocran

Posted by jicafriends at 09:58 AM | Comments (0)

August 17, 2006

Dear Mr. Seevanh XAYKIA and Jicafriends

Dear Mr. Seevanh XAYKIA and Jicafriends,

I am very very happy to read the message from Mr. Seevanh XAYKIA.
This is because of my personal reason that he is sincerely taking up my dream.
About 2 weeks ago, I had a chance to visit his IT trainging center and discuss about how to proceed the IT traing for the blind people in Laos.
He is very kind and generous to understand the importance of production of the braille textbooks. The braille text books are, needless to say, absolutely necessary for the blind people to receive education.
I visited the school for the blind in NRC and looked at the braille books at the library. I was really surprised and schocked to see the old braillebooks. Some braille dots in many pages are torn off and useless any more.
I believe that production of braille books can be smoothly carried out bymaking the best use of conputer.
After coming back to Japan, I am really surprised to know that his IT team provide a scholarship for people with visual impaired to training for six month about basic computer and how to connect to
internet. This is, I feel, an epock-making revolution in the blind world in Laos.
I sincerely hope the IT workshop can be carried out successfully.

Kazuhiko Yamaguchi
Executive director
International Association for the Visually Impaired

Posted by jicafriends at 10:11 AM | Comments (1)

July 21, 2006

For your solidarity of the pressure movement.

After the restoration of the democracy in Nepal, parliament and the
government are formed. The government brought the annual policy and programs
of the country and also announced the annual budget. The newly formed
government has announced the issues of different groups and communities but
did not address single issue of persons with disabilities so far. The
government also made 15 member interim constitution draft committee
including all the groups and regions but did not bring the single member
from the disability sector. So it proves that the interim constitution draft
committee will also not bring and address any issues of persons with
disabilities.

Therefore, the Independent Living Center Katmandu decided to run the
pressure movement from today demanding for the representation of the
disabled in the interim statue drafting panel and constituent assembly to
address the disabled rights and adopt disabled friendly policies to protect
and promote the participation in the state mechanism.

In the first day of the program, the personalities from the different
organizations, civil societies, human right activists have put their
solidarity for the program. This program is co -jointly organized by the IL
Center and other various types of disable people organizations. This
pressure program will continue until the fulfillment of the demand.

Sincerely Your's
Ganesh KC
Member- IL Center Kathmandu

Posted by jicafriends at 11:29 AM | Comments (1)

July 11, 2006

Blindman Jack

Three weeks ago, I was re assigned to handle Disabilities Information and
Resources Center DIRC.
It's gonna be the embrio of library for disabled and who ever interested in
empowering disabled. And last sunday, I just finished my "Advocacy writing
on mass media" training.
It a journalistic training that given to NGOs activists and I was the only
disabled who joined the training. In the future, one of my program is
writing the progress of disabled's movement in the local media in Aceh.

Please feel free to up-date my activities in JICA website and
I'll be more than glad to share it with everyone in this world.

Thanx a lot

Blindman Jack

Posted by jicafriends at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2005

national diet - Carlos Kaiser

Dear friends,

I have been invited to the Chilean diet comission of PwD rights, to analize
impovements in our law.

In Chile, we are working hard to improve our rights. it has been a hard work
but we will never give up.

we have had different meetings with our congress men. I want to tell you
that the president of this comission is a woman. I lioke it because we want
a fair society for all of us.

Our path is not easy, but together we will reach the stars!

your Chilean friend

Carlos

Posted by jicafriends at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)