Creating an International Community

This week my goal was to focus on outreach in order to gain more views, awareness of and followers/members for DOW. This involved me contacting multiple different companies and groups about promoting DOW on their Facebook pages and group pages. In doing this I got the chance to talk to many different types of people from all around the U.S. and some in other countries. From this experience I have gained a broader understanding of how similarities bring people together. The deaf community, although there may be certain ones here and there, is not restricted by state or even country borders. Being deaf or HH comes with specific challenges and joys, and even members of a deaf community from a different country can relate to these same things in some way or another.

A problem that I have run into at the current moment is that the migration to our pages, that I thought would happen due to my efforts this week, did not happen. Although at first this seemed to me to be disheartening, I quickly remembered all of the students that DOW works with. These students are so talented, brave, smart and strong, and in the face of adversity they do not break, but instead push past each obstacle. DOW will have to do the same. Challenges will come and go, but we know that this message and this work needs to be done and so we push forward and progress, even if at first it seems slow.

Until next time, Sam.