Simon Houriez, director of "Signes de sens"
website : www.signesdesens.org
Very Special IF this friday 26/02/2010 at 17:30 !
SIGNES DE SENS works on accessibility to Knowledge and Arts for deaf people. It has been doing this work for six years ; 10 people are employed by the organization. Our work is based on a simple idea : everyone deserves to be able to educate, whatever communication means they use. Everyone deserves specific learning tools to develop curiosity and to learn.
2 GOALS
- Support deaf community. Help it to enlighten and strengthen itself, while being respected as a inority. We propose and create specific tools to help the deaf community in achieving these goals.
- Encourage deaf and hearing people to mix, on equal level basis. Fight against illiteracy. Offer deaf people the opportunity to get access knowledge by reading.
3 ACTIVITIES
- Cultural activities : Propose bilingual cultural activities (French / French Sign language) : theater shows, workshops, exhibition. Make cultural and art places accessible to deaf people : museum, theaters, libraries. We work in France and abroad
- Publishing : Create multimedia tools (books, DVD, the Internet) using mime, sign language, video and pictures. Learn, discover and dream. For everyone : deaf or hearing people. Conte sur tes doigts publishing
- Web : Use the Internet (social networks, web 2.0, video...) for deaf people' access to Knowledge. Use the Internet to learn, meet people, get information...
Few words from Simon to present his background and activities :
"I was studying since a long time and I was quite successful but there was always this question about the meaning of things, the use of learning and searching, as i wanted to become a researcher in physical chemistry. Why do we learn so many things?I think nobody never asked me during my scholar path about this "why?" or "what for?" and often the answer is about getting a good job, a job that firstly allow you to earn enough money to live and secondly an interesting job. About the first part of course you have to think of it but for the second one.. what does that mean "interesting" ? To me, after some personal problems that made me think about "life", this question of interst was central, and i quited my studies to start something else, something "out of the books"and "interesting". I met a deaf guy and I discovered deafness and all the problematic. It was amazing and I started to think about this question, I had an idea an then an other.. I tryed.. I asked someone to help me and an other one.. I developped this project .. as a researcher I suppose. Then the organisation "Signes de sens" was born and it is still running an developing projects about accessibility to knowledges and culture for deaf people. Everything I will explain soon !"
French links :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh79hezDK80
http://www.ashoka.org/shouriez