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Queen of Peace Catholic Church to train 60 sign language interpreters
● Rev. Fr. Rene
As Chinese disability civil rights activist, Chen Guangcheng, aptly said, “How a society treats its disabled is the true measure of a civilisation.”
This means that, it is important for able-bodied persons or institutions to make conscious efforts in supporting people living with disabilities in order to alleviate their sufferings.
One of such institutions living up to this expectation is the Queen of Peace Catholic Church, Madina in the Greater Accra Region.
The church is on a mission to train 60 sign language interpreters this year.
This was to ensure that the hearing-impaired who attended mass at the church and nearby parishes were not deprived of understanding what was said at mass and social gatherings.
The exercise estimated to cost about GHc80, 000, is opened to volunteers who are ready to help demonstrate skillfully the teachings of Christ or the word of God to the understanding of the unhearing.
Rev. Fr Rene Yao (SMA), the founder and first Chaplain of St. Martin’s Deaf Ministry, said the Catholic Church needed the support of all well-meaning citizens to make the initiative a reality.
He was optimistic the introduction of the sign language during mass and other social gatherings would motivate people living with disabilities to attend the church and get the best out of the time spent there.
The training programme, he said, would be done in batches to rope in more volunteers to deepen the church’s evangelisation, programmes.
Rev Fr. Rene said: “As Catholics, the volunteers would be empowered to share the Gospel and the teachings of Jesus.
The training would offer the (volunteers) the responsibility to bring the message of Jesus to everybody.
“The church is looking at the possibility of sustaining the training in subsequent years, so that those trained could be useful to people in the society.”
He said funds being raised for the project would also be used to rehabilitate a room for physiotherapy for the Hope for Life Foundation, which is an organisation that handles disabled issues.