Smorgasbord Children’s Reading Room Special – How books can make a difference – Cameroon School for the Deaf – Supported by Dawn Doig

The majority of children in the parts of the world we live in learn to read at school, have access to books, are read bedtime stories and feel safe from danger. Unfortunately there are still countries where this is a luxury, as this particular fundraising page illustrates.

Dawn Doig lives in the Cameroon and supports a number of initiatives including this school for deaf children, that is badly in need of help to not just teach the students but keep them safe.

CAESEDA Centre d’Acceuil et d’Education Specialisee des Enfants Deficients Auditifs Nkolmebanga, Cameroon introduced by Dawn Doig

The deaf children who currently live and go to school at CAESEDA Centre d’Acceuil et d’Education Specialisee des Enfants Deficients Auditifs Nkolmebanga, approximately 80 km outside Yaoundé, Cameroon are in need of a new school and living quarters (orphanage).

The facility is currently housed in the deteriorating buildings of an old poultry factory. It is heartbreaking to see these children living and going to school in such unpleasant conditions. The roofs leak and there are no adequate bathrooms. The bedroom windows had to be boarded up because a man tried to abduct some of the children while they were sleeping. These children need a safe, secure, and comfortable place to live and go to school.

Sister Simone, a Catholic nun who currently runs the the school for the deaf/orphanage, has been given land by the Cameroonian government to build a new facility, but she does not have the necessary funds to break ground. Sister Simone also has a well designed project already prepared which clearly outlines five distinct modules. These modules include dormitories and classrooms, dining area, medical clinic, and training center. The entire project will cost almost 2 million US dollars to complete. For now, it would be wonderful to at least complete Module 1 so the children have decent living quarters and decent classrooms. The funding requested here is for Module 1.

Here is the link to the Go Get Funding Page for more photographs:New School and Orphanage for Cameroon Deaf Children

Dawn Doig donates the funds from the sale of her 15 hardback and paperback children’s books to this very worthy cause.

Not everyone is in the position to necessarily donate to this or any other charity funding project, but it does illustrate how we as authors can look at our books in a different way.

We write to be read, and yes, any income is always gratefully received, but another way to support is to donate books to schools and libraries in countries that are desperate to provide them to both children and adults to read.

I have just bought these books for my younger nieces and nephews and I hope that this will help in some way to reaching the goal of building this much needed orphanage.

Dawn sent me this photo yesterday which is now on screensaver and nothing pleases me more to know that a child thousands of miles away might read Tales from the Irish Garden and wonder about a world so different from their own. Or enjoy the antics of a shaggy dog.

About Dawn Doig

I am Canadian. Born in Victoria, B.C., Canada, I spent most of my childhood on Vancouver Island. I graduated from high school in Abbotsford, B.C., Canada in 1983 and went on to complete a Bachelor of Science degree in Linguistics from the University of Victoria in 1988. In 1990, I completed a Master of Science degree in Human Communication Disorders majoring in audiology which led to a very rewarding career that spanned 23 years. During that time, I had the privilege to work with patients in different parts of Canada, Kuwait, England, and Saudi Arabia. While in Kuwait, I wrote my first children’s picture book And So, Ahmed Hears which was inspired by all of the hearing-impaired and deaf children I have had the immense pleasure to work with over the years. My last eight years as an audiologist were spent in Saudi Arabia where, in my role as head of the audiology unit, I was instrumental in helping to set up the communications department at a large rehabilitation hospital. This was and still is one of the highlights of my career in audiology.

​In 2015, I completed a Master of Education degree in Teaching English as a Second Language through The College of New Jersey. My husband, who is a teacher, had followed me around the globe for 23 years and now I follow him. My first teaching post was as an English as an Additional Language (EAL) teacher at the International School of Ulaanbaatar (ISU) in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. While in Mongolia, I wrote E El Gi Piddr which was inspired by the diverse population of students who were learning English as their second, third, fourth , or even fifth language. This past August, my husband and I relocated to Yaounde, Cameroon, where I am currently the English Language Learner (ELL) coordinator at the American School of Yaounde (ASOY). I have been blessed with yet another rewarding career. Instead of helping children to hear now, I am helping them to speak, read, and write another language. Communication in any form is such an important part of being human.

​I have been married for 33 years to my wonderful husband, Bruce. We have two grown children, a son Colin and daughter Marisa who both reside in Vancouver, Canada. We have opened our hearts and our homes to many furry friends over the years and currently share our home with Kydee and Patches, two female kitties we adopted in Mongolia. I love to bake to relieve stress and get immense pleasure out of sharing my baking with others. While living in Saudi Arabia, I self-published a baking book entitled Just Frickin’ Bake It. It is available for purchase on Magcloud. Over 1400 copies of the cookbook were left in Saudi Arabia and any sales are to be donated to the Terry Fox Foundation for cancer research.

​Bruce and I love to travel and recent escapades have included hiking the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu, riding mountain bikes down Death Road in Bolivia, zip-lining through the rainforest in Thailand, whitewater rafting in Uganda, and trekking with chimpanzees in Uganda. In December 2018, I had a 40-year dream come true when we spent two hours with the mountain gorillas in Uganda. Seeing my books in the hands of children around the world is the next big dream I hope to see come true 🙂

A selection of other books by Dawn Doig which are available in several languages.

Read the reviews and Buy Amazon US – And: Amazon UK – Follow Dawn: Goodreads – Website: Dawn Doig – Twitter: @Shoebears

Dawn donates the sales of the books to the orphanage.

 

Thank you for dropping in today and I hope that this might have given you some ideas of how you could make a difference to a child’s life somewhere in the world where books and the gift of reading is not as taken for granted as much as we do where we live.. Thanks Sally.