The Rotary Club of Fort Collins teamed up with the Rotary Club of Cheyenne and the Rotary Club of Chiquimula de la Sierra, Guatemala to provide a computer lab for a school for deaf children in Zacapa, Guatemala. The Maria Teresa Ordonez School is the only school for deaf children in eastern Guatemala and serves over 75 children with impaired hearing and/or speech.
The facility was built largely on the efforts of Jorge and Reina Palma Zecena, members of the Rotary Club of Chiquimula, whose‘s son Jorgito is himself deaf. As there was no funding available to make modern learning tools available to these otherwise normal children, Anita, Jorgito’s sister and also a member of the RC of Chiquimula wondered if Rotary could help. In June of 2007, Anita met with Ft. Collins Rotarians Claude Piché, Chuck Rutenberg, Susie Ewing and Betty Brown and proposed a Matching Grant to equip the facility.
The opening ceremony for the computer lab took place in June of 2008 during the 2008 visit of Rotarians Ft. Collins.
The matching grant covered the purchase and installation of 12 computers and work stations, special software for teaching hearing-impaired children as well as an air conditioner for climate control in the lab.
This project will directly benefit the students of the school and indirectly benefit the families and communities of these youth. There is also potential to network these resources to other schools for deaf children in other parts of Guatemala.
For more information about this project, please click here.
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