Non-Profit Spotlight

“The deaf community wants to know and support/encourage the children and embrace the families. The families want their children to thrive. We want to support those introductions and relationships,” Tanya Polstra shared.

The organization was founded by the parents of a deaf girl in 1996 to provide child-appropriate resources in American Sign Language (ASL), the heart language of the deaf, to families seeking to teach the Christian faith and values to their deaf and hard-ofhearing children.

“We partnered with two other ministries to develop and produce Finger Food Cafe movies (two) and the Dr. Wonder’s Workshop TV show (65 episodes),” Tanya said. “All videos, several games, and parent information are available on our God Loves Deaf Kids app as well as Apple TV, Roku, and more.”

While Lead-K, the Nyle DiMarco Foundation, Gallaudet, and more are working to bring ASL to these children, our focus is to bring them relationships – in their families, communities, and, our highest goal: with Jesus. Learning, whether it’s faith, science, or math, requires language. So in encouraging and supporting ASL, we’re encouraging and supporting a lifetime of healthy identity and confidence,” Tanya explained.

As a community, deaf people reject the phrase “handicapped” (and “hearing-impaired” for that matter) because they are capable people with a visual (not audio) orientation. But they’re the only ones who mostly learn their language and culture from outside their families. By the time they find their “tribe,” where they fit at a heart level, they’ve dealt with isolation and oppression, with many turning away from their families of origin. One of our goals is to enlighten these families while their children are still young enough to learn and embrace their values, their family stories, so that when the young deaf people find their “tribe,” family isn’t excluded.

“Now we’re working on a parents’ outreach ministry called Manifest and a VBS/Camp experience incorporating the Dr. Wonder’s Workshop (DWW) material and coordinating activities,” Tanya said. “We are not the only ministry for deaf children, but we are still the unique ministry dedicated to developing shareable/reusable resources in ASL specifically for teaching biblical faith to deaf and hard of hearing children while including their hearing family members by adding voice-overs, music, sound effects, and captions.”

Silent Blessings is also working to produce resources that bring scripture and character/value lessons (based on scripture) in child-appropriate, visually engaging ways. They are working to bring awareness and deaf-friendliness to churches, so families can confidently continue to worship without their deaf and hard-ofhearing children being left out of treasured activities like Sunday School, VBS, and more. They are also building a network of families who can mentor and be mentored by sharing experiences and strategies for home, life, and the adventure that is IEP.

“More things that we’d like to build, given the resources, are maps/lists of churches with ministries for deaf kids and maps/ lists of schools and which method(s) they espouse (ASL, SEE, oral, bi-lingual/bi-cultural), and maps/lists of opportunities for families to learn ASL and mingle with the deaf community, so their children can have language models to interact with,” Tanya said. “We’re in an entrepreneurial phase of building new initiatives while renovating our infrastructure, picking through existing materials to see what we need to reuse, revamp, recycle, or release. We need volunteers who know fundraising, grant writing, marketing, audio/visual recording, and editing.”

Helen Keller said, “Blindness cuts us off from things, but deafness cuts us off from people.” While more familiar special needs like Down syndrome and cerebral palsy may limit interaction with others, deafness almost prevents it. Deaf children are practically invisible because there is no wheelchair, brace, service animal, or cane to give outsiders a hint – there’s “only” a lack of communication. Deaf kids are sprinkled among American communities at a rate of roughly one to five per thousand (https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/ hearingloss/data.html), with 90% born to hearing households.

“Special needs” as a label doesn’t automatically include deaf children – as a matter of fact, almost nothing includes deaf children, and that’s the problem,” Tanya stated. “Most are born to hearing households without deaf role models, and the professionals are telling the parents to avoid the use of sign language because it will hinder their use of voice and non-existent hearing. We’re working to inform these families that they do have other options, and their children will be healthier on the whole if visual language, ASL, is included in their family life. It’s communication, relationship, education, and the ability to think in and freely express their own thoughts without the child having to navigate a language they physically cannot reproduce.”

One of our favorite stories is of a girl we call Sarah. She’s deaf, and her mom was faithful to interpret for her in sign language. Her mom reports that when the family offered prayers before dinner, Sarah always gave up her turn to pray. That is, until the day she watched a Dr. Wonder’s Workshop video and saw a boy kneel by his bed and pray in sign language. She, like many deaf children, didn’t realize that Jesus could understand her expressions. Ever since then, reported her mom, Sarah takes not only her turns to pray, but she also takes all those turns she gave up.

“Many deaf people believe Jesus is the god of the hearing, because too few families and churches have realized the need or invested the effort to tell them otherwise. That’s why we do what we do.”

Deaf Missions just completed the only existing verse-by-verse signed translation of the Bible. Many of the people who pushed this project over the finish line were children who were involved in or reached through the Finger Food Cafe and Dr. Wonder’s Workshop projects. These are deaf adults who, without this influence in their childhood, would not have the embedded resources to have done this work. We want to continue influencing deaf children and rejoice in what the next generation will accomplish.

Do you run a non-profit? Would you like to be a part of the non-profit spotlight or nominate someone else to be in an upcoming issue of Special Needs Living? Email us at SpecialNeedsLivingIndy@n2pub.com.

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