Free School Maimai “Iruka House”
Free School Maimai, an NPO in Shibuya Ward, will be holding a sign language event. This is the first project to remove barriers. The Olympics for people who cannot hear are called the Deaflympics. The Deaflympics will be held in Tokyo in 2025. If you take this opportunity to become familiar with sign language, you should be able to break down the barriers between people with hearing impairments and people with normal hearing.
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NPO Free School Maimai (Location: Shibuya Ward, Representative: Tomoe Konoike, hereinafter referred to as Free School Maimai) held a sign language play event at the social space on Sangubashi Bridge on the evening of November 23, 2023 (Thursday holiday). . This project was held as a publicity event for an event called “Exchange Meeting with Deaflympics Athletes” to be held on Saturday, December 9th.
The URL of the special page for the “Interaction with Deaflympics” event to be held from 13:30 on Saturday, December 9th is listed below. https://irukayainfo1.wixsite.com/home/general-4-1
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From 4:00 to 6:00 at dusk. Many families are heading home soon, so why not stop by for a bit before heading home? Parents and children who stopped by and a group of boys who often come to this space showed interest. In a familiar place, with familiar friends and parents and children. Each of them participated in this project in a relaxed and lively manner. After warming up with a gesture game, we played a gesture message game. In the beginner’s version, it is OK as long as the information is communicated from the front to the person in the back seat. In the advanced version, will it be communicated to all the people in the queue? ! Both teams in the front and back rows were able to successfully get their words across to the end. We also enjoyed playing other games, and at the end, we challenged ourselves to “Try telling your name in finger letters.”
I moved my fingers along with the names of many of my friends and was able to feel the different finger shapes. While everyone who participated felt the difficulty of communicating without speaking out loud, they also learned that there are many ways to communicate. The next day at school, I could see the smiles on the faces of the children who were probably showing off their finger letters. This event was held as a publicity project for a networking event with Deaflympics athletes, but the actual event will take place in two weeks. Did we achieve the purpose of this project, which was to create an opportunity for people to go and listen to the stories of the players?
But even if you can’t hear directly from the athletes, if you can recognize sign language when you see someone using sign language on the street, then the project was a great success. I think.
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-Purpose of the project-
The Deaflympics, the Olympics for the hearing impaired, will be held in Tokyo in 2025. The players are practicing hard every day for the tournament. Why did Free School Maimai organize an exchange with the players at this time?
There are many things in this world that we don’t know. There is more we don’t know than what we do know. However, armed with what we know, many of us tend to judge people as superior or inferior to others, get excited about their grades, and when a word we have never heard comes up in a conversation, we immediately ask, “What does that mean?” ?” I am unable to ask.
You can’t say you don’t know what you don’t know. Where does it come from? Also, for example, what should you do if someone with a confession comes on the train? What should I do if I see someone
hyperventilating? When you encounter something like this that you might be able to deal with if you knew about it, if you have never seen or heard of it and don’t know how to respond, you just don’t know what to do and get defensive. Things can easily happen. This “momentary upset” may make the other person feel like they were “avoided” or “disliked.” Of course, the person who was upset probably didn’t mean that.
Those who perceive this response negatively may turn against the other person. This creates unintentional discrimination. Isn’t that what happens in every situation?
The world is full of things that everyone doesn’t know, so don’t worry about it and just ask. Moreover, I would like many people to realize that if they know even a little bit about it, they will be able to deal with the situation without panic when they encounter it for the first time.
Once you learn a little bit about a world you don’t know about, that world becomes familiar to you from that moment on. If this is repeated, discrimination and conflicts will decrease. With this hope in mind, Maimai is creating opportunities for everyone to learn about various things around the world. Since the Deaflympics are approaching and Tokyo is becoming sign language friendly, let’s invite some notable athletes and learn about the “deaf world” together. I planned it with that intention in mind.
Participation is accepted until the day of the event. Why not take this opportunity to remove one wall of not knowing?
-Organization information-
NPO Free School Maimai
Established (registered): September 5, 2002
Homepage: https://irukayainfo1.wixsite.com/home
Contact: irukayainfo1@gmail.com