Lifting students beyond expectations
“The child gives us a beautiful lesson—that in order to form and maintain our intelligence,
we must use our hands.”
Maria Montessori
The Learning Center for the Deaf (LCD) is a representative organization of persons with disabilities (OPD), focusing on issues related to the Deaf, where the Deaf constitute a majority of the Board and the General Assembly (besides director and staff members being Deaf). It is an organization that offers services in parallel to advocacy work.
The purpose of the “Learning Center for the Deaf” (LCD), which is a non-profit, non-political, and non-sectarian association, located in Baabda-Brasilia, Lebanon, is to provide quality services to respond to the urgent needs of deaf persons in Lebanon, with emphasis on education, in its broad meaning, as a tool for change and advancement of the deaf community.
The team (management and teachers) of the LCD fervently believes in the empowerment of the Deaf in general, including the family of the deaf person, and reaches out to the world of the hearing with information that helps spread awareness about the Deaf and deafness. The focus is to promote deaf persons’ rights, especially the right for accessibility and inclusion in society. This is done with an eye seeking justice, equal opportunities, and especially respect for human dignity.
Consequently, the LCD has initiated challenging services and programs which were not available in the country before, in order to complement existing programs and services, and thus provide better opportunities for the Deaf and their family members, whether directly or indirectly. One of the most recent pursuits focuses on the provision of Sign Language interpretation, among others.
All LCD services are meant to create change. Equally, the LCD undertakes many important right-based initiatives, by means of seeking change at the level of legislation and policies; often in partnership with other OPDs.
These services and initiatives were added to the two major and unique programs which were consecutively initiated by the LCD in 2001 and 2003, being the family-based Early Intervention Program and the High School Program.
The High School successfully aims at providing deaf young people the choice of passing the official Baccalaureate (High School) exams and heading to University, like their hearing peers.
The Early Intervention Program is a rich comprehensive program prior to school-age (0-3yrs). It is a stepping stone that empowers the family and provides them the tools to surround the child with a rich environment, supportive to his/her general healthy development and well-being, with a great emphasis on communication and language. This stepping stone preemptively determines the quality of the future life of many deaf children.