I received the following email from a friend who is working in another country on literacy materials for the deaf and hearing-impaired:

I am looking for a deaf volunteer in Herat, Afghanistan who can help us help illiterate Afghani deaf learn to read.

How? I found a team from Houston headed to Herat, Afghanistan later this month and they graciously offered to video the Afghani hand signs so we can put them in the free His Hands Reader program. We can make this available for free to the Afghani deaf.

Why? There are 600,000 deaf in Afghanistan that are illiterate.

The videographer’s window of availability in Herut is only Oct 31 thru Nov 2. The task should take only about 10 hours to film the 1700 hand signs.

What? The His Hands Reader project will in turn produce and distribute a free DVD containing the video lexicon for the 1700 words in English and French. We can add any of the other 40+ text languages of Afghanistan if volunteers surface to add them. The DVD materials will also include a video reading primer from the book of Genesis.

If you are interested in helping with this project, please email me (I will forward your email to my friend) or leave a comment. My email is sherryDOTearlyATgmailDOTcom.