our approach

We aim to protect deaf children holistically: by strengthening safeguarding in their entire life-space. This means working with all their key duty-bearers, including their caregivers, teachers, community leaders, and local authorities.

Below is a “Mind Map” that shows how each strand of our work contributes to our overall goal of holistic protection. These strands range from building the individual skills and resilience of deaf kids, increasing school safeguarding capacities, enriching the protective capacities of actors in the kids’ wider communities, and contributing to the Child Protection sector at large. We are eager to form relationships with donors and partners who can join us on our journey to fully realise this approach.

Our short-term aim is to deepen the impact of our 2 programmes, DeafKidz Defenders and DeafKidz Goal. This means further developing their content, bringing them to new schools in our target countries, positioning them for scale — even delivering them side-by-side.

We want to:

– Make the DK Defenders EdTech app more self-guided, catalysing its reach, scalability, and cost-effectiveness in teaching kids protective behaviors.

– Build elements into our programmes which respond to abuse, such as group healing work.

– Deepen cultures of holistic protection in communities, while countering stigma.

– Create additional DeafKidz Defenders modules that are relevant for older children facing online threats.

– Integrate an emotional intelligence/resilience module which can help deaf kids manage the trauma they’ve experienced.

– Bring DeafKidz Goal to Africa, and add new sports beyond football to its roster.