At 20th anniversary celebration: Buea School for Deaf celebrates milestones, makes projections.

Promoters, friends, ex-students and staff of the Buea School for the Deaf turned out in their numbers to be part of the celebration which unfolded at the campus of the institution located in Mile 16, Buea on Saturday March 2, 2024. 

It was a unique opportunity for the school that trains from primary to secondary school. The institution gives children with deafness an opportunity to start their education with no language, communicate, and learn through sign language and the use of their eyes. They write the national examinations with varying levels of success.

Addressing guests during the event, the Co-founder of Buea School for the Deaf, Aloysius Bibum, said it was a period to celebrate and reflect. 

“We are celebrating 20 years of empowering deaf children despite the challenges because people think deaf children cannot learn but they can. They communicate through signs, which is challenging, but we are making strides,” Bibum said.

Bibum revealed that BSD started in 2003 in a rented apartment with 13 students. He said the institution was neither able to pay its rents, or teachers or get parents to pay their children’s tuition fees. 

Going by the declaration of the co-founder during the event, the situation was made worse by the fact that most parents saw their deaf children as useless and such a school was thus seen as a dumping ground. 

Despite the challenges at the beginning, BSD has a current enrolment of 105 boarding students in its primary, secondary, vocational, and external high school programmes. 

These children comes from five of the country’s 10 Regions, with the exception of the three northern region, South and East Regions. It has a staff strength of 44. 

The BSD co-founder encouraged the guests to build bonds with the school to ensure it achieves its mission of providing quality education and employment opportunities to deaf youths.

Deaf schools unlike other schools, he said, face serious financial challenges because they offer special education to persons with special needs. 

With very few students, it is practically impossible to raise sufficient income from school fees alone given the small number of students in a class.

Ex-students, parents salute training at BSD

One of the ex-students of the institution, Allain Essoh who spoke to the press during the event, appreciated the co-founders, management and staff for allowing deaf youth to have quality education. 

BSD, he said empowered them to graduate from universities, teachers’ training colleges and some going out of the country.

He promised the support of ex-students to the institution to ensure that all deaf children across the country can also benefit from such an excellent opportunity as they did. 

The ex-students from all works of life donated different gifts to the institution to support its mission.

On her part, Dr Arrey Bessem, a parent of a student in the institution expressed joy at the opportunity provided by the institution to her deaf child. 

The institution, she said, made her child more confident as she too had taken time to learn the sign language to effectively communicate with the child.  In this light, she encouraged parents with deaf children to send them to BSD

Multimedia centre in place to assist learners

Given that some teachers face communication challenges while students face reading and writing challenges, the institution has created a Multi-media Centre where teaching and learning are conducted with the use of a laptop and a projector. 

In order to offer quality training to its learners, BSD is also working with the Association of Schools for the Deaf, the Association for the Development and Promotion of Cameroon Sign Language and the Association of Sign Language Interpreters. 

By bringing deaf leaders to work with hearing professionals, the management of the school says it’s ensuring that the future of deaf education in Cameroon will be a bright one.

The combination of these two methods enabled BSD to record its highest success in GCE O/L in 2023 with 100%.