The Deaf Wellbeing Society In New Zealand celebrate 150 episodes of healthy cooking programmes for their community!

The Deaf Wellbeing Society Incorporated is a not-for-profit Deaf led community organisation in New Zealand. Its sole purpose is to empower and enrich the lives of the Deaf through education and to reduce isolation through social contact.

We operate monthly cooking classes in NZSL, a fortnightly Drop in centre, Deaf CSW visits to isolated born Deaf people living in rest homes, Deaf CSW visits to isolated Deaf inmates in prisons and weekly filmed recipes in NZSL and weekly filmed art projects in NZSL. We employ 4 Deaf people and have a total of about 7 volunteers who are Deaf and hearing.

New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) is crucial to many deaf people’s ability to learn, communicate and participate in society. The language is vital to the expression of deaf culture and identify. Deaf culture is well documented and includes shared values, norms, behaviours, history, humour, art, stories, poetry and traditions of deaf people. Deaf culture is passed on from generation to generation through NZSL.

NZSL is one of three official languages in New Zealand, along with English and Te Reo Maori. NZSL has its own grammatical structure which enables users to communicate fully and express thoughts and emotions. However it differs from spoken languages because it is solely visual.

There are approximately 11,000 deaf people who use NZSL as their primary form of communication and approximately 20,000 people in total who use NZSL. This includes parents who use NZSL to communicate with their deaf child. (The figures are from the 2013 Census).

The recognition of New Zealand Sign Language through the New Zealand Sign Language Act 2006 was a major step forward in improving the lives of Deaf people.  However, this recognition is still too recent to have had a significant impact on the many inequalities that Deaf people face on a daily basis.

NZSL is originally from Britain with some Irish influence and includes some Māori concepts. The largest Deaf community is in Auckland with 2 Deaf Education Centres in Auckland and Christchurch. There are also 10 Deaf Clubs in both North and South Islands

Here at the Deaf Wellbeing Society, Natasha was a Community Support worker in the NZ Deaf community. She saw many of her clients had little knowledge of recipes and kitchen skills. Some clients lived off frozen fish fingers and chips every night. Reading recipe books were difficult for some so we decided to start filming recipes in NZSL. This is how our healthy cooking programmes began and we are now celebrating our 150^th episode!

Deaf Wellbeing Society is Deaf led and only employs Deaf people. We have a Deaf presenter, Deaf camera person, Deaf editor and Deaf coordinators. They are Natasha, Anna and Monica. We ask for feedback from the Deaf community for recipes ideas and we make decisions together. The recipes are signed in NZSL with English text too.

Our recipes are viewed about 8000 times in the first week and our posts reach about 18,000 people per month. We have 3908 followers on facebook. (1000 are from NZ, 1000 from the UK and 800 from Australia) We would dearly love to get more Youtube subscribers but Youtube is not too popular with the Deaf community in NZ. Please subscribe!

We are all passionate about the NZSL films but it is hard to get funding. We are always on the hunt for money! Our NZSL Board partially funded us for the first 2 years and is also excited about our new project that starts next year.

We actually film in our homes and the filming days generally run smoothly as we are well prepared. But no one is ever prepared for the cat suddenly jumping on the bench while you are creaming butter and sugar together!

One of our favourite recipes is an old fashioned NZ recipe called Lolly Cake. All Kiwis love it. Our mums make it for our birthday parties when we are children. We are taking it one step further by making it into a layered cheesecake! See the link below:

https://www.deafwellbeing.co.nz/recipes/%E2%80%8Blayered-lolly-cake-cheesecake/

Next year we start a new series of recipes called “The Journey from Nature to plate in NZSL” We follow passionate Deaf people producing the food from the land and we create beautiful recipes with them and their fresh produce.

What’s next for us? We are currently establishing a programme called “Connecting through Communication” We are utilising an existing government grant system to help the Deaf community get access to computers and smart phones. Reducing isolation and gaining access to information for the Deaf community has always been our main aim and it continues to be.

If you’d like to see our healthy cooking series please see the links below and say hi to us on our social media pages!

Email: monica.deafwellbeingnz@gmail.com

Website:  www.deafwellbeing.co.nz

Facebook: www.facebook.com/deafwellbeingsociety

Instagram: deaf.sign.cook

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUZFfgDTZZi20n5j1naZ0Cg

150 NZSL Recipes

https://www.deafwellbeing.co.nz/recipe-categories/