Don Bosco Institute of the Deaf, Wonosobo

 

The children at the Don Bosco Institute all have a hearing impairment. They are aged between 5 and 16 years and come from different parts of Java. Most of their parents have a very low income as farmer or manual worker and live in a small village where there are no educational facilities for children with a hearing impairment. This means that those children would never go to school and would remain illiterate which would reduce them to mendicancy. That’s why the Brothers of Charity set up a boarding school for this specific group of children, so that they could be educated and develop their skills and capacities in a healthy environment, notwithstanding their impairment and poor economic background. The boarding school consists of a kindergarten for the youngest children, a primary school and a vocational school (metal work, woodwork or tailoring) for those who wish to remain at the institute instead of going to a general high school.