Paper short abstract:

Sign language skill is a key resource for people living with deafness in accessing formal education and health services as well as gaining livelihoods. The paper will explore how the experience of deafness and sign language can be transformed into valuable assets in supportive organizations.

Paper long abstract:

Arusha, a city in northern Tanzania, has various organizations which have been engaged in deaf education, vocational training and employment of deaf people. Particularly, two different types of organizations, one for-profit and the other non-profit, have been actively involving deaf people in organizational practices.

Deaf people who sustained their deafness and hard of hearing in childhood due to disease and illness acquire sign language through participating in supportive organizations, as they were born to hearing parents. The paper aims to identify sign language as a key facilitator of capacity building for deaf people in education and employment, as well as to explore organizational structures enabling deafness and sign language to be transformed into valuable assets in creating additional value.

Sign language facilitates capacities of deaf people in dealing with adversity induced by communication barriers and social discrimination, which capacities promote their competencies in pursuing education as well as gaining livelihoods. Connectivity to signing communities enables them in accessing social and financial resources in vulnerable contexts. Sign language can be a more efficient means of communication than spoken language in a specific work environment in which deafness and sign language create additional benefits for engaged organizations.

The paper will identify enabling organizational structures in which deafness and sign language promote organizational performance through creating financial and social benefits. Also, the paper will examine constraining structures which frustrate the use of sign language and are a threat to deaf people in sustaining their livelihoods.