Learning Sign Language for Voluntary Work

[Courtney Morley]

Hi all, I tried twice now to learn BSL but both attempts had fallen through, though I'm determined to get back to it. There's very little opportunity to use it in my day to day life as until now I've never been exposed to the Deaf community and ways of practice seemed few and far between. 

This year however I started volunteering at an urban farm charity that focuses on educating children and special needs groups, we're often used as a school trip location for younger children. Our signs all have BSL on them for the animals, and one of the boss's kids is hard of hearing and uses sign language a lot when he's around. He's very sweet but I felt a crippling guilt when he started offering signs to me I wasn't familiar with, and he in turn didn't have the vocal capacity to explain what he was signing to me. I'm now determined to get back to learning it so that I can communicate with him better and maybe to stop him from feeling like he's talking to a brick wall (AKA me), and when we reopen after the next lockdown, perhaps I can have a bit more vocabulary up my sleeve to offer more communication opportunities for any other guests who use BSL.