From left: Jacob Ireri, Jiayi Zhou, Namiraa Balijinnyam

Three students from Gallaudet University, the United States' oldest institution of higher learning for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, recently paid a visit to Japan for an exchange with students from Japanese schools for the deaf. The students are scholars from Kenya, Mongolia, and China, studying at the university under a Nippon Foundation program known as the "Gallaudet University World Deaf Leadership Scholarship." The scholars were very interested in the places they visited, saying that they looked forward to telling children in their countries about the experience when they went home.

The three students were Kenyan Jacob Ireri and Chinese Jiayi Zhou from the program's 5th year group, and Mongolian Namiraa Balijinnyam, of its 6th year. Mr. Ireri is involved in the establishment of a self-support group for the deaf in Kenya. Ms. Zhou is a specialist in graphic design and is active in Shanghai as a deaf artist. Ms. Baljinnyam is the first deaf Mongolian woman to receive a master's degree and plans to pursue her doctorate at Gallaudet.

The three visited Kyoto's "Rehabilitation and Treatment Center for People with Hearing and Speech Disorders" and the "Tokyo Metropolitan Chuo School for The Deaf." In addition, in Kyoto, Osaka, and at The Nippon Foundation's Tokyo headquarters, they gave presentations on the state of education for the deaf in their own countries and talked about their own experiences. Finally, they visited Tokyo's Meisei Gakuen school for the deaf and sat in on classes in the kindergarten and elementary school.

Meisei Gakuen is Japan's only bilingual (Japanese-Japanese Sign Language) school for the deaf, and the visitors heard from the principal about the school's establishment and teaching philosophy. Ms. Baljinnyam, who wants to be a teacher of the deaf in her own country, expressed a desire to build such a school in Mongolia in the future.

The three were able to experience a number of traditional Japanese arts, such as flower arrangement, tea ceremony and taiko drumming. They hope to be able to put this experience to use when they return to their mother countries to become leaders of the deaf communities there.

The Gallaudet University World Deaf Leadership Scholarship program was established in 1993 to nurture deaf leaders in developing countries.