1. Bringing deafintl to communities without e-mail: Some of the communities that could benefit the most from deafintl don't have access to this list because they don't have e-mail. That's where you could come in.
   • Do you live in a developing country? Please consider printing out hard copies of deafintl posts to share with people in your local deaf community. If they don't read English, help translate posts into their preferred language.

   • Or, if you live in a rich country, please consider using the postal service to mail hard copies of deafintl posts to people you know in developing countries.

   • Encourage people you know in developing countries to give you questions and comments that they would like to share with people on deafintl. They could type or handwrite messages that you could copy into email. If they write in a language other than English, please translate their message to English -- but also copy the exact, original text for bilingual people on the list who can read in that language.

   • Or, if they can't read or write, then encourage them to tell you what they want to say in their native signed language. Take careful notes. Read your notes back to them so they can tell you if you made any mistakes. Make posts to deafintl on their behalf!

   • When people on deafintl reply to a post that you have made on someone else's behalf, make sure to print it out and share it with them!

   
   
2. Making deafintl more multilingual: Currently, deafintl is fully accessible only to people who know English. If you know more than one written language, you can help change that. Multilingual people are needed to offer translation assistance in any and all languages either to or from English. Translate a little or translate a lot, it's up to you. If you are interested, please contact a deafintl listowner at owner-deafintl@waste.org to offer your help.

3. Helping deafintl grow: The most important resource deafintl has are its subscribers. The more participants deafintl has, the more people it will have to share ideas, information, knowledge, feedback, opinions, and insights that can help us all improve the work we do with deaf and hard of hearing communities in developing countries. Help spread the word about deafintl. Tell people you know about deafintl and encourage them to either look at the deafintl web page at http://patriot.net/~ashettle/deafintl or contact a listowner at owner-deafintl@waste.org for more information on deafintl and how they can subscribe themselves.

   Also contact a listowner if you are willing and able to distribute flyers publicizing deafintl. Please know, however, that most of the cost of reproducing and mailing flyers comes out of our own pockets, so we are limited in how many flyers we can distribute. If you are willing to distribute flyers, we would normally mail you one copy and ask you to photocopy more on your own. If this would be a problem for you, please let us know and tell us how many flyers you would want and to whom you would be able to distribute them. In some cases we may be able to send a limited supply of flyers, especially if you think you are likely to be able to reach deaf and hard of hearing people in developing nations who have e-mail access.

4. Improving deafintl as an information resource: Deafintl has subscribers from dozens of countries from throughout every major populated continent in the world. That means our listmembers have a great deal of knowledge and experience that can be useful for deaf and hard of hearing people in developing countries and for the allies who work with them. A FAQ could let us collect all this knowledge into one place. A FAQ is a collection of "Frequently Asked Questions" and the answers to as many of these questions as possible. See our deafintl FAQ page for more information on what a FAQ is and how you can help develop one.

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This page was last updated on 31 January 2004 by Andrea Shettle.