www.dbcusa.org

“I can never thank DBC enough for all you did for us when we needed you so much!
Luke is a delight in every way and his fingers fly these days.” - Angie Albright, Luke's Grandma

Greetings! We would like to thank each of you for supporting the efforts of the Deaf Bilingual Coalition over the past 4 years. You can continue this support by considering a donation to the DBC. You can make a donation by going to www.dbcusa.org or by sending your contribution to:

Because of your support, the Deaf Bilingual Coalition has increased awareness nationally and internationally on the importance of bilingualism focusing on the whole child and language development through American Sign Language and English.

This awareness building has increased the amount of action being dedicated towards the language rights of the Deaf child by early intervention services, educators, researchers and other organizations committed to Deaf children. However, there is a great need to continue to push for those actions to have direct impact on the child. The Deaf Bilingual Coalition is committed to this. With your support, we can make this dream a reality.

Mission:
The Deaf Bilingual Coalition promotes the basic human right of all Deaf infants and young children to have access to language and cognitive development through American Sign Language (ASL).

Purpose:
The main purpose of the Deaf Bilingual Coalition is to emphasize the importance of the social, emotional, linguistic, and cognitive aspects (of AL) pertaining to early visual language acquisition for all Deaf infants and young children.

The secondary purpose is to make the general public aware of the prevalence of misconceptions and information that devalues ASL.

Goals:
1. Establish language acquisition, social justice, and quality education through ASL/English bilingualism by empowering stakeholders to advocate and promote legislative action in support of ASL.
2. Inform Deaf people, parents, teachers, and medical personnel of the importance of ASL and to spread awareness of research-based evidence and experience-based testimonials that support the importance of ASL
3. Collaborate with others to help parents and their Deaf children to awaken from a state of victimization and to promote ASL.

Vision:
The DBC will continue to empower families to focus on their Deaf child’s language so that their child may grow up in a language-rich environment full of ASL and English bilingually in order to have an abundance of life experiences. Those experiences should include possessing self-confidence and self worth, a strong identity, skills in independent and critical thinking, an ability to problem solve, and an awareness of Deaf culture, community, and history.

Happy Holidays and Thank You!