Goodsearch

I really wasn't a fan of Signing Time when Cam was first born. In fact, I was a little annoyed with it's repetitive songs and it's overly smiley star with the tape on her fingers, Rachel. I thought, how weird...I'm not watching that or subjecting my child to it.

Then, when I started teaching in SLC, the girls had been using the Signing Time DVDs to learn sign language. I got watching them, brought some of them home to practice up since I would now be adding a sign language course to my curriculum and I even put the songs in the car. Cam immediately loved the songs and I slowly grew to really like the series. After attending Hopkin's Birthday party (see here) in October, I really started to LOVE Signing Time!

Rachel and the crew just recently traveled to Ghana, Africa with Signs of Hope International to help educate teachers of a deaf school there. Being deaf or disabled in Africa is something that many people look down on. The students live there in a dorm at the Deaf School for three months as they learn sign language and academics. Many times, at the end of the three months, the parents don't even come to pick their children up to take them back home. They are left there as orphans to be taken care of by the school. Children with disabilities are believed to have a devil in them and parents are often told to kill their children. Most parents cannot bring themselves to do that and will hide them, limiting all communication and not giving them an opportunity to have any schooling. The conditions there are so primitive and poor and it was amazing how the littlest things are so HUGE to them. (BTW, I took these photos from Rachel's blog to make my point).

Rachel documented the whole trip on her blog here and it was an eye-opening and inspiring experience to read about. She raised money to be able to go to Africa and is now hoping to raise even more money for her foundation to help more children and travel to Africa again.

GOODSEARCH.COM is one way that they have to raise money and I want anyone and everyone who reads this to PLEASE consider using it as your search engine, instead of google. When you go to goodsearch.com, you select your charity (the Signing Time Foundation) and search as usual. They use the Yahoo search engine and I found everything I have ever needed, including images and video. You can set it as your home page and get great information, just as you would through Google. Just be sure to select the Signing Time Foundation so that they will receive money for every search you do. Of course, your searches should be valid and honest but as many as possible because they only earn 1 cent per search. But I have found that without trying to search for things, I am searching many times a day, especially when I am school.

I believe in this cause because I believe children should have the opportunity to live and learn, no matter their situation or ability in life. This is one reason I became a Special Ed teacher to begin with and it is another reason why I have come to love Signing Time and believe in its mission. Please do a simple thing by adding Goodsearch.com to your home page and search away. We always wonder how we, as one person in the middle of a bunch of people, somewhere not even remotely close to these kinds of problems, can help out those who have so little. Of course, we offer our money to our church organizations or charities and our old clothes and our canned food and maybe even some of our time for humanitarian projects but this isn't even giving of our own money or possessions. It's only giving of our time and doing something we would normally do anyway. Who's in?

Thanks for listening.