HOW SENYAS KAMAY PILIPINAS STARTED…

Senyas Kamay Pilipinas began little but with great hopes. In 2001, Liz Reyes, its founder, worked as an educator in Miriam College to Deaf, Elementary & High-school students. She did this for a couple of years and found a distinct curiosity about them.

In 2003, she volunteered to work for a non-profit organization supporting hearing-impaired children. Gaining her employer’s trust, she took on a bigger responsibility by becoming the organization’s Program Coordinator. Her great interest in doing more charity work went further when she began helping out Deaf kids and their families, living in her own community in Montalban, Rizal.

Liz left the organization (Link Center for the Deaf)  in 2007 and opted to reach out to more differently-abled individuals on her own terms, manifesting her philanthropic nature. She met Ms. Cecille, a teacher from San Jose Elementary school (Montalban, Rizal) and the rest was history.

Courage led Liz to setting up a Sunday school and gave hearing-impaired individuals and their respective families the opportunity to learn Sign Language. She also sought the help of both deaf and hearing friends.

Teaching is a beautiful craft on its own; more so educating differently-abled kids gives it a sense of poignancy. Liz lived with this state of being; along with Silid-Aralan Inc., a non-profit organization, they worked hand-in-hand in providing transportation allowance for a year to hearing-impaired students.

All these zealous work did not have an identity at first as an organization, and so naming it “Senyas Kamay Pilipinas” helped drew more attention and support from fellow philantropists.

Liz and her family built relationships among Senyas Kamay volunteers and its beneficiaries especially during Christmas time where a simple feast is prepared and celebrated for.

With the encouragement of Ms.Cecille, year 2008 became Senyas Kamay’s threshold for nobler things as Liz has envisioned it going mainstream. The idea of registering the organization with SEC came in this year.

Then came 2009, Liz met Louie Poco at a Leadership Seminar and he eagerly prodded her to pursue Senyas Kamay. They began with distributing school supplies to a much larger scale of recipients from Montalban, Rizal. Typhoon Ondoy hit the country September of this year and it was an opportune time to give. Senyas Kamay gave food, clothes and medical assistance to typhoon victims living in Marikina, where Louie resides. Louie, who is also a member of The Bloomfields band held a benefit concert thru Senyas Kamay for Ondoy Victims last October .

In the last 10 years, Senyas Kamay has been holding annual activities in partnership with school principals, teachers and parents, for about 500-700 differently-abled students (those hearing and visually impaired, & with mental/physical disabilities). With  earnest donations, Senyas Kamay has managed a school supplies distribution and  a gift-giving project/ Christmas party. During Deaf Awareness week, the organization also holds a yearly Poster-making contest to budding student artists.