Maryland Deaf Community Center

Mission:

To have a Center where various members of the Deaf Community can gather for education, communication, social, and referral purposes.

Our Community

• Maryland is one of the 36 states that has a Commission serving the deaf and hard of hearing population and is supported by the state government, but does not function as a Deaf Center.
• Many states have Deaf Centers: California has nine and other states such as Illinois, Kansas and Utah have one where there is a large cluster of deaf population.
• Maryland has over 1.2 million Deaf and hard of hearing residents.
• Frederick has thousands of deaf and hard of hearing residents.

• Frederick would house the first Deaf Center in Maryland.

Rationale

  We need:

• Accessibility to activities in our American Sign Language (ASL).
• Accessibility to a variety of services in ASL such as social, references and information sharing.
• A place where we can present educational workshops, career internship and placement.
• A place where the hearing community can learn sign language with Deaf people and join us for workshops, educational and social events.
• A place where individuals wanting to learn to become interpreters can do their internships.
• A place where community theaters, recreation activities and social events can take place.
• A place where referrals can be made to a variety of resources.
• A place where all Maryland counties can utilize.