The Community Service Centre for the Deaf

The Community Service Centre for the Deaf (CSCD) is a non-profit and non- government organization. It was registered with the Ministry of Welfare Service. Malaysia in year 1995 to provide education for the Deaf in the community. We started a project on baking to help the deaf students to learn some vocational skills who have graduated from the centre. Progressing with this baking project, we got the deaf graduates to run a bakery for a living. Since then, over 100 deaf young trainees were trained at the centre. Silent Teddies Bakery was established as social enterprise in July, 2017, the bakery is staffed entirely by the Deaf. The management and running of the CSCD is now undertaken by Silent Teddies Bakery. Our activities include training for the Deaf, run the bakery and providing sign language classes to the public. Realistically, being hearing impaired in our society is a challenge as the Deaf graduate from the centre, they face difficulty securing jobs in the corporate as employers were unwilling to hire them. Most of the time, people have a tendency to misunderstand the Deaf. The courage and determination it takes in a world where sound rules the order of the day is immeasurable. This drives us to continue our mission to empower the Deaf with the skills and increase their job opportunities as well as raising a social awareness of deafness. Our main challenge at Silent Teddies: Today there are about 497,904 children, teenagers with disabilities. The Deaf Community in Malaysia is continuously increasing and the deaf people were estimated around 32,000 persons. Their disability is invisible and a large number of them had been left out, untrained and unemployed. The public does not understand yet their culture and communication which is unfortunately such a great barrier to them. The solution we found: Be a vehicle for changing lives of deaf persons, by providing them skill trainings as well as providing them with meaningful work in the food and beverage industry. Beneficiaries: Deaf and B40 Community