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The New Zealand Deaf Sports Association demonstrated in Wellington at the weekend – at its 33rd annual games – how well it would use the Government funds it is hoping for so the association can hire its own interpreters.

This month, the Manawatu Deaf Club will again host the Annual New Zealand Deaf Convention. It will be the twenty-first with over 200 people competing. 160-170 will be from Auckland, Waikato, Taranaki, Wellington, Christchurch and Southland. Local competitors make up the total.

On a recent Saturday, I was lucky enough to meet members of the Auckland Deaf Society at a working bee they were holding to improve the grounds of the city's Deaf Welfare Centre. The centre, incidentially, is a very fine building – it has the biggest sports hall in Auckland with a floor area 110 by 60 feet.

Sumner School for Deaf Children has taken an adventurous step by beginning a trial integration of a class of 'hearing' children into the school.

"There's still a lot of barriers for deaf people in this country," says Erica, who lost her hearing when she was six months old. "We face all sorts of challenges that hearing people take for granted, such as finding interpreters to help us with schoolwork or meetings at work."

Four New Zealand deaf athletes are favoured to win medals in swimming, cycling, and badminton. The 112-strong New Zealand team will compete in 11 of the 12 sports.

Applications are invited for the above position based in the Wellington Welfare Office for the Deaf. Interpreting work will include areas such as welfare, court, political meetings, medical, etc. Application giving full curriculum vitae and a VHS video tape of yourself of no less than 15 minutes presented in sign language.

An advertisement for the inaugural general meeting of the Friends of the Deaf (Wellington Region). The guest speaker will be Marianne Ahlgren, speaking on NZ Sign Language.

The Friends of the Deaf has paid £3000 for a three-quarter acre site at 166 Balmoral Road and in the new year it will begin to erect there the first permanent institute for deaf adults in New Zealand.

Although many people will not have heard of the World Games for the Deaf, New Zealand's involvement with them spans 40 years. The first information about the games reached New Zealand in 1949 and the New Zealand Amateur Sports Association was formed.

The CSUN library is given a copy of 'Introduction to New Zealand Sign Language', the first published dictionary of the native language of New Zealand's 6,000 deaf with 1,200 signs.

Deaf people can communicate country to country with more ease than those who can speak. It is not because they have an international sign language – each country has its own – but because it is a visual language.

Growing up in Feilding Della Roache used to like going to the pub to pick up her dad. Now she's the bar manager at the Himatangi Beach Cosmopolitan Club. And she's deaf.