Jennifer Bird • Nov 5, 2024 • 4 min read

Hi, my name is Jen Bird. I am in Kenya, Nairobi.

I’m here because I am a Founder of Signalise Co-op which is a cooperative of Deaf people and workers such as interpreters, lipspeakers, notetakers, speech-to-text reporters, Deafblind interpreters, translators. We work together with staff. This is to improve access to interpreting services and to run a business providing interpreting services.

I'm here because I’ve been awarded a Churchill Fellowship. You may know our colleague Herbert Klein who did research in Indonesia last year via the Churchill Fellowship. And this year I have been awarded a fellowship. I am one of the Founders of Signalise and we’re improving access for Deaf users and on of the main challenges is that we are a bilingual co-op and also the co-op economy is growing.

Co-ops make up £1.65 billion of the British economy which is incredible. And over 9000 business are co-ops in the UK.

But any British people do not know what co-ops are.

I think Signalise is really important. Co-ops aim to keep profits for people. Private businesses work on taking money out of the business for owners, charities keep profits for funding good causes but operate in their own way but co-ops must consult with members to discuss how any profits should be spent.

Co-ops are really interesting and it is one of the first times for Deaf people to be involved in a business like Signalise.

So in Kenya through this research project I am meeting other bilingual co-ops and local Deaf organisations to find out how they work with different user groups such as worker groups or user groups and also how this is done bilingually to make sure everyone has the same level of access.

Next week in Mombasa, I am attending a conference where many people involved in co-operatives and those building tech to support users. Tech similar to what Signalise is building such as a booking system and other tech: an online handbook and other tools to encourage users to become involved in the co-operative business.

So I’ll be looking at other’s tech development and later creating a report with recommendations to improve Deaf people’s access to co-operatives.

As we know, Deaf people are often the last to find out any information as conversations can be missed and there can be a realisation later that they did not know about something.

So I will be looking at bets practice for getting user involvement in businesses.

I will be at the conference in Mombasa then later Sweden, Finland and doing other remote interviews to collect data and create a report. I’ll also be doing regular updates to explain what I am doing.

And I am very excited by the conference next week!

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