Partnership on Equal Terms 

The Finnish Association of the Deaf  carries out development cooperation work in Africa, Asia, the Balkans and North West Russia. The FAD has 10 ongoing projects.

Together with development cooperation partners the FAD promotes human rights and democratisation from the perspective of a linguistic minority. Following its principles the FAD supports organisation of the Deaf  associations, and development of organisational training for the Deaf  associations in the project countries. FAD offers expertise to its cooperation partners in Deaf  rights, education, research of sign language and training of sign language interpreters. In the project countries the Deaf  have been denied their basic human rights for long. It takes time to activate and empower the Deaf  themselves to work together for equal human rights and to promote sign language.

The FAD’s international activities were started in the middle of the 1980s when the first cooperation agreements were signed with Zambia and Tanzania. In addition to the traditional partner countries in Africa, the FAD has expanded its development cooperation to areas such as Russia and Balkans. The FAD development projects are financed mainly by the development cooperation funds received from the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Funding is sought also from the EU.