The chair of the EDBN, Ricard Lopez, has made the most of his time in the Aalborg conference. During the four days of the conference he has called three very successful networking meetings.
In the first meeting, Mr. Lopez, met with some parents of deafblind children from the Nordic countries. Those parents have never been involved before in the activities for families organized by EDBN and other European associations. They found out that there has been a lack of communication between them in the past but both parts are really interested in cooperating from now on. The first common project will be a sixth “Listen to Me” event for next year.
Listen to Me it is an EDBN project that started in 2002. Deafblind people, their families and professionals in the field meet for a week full of activities. Usually, during the mornings families go to conferences about specific aspects of deafblindness in order to learn more about the disability and also about how to live with it. While families and professionals attend to talks, people affected by deafblindness take part in sensorial activities helped by volunteers. During the afternoons all the families together go to do some tourism around the area. One of the days of the encounter everyone goes to a day trip to visit the main touristic places of the region where the Listen to Me takes place.
Those are the five Listen to Me meetings that have been done until 2017:
3.Salou, Catalonia: October 1st – 6th 2006
4.Glasgow, Scotland: August 22nd – 27th 2008
5.Olomouc, Czech Republic: July 27th – August 1st 2010
As a result of the first network meeting in Aalborg 2017 a sixth Listen to Me was planned in 2018, but it has not been decided yet where it will take place, either Catalonia or Italy.