Hands up if you’re ready to sign with us! 🙌🏽
We are thrilled to introduce you to our hero for this year’s New Zealand Sign Language Week – Jon Tai-Rakena! Jon is passionate about teaching NZSL to anyone and everyone, from whānau to neighbours to friends and everyone in between, and is also a regular TikToker – you can find him over on the platform as @learnnzslwithjon. 🤟🏽
We’ve loved getting to know Jon and discover more of his journey. He shared a heart-warming story with us about how his grandma learnt sign language and taught him as a Deaf child so he could communicate with his family. Jon’s grandma is a very important person to him, as she provided the “bridge”, as he said, to his hearing family.
That’s what this year’s New Zealand Sign Language Week is all about, coming together to all learn signing, whether we are Deaf, Hard of Hearing or hearing! Because together we can make New Zealand Sign Language thrive. 💜
We can’t wait to bring you more exciting updates for this year’s awareness week, so keep those eyes peeled! 👀
