OLONGAPO CITY – Anthony Trinidad, 16, but just in Grade 4, hobbled quietly into the room. Bright eyes peering through thick glasses, he touched his forehead with two fingers and raised the small one higher as if counting the number “1.”

“He’s saying ‘Hi!’ to you,” said Emilia Sanchez, the coordinator of the Columban College’s special education (Sped) program for the deaf and mute in Olongapo City.

By noon, almost all the boys and girls in the program had dropped by what they called the “segregation room” where Sanchez and several interpreters also held office.

Trinidad, although stricken with cerebral palsy, is more active than the rest, reaching out to others as they spoke of the morning’s activities through sign language.

They lingered much longer, sharing the native rice snack brought by their Dutch friend, Irene Valenton, who visited them recently.

A little past noon, Rodina Canlas, who has artificial legs, made giggling sounds to her hearing-impaired schoolmates. She folded her middle and ring fingers to say “I love you,” and her friends returned the greeting, waving the same sign.

Trinidad, Canlas and 14 others have more than one thing in common aside from physical handicap and supportive parents. Aged 3 to 22 years old, all want to be in school and get a decent education, Sanchez said.

But unlike the years before 1996, when the Sped program started, not one in this batch has dropped out.

A miracle

For Sanchez, 49, this is quite a miracle for these young people who are burdened not just with poverty, but with physical disability as well.

Trinidad and the rest continue to be in school through the support of several Germans.

Dr. Carl Ampt, Traudel Kind, Wolfgang Inhester, Juergen Mank, Herbert Tutz, Christel Felsner, Heinrich Treutner and the Lotus Hilfs program have sponsored the education of these students by donating 300 euro (roughly P18,000) for each student.

Canlas, 9, is supported by a German known only as Sadettin. The money pays for her tuition and books, said Valenton.

This sharing, she said, had its beginnings with Treutner in August 2007.

Vacationing in Zambales, the 72-year-old tourist hired Annie Favor, a cook and laundrywoman whose daughter, Reinalyn, happened to be deaf.

Treutner, a retired German teacher, decided to help out in the girl’s education and asked Valenton to scout around for a school for hearing-impaired kids.

In 2007, Treutner helped Canlas get a pair of artificial legs, the first that she had since she lost her legs in a fire when she was a baby. Treutner saw Canlas at the city public market, mistaking her for a dog.

Like in the case of Canlas, Valenton did the linking for Treutner. This time, it was Sanchez that Valenton, executive director of the Zambales-based Lotus Foundation, found.

“I can’t promise you anything but I will try my best,” Valenton recalled the German telling an almost hopeless Sanchez.

“Enrollment continued to dwindle because the parents were poor,” Sanchez said.

Very soon, “Big Sister” and “Big Brother” – as how Sanchez and Treutner have taken to calling each other – were tapping sponsors by e-mail.

Ampt, a dentist, not only sponsored five students but came to hold dental missions in Aeta communities and donate carabaos for farming, Valenton said.

More sponsors

More German sponsors are being sought to support other deaf and mute who have not enrolled this year, she said.

The Columban College, which is run by the Catholic Diocese of Iba in Zambales, sustains the program by providing office space and shouldering the allowances of eight interpreters and Sanchez.

Sanchez teaches full time in the college to augment the P2,600 monthly allowance she gets for her Sped work. She is not complaining. As one of the pioneers of the program, she has considered it an advocacy since 1987.

In 2007 when the enrollment dropped to 10, she asked friends and retired US Navy personnel for donations to put some students back in school.

“They’re also human beings, only that they can’t hear or talk. In some cases, the kids’ parents are the problems. They deny education to their children because they think this way: ‘Why should I bother to send my hearing-impaired child to school when in my old age, he can’t take care of me?’” she said.

From 1996, the Sped held segregated classes where the deaf and mute were not mixed with hearing students. Starting 2004, they were made to attend classes with hearing students through the aid of interpreters.

To date, the segregated classes are held in preparation for mainstreaming.

Seeing the program evolve, Sanchez dreams of seeing a center where her wards could get technical or vocational training and link to employers.