TERRA Consultancy: year 2014 highlights

The TERRA Consultancy had a fantastic 2014 and our work continues to be fully in efforts to enhance the worldwide Deaf community, but firstly those based in the UK.

First on the list of the successful events was ‘Deaf Day’ at City Lit College in April, where, for the first time, we provided a unique business consultancy workshop entitled ‘Try Your Wings’.  In this exercise we addressed Deaf needs for an in depth understanding about the real business world.  We covered areas such as evaluation of own potentials, identifying target groups, PR, Marketing and CPD development. These were designed to help the Deaf understand the concept of business responsibility and gain an insight how to manage, run and maintain a newly established company.

TERRA is the proud partner for many Universities who support Deaf students in sourcing qualified educational BSL support. The academic support TERRA offers covers total management of fast-changing academic environments and uninterrupted support during sudden change of lesson plans. This includes busy examination periods in May. TERRA provides emergency support for all Deaf students erasing additional pressure or worry to have to source a suitable academic BSL support. This allows students to fully focus on their time to revise for exams. In this regards, all of our students passed their university exams! Great success!!!

In the summertime numerous students had a great and blissful  Day in July, which included having a fully-informed BSL environment so that they could enjoy their lifetime success in front of their family, friends and professors.

The next highlight was our contribution to the Deaf International Community that enhance promotion and opportunities for youngsters to participate in the ‘Miss and Mister Deaf International’. This event was great and we were happy to make some great shoots of crowning new Miss and Mister Beauty of the Deaf World. 

Our next remarkable achievement was our partnership work in the Deaf community supporting unemployed Deaf people in getting the right support for their job interviews. We strived to make their dream of achieving a job come true.  In our previous reports we were saying that Deaf people without an appropriate BSL Interpreter could not succeed at job interviews. Now, with TERRA’s support many Deaf people have achieved a job thanks to our tailor-made service of supplying most suitable BSL support needed for any particular job.

TERRA is also proud of running a high level booking  system that is able to cover last minute bookings with a pool of BSL Interpreters for Deaf people to get the right access at the right time.

One of our proudest highlights has been the breakthrough introduction of the TERRA brand into the international Deaf community.  We have become recognized in the business sector for offering consultations and providing International Sign Language for Deaf people. This includes assisting ISL professionals in imminent situations, for example relay interpreting, international congresses and also in international entertainments.

This past summer, (2014) TERRA supported the People and Austerity campaign, providing BSL services to Deaf people so they could get correct information about the imminent event of benefits capping and related issues.

TERRA can also act as a ’bridge’ between employers and Deaf employees and provide practical guidance in developing effective communication strategies, as well as assisting with Access to Work applications, providing Communication Support Workers and BSL Interpreters in the workplace and Deaf Awareness Training.  An example of this was involving the support of an appeal for a Deaf client to stay in their employment and through this case and our links with the employment mediation service TERRA was, able to make the particular employment team more knowledgeable about Deaf Awareness and their rights.

Finally and most recently, our successful 4^th Deaf Christmas Business Show 2014 took place on the 6^th December at the Clerkenwell Centre. This was a great achievement within the international Deaf community as we offered both business advice and showcased the successful business ventures of some of TERRA’S clients.

The Business Show once again highlighted the campaign to promote and increase awareness of Deaf and Hard of Hearing entrepreneurship for both employed and unemployed people. As the proportion of Deaf and Disabled people are experiencing barriers to gain access to education, employment and setting up businesses, this is at a much higher percentage than the national average so this event was created to do something positive about the situation.

An extremely popular topic with the Deaf audience was provided by our guest speaker also from Terra, Dr. Sheila Osmanovic.  Here she spoke about the main highlights of ‘Try our Wings’, a business initiative (both designed and demonstrated by TERRA at the City Lit Deaf Day) which aims of achieving Deaf people’s dream of business success.

In her talk, Dr. Osmanovic outlined the definition of a business, its responsibilities, explained how to achieve time management through effort and that learning development within the dream in order to achieve your own business. Through their various pathways TERRA has supported many Deaf entrepreneurs over the years in a variety of industries including two promising young Deaf artists and designers who are now running a  newly-opened jewellery e-shop under the brand name ‘Pomme Rose’s Jewellery’.

The 4th Deaf Christmas Business Show 2014 was attended by 135 Deaf and Disabled people, a proportion of these were from overseas; these ‘international’ colleagues were particularly interested in this event as there were few opportunities for Deaf people in their own countries. All attendees agreed the Business Show was a business success for all involved!

Altogether 2014 was a notable year all round for TERRA Consultancy Ltd!

We are looking forward to welcoming the new success ventures in 2015!