The Pallet Cafe, located in Nairobi, is showing people how integration can work.
Deaf people are being employed through a social experiment in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. Deaf people are appointed here who have faced discrimination in almost every aspect of their life.
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The Pallet Cafe, located in Nairobi, is showing people how integration can work. Weaving their way around the tables and abundant plants in this self-styled garden cafe, staff take orders using Kenyan sign language, memes or gestures.
@FKEKenya in partnership with @ILOAfrica conducted a HIV awareness and testing for persons with disability (Hard of Hearing, Deaf) at the Pallet Cafe, Nairobi. This has been a forgotten group thus FKE took it up and saw it fit to bring these services closer to them . pic.twitter.com/JYR7HAHfMM
— FKE Kenya (@FKEKenya) November 15, 2021
According to BBC news, posters have been put up here with an introduction to some basic sign language. If the waiter wants to ask if someone wants a cold bottle of water, he gestures lightly, and the customer can confirm with a thumbs up. If ordering an omelet, a fist gesture can be used to ask if the customer wants a soft-boiled omelet.
Pallet Cafe is one of my favorite coffee shops in Nairobi! Customer service, the environment and amazingly most Pallet staff are individuals with special needs. https://t.co/kLTZEPRIfa pic.twitter.com/iUrdkEBSmK
— Amira Adawe, MPH (@Aadawe) January 11, 2020
Edward Kamande, who joined the staff shortly after Palette Cafe opened in 2019. He started working here as a waiter and today he is the manager of the cafe. Businessman Faisal Hussain, 26, says, “He believed in me. They saw that there was something inside me.”
RT @epaphotos
Pallet Cafe in #nairobi #Kenya.5 of 15 employees have hearing impairment +serve as waiters. They use #signlanguage +teach the customers how to communicate with them.The cafe is one of the few businesses w/ hiring policies for ppl w/ disabilities
(pics DANIEL IRUNGU) pic.twitter.com/LIBfRGdzLp— Kyri Christodoulou (@kyriakichristo) July 31, 2019
“My vision was to support the deaf community,” he says of his business. More than 30 out of 40 workers in Lavington are either hearing impaired or deaf. Kamande believes that employees are valued for what they can do. “There is no discrimination in our company, there is freedom here,” he says.