Wycliffe Associates and the Disability Desk of the Ministry of Justice and Community Services have revised the Memorandum of Understanding signed earlier this year between the two parties.
The MOA provides for Wycliffe Associates to involve people in promoting Bible translation using Symbolic Universal Notation SUN, a symbolic language that enables Associates to produce a Bible for illiterate blind, deaf and deaf-blind people.
It was also made clear that Wycliffe Associates will work with the Vanuatu government under the Ministry of Justice and Community Services to achieve the goal of teaching SUN to those who need a language to understand the Bible.
After the meeting that took place this week, it seems that nothing has happened since the agreement that was reached at the end of January this year.
The National Coordinator for Human Rights, Albert Nalpini, explained that they never learned about the agreement because it was negotiated at the highest level and the lower levels that will implement the project were not informed.
The representative of Wycliffe Associates in Fiji, Vanessa Pinero apologized for what happened and ignore the formal way of working, and she promised that it will not happen again. Justice Minister James Bule, who has only been in office for two weeks, thanked the former minister for his commitment to sign the MOA and the doubts of the last eight months were cleared through the meeting to pave the way for the project.
According to the MOA, Wycliffe Associates will support the government and its stakeholders in technical processes, quality assurance, training to learn the SUN languages, and providing an ongoing mentoring relationship.
The Department of Justice is required to appoint a SUN Coordinator to serve as the primary contact for WA, provide project leadership and management, and collaborate with non-governmental organizations, churches, and organizations willing to participate in the Bible for People with Disabilities.
The latest data from the National Statistics Office, a total of 14,000 people with various impairments live in Vanuatu.
The project SUN will help these people to read and understand the word of God in a simplest way.