Dear Friends,On Thursday 16th September, eKitabu kicked off the second Family of the Year Award (FOYA) with a roundtable discussion on Zoom with 65 parents, caregivers, teachers, and colleagues from The Ministry of Education, through the Directorate of Special Needs Education (DSNE), National Council for Persons with Disabilities (NCPWD), Kenya Institute of Special Education (KISE), and Humanity and Inclusion team members from the Kakuma and Dadaab refugee camps.FOYA was an experimental program we began designing in 2018 and launched in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. The program is open to all parents of children with and without disabilities to find out and celebrate what parents, caregivers, and families are doing to improve their children’s learning. The Covid-19 pandemic gave special relevance to this effort focused on inclusive and quality education. The objectives of FOYA are to engage with families, understand their needs better for home and school—including what support helps children learn during the pandemic—and encourage the involvement of parents, caregivers, and communities in their children’s learning.Finally, I am happy to note that on 23rd September, International Day of Sign Languages, UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO) published a new guidance document on Sign Language for Deaf Children’s Education and its Use in Accessible Digital Teaching and Learning Materials that UNICEF developed under UNPRPD. Congratulations to our colleague Georgine Auma Obura, Director of Studio KSL, and the collaborators she led in drafting and building this peer-reviewed document for UNICEF in consultation with National Associations of the Deaf in Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and with input from World Federation of the Deaf, researchers and practitioners in the global Deaf community. Pongezi sana Georgine!Warmest regards,Will[su_button url="https://mailchi.mp/ekitabu/ekitabu-tunaenda-digital-newsletter-october-2021" target="blank" background="#e80904" color="#ffffff" size="5" radius="0"]Read the entire newsletter here[/su_button]