It has been a very productive first quarter. Our Japanese team from Tokyo is contributing this week at our studio in Örebro with thousands of words to the dictionary at double speed.  It is really great to work with such efficient co-workers.

New staff. Our new illustrator Elena from Russia.

Thomas visited on the 18^th of February our Estonian partner in Tallin. Got a nice guided tour of the deaf school.

Brno Czech Republic, 11-14 February. Universal Learning Design. They spoke nicely about our dictionary.

We represented in Brussels Belgium 24-25^th of January to get the latest knowledge of project reporting in our big three year Leonardo Network project, together with Örebro University.

”For it´s creative and innovative organization based on social responsibility”.

Dennis Lennartsson was given the prize from the Prince of Sweden Carl Philip Bernadotte at the University in Östersund-Mittuniversitetet. It is honoring that the ESC  was awarded amongst many competent organizations in Sweden.

Jury:

Professor Anders Lundström, Mittuniversitetet (ordförande),  Landshövding Britt Bohlin, Länsstyrelsen i Jämtlands län, Rektor Anders Söderholm, Mittuniversitetet, VD Gunnar Olofsson, Inlandsinnovation AB, VD Lars-Olov Söderström, Norrlandsfonden, stf GD Göran Theolin, Tillväxtverket samt stf GD Göran Marklund, VINNOVA, docent Yvonne von Friedrichs, Mittuniversitetet.

Founder Thomas Lydell Olsen was invited to speak at an international conference in Rio de Janero, Brazil.

Invitation was made by INES (Instituto nacional de Educacão de Surdos) which is a authority under Ministry of Education in Brazil.

Thomas spoke about the creation of a dictionary. The Brazilians have confirmed that they want to join spreadthesign.com on order to make the Brazilian sign language (LIBRAS) accessible.

Foundation Alares is a institutional of Development of studies, consulting and services related to dependency, Conciliation of work and family life, and Social Responsibility of citizens, companies and institutions.
For 6 years this Foundation give the awards ”Conciliation of work and familiy life”, there were 404 candidates and the project Spreadthesign won, finally, the award in category Innovation. The President of the Foundation and Ministry of Employment gave us the trophy and diploma. The ceremony for the award took place on 25 Juny 2012 in Madrid.

A Swedish development project within the Leonardo da Vinci program has been singled out as particularly successful by the EU Commission. The project highlighted is Spread the Sign and aims to improve opportunities for persons with disabilities to participate in education and employment.

Spread the Sign, run by European Sign language Centre in Örebro, have developed an international and fully web-based sign language dictionary. The aim has been to help hearing-impaired students in upper secondary schools to do an internship abroad.

- The project is getting recognized because it aims to improve the skills of people with special needs, says Marianne Feldt, administrator at the International Programme Office in Sweden.