OASIS

In the beginning, very few of us had any previous involvement with the mainstream Deaf community.

In the late 90’s, Lisa Dyer from the H.E.A.R. Service gathered names of deaf/hearing impaired individuals interested in meeting others in a similar situation.

On Thursday 10th February 2000, there was an initial meeting chaired by Mark Gravolin, who at that time was involved with VCOD. Thirteen people attended this meeting. Within a few months an online forum had been setup to replace mass emailing. Monthly events were established, and these are continuing.

It was also decided that while we are a loose social network/collection of individuals/community, we also needed a name we could promote and which would inspire new people to become involved. In 2000 we settled on Here to Hear (H2H for short). At the end of 2005 it was decided to adopt a new forum-based online presence. At the same time we decided to update the name to something positive and easy to promote – hence “OASIS”. Whether this name is simply a nice word with positive image, or athe acronym “Oral and Signing Interacting Socially”, depends on who you ask!

Much the work since early 2000 has been done by Anthony Lill. In particular, he has put in a huge effort to organise events and to make new members welcome, and is responsible for much of our early growth.