GHITA launch its ‘Name me campaign’

As part of GHITA’s goal of raising awareness of British Sign Language, it has launched its ‘Name Me Campaign’.

In June 16 last year, the BSL Act was passed in Gibraltar. A year later, the organisation wants to encourage people to learn at least their own name in the language.

The ‘Name Me Campaign’, will see people learning how to sign their own name in BSL, video record themselves doing it and sharing the video on social media.

“Experience shows us that when learning about BSL for the first time, people are interested in learning how to sign their name,” Edgar Triay, Chairperson of GHITA, told the Chronicle.

“This involves finger spelling each letter of the name.”

“The Campaign Name is also representative of the way British Sign Language is structured and ordered which differs from the way English is spoken.”

“Each person who wants to get involved prepares a short video that shows themselves signing their name using BSL structure and order.”

“For example: Using English, a person would say ‘my name is ..………..’.

Using BSL, a person would sign: ‘Name me ……..’ finger spelling each letter of their first name.”

GHITA suggests the following hashtags are used to help bring awareness. #BSLGib #Namemecampaign #Britishsignlanguage and #GHITA

They also suggest that after completing a ‘Name me …..’ video, they sign ‘Name you what?’ and encourage those watching or tag other friends and ask them to make their own video.

“This alternative could also work well with Teams and Groups, such as Work Teams and Friends Group who are together at the same time and are able to film each other within the same video,” they said.

They also suggest making it even more fun by filming in your favourite place in Gibraltar.

Instructional videos have been provided by SigncodeUK, and aim to help viewers learn how to spell their name and sign in BSL structure and order.
The instructional videos are at: https://www.youtube.com/@GHITAYouTube/videos