Sign language club gets a hand from social media

A Grande Prairie couple enthusiastic about learning more sign language has reached out to the community to create an American Sign Language Club. 

Founders of the ASL Club of Grande Prairie Sooraya Nuthall and her husband, Grayson, thought of the idea after noticing Nuthall’s niece was learning baby sign language. Nuthall says this sparked her interest and she remembered learning the form of communication when she was in grade nine. Her teacher at the time was deaf and sign language was frequently used to talk during the year. 

“I know a couple other girls that had heard that my husband and I were doing ASL at home. We pretty much have been speaking in ASL at home for the last two months. This is just so we can get fluent in it and we hit a point where we weren’t learning too much more. We needed to grow with it,” said the club co-founder. 

To practice and learn from each other, the few people she knew that were interested decided they were going to start the group. When igniting the idea on Facebook, she didn’t think the interest would be so intense. Instead of 13 like originally thought, there are over 200 members on their page.