......for children with hearing loss
Lion Vic Truluck, Multiple District Used Hearing Equipment Officer passed on this good news
Children in Bolivia with disabilities are more than likely to be hidden away in their homes without the hope of an education to enable them to
fulfil their individual potential and become contributing members of society. The facilities for helping children with hearing loss have been,
until recently, very sparse.
In September 2004 the first hearing campaign was initiated to identify such children in the La Paz area of Bolivia. This not only focused on identifying children in the capital, La Paz, but also in neighbouring El Alto, a city of a million economic migrants from the rural areas. We also visited six small towns within a radius of two to three hours travel time from the city.
The campaign was a group effort between the government entity SEDEGES, responsible for vulnerable members of Bolivian society, CODEPEDIS, the state entity in support of disabled Bolivians, and the Amigos del Hogar Volunteer Group in coordination with Airline Ambassadors International. These two volunteer organisations work together to help children with hearing loss in Bolivia, having begun in 2003 by attending to some of the needs of deaf children in a state institution.
The fact that there were only 15 students at the school provided by this Institute was a sign that the deaf community was not being served sufficiently.
Over a 14-week period a team of professionals and at least one volunteer made 27 visits to health centres in 16 districts of two cities and six villages. Local radio and television stations provided frequent reminders to the public about where we would be at any given time during the campaign. Hundreds of children with different disabilities were seen and about 200 diagnosed with hearing loss.
After this campaign, our volunteers focused on how to better attend the needs of the recently identified deaf children. We offered school bus transportation for the children who needed this service to attend the special-needs school. The attendance tripled overnight, and has since expanded to include three structional institutions with about five times as many students as we began with.
Our next acute need was to find a source of affordable hearing aids for these children. In the past the purchase of a hearing aid for a deaf child in Bolivia from a low-income family was impossible. There was no source of funding available to purchase the hundreds of hearing aids needed for the children whose hearing loss had been identified.
Then early in 2005 we received an email from the aptly named Mr Vic Truluck of Hastings Lions Club. At first we couldn't believe our eyes when Mr Truluck wrote offering 100 hearing aids! Barbara Wilson, a Fairtrade client of our handicrafts workshop, Artesania Sorata, had made the contact. Soon we were able to provide hearing aids to these children whose luck had indeed been changed by Mr Truluck and the Lions Club.
Apart from working with disadvantaged children in Bolivia, my husband and I each have a workshop where we provide work and hope for a more self-sufficient future for Bolivians. We met when we were both travelling in South America in the early 70's and settled in Bolivia where I began a handicrafts workshop in 1978. We produce quality textile artwork, dolls and alpaca clothing for adults and children.
My husband, Ron Davis, has developed several appropriate technology designs to help to raise the standard of living for rural dwellers. Among the inventions that he has developed is the Watermotor, a turbine that enables people to use small scale waterpower to run machines and to make electricity.
In 1992 we began a volunteer creativity programme in a home for children with family problems. The programme has grown over the years to include our hearing programme which began in 2003. We have been fortunate to have made the connection with you and the Lions Clubs to provide hearing aids to so many children here. We have put together a support team for helping to attend to the needs of the deaf children.
We met a very capable audiologist who makes our pre-molds and molds for the hearing aids with the help of her technician. We also learned that we needed a programme of adaptation to help the children to learn to use their hearing aids, so we hired a speech teacher for the students to help them to understand and pronounce the new sounds that they could hear. A social worker has joined our team and together with a hearing professional, they have made great progress in helping each family to understand their child's hearing loss. We provide a signing interpreter for five high school students who attend the 'regular' high school. We also continue to provide transport for about 50 students to attend the school that provides for their special needs.
Our volunteer programme is always looking for new volunteers, both hearing professionals and non-professionals, to help the children in Bolivia with hearing loss to develop their full potential. You can read a bit about our volunteer programme on our website: www.artesaniasorata.com. If you know anyone who would like to help as a volunteer or with any of the various programmes we support for children with hearing loss in Bolivia, please be in touch at: cnsorata@yahoo.com. We have high hopes that we will be able to continue to work with Lions Clubs for many years to come to continue to give the gift of hearing to children in Bolivia.
Diane Bellomy
Amigos del Hogar Volunteer Hearing Program
La Paz, Bolivia
September 30, 2007
