Hearing for Children: Main page

Hearing For Children

“I’m just as deaf as I am blind. The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important than those of blindness. Deafness is a much worse misfortune for it means the loss of the most vital stimulus— the sounds of voice that bring language, set thoughts astir and keep us in the intellectual company of man.”

Helen Keller

Hearing For Children is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization dedicated to helping the deaf of the world, with a special emphasis on deaf children. Our previous work involved offering cochlear implants at low or not cost to those in need around the world. (See the “stories” page.) But two things have caused us to change our approach, even while we have rededicated ourselves to assisting the deaf:

First, our founder, Dr. William F. House (“Dr. Bill” to his patients; see his story here), recently passed away (December 7^th, 2012; his New York Times obituary is found here), bringing into focus his astonishing legacy of service to mankind, empathy for the suffering of others, and the broad and continuing impact of new techniques and inventions to address the problems of deafness.
And second, there has been a dramatic increase in the price we must pay for cochlear implants, which has diminished the impact we were previously able to have.

As a result, we have decided to transition to a focus on achieving the dreams of Dr. Bill— the goals he talked about in his final days and weeks— and beyond. In 2013, we have two of his dreams or goals in mind, particularly:

First, Dr. Bill was passionate about the development of a low-cost cochlear implant that would serve the world. Hearing for Children has a targeted strategy for encouraging the development of these cochlear implants. Simply stated, we aim to provide a growing body of evidence that single electrode, analog stimulus cochlear implants can provide full access to human speech, “the most vital stimulus”. (You can read more about why it is so important and so reasonable to make this effort here.)
And second, Hearing for Children is working on increasing medical acceptance of a very simple screening tool which can help identify deaf and hard-of-hearing children. (Without identification, there can be no treatment.) Please see this page for more information about the Sleeping Baby Home Hearing Screen (SBHHS).

Please help us. We have practical, low-cost strategies for achieving these goals, and either has considerable potential for helping the deaf and hard-of-hearing worldwide.

main