With many charities the fruit of their labour is tangible and measurable. A food drive organisation can confirm that they’ve provided 3000 meals to 200 families over a period. A volunteer gardening charity can show that they’ve created 7 sustainable gardens in their community and measure the success of those gardens through their produce, waste etc. Hear This Education’s results are not as simple to determine.
Yes, we cannot say that we’ve prevented noise-induced hearing loss in a class of 30 children. What we can say is that we’ve made the best effort at educating children about the way their hearing works and how it can be protected. We provide them with practical tools to change their behaviour and create healthy habits. This is why we currently focus on establishing a national project to reach as many children as early as possible for them to create those good behaviours. Many projects will follow the school programme.
Our Co-Chair, Lyn Gage speaks of her own experience: “I took my grandchildren along to hear our Hearing Educator talk about ways to prevent hearing loss. They were fascinated, especially when they were told that if they were exposed to loud music over a period of time it could affect their hearing and it would never return. They went home and told their parents all about the presentation. Next time they were in the car, they asked their mother to please turn down the music!”.
It is exactly those behaviours that speak the success of education and prevention.
Long gone are the days when hearing loss was something associated with the elderly. With an increasingly busy and noisy world, younger people are experiencing signs of hearing loss at alarming rates. At the World Health Organisation’s Forty-Eighth World Health Assembly they called for Member States to “(4) to consider the setting-up of mechanisms for collaboration with nongovernmental or other organizations for support to, and coordination of, action to prevent hearing impairment at country level”. We are heeding that call for national change. Be a part of that change.
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