Gunnar_WWH

Help non-profit World Wide Hearing to get funding by liking our video (takes less than 2 minutes)

Hi all,

Given that you are surfing this site, you most likely have an idea of how much hearing problems can affect someone’s life and may be willing to help our cause (/World Wide Hearing) by investing 2 minutes of your time and voting for our video. You can as well feel free to forward the information below.
In brief, WWH’s (wwhearing.org) mission is to provide children and teenagers in developing countries with affordable hearing aids. This is a video taken during a recent pilot project:

We are currently in process of applying for government funding which would allow us to launch our first major project. One criterion used to evaluate our application is the number of “likes” we get for our video at
crs.applications.grandchallenges.ca/en/viewVideo/28735E6AA7E936A8937B26

If you think this cause is worthy, please click on “Log in to like this video” and register using your email address (“create a new account”) and confirm the registration using the link sent to your email. Then log in to like the video. All of this takes less than 2 minutes. The voting will close end of May 2012.

As WWH is not the standard applicant to this program (we innovate in business rather than in e.g. medicine), each vote matters even more. Feel free to help us spreading the word by posting this on your own wall. Thanks so much for your support!

I hope it is ok for me to post this here and truly appreciate your time.

Gunnar Grass,
Ambassador of World Wide Hearing

Deafness

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Bebonang

Facepalm! This has to stop this nonsense as you all hearing people don't accept us being deaf/hard of hearing. We had gone through that road before and it is not helping us none at all. Why keep up when we are trying to explain or reason with you, hearing people, that we are frustrated not understanding spoken English language or any other spoken languages (other countries). You all can not make us hearing like you want us to be hearing. This is what make us mad at hearing society for putting us suffering through mainstream school (oral only) just because they don't accept us being deaf. We need ASL to be able to understand what we want to sign. If someone like you don't know how to sign, then all you have to do is write down notepad to communicate. Also lipreading is not any better either as it is hard to lipread and have to make the person repeat again until we catch what you are saying. We are very much like to be in the Deaf world than being in the hearing world. As for job, no one want to hire us because they don't want to provide special accommodations like TDD (Telecommunication Device for the Deaf) or flashing lights to let us know there was a phone ringing and to provide some sign language interpreters so that we can understand in the meetings and conversing with hearing boss and other workers. Trying to be in the hearing world is not easy at all. You all are not helping to let us be the way we are. We will always be DEAF (I am screaming to let you know that we are deaf period) for the rest of our lives. Don't do that to us.

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I HAVE BEEN DEAF SINCE BIRTH, AND IT IS STILL AWESOME TO BE . (thumb up) (very happy)

celly37

Im hearing, and I feel as if the title of your organization is rather offensive "world wide hearing" its basically saying you want to eliminate deafness, and you would only eliminate deafness if it was a bad thing, and I do not believe it is. There are families who are extremely happy and some are even proud they are deaf! To make them feel bad for who they are is very sad. And i dont believe that was the intention but that is how it is interpreted.
BUT, there are also deaf people who have a desire to hear, (not be hearing, but be able to hear something, and there are many different reasons for that, some being safety, some to be able to hear their children if they cry, ect.) That doesnt make them any less deaf, and in most cases hearing aides do not make them so they can hear voice, just certain noises. And in other cases it really does help them, and i think its great you are trying to provide the funds and prices that people can afford. But you need to be very understanding of the people who do NOT want them, respect them because they are just as amazing as a hearing person.

dereksbicycles

Why don't you give all deaf people free cars? Ones with turbo engine will be nice. Then people like me would go and burn some rubber. Forget about the people that pick on us .

Frisky Feline

it is good for hearing parents to see this videos.

CSign

Why is that?

CSign

This organization seems to be providing hearing aids to people in impoverished countries who otherwise wouldn't have access.

I think it's also important to note that not all countries have a strong Deaf Culture as we have here in the United States.

Frisky Feline

they look like crying happily when their kid hear with a device.

Bebonang

Ha! Oh, come on. You know better than that. The boy look like he is kind of suspicious, even when he nod his head that he can hear some sounds. His father seem in tears that he thinks that his son will hear very clearly. You know better than that hearing aids are not that easy when you can not hear well from the hearing aids and that goes for CIs too. The only problem is we don't know how much hearing loss he has. He might have mild hearing loss or severe hearing loss or more like profound hearing loss. Don't make any mistake by seeing what they are acting out in the video. That want us to believe that this is a miracle for the boy to be able to hear sounds but can he understand what his father said. No, I think not!

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I HAVE BEEN DEAF SINCE BIRTH, AND IT IS STILL AWESOME TO BE . (thumb up) (very happy)

Frisky Feline

I understand what you are saying. its too common for hearing people to get thrilled when kids hear something either ha or ci and thought they would hear sharp like hearing people. nope it is . reality that kids have to practice and put lot of pressures with ha or ci for years until kids to become adults then they tell them "ENOUGH."
Sure they do appreciate what the parents want to do the best thing for them.

dereksbicycles

Can anyone imagine the anger when parents go out and buy a car with turbo engine for their kids. The kids didn't know how to get full potential out of a turbo engine. Parents may be disappointed and wonder why did we get a car with turbo engine for kid who won't appreciate it. Cannot force a turbo engine into kid's lap if kid doesn't want to use turbo engine.

Same thing with hearing aids. Cannot force them on people who don't want them.

celly37

I think we all have valid opinions here, but we need to remember to respect each others opinions as well. Bebonang... I totally understand everything you said, HA and CI (which i am totally against for young children, it should NEVER be a parents choice, only the deaf individuals choice) Here is the think with HA though,,, they can be taken out, no problem. So if a parent wants to buy one, let them, its thier money they are wasting if it does not work, and it doesnt harm the child BUT... if a child doesnt want to wear it, because its uncomfortable, then the parent NEEDS to respect that, because most likely if a child doesn't want to wear it, it probably is not helping and is just something extra on their ear they have to wear... if it worked they would want to wear it.. make sense? And CSign... your right, the parent does seem happy, but the parent isnt who I am worried about, the child is.. his reaction is what matters, its very obvious from the video he hears something, but I am not totally convinced its significant. And when the dad starts crying, it of course melted my heart, because it was very apparent that he loves his child, which is not really something you see in impoverishment countries often. But i pray that he makes future decisions based on his sons feelings and needs and not his own. Our children are the most important things in our lives, when you have a child you put everyone of your wants to the side, and you make sure your child has everything he needs, and some of what he wants. If you have a deaf child, your child NEEDS sign language, so you better learn it... if your child wants a HA or CI later down the road, then you make sure he knows everything that is involved in the process and let YOUR CHILD make the decision, because him or her is the one who has to go through the surgery or the wearing of the device, not you

Bottesini

Right, young hearie... So when you have kids , if they don't like brushing their teeth, it will mean it isn't useful. So of course you will just let them have natural dentition.

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celly37

Not brushing their teeth would harm them, tooth decay, infections ect. Being deaf does not harm them... there is a huge difference!

Bottesini

If there is enough residual hearing to acquire spoken language, it isn't going to happen if you wait until they are adult.

Romantacising deafness is all well and good. But you don't have any vested interest in it either way, and the implication escape you.

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celly37

If that was the case, then a hearing aide would work, and the child would most likely want to wear it. Also, if they were in school they could wear the hearing aide, and at home if they decide not to... what is the big deal? Just out of curiosity... are you hearing, HOH, or deaf Bottensini?

saywhatkid

rockin'robin

2x that!

Bottesini

Deaf family for generations.

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celly37

ah ok Anyways please know, I really don't think there is one specific answer for HA and CI for deaf or HOH individuals. I base most of my answers on what I would do if i had a profoundly deaf child... I would learn ASL (well I am already learning lol) for my child because that is what I believe would be best for a deaf child. I just can not support CI's for babies, no matter if the window of opportunity is when they are young its just not fair to make a child go through a surgery that is unnecessary. But HA I think are different because you can put them on, or take them off whenever you want. But if my kid hates wearing them, and can communicate with sign language, then why not just let him/her sign? communication is communication... doesn't matter how you do it, just matters that you do... I am not romanticizing deafness, I have one deaf friend who loves being deaf and who spends a lot of her time teaching hearing people ASL, and another one who wants to be hearing. Its different for everybody, I understand that. This is why I stress individualism and letting the deaf person decide, because ONLY THEY know how they feel!

Bebonang

That is exactly what I am trying to explain. It is all up to the deaf or Deaf individuals who choose to wear hearing aid or CI later on. But if they were being force to go into mainstream school with no sign language and had to deal with speech and lipreading expecting them to be involve in the hearing world. They are wrong. It is really difficult for us having to understand what hearing people say with no sign language interpreters or lipreading which we fail at trying to understand them. They get us very frustrated that there has to be a solution to make communication beneficial and comfortable to communicate with the help of sign language. Sign language really does work better than trying to lipread or trying to listen (I hate that word). That is my strong feeling.

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I HAVE BEEN DEAF SINCE BIRTH, AND IT IS STILL AWESOME TO BE . (thumb up) (very happy)

celly37

Personally I think EVERY american should learn ASL, in public school they offer German, italien, Russian, Chinese, French ect.... but we live in AMERICA. If we need to learn another language it better be ASL or even ESL to be honest (although i like ASL soooooo much better) Im honestly tired of hearing people not taking the time to learn... I have been teaching my nephew, two nieces, my two sisters, and my fiancee sign language, and my mom will be taking a class at the community college hopefully in the fall. And its because we all realize the importance of learning it! I am very sorry that you get frustrated not being able to communicate with hearing people, and I understand how hard it is to read lips, I read lips too because although i hear fine, i have a hard time understanding people especially someone I dont know (takes me time to learn voices and to be able to pick them out over other noises), and I often rely on lip reading to understand, if someone looks the other way i usually can not understand them, especially if there is background noise. But everyone moves their mouth different, so i cant always do it, and either pretend I understand or i am constantly saying "what??... or "say that again" .... Anyways, I really hope more people start learning ASL it seems like in my area (upstate NY) it is becoming more popular, and more people are learning, but I imagine it is not the same for all areas unfortunately.

Gunnar_WWH

Hi all,


Thanks for the discussion of our video and mission, it is very interesting to hear different standpoints. For clarification: We certainly do not intend to discriminate against deaf people and do not assume that hearing is per se better than deafness. If someone prefers not to use hearing aids, that is perfectly acceptable of course and you are right that we have to make sure that the kid truly benefits from the hearing aids. We will certainly not force hearing aids on anyone who doesn’t want them.


That said, we see that technological progress has improved the quality of hearing aids and has made them more affordable. I believe that it is important in many dimensions to enable poorer countries to have access to these technologies so people can chose whether or not they want them.


Thanks again for your valuable input, it is very much appreciated!
Gunnar