Joy of Sound

The Rotary Club of Chennai Kilpauk is working towards enhancing the learning experiencing for hearing impaired students by creating digital content for the TN State Board exams and providing smart classrooms to schools for the hearing impaired. All schools in the city of Chennai have been covered and now the rest of the State of Tamilnadu is the target.

The initial funding for the Joy of Sound came from RC Strathcona Sunrise and TRF.

The project Chairman is Rtn. PP Mahimm Gupta

Here is a video about the project.

Joy of Sound

Global Grant Project 

On, 11th June, we rolled out our very ambitious, $66000, Global Grant Project called the Joy of Sound. This project, in association with theRotary Club of Strathcona Sunrise-Courteney, will work towards changing the way the hearing impaired child is educated through the use of smart classrooms. Under the project, we will be supporting 2 schools for the hearing impaired, the MGR School for the Deaf and The MJC-Guild of Service School for the Deaf.

The club will work with the schools to:
1. Develop smart classroom content for classes 5,6,7,8,9, and 11. This is being achieved by training and enabling the special skill teachers to transform physical content into electronic medium.
2. Provide smart classroom infrastructure for 3 classes each at both the schools
3. Provide hearing aids to the children in the school.
4. With the support of Clearwater Technologies, provide Shoebox Audiometry testing application, that any teacher can use to carryout screening of the children and track their hearing progress.
3. Screen and identify children with hearing disability by holding screening camps in the schools.
4. Admitting children from the identified set and educating them in these schools.

20 teachers underwent training on computer and Powerpoint skills at the MGR Janaki Arts and Science College. This army of teachers, lead by the very committed and able, Mrs. Sarawathi will drive us to our goal. Many thanks to all for volunteering to take up this cause. It is a challenge and will require each of these teachers to put in many many hours of extra work to make this project a success. But I believe that each one who takes up the cause of teaching a special child, has already made that commitment and is driven to make a difference to the lives of these children they teach. While each teacher is a blessed and honoured being, the ones who teach children with disabilities, are on the top.

Special thanks to the selfless dedication of Mrs. Saraswati, our Lead Coach and Trainer (she has given her life for teaching the hearing impaired), Rtn. Mrs. Latha Rajendran of the MGR School and Mrs. Rani Gulrajani of the GOS School, for partnering with RCCK.

Many thanks to Rtn. Chip Ross and Rtn. Mike Pontus from our partner club, RC Strathcona Sunrise for helping make this project a reality. Thanks also to 3230 DG, Raju, 3230 Rotary Foundation Chair, Muthupalaniappan Shanmugama and Rtn. Jennifer Berg of the RI Global Grants team, for helping with the grant approval.

Most of all, thanks to all members of RCCK, especially Hari Ratan for his guidance, Ravi Krishnan for helping and doing all the work on the application, Mita Gorsia Venkatraman, Ravindran, Sanjay Agarwal, Ravikant Choudhry and Kalpana for being there at the inauguration of the event, and everyone else for always being there.

Small beginning and many miles to go. Happy that the trip has started.

Pres. Sanjay Agarwal on the right.

Hearing Impaired Screening Camp - MG with RC of Galesburg - ROTI Project

This matching grant project which is partnered with Rotary Club of Galesburg, Illinois, started yesterday with the first screening camp and had a wonderful response.

Many residents of close to 19 villages  surrounding the camp had come and some of them staying as far as 35 kilometers away on the outskirts of North Chennai.  The campaign for calling people to get checked was extremely effective and from these villages whose population is close to about 4000 numbers, we were able to call about 200 of them to visit in a single day.  The effectiveness of the campaigning done by Dr Sandhya Ruban (of Eternity Foundation)  and her team of volunteers was fantastic, enabling it specifically call for patients with hearing abnormalities.

We had team of the following specialists :

DR KAMATCHIPANDIAN – DOCTOR ATTACCHED TO E N T DEPARTMENT K M C

MR PRAVESH – AUDIOLOGIST

MR SANDEEP – AUDIOLOGIST

We were also honoured to have the presence of Mrs Neela Govindaraj ( Speech Therapist and Language Assessor of specially challenged) who had accompanied with Ms Uma (a social service initiator who also works with IBM).  Both Mrs Neela and Ms Uma sat for a long time and helped in coordinating and handling the visiting patients. They interacted and counseled the visitors on a one to one basis, which was really interesting to see them doing their roles in gathering more insights to the various challenges faced by the villagers.

We also witnessed misery at its lowest point  in the case of certain individuals who felt extremely helpless with their lives.  Hence we could sense there was lots to be done in terms of community service to these villages, and there was potential for plenty of them who needed to be living in standard basic amenities.

Finally coming back to hearing impairment and hearing aid cases, we have crossed 100 deserving beneficiaries and individuals cases are being discussed in a couple of days with the Doctors, to analyse and shortlist hearing aids beneficiaries.

Hearing Impaired

We had received requests from 15 people for hearing aids. These children were not able to hear and their parents believed that they would start hearing if they were able to get them hearing aids.

The date was fixed for the 13th of December and these children came into Chennai with their parents. Rtn. Divyesh Palicha had arranged for audiometry tests at Eljay Agency- a business that deals with hearing aids. Tests were carried out and results were ready and Divyesh called me and said "Let us meet at Eljay so we can go through the results and make a decision on the apparatus and further tests if any are required"

Children waiting for their audiometry tests

We met at Eljay Agencies and sqw the results, 11 were ready for haring aids, 2 children had to meet a ENT and 2 had to go through BERA tests (Brain Evoken Response Audiometry) this test was required as the 2 children were actually infants and were not able to respond properly to the audiometry tests.

Sukanya after experiencing sound

Sukanya a girl who was ready for her hearing aids was called in to see how she responded,a hearing aid was taken and affixed to her ears and then she experienced magic, she was for the first time in her life able to hear a sound though it was only our voices. She was asked what her name was and she could not answer, she was asked what her father's name was and she responded "sgumpore" mumbled, unclear. She had never spoken continuously in her life and now she had to listen and then speak, a great and wonderful task. Sukanya was used to sign language and now she could hear and the sounds in her ears made her cry. She could not belileve that it was possible. Sukanya ran out with the hearing aid to her father and mother and asked them to speak - for the first time she heard her mother's voice and then her father's, this was joy and a smile quickly followed by tears. Sukanya then heard something that we tend to ignore, a passing car playing music, she listened and then turned to look at the car and then she heard for the first time in her life, music. It did not matter  that the song was in a language that she did not know, it was music and a new experience.

Emotions were high and many children who had come for the tests realised that they too would be able to experience sounds soon.

the orders for the hearing aids have been confirmed and these 11 children will get their hearing aids on 23rd of December evening. A few days before Christmas, the gift of sound, the gift of music. To be able to listen to music, listen to the voice of their mothers', to be able to respond to ones own name.

Great project and very very satisfying.

Thanks to Rtn Divyesh Palicha for making this happen.