A Better Fit

Dr. Doug Clutton and wife Valerie recently returned from a prolonged stay in Canada to the Philippines after having  previously spent many years working as missionaries with the Deaf in Manila.  They have now moved to the city of Bacolod on the island of Negros and again are serving as missionaries to the Deaf working mainly in developing vocational and income generating projects for the Deaf.   Dr. Doug is an audiologist by trade.  This skill and training are very rare in the Philippines and there is a tremendous need all over the islands for his type of services.  Although there are several universities providing education and training in the field of audiology, almost all graduates go abroad to work leaving the Philippines with only a few.

IDEA Philippines has a beautiful hearing clinic which has been put together through the efforts of organizations such as CBM, Rotary Honolulu, Dr. Bukowsky, and other private individuals.  The new clinic building was just finished at the end of 2010 and our staff is still in need of additional training to really make it functional.

For this reason, we at IDEA were thrilled to meet Dr. Doug and even more excited when he offered to provide us with some much needed additional training on how to fit hearing aids and make permanent ear molds.

The week long training funded by CBM was an intensive hands on workshop and very practical.  Although our IDEA Philippines staff are not audiologist, they are now one step closer to being qualified hearing aid technicians and dispensers.  Because of the  proximity of Bacolod to Bohol, IDEA plans to have Dr. Doug come back to help us fit donated hearing aids to our hard of hearing students and to impoverished elderly Bohol island residents.  IDEA Philippines already has over 100 donated used hearing aids and is always anxious for more so that we might be able to help those hard of hearing Boholanos who just could never afford to purchase hearing aids.

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Power Problem Solved

As IDEA strives to provide employment for more and more deaf men and women on the island of Bohol, it runs into some unexpected problems.  We are approaching the end of the second phase expansion of IDEA’s livelihood and income project known as Dao Diamond Hotel in Tagbilaran City.  Through this effort we have been able to add ten more jobs with and the improved income is allowing us to bring more deaf children into school.

With the increase in the facilities came an increase in our power consumption.  This is normally not a problem as the electrical power from the province is adequate but the difficulty arises with the frequent power outages (called brown-outs).  The hotel has a ancient back up generator that was probably made in the 1950′s and has been rebuilt and rebuilt over the years.  With our increased power needs, every time the hotel had a brown-out, the poor old generator just couldn’t carry the load so customers were often sitting in darkness.  Brown-outs could last as long as eight hours.  That’s not the kind of hotel experience that would be enjoyable by any guest.

Dennis consulted with an IDEA partner who deals in generators regarding the problem, hoping for some advice on what and where to purchase an inexpensive, more modern and more powerful unit.  Although the foundation didn’t have the funds to buy a unit, Dennis new this was not an issue that could be put off for very long.

The IDEA board and staff were absolutely elated when the partner offered to donate a slightly used generator to meet the need.  The generator was  promptly shipped from the States and arrived on the island of Bohol the first week of February.  It had a perilous journey with problems such as  the container ship it was loaded on being  involved in a collision at the Port of Hong Kong, being caught up in a flood at the port city of Cebu, being denied passage on the regular ships that sail between Cebu and Bohol so being force to be loaded on a barge, and having the barge get caught in a storm and passing through very rough seas with a danger of toppling the generator overboard.

But thank God, it finally made it to our little hotel safely and is now perfectly turning out the power requirements during the brown-outs.

A huge thanks to the friend of IDEA who provided this marvelous gift.  We know it will serve us for decades to come.

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