Gifts for Bohol and Leyte

The deaf kids are were so excited when December 13 rolled around. They knew that was the day that “Mrs. Clause”, Marilou Drake, and her elves, the IDEA Philippines office staff, would be coming to their dormitories with loads of Christmas gifts.

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Marilou

Marilou and her Elves

 Most of the gifts that the team delivered were purchased with money given by the individual sponsors of the students and were specifically shopped for from wish lists sent in by the kids.  Even if the kids didn’t have a sponsor, IDEA made sure that everyone of the children got some nice presents.  There were smiles all around.

Marilou and the Elves also wished the students a Merry Christmas through caroling.  You may wonder how the students could appreciate the singing?  The carols were also interpreted in sign language and many of the students have some residual hearing so could pick up a little of the music.  In addition, all the students got new hearing aids from the Starkey Hearing Foundation just the week before so this was a chance to test them out.  A few of the kids had dramatic improvement and could hear quite a lot of the music.   Even if it wasn’t crystal clear for everyone,  it was the thought that counted.  Everyone had a great time.

The kids will be busy this week making thank you cards.  IDEA as an organization would also like to thank the sponsors for making this a Merry Christmas.

Here are a few photos of the event and also a video.

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 Starkey Hearing Foundation

and IDEA Philippines Team Up 

To Provide Hearing Aids to Bohol

December six and seven were a whirlwind couple of days at IDEA’s Dao Diamond Hotel in Tagbilaran City, Bohol.   The six member Starkey Hearing Foundation audiology team from the States plus nine audiology student volunteers from the University of Santo Tomas flew into Tagbilaran, Bohol to distribute hearing aids.  The trip to Bohol for them had some drama to it as the airplane they chartered missed the taxiway and buried one airplane wheels three feet into the mud.  Luckily the landing gear did not collapse.  Finding another flight delayed the start of the mission by more than half a day but like real troopers, they hit the ground running and  worked late into the night to fit the crowds of people who were waiting eagerly to receive the gift of  hearing aids.

Along with IDEA Philippines staff, the team was able to fit around 900 people with aids in the short two days.  Bill Austin, the founder of the Starkey Hearing Foundation and owner of Starkey Labs, lead the mission and inspired the team with his super human dedication to serve the patients and his incredible stamina.  The teams worked straight though lunch and dinner without stopping to eat in order to be able to meet the needs of the crowds.  The sacrificial attitude of the IDEA staff and Starkey Mission team was truly awesome!

Bill Austin, Founder of Starkey Hearing Foundation

The two day event was punctuated with literally hundreds and hundreds of  “AHA” moments when either someone began to hear sounds they never had heard before or someone with slowly diminished hearing was restored.  Huge smiles where on peoples faces as they exited the distribution center with their new electronic hearing devices.  Small conclaves of individuals could be seen standing around talking to each other to marvel at the improvement in understanding of speech.  In the case of the sever and profoundly deaf students, they were realizing they could hear car horns or laughter of people around them.  Just being aware of the sounds around they makes there world safer and more enjoyable even if they couldn’t understand speech.   What a special time!

THANK YOU Starkey Hearing Foundation for this amazing gift of hearing for Bohol.  THANK YOU Bill Austin.

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FIRST BATCH OF MAYON STOVES

July 5, 2011

Perla Manapol (pictured at the left) is the president of an organization known as Sustainable Rural Enterprises based in Aklan, Philippines.  Her fervour to help the poor and at the same time helping the environment is contagious.  She initially infected Ambassador Benny Tan (pictured on the right) with the concept of stoves that burn waste materials giving the masses an alternative to cutting down trees for fuel.  In turn Ambassador Tan infected Dennis Drake and Juviro Hagup  (pictured in the center) of IDEA Philippines with the vision.  Now a group of deaf men working with IDEA Philippines are producing these wonderful rice hull burning stoves.  Ambassador Tan even gave a grant  for 100 stoves which will then be made available to low income people on Bohol.  IDEA hopes to introduce these stoves in Leyte and employ some of the deaf high school graduates there as well.

So here stands the team of promoters behind the first batch of Mayon stoves to come off the still crude but improving, assembly line at the IDEA Philippines shop.  It was great to have Perla to demonstrate the proper way to use the stoves and give the IDEA staff tips on marketing them.  In her demonstration of the stove and only using rice hulls as fuel, she was able to get one liter of water to a boil in only six minutes.  That’s a hot fire.

Ambassador Tan demonstrates lighting technique for the stove.

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Christmas arrived a few days early for IDEA Philippine’s deaf children.  Because we don’t have a sleigh or snow, on December 14th  IDEA’s office staff loaded up our red van with a mountain of gifts to take to all the IDEA supported deaf centers around the island of Bohol.  There was some doubt as to whether they could fit all the gifts and helpers in but with a tight squeeze they did it.  Because “a picture says a thousand words” we’ll just show you what the day was like.

IDEA’s Santa Helpers used wish lists prepared by the elementary students and shopped for days to fill them.  Then they spent more days just organizing all the gifts for the distribution.  The deaf high school students up at Bohol Deaf Academy and the students in Ormoc, Leyte were able to shop for themselves because their schools are close to a large department stores.  Sponsors sent in money to buy their deaf child Christmas presents but even the children without sponsors got gifts courtesy of IDEA’s general fund.  IDEA spent about $6000 on gifts for 336 deaf children.  Every child was given at least $18 for shopping.  That amount goes a little further in the Philippines so that it might buy a pair of pants, dress, or shoes with a shirt / blouse and underwear or socks.  Most sponsors sent in a few more dollars so their children were able to get a few more things.

It was a long day for Santa’s Helpers

Merry Christmas Everyone!  shhhhhhh

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