Helping Deaf Children in Sierra Leone

Melton Mowbray Belvoir Rotarians do it again !

They are helping out St Joseph’s school for deaf children in Sierra Leone by purchasing a special hearing aid test box. This will allow their resident audiologist Monica Tomlin to properly test all the children’s hearing aids and other hearing equipment. The test box gives real time information so that it is immediately obvious if the hearing aids are not functioning as they should.

Sierra Leona is an extremely poor nation lying on the west coast of Africa just north of Liberia.  The school has over 200 pupils with deafness ranging from moderate through to profound and is located in Makeni 2 hours east of the capital Freetown. It is the only school for deaf children in the country. As the audiology department at the school is more advanced than other clinics it is in great demand to treat deaf children and adults in other parts of the country as well.  

This opportunity for the Melton Mowbray Belvoir Rotarians arose after Rotarian Simon Blake invited Monica to talk to the club over Zoom during lockdown in 2021. The club’s International Committee decided that it would endeavour to raise the funds to purchase the equipment. It was successful and the equipment, worth around £6000, arrived here in the UK just before Christmas. It will reach the school in Sierra Leone mid to late February.

In order to build up even stronger connections between the school and the club itself Simon is intending to visit the school during March 2023 to see the equipment in action, to meet the children and to find out more about the country which has undergone civil war between 1991 and 2002 and then a severe outbreak of Ebola between 2014 and 2016.