The best part: those smiles, those joyful faces when we fitted them with hearing aids or replaced their broken ones.
Mar Fernández
GAES Santiago – India, in collaboration with the Vicente Ferrer Foundation
The hardest part of volunteering, for me, is putting into words the feelings, the emotions, the experience, and everything this trip has given me. It was incredible!
Together with my colleague, we fitted 20 hearing aids and carried out nearly 50 hearing evaluations for children at the Vicente Ferrer Foundation. I was in charge of the audiological part: otoscopy, tympanometry, and audiometry. I was struck by how easily the children allowed us to perform the tests—they didn’t resist at all. I’m used to having to negotiate with both kids and their parents, so this was remarkable. The Vicente Ferrer Foundation made our stay very easy—we always had an interpreter who spoke perfect Spanish, along with the speech therapists from the Speech Therapy school.
The best part: those smiles, those joyful faces when we fitted them with hearing aids or replaced their broken ones. The hardest part: that we only had 20 hearing aids, 5 days, and the overwhelming feeling that they gave us far more than we could give them. I was still in Anantapur and already longing to return.
Thanks to GAES Solidaria for giving me the opportunity to live this experience, and to the Vicente Ferrer Foundation for the wonderful welcome they gave us.