When Annette Cross says she wants the world to hear, it isn't just talk. She walks the walk.

 Recently, the board certified hearing instrument specialist and owner of Provincial Hearing Aid Service in Bridgewater returned from El Salvador where she participated in the Starkey Hearing Foundation's latest "So the World Can Hear" international hearing mission.

 Since 2000, the foundation has distributed over 240,000 hearing aids to needy people, mostly children, in about 85 countries all around the world.

 It was the fifth such mission Ms Cross has participated in with the foundation and her second in five months, the other being an October 2007 sojourn to Istanbul, Turkey.

 That was preceded by her first mission to El Salvador in 2004, a second to Jamaica in 2005 and another to Panama in 2006.

 "The Starkey Hearing Foundation every year puts on a big fundraising event in Minneapolis," Ms Cross explains. "We go there and decide which mission we want to do."

 The foundation raises $4 million annually to help fund the 100 to 150 missions they organize in developing countries. Participating specialists are required to pay their own way to whatever destination they select, including their airfare, meals and accommodations.

 "Any of the money that is leftover goes to the kids as well," she says. "Some of these kids are bused hours and hours, so we're paying for their food and lunches. And each one of us takes down extra suitcases of toothbrushes, pencils, books and little toys for them."

 Ms Cross says that prior to a group of volunteer specialists arriving at a particular mission site, members of the foundation's team visit the area, conducting tests and selecting individuals who are to receive hearing aids, as well as making the necessary ear moulds.

 "So when we go down, what we do for three days straight is fit hearing aids," she says. "It sounds like it wouldn't take that long, but you're talking about quite a language barrier and a lot of the kids who come in are really scared, so it's hard for us to gauge if that hearing aid is working for them."

 She said the experience is also very intimidating for the children, as "some of these kids have nothing, then they come into this big room with about 25 or 30 of us bustling and hustling and getting things done and a translator standing in front of them talking to them or talking to their mother trying to find out what's going on. It can be very scary for them."

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 Ms Cross, who travels to each mission with a group of 10 or 12 other specialists from all across Canada, says the latest trip was particularly satisfying.

 "We promised them we would come back, because El Salvador was our very first mission and really touched a part of our hearts," she explains.

 That bond grew even more once the Canadian contingent arrived in January, thanks to one of the mission's organizers, a Quebecer who married the first Latino audiologist in the country and now resides there.

 "When they were taking the impressions for the hearing aids, they took pictures of all the people, then gave them to them to bring [to us]," she recalls. "It was fabulous."

 While there, the group fitted about 1,200 hearing aids to an appreciative population whom Ms Cross describes as "a wonderful, wonderful bunch of people.

 "Their faces literally light up," she says. "You never get tired of that look. It is just precious. And that's why we do it."

 The group also reached into their own pockets to raise around $2,000 to help out the village school, which was scheduled to close in February due to a lack of funding.

 Ms Cross has since taken on the plight of the school, and its 150 students, as her own personal project. She plans on holding several fundraisers in the local area throughout the upcoming year in support of the facility, money she will deliver personally when she makes a return trip to El Salvador this coming November.

 "That's something I've taken as part of my mission. Every year I'm going to help raise money for that school and we're going to build a Canadian library for that school," she explains.

posted on 03/04/08