Donate Hearing Aids? – Here’s why!

Donate a hearing aid – the easy way!

To donate hearing aids is so important and so easy.  We’re passionate about Hearing Aid Recycling.  We’re always delighted to receive donated hearing aids.  Either directly through the post or via our collection centres.  We’re so grateful to all of our registered places and for every donated hearing aid.  We’re adding locations all the time.  It is super easy to lookup the nearest one.  We have one in most biggish (and some very small places too!) towns.  You just need to input your postcode into the search field on our interactive map page and let the clever behind the scenes technicals do the rest.  It will show you on the map  (which you can zoom in on) and also on a list below, the nearest few, so you can hopefully choose the most convenient for you.

SUFFOLK NEWS:

Hearing Aid Recycling Founder Zoe was interviewed by The Suffolk Times last week.  Martyna Wiecha and Zoe had a long and involved conversation.  We are so grateful for the paper’s interest and enthusiasm for our Hearing Aid Recycling initiative.  We phoned The Suffolk Times as we were, also, so grateful to Mr Durrell for donating his Aunt’s hearing aids.  You can read a little bit more about it here.  It felt as though our hard work trying to establish a very easy way to donate hearing aids was really falling into place and beginning to work. 

Martyna was so easy to talk to and asked a lot of questions.  One of which gave Zoe a pause for thought.  It was such a good question and one that hadn’t been asked in as direct a way before.  For that reason we felt it warranted answering here and now!  Hopefully Martyna’s piece will be published soon and we’ll be sure to add it here as soon as it is.  Her question was:

Why Donate Hearing Aids?  Who has the most to gain?

Without hesitation Zoe was able to say: a very young child or baby who is born deaf, in poverty, in a part of the world where there isn’t an NHS equivalent.  Which very sadly encompasses many, many children and babies.

Newborn hearing screening:

In the UK most babies will have had their first hearing test before they even go home for the first time.  The whole thing is so gentle and non-invasive that in all probability they’ll sleep right through it.  Thankfully most babies slumber through and pass with flying colours. If, however, an anomaly is picked up, they will receive the very best care and the very best equipment from the very beginning.

A Child born deaf without access to hearing aids also never learns to speak!

Our title, here, is really pretty self-explanatory.  A baby born deaf without access to hearing aids, also never learns to speak and will be condemned to a life of being mute too.  In the UK if you are born deaf you will have access to the very best technology, completely free, from the NHS.  That combined with so many other services means that, that baby, then child, young person and so on still has every opportunity to lead a full and connected life.  Pursuing their dreams.  An incredibly inspiring example of this is Rose Aylng-Ellis.  Perhaps best known for her winning stint on Strictly Come Dancing.  You can read a bit more about her here.

What will a donated hearing aid mean?

It is so incredibly humbling to witness how quickly a child born deaf learns to replicate speech and when they are provided with hearing aids, learns to speak  .  So, that was our answer:  A child born deaf without access to an NHS equivalent has the very most to gain from a donated hearing aid.  The biggest reason why it is so incredibly important, if you can, to donate your hearing aids when you no longer need them.  The very simple act of passing on your no longer needed hearing aid really will enable us to transform an entire lifetime.

Not least:

It is so important to not send these tiny bits of life changing technology to landfill. 

They may be little but they are mighty!!

How many? One hand?

We haven’t tried, (but we might!) and don’t know just how many hearing aids you can fit in the palm of one hand.  This pic is one of Hearing Aid Recycling’s co-founder Zoe’s hearing aids in the palm of her (really quite small) hand.  So, we’re going to guess that with care and determination you may get 10 pairs on one average palm?  Potentially transforming 10 entire lifetimes from the palm of one hand.  Almost as humbling a thought as it is watching a child take joy in the connection with the world around them as they discover sound.  Learning to communicate through speech, from the gift of a donated hearing aid.

Thank you again for every single hearing aid you donate.  We will do our best to make sure it goes on to do as much good as it possibly can.