Lets hear it for Melton Belvoir Rotarians!

The state-of-the-art equipment for St Joseph’s School for the Deaf, in Sierra Leone, is vital to ensure that each child's hearing aid is functioning correctly and is tuned to the specific user.

Club members made the decision to raise the funds to support the school after Rotarian Simon Blake invited their resident audiologist, Monica Tomlin, to talk to the club over Zoom during lockdown in 2021.

Monica emphasised the difficulties of providing the right help for each child without modern testing equipment and the Rotarians decided to take action.The state-of-the art equipment, which costs £6,000, arrived in the UK just before Christmas and it will reach the school next month.

Sierra Leona is an impoverished West African nation which has undergone civil war between 1991 and 2002 followed by a severe outbreak of Ebola between 2014 and 2016.

As always in these circumstances it is the children who suffer most. Life is exceptionally difficult for youngsters who are disabled and deafness is a major handicap to acquiring even a basic education.

St Josephs, the only school for deaf children in the entire country, has over 200 pupils with deafness ranging from moderate through to profound.

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.In order to build up even stronger connections between the school and the club, itself, Simon will visit the school in March to meet the children and see the equipment in action.