It was at school one afternoon early last year that young Djecilia Jean Baptiste felt the walls start to shake.

“I heard other houses come down,” the 13-year-old says, eyes fixed downward. “And I didn’t know what was happening.”

The earthquake in Haiti killed more than 300,000 people and devastated the girl’s hometown of Jacmel. The school stood, but Djecilia’s family home did not, like thousands of others across the country reduced to rubble. Since that day, she and her twin brother have been spending their days in class, studying the arts, and their nights living in a tent with four other siblings and their mother.

This month, however, has been different. What began as a plan to display the school’s artwork at the Edmonton Fringe Festival became, at the request of the foundation that runs the school, a chance for students to share the art and storytelling of Jacmel first-hand in Canada.

“They said, ‘It’s really great the artwork can come up – can the kids come up, too?’” says Patti McIntosh, an Edmonton writer who stumbled on Djecilia’s school, the Art Creation Foundation for Children, by Googling “children’s art work Haiti.”

The invite, if funding could be found, was a no-brainer, Fringe executive director Julian Mayne said.

“It took about two seconds to realize it was a fantastic idea,” he said.

Fringe officials travelled to Haiti two months ago to help ACFFC school students, many of whom were once street children, develop two Haitian folk tales, each performed entirely in French and by the children. With the help of a local grant, officials then flew nine students and a chaperone to Edmonton to stage them once again.

“Without the foundation, I won’t be here,” young Djecilia said at the Fringe site, a digital camera dangling from her wrist.

It was the children’s first plane ride, and upon arrival they were in awe of the long summer days in the prairies – not to mention the 24-hour electricity.

The trip, however, was a tall order. Few had any family members with passports or documents, much less their own. It was only after months of work – and what Ms. McIntosh calls a “leap of faith” by two local agencies that offered a grant – that the kids’ visit was secured.

“It’s kind of an exceptional, once-in-a-lifetime thing,” Ms. McIntosh says. “I think there’s something that resonates when you hear they want to be artists. They want to be international artists.”

The Fringe began last Friday and runs until next weekend. During their two-week stay in Edmonton, the students will perform their plays and sell hundreds of tiny papier-mâché birds and bowls, each hand-made and painted, to raise funds for the school. Tourism – and the wares tourists buy – are major industries in Jacmel. The children view the arts as a livelihood.

And it already is their livelihood: their creations are sold and help form the base of funding for the foundation, started by an American. The Jean Baptiste twins say they like all types of visual art, but both have prominent roles in the folk tales. The school and art are an opportunity in a region with widespread hardship. One child told Ms. McIntosh he’d spend his life in the arts “because then he could eat and have babies.”

The school offers at-risk children opportunity they hardly would have had otherwise, says chaperone and ACFFC executive director Georges Metellus. They get education, regular meals and shelter during the day. “Our program is to find poor kids, poor families, street kids, and have them with us, to live the life of a real kid,” he says.

Their paintings and sculptures are vibrant, filled with colour and depicting their own lives – Mr. Metellus, for instance, is featured in paintings. American friends urged him to get out of Haiti after the earthquake; he wouldn’t leave his job. The Edmonton trip, he hopes, is the first of many for the young artists of Jacmel.

“If we can take them around the world, we’ll do that. This is a big experience,” Mr. Metellus says. “We had a prayer – ‘thank you, God, because I didn’t expect to visit another country in my life.’ So, thank you.”

Josh Wingrove for The Globe and Mail

The University of Notre Dame Haiti Program will spend less money to light and power its operations thanks to the addition of 16 solar panels, the work of a non-for-profit foundation led by two 1985 Notre Dame graduates.

The Let’s Share the Sun Foundation, based in Troy, N.Y., completed the second phase of a solar installation at the Residence Filariose in Leogane, Haiti, where four panels were installed earlier this year. The solar panels are now generating enough power to shut the diesel generator off during the day. The Residence Filariose serves as a training facility for the local community and guesthouse for visiting researchers focused on eradicating lymphatic filariasis.

Co-founder Nancy Brennan-Jordan (a 1985 Notre Dame graduate), Gib Gailius (also a 1985 graduate), Bernadette Jordan, and Notre Dame sophomore Annemarie Schwendler witnessed and filmed the installation in July after several months of very detailed planning to get the solar panels into Haiti.

Program administrator Wesley Pierre said, “Once we heard that we will have three kilowatts of energy from the solar panels, I was so happy to receive that message… because every three days, we need to buy gas [for the diesel generator] for almost 200 U.S. dollars.”

Brennan-Jordan explained, “The whole process of our solar installation is what makes us different. We successfully installed a high quality 3kw solar system to support the inspiring work of the Notre Dame Haiti Program and at the same time with the leadership of Richard Hansen and the Soluz team trained four local Haitians in the process.

“This team then went on to install two large panels on a rural Leogane school last month. This rural school will now be able to have electricity for the first time and provide afternoon classes, doubling their student body to 240 students. We also met with the Mayor of Leogane during our visit and respect and honor the local community plan for the rebuild of Leogane. I have the confidence that the Residence Filariose solar install and the first solar school in rural Leogane will be sustained and maintained by the local community. This empowering ‘train the trainer’ model is the key to our long lasting impact.”

Soluz was instrumental in acquiring the solar panels and leading the installation effort. Richard Hansen formed Soluz decades ago to empower local communities to gain access to affordable, sustainable energy.

“Since the Notre Dame facility was built in 2001 to support our research and national public health program in Haiti, solar energy has been a dream of ours,” says Notre Dame Haiti Program Manager Sarah Craig. “Words cannot express our thanks and gratitude to solar expert Richard Hansen, and fellow Notre Dame alumni Nancy and Bill Jordan. Their personal and professional commitment to our Notre Dame work in Haiti exemplifies the university’s mission to ‘…create a sense of human solidarity and concern for the common good…’. Heartfelt thanks for living out the Word.”

The Let’s Share the Sun Foundation continues to install solar in the poorest parts of the world while establishing education links at home and abroad. For more information, visit www.LetsShareTheSun.org.

Nancy Brennan-Jordan for ND Newswire

We all know that women and girls living in areas of armed conflict and disaster suffer the worst consequences of crises due to their heightened vulnerability. We also know dozens of initiatives, conferences, reports, and guidelines have been elaborated with the aim of mainstreaming gender-sensitive approaches in responses to humanitarian crises. Why then does our field research in crises such as Haiti offer such a bleak perspective on gender as a priority for all humanitarian actors?

This year we visited 9 crises in the compilation of the 2011 Humanitarian Response Index (HRI) and found that too often the specific needs of women and girls were being inadequately taken into account by humanitarian agencies both in the immediate response and in long term-recovery efforts, despite acceptance of the principle that aid should be non-discriminatory and based on needs.

Haiti is a glaring example. Despite the generous international response to the earthquake, the fielding of personnel from UN Women, and the lessons that should have been learned from the Tsunami and other similar experiences, gender issues in Haiti remain prominently and specifically unaddressed, exacerbating the already extremely difficult situation of women and girls there. Sexual and gender based violence remains rife- in a study by New York University in March 2011 14% of respondents reported that, since the earthquake, one or more members of their household had been victimized by either rape or unwanted touching or both.

Initially, gender issues were identified as a priority for the response with various initiatives being launched. However, an evaluation carried out by OCHA found that the achievements of the first three months were lost through lack of follow up.

Our interviews with key humanitarian actors in Port-au-Prince unfortunately confirmed this impression. The answers to our question on how gender needs have been addressed in Haiti since the earthquake were almost always vague and perfunctory, and in many occasions pessimistic. Some actors claim that gender was not a priority in Haiti due to the urgency of the moment. The “we will take care of this when we can” soon became the current “we should be working on it, but…”. Very few of those interviewed by the HRI team were able to respond concretely and provide specific examples of effective work around gender.

So how can we explain this lack of effective prioritisation of gender in Haiti?

Several humanitarian organisations told us donor governments generally did not really monitor if the organisations they support fully integrate a gender component in their programmes. “You can copy and paste the same paragraph in the gender section of every proposal and nobody complains”. As in other crises, gender in Haiti is relegated to an element that donors like seeing in funding proposals but sadly is rarely implemented or monitored in practice.

But this is not the whole picture. A cross-cutting theme like gender needs special attention and coordination- and as other reviews have found, coordination was not especially efficient in Haiti. If members of a programming cluster like health do not know what those in, say, the shelter cluster are up to, they will hardly be able to effectively address the gender dimensions. It also requires accurate needs assessments, and most would agree that needs data was not adequately disaggregated in Haiti.

Maybe part of the explanation lies in something far more simple. The humanitarian system is still overwhelmingly male dominated. While there has been some improvement in recent years, field research for the HRI 2010 showed significantly more male than female respondents in its survey sample of senior humanitarian staff (64 percent and 36 percent respectively). The masculinisation or gender bias of the system, especially at the decision-makers level, has been pointed to as one of the reasons why women’s needs are regularly poorly addressed in crises.

Today Haiti is caught between the emergency phase- where there is supposedly no time to differentiate gender- and rehabilitation- where absent a clear strategy to address gender, funds are not allocated. Both donors and NGOs blame each other, citing lack of prioritisation, knowledge and capacity, but in fact, the blame is shared.

Granted, further investment in tools, capacity-building and training in gender issues may be required. But the current scenario is not coherent with what is already known and what should already be done. Can there be any excuse for gender to be systematically left on the sidelines of humanitarian interventions? Surely not at this stage.

Donors have a key role in improving the quality and effectiveness of aid efforts for all affected populations- women and girls, men and boys- and can take specific steps for a more gender-sensitive approach in responses to crises. Requiring sex and age disaggregated data, and a gender analysis in needs assessments is a first step, but this must go beyond a simple data collection exercise to become the fundamental tool for determining how to prioritise interventions based on different needs. And actively promoting women’s participation in all stages of programming and verifying that the response is actually adapted to the different population groups is a good place to start.

Dara Dara for Trust.org

The Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs welcomed the first-ever group of Youth Ambassadors from Haiti to the United States on August 7. For three weeks, 20 Haitian high school students will travel to New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. where they will meet with their U.S. peers, live with host families, and take part in activities focused around civic education, community service, and youth leadership development.

The youth participants are 15 to 18 year-olds who have demonstrated outstanding leadership potential. Although they hail from families of limited economic means, each has demonstrated exceptional commitment to public service and an interest in improving their local communities. The students will be accompanied by two adult educators.

The Youth Ambassadors Program brings together high school students and adult mentors from 25 countries across the Americas to promote mutual understanding, increase leadership skills, and prepare youth to make a difference in their communities. More than 400 Youth Ambassadors participate in the program each year.

For more information – Visit the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ website at http://exchanges.state.gov/youth/programs/ylp/current-youth-leaderships-programs.html.

MAPLAT, Haiti (AP) — I went to Haiti last year after the earthquake, driven by an excited but vague notion of doing some good in a hurting country.

I went again this year with my eyes open a little wider, not jaded exactly but aware of why some people view these volunteer trips with justified skepticism.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, a place where sewage runs down the streets of the capital and children die because they don’t have clean water. It is in desperate need of helpers. Still, I sometimes roll my eyes when Americans visit for a week and come home declaring that their lives have been changed, as if they were not going to happily resettle into their comfy routines. My editor asked me if these trips are just a way for rich people to lessen their collective guilt, and I think that sometimes they are.

But I was impressed by the group that I traveled with, a small nonprofit called Farsight Christian Mission. Levern Halstead, who runs Farsight from his home outside Chattanooga, Tenn., says again and again that his trips must have an objectively measurable result — a new building, a new bridge, a new well.

He grows frustrated by volunteer groups that come with good intentions but no plan. It’s a sentiment echoed by others I talk to in Haiti, both Haitian community leaders and long-term aid workers from the U.S.
They don’t want to discourage people from helping. But they’re dismayed by the aid groups that bring what they think Haiti needs instead of asking what’s needed, which is how bags of donated high heels end up in villages where people trek through forests. Or the groups that want to play games with children but won’t haul around plywood, as if they could be better teachers than someone who actually speaks Creole. Or the volunteers who won’t bother to learn and respect the local culture.

“Some groups, you can tell, they just want to make their Facebook page really nice,” says Nego Pierre Louis, a 24-year-old Haitian who founded a community service group called the Bezalel Movement. He saw a flood of donated medical supplies come to one aid group in Jacmel, the coastal town where he lives, after the January 2010 earthquake. And, he says, he saw much of it get thrown away because it expired while the group hoarded it, not sharing with other relief organizations.

Still, there are good things to be done in Haiti. I was with Halstead last fall when he spoke to villagers from Seguin, in the mountains, about an idea where he’d buy 30 sheep for 30 families. The program would be self-sustaining, with families giving back every other lamb until everyone had a few animals.

The villagers told him they’d prefer that 15 families get two sheep each, because sheep get mopey when they’re alone. Halstead changed his plans immediately.

After the earthquake, he raised money for Pierre Louis to buy vegetable seeds to take to another mountain village, Maplat, where people were starving as food donations got gridlocked in Port-au-Prince. The villagers in Maplat doubled their food supply.

“And it’s not rice and beans with an American flag on the side,” adds Halstead, 59. He’s been coming to Haiti for more than 14 years, ever since he walked away from a career in computer programming.
My team spends the week in that same village, Maplat, which is really just a handful of buildings on the side of a treacherous dirt road. We help the villagers build a couple of one-room wooden houses with tin roofs — nothing fancy, but they’ll be useful for visiting doctors and other aid workers.

I have no particular skills in construction or any vocation that would be especially useful to Haiti, like medicine or agriculture. But I can hammer a nail and lug around lumber, and that’s good enough when you’ve got a leader who knows how to plug cogs like me into a machine.

Maplat’s village pastor, Louissaint Louime, is a smiling man with whitening hair. Like most of the men, he’s up every morning before dawn waiting to help build the houses. Like a lot of rural Haitians, he isn’t sure how old he is, but he thinks he’s 61.

Louime cares for a congregation that mostly lives in cornstalk huts and rarely has enough to eat. But he doesn’t particularly want a truck to speed by throwing out food and clothing, as happened after Hurricane Noel in 2007. Then, a few people will grab as much as they can and sell it later, and everyone else will get nothing, Louime and others said.
His wish, he says through a translator, is for an agronomist to help his village learn how to better use the clay-ridden land, and maybe someone who will start a microfinance program so that people can start businesses.

In other words, people who will take the time to teach skills, not just make themselves feel better by giving away stuff they didn’t want anyway.

“We’ll go into a new community and the kids, all the English they know is, ‘Give me a dollar, give me a cookie,’” said Clayton Bell, a 28-year-old doctor from El Paso, Ark., who works at the Cloud Forest Medical Clinic in Seguin. “It’s not their fault. But we have to retrain them, ‘Okay, if you want that, you can help me work, you can help me clean the clinic.’”
Next door, Chrisnet Excellus walks through the school where he is principal and worries that he won’t be able to pay his teachers. He has more than 400 students at Ecole Chretienne Emmanuel, who sit five to a bench in a concrete building without running water. Tuition is about $15 a year, but a third of the families can’t afford it. Excellus lets the children come anyway.

Excellus, 40, is married and the father of four girls. He has kind eyes. On a chilly day, he wears a Winn-Dixie windbreaker. I ask him what he needs for his school, and he needs everything, even pens and paper. I ask him what he wants for Haiti and he says, “Complete change.”
I am not naive. I know that a couple of buildings in Maplat will not fix Haiti’s problems. I know that radical changes are needed, like good roads, clean government, renewed industry, replenished topsoil, and I cannot bring them about. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t work for small victories.

At the end of the week I come home to New York, a city I love. I walk my favorite streets, hug my friends, enjoy hot showers. But all I can think about are the dusty, barefoot children who grabbed my hands and grinned at me. And Jocelin, a Seguin teenager who wants to be a doctor “because that’s what Haiti needs.” Tony, a student who dearly wishes to buy some books for the children in Maplat. Benitho, a debonair 20-year-old who gets serious when I ask him what he wants for his country: “If I can go anywhere to find help,” he says, “I will.”

All I can think about is how I want to go back.

If You Go…

FARSIGHT CHRISTIAN MISSION INC.: This registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit supports the work of the Bezalel Movement community service group in Jacmel, Haiti, and the Ecole Chretienne Emmanuel primary school in Seguin, Haiti, http://www.fcminc.org

CLOUD FOREST MEDICAL CLINIC: This clinic in Seguin, Haiti, is supported by the registered 501(c)(3) nonprofits Where the Stars Still Shine Inc. and Humanity First USA Inc.; http://www.wherethestarsstillshine.org and http://usa.humanityfirst.org

Christina Rexrode for Associated Press

America Green International is mounting a local campaign to deliver 1,000 solar light bulbs to Haitian refugees.

The effort began after a trip to Haiti last January to explore the benefits of introducing green technologies there, says Program Coordinator Leah Quintal. Her and other aid workers gave a man who operates a food stand a pair of small solar lights.

“Then he pointed at all of the nearby tents and said ‘this is wonderful, when are you bringing them back for everyone here?’” explains Quintal. “That spurred the whole conversation around this program. … Even one light bulb can be so transformative. It changes that person’s life. When you get a solar light, it’s renewable energy, so you cut the cost of kerosene, a dramatic cost, so you can spend the money to improve your life in other ways.”

Quintal also says the lights could play an important role in preventing rapes and other crimes that plague the sprawling camps that sprung up after a devastating earthquake struck the country in 2010.

“It’s horrible: Having light at night would help their security. It would seriously curb the amount of rape that’s occurring in the tent cities,” she maintains.

In a trial run, the program delivered 250 solar lights to Haitians in need. And Quintal’s been a familiar face at local festivals this summer, operating out of booths to sell more of the lights and raise money for the program (they cost $20 a piece). The lights can also be purchased for use here at home, where they’re becoming increasingly popular among hikers and campers. All the proceeds go to fund the Haitian effort.

Quintal reports that American Green needs about 800 more lights to meet their goal of 1,000, which they’re hoping to distribute to refugees in January on the two-year anniversary of the quake. She’ll be selling them from a booth at RiverFest at French Broad River Park this Saturday, Aug. 13.

Meanwhile, longtime Asheville filmmaker Kurt Mann (and owner of American Green) documented the trial run in Haiti (see below for his video). Eventually, he’s hoping to make a full-length documentary on the effort.

Jake Frankel for Mountain Express

THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL STORY SWAP: CONNECTING STUDENTS IN NEW ORLEANS AND PORT-AU-PRINCE

All Story Swaps begin the same way…Tell me something about you. Tell me a story so compelling that after hearing it, I’ll know you better. Then, I’ll take your story and recreate it as if it were my own. It’s a most elemental start to an exercise that produces results as starkly different and personal as the voices and lives being shared.

From April 19 – 23, 2010, the Aspen Writer’s Foundation Story Swap field teams worked at Cours Prive Edme in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and Sci Academy in New Orleans, LA. Story Swap literacy teachers, videographers and field producers introduced the high schoolers in each location to one another, facilitated the process and documented the project through film and print. Global Nomads Group, an international NGO that creates interactive educational programs about global issues for students around the world, provided videoconferencing for both locations.

Imagination is at the heart of this project and allows participants to see the potential for change within their daily lives and to envision solutions and possibilities for development, unify diverse socioeconomic and cultural groups, and hope for a better future. Students share stories of family, landscape and emotional experiences that broaden their perception of the world and their surroundings. This cross-cultural storytelling exchange breaks down isolation, increases interaction, raises awareness and encourages compassion. The Port-au-Prince / New Orleans Story Swap project was designed to help strengthen and, in this case, restore individuals, schools and communities.

Story Swap is an Aspen Writers’ foundation project, supported by the Bezos Family Foundation and showcased on Students Rebuild.

What do an actor, a former president and an art dealer have in common? Well for Bill Clinton, Ben Stiller and David Zwirner it’s a fundraiser. They will co-chair an exclusive event for The Stiller Foundation.

The event will take place on Friday, Sept. 23, in New York at Skylight Soho. It celebrates the previous evening’s Artists for Haiti art auction. The most prominent artists will be featured, including Adel Abdessemed, Cecily Brown, Paul McCarthy and Neo Rauch, to name a few. These artists have donated major works to Artists for Haiti and 100 percent of the charity auction sales will go directly to nonprofit organizations helping to put Haiti back together.

“Right now is a pivotal moment in Haiti’s future. And there is an opportunity for real change there. I’m honored that President Clinton has agreed to co-chair and attend our event,” Stiller said.

“I first became involved in Haiti through the Clinton Global Initiative, and his commitment and connection with the Haitian people is unparalleled. I’m also deeply grateful to my friend and partner David Zwirner, who has mobilized the art community in an unprecedented way. Through the generosity of these amazing artists, we have a chance to make a significant contribution to the rebuilding effort.”

The foundation, started by Stiller in 2010, focuses on building schools in Haiti, where thousands of schools were damaged after the devastating earthquake in January 2010. According to a United Nations report, just in the capital of Port-au-Prince, 8,000 schools were destroyed that served 1.8 million children.

Clinton also contributes to Haiti with the Clinton Foundation Haiti Fund, serves as the United Nations Special Envoy and co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Mission.

“True recovery is about more than just moving people in and out of tents; it means setting up the institutions and systems that will empower citizens to build a bright future for themselves and their children,” Clinton said.

Zwiner also added, “Ben’s intensity and passion as a philanthropist is exemplary. I am incredibly thankful to him for showing me firsthand what The Stiller Foundation has already accomplished in Haiti. Yet there is so much more to be done. The art world is an extraordinarily generous place and I am humbled by the support of the artists who have given so willingly. Through their donations and with everybody’s help, I believe we will be able to make a significant difference.”

Allyson Koerner for Ecorazzi

Denver, Colo., – Team Zaryen, a group of amputee soccer players who lost limbs in the devastating Haiti earthquake last year, demonstrated their impressive skills at the Knights of Columbus’ convention in Denver, Colorado on August 1.

Supreme Knight Carl Anderson, who visited Haiti in the earthquake’s aftermath, praised the players for their determination on Aug. 1 and noted the “greatness of the people of Haiti” and their “faithfulness and generosity of spirit.”

Port-au-Prince’s Team Zaryen is made up of players who received prosthetic devices through a partnership between the Knights of Columbus and Project Medishare.

At a press conference on Aug. 1 at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Denver, the players moved around on crutches kicking a soccer ball with a strength and swiftness that surpasses most average players.

Coach Cedieu Fortilis told CNA that the team formed in September of 2010 and since then, has attracted about 40 members.

He said the community in Haiti, as well as everyone they encounter in their travels, are fascinated watching them play since “no one expects amputees to be able to do this.”

“There are no words,” he added, “to describe the blessing that the Knights of Columbus have been for us.”

Fortilis noted that the players chose the word “Zaryen” as their team name since it is the Creole word for Tarantula – a spider known to keep thriving even after the loss of a leg.

The team also announced that they will tour the U.S. this fall to run soccer clinics for wounded members of the U.S. Military.

“Following the earthquake there was a tremendous outpouring of support from the people of the United States, much of it coordinated by America’s armed forces,” said Dr. Robert Gailey, director of rehabilitation services for Project Medishare.

“Team Zaryen is now looking to return the favor by running clinics for wounded American services members this fall in the United States,” Gailey said, “and we are honored to be working together with the Knights of Columbus to assist these young people in Haiti and to be providing these clinics for the U.S. Military.”

Gailey noted that a primary reason the soccer team was formed was to help remove the social stigma associated with being an amputee in Haitian society. The players also hope that their example will inspire local youth to overcome obstacles and view their lives as filled with limitless opportunities.

The tour will be co-sponsored by the Knights of Columbus and Project Medishare’s “Healing Haiti’s Children” program. The knights have donated more than $1 million to the program since its inception.

Marianne Medlin for CNA

The Starkey Hearing Foundation announced that Miley Cyrus will return to Haiti for a Starkey Hearing Foundation mission. The announcement comes after Miley Cyrus, who is an advocate for the Starkey Hearing Foundation, made a sizable donation through the silent auction at the organization’s annual gala “So The World May Hear” which was held last Sunday. The trip to Haiti is actually the silent auction item that Miley Cyrus won. Her last trip to Haiti was in March 2011, during which she helped distribute hearing aids to those in need.

Miley Cyrus: “After I went on my first mission to Haiti with the Starkey Hearing Foundation, I felt so drawn to helping others hear for the first time and immediately wanted to look for another chance to go back and help again. I grew up around music with my brothers and sisters and couldn’t imagine what it would be like if we couldn’t hear the magic of music-it’s had such an influence on my life-so I want everyone to have the ability to enjoy sound as it was intended.”

Miley Cyrus is also the spokesperson for the organization’s “Listen Carefully” campaign which launched in April 2011. The campaign promotes safe volume levels and precautions for protecting one’s hearing. Miley Cyrus has also appeared in several public service ads for the charity organization; showing the world that protecting, preserving and helping the gift of hearing is near and dear to her heart.

For more information about the Starkey Hearing Foundation, please visit starkeyhearingfoundation.org

Cathy O’Brien for Examiner