I Hear Foundation offers a number of services to individuals with hearing loss. Although I Hear Foundation has been registered since 2002, the present set of trustees has started work since 2013. Two of the trustees, Dr. Milind V.Kirtane and Ms. Nishita Mohandas have been involved in treating hearing loss, especially profound hearing loss, with cochlear implants for the last 20 years wherein more than 2000 individuals have been operated, majority of them being children. Besides operating on children, the work that they have done also involves raising donations for this purpose for the economically weaker sections of the society. The other area which have been focused on by these professionals and their team is spreading awareness amongst medical and paramedical personnel and general public, and imparting training by way of training workshops to surgeons, audiologists and special educators. Over the past 10 years such workshops have trained surgeons, audiologists, and educators of the deaf from all over India. Further to this, Dr. Kirtane has also been mentoring surgeons, namely giving them hands-on training and then being with them when they do their first few implants, that is, during the initial part of their learning curve to ensure that the patients get the best possible attention. So far, 48 surgeons have been thus mentored.
The foundation looks forward to
Training
Training surgeons, audiologists and educators in different parts of the country
Spreading awareness
Spreading awareness to a much wider population
financial assistance
Providing financial assistance to individuals from economically weaker sections of society.