The iHearYa! program for the Hearing Foundation of Canada went live on Wednesday. Reactions to the launch have been great, from kids, teachers and the press.
By the time they leave university, 30% of all Canadians suffer from a degree of hearing loss. Much of this loss is noise induced and could easily have been avoided.
The iHearYa! program motivates teens to talk to other teens, alerting them to the very real dangers of damaging their hearing, primarily by listening to music too loud.
Rather than preaching to kids from an adult perspective, we partnered with two Canadian musicians, Ana Miura and Jordan Croucher, who are helping us to get the message across that for anybody who loves to create and listen to music, the ear is the most important instrument. Don Quarles wrote the iHearYa! song for us and both Ana and Jordan recorded their own versions in their different styles.
We designed the entire program to be as accessible as possible. We are asking teens to create their own content, video, stories, or art, that helps communicate the idea that noise induced hearing loss is preventable. The ihearya.org website acts as a hub, tying together Facebook pages, a YouTube channel and images hosted on flickr.
Rather than forcing students to visit our site, we’ve decided to go where teens were talking to each other anyway, removing barriers to participation wherever we could. As a result, several videos, written submissions, photographs and drawings have already been submitted.
The initial pilot will visit three schools in Ontario. We’ll then be taking stock of the results and reactions, before helping the Hearing Foundation of Canada to roll out the program province-wide.
Here’s a video snippet of Ana and Jordan in our offices, rehearsing the iHearYa! song. We’re pretty sure that this is the first time Jordan has ever performed with a ukulele, home built by Ana.
