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Couple Brings Gift of Hearing to Impaired Across the Globe
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of ABC News
Posted: May 12th, 2014
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2014/01/21/couple-brings-...
In the shadow of Angkor Wat, Cambodia, a place that houses some of the oldest temples on Earth, people, young and old and considered deaf, came by the hundreds looking for a miracle. Bill and Tani Austin of Eden Prairie, Minn., were there in November to prove that most werent deaf at all. They say 95 percent of the worlds so-called deaf are merely hearing impaired but can do nothing about it. For 10 months a year, the couple travel around the world to fit the hearing impaired with hearing aids. Last year, the Austins Starkey Hearing Foundation fit 165,000 free hearing aids for people in India and the Bronx, from New Orleans to New Guinea. During the visit to Angkor Wat, Tani Austin fit Sarien, 12, with powerful hearing aids to see whether she could get her to respond. Her mother said she was completely deaf. With the hearing aids on, though, Sarien could hear sounds and tried desperately to make sounds for the first time in her life. After Bill Austin got rich running the hearing aid company Starkey the industrys only US owned and operated one since 1967 he made it his mission to spend the money by giving back. He started the foundation in 1984 with wife Tani. Starkey supplies the hearing aids. Their goal: help 1 million people to hear by 2020. So far, nearly 500,000 hearing aids have been distributed around the globe. For me a day here is better than any day on any beach anywhere in the world. Its better than any fine meal in Paris. I would stay here and not eat at all and work for these kids and go home tired and say I had a good day, Bill Austin said.
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