University of Mississippi alumna Eliza Peters recently announced plans to expand Hear the Cheers, a program that aims to benefit deaf and hard-of-hearing children, to Oxford.
Peters co-founded Hear the Cheers in Chicago with ESPN reporter Sarah Spain in 2012. The program is partnered with the Chicago Hearing Society and is dedicated to raising money to provide audiology services and hearing equipment to young athletes.
“We fundraise for kids to receive hearing aids and equipment free of charge because insurance doesn’t cover them,” Peters said. “That’s a really big financial barrier for a lot of people, and if your kid needs two hearing aids, that’s obviously a lot of money to cough up with no insurance coverage.”
Hearing aids can typically range from $1,000 to $6,000, according to Medical News Today. Accompanying medical costs, such as hearing tests and audiologist support, add on to this expense, Peters said.
Peters has been personally impacted by the cost of hearing aids. Upon discovering that she had hearing loss at the age of four, Peters was diagnosed with cholesteatoma — a destructive growth of skin — that encompassed the bones in her left ear. The bones had to be removed, which caused her to need hearing aids.
The impact that paying for hearing care had on her parents inspired Peters to create Hear the Cheers.
“We realized that (the price) was a big issue and, also, we were lucky that I was able to get my hearing aids and that we were able to afford them,” Peters said. “But we also realized that was a hard reality for a lot of other people, so we wanted to do something to help and be able to make a difference in our community.”
Peters talked about why she is expanding the program to Oxford.
“I really want to bring this program to Oxford because it’s really important to me,” Peters said. “I’m not sure what the details will look like, but I’m looking forward to collaborating with some small businesses and hopefully being able to fundraise for a kid in Oxford that needs support.”
Hear the Cheers holds equal importance to the organization’s co-founder Sarah Spain. Spain was inspired by a colleague who started a service project with her daughter.
“I don’t have any kids, so I reached out to Eliza and said, ‘Will you be my pseudo daughter, and can we come up with some sort of project we want to work on in the community?’” Spain said. “She explained to me that she had major hearing loss in one ear and had dealt with wearing different kinds of hearing aids for her whole life, and that it wasn’t usually covered by insurance, which was a shock to me.”
Spain said that she has learned much about the hard-of-hearing community from the project.
“It started out small with ‘let’s do this project this one year,’” Spain said. “Now all these years later and all these people that we’ve served later, I’ve learned so much about the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. I also learned how much change there still needs to be in terms of insurance coverage and everything else so that it’s not such a burden on families.”
Spain is optimistic about the continued success of Hear the Cheers and its mission.
“When (Eliza) got to Oxford, she fell in love with this school,” Spain said. “She always says ‘make your mess your message.’ Eliza has really figured out how to make her message her message and to bring that message to wherever she is.”
