Hear Us helps Zeta and Zian Loubser and mom Ronele Conrad with ongoing accommodation costs in Cape Town while they attend the Carel du Toit School, as they live in Mamre, as well as with maintenance costs such as replacement batteries. The twins were both diagnosed with profound bilateral hearing loss at 1½ years and each received a cochlear implant through State funding soon after that in 2018. They are now 4½ years old and are full-time learners at the Carel du Toit School receiving the very necessary language intervention.

The Nellie Atkinson Trust donation contributed to the bilateral sequential cochlear implant surgery for both twins in September 2021 with the “switch on” on 21 October 2021. Bilateral cochlear implants will allow them to benefit from binaural hearing, with better sound localization and better understanding of speech, especially in noisy environments, which is often the case when children are in school. This will enable them to progress well and not be faced with barriers where they have limited hearing.