Hear the World, a global initiative raising awareness of hearing and hearing loss created by Stafa, Switzerland-based Phonak, which has US offices in Warrenville, Ill, has donated $18,000 to The Bryan Adams Foundation to help families of children with hearing loss.

The grant recipient, FANDA (Fundación de Ayuda al Niño Discapacitado Auditivo), a Buenos Aires-based nonprofit group, will provide children in low-income families with hearing tests, much-needed hearing devices, and auditory therapy. 

“FANDA very much appreciates the Bryan Adams and Hear the World foundations for their indisputable generosity in helping … for the care and assistance of deaf children from very low-income families in Argentina and many other countries in South America,” says Gina Romano, FANDA’s president.

The Bryan Adams Foundation, launched in 2006 by famed musician, photographer, and philanthropist, Bryan Adams, provides financial help and support to those who are focused on bettering the lives of others.

The partnership is not the first collaboration between Adams and Hear the World. The musician serves as the official photographer for the hearing-awareness initiative, capturing images of famous musicians—such as Mick Jagger, Amy Winehouse, Plácido Domingo, and others—in a conscious pose of “hearing.” The photographs were featured in a Hear the World Ambassadors art exhibition that traveled earlier this year to New York, Berlin, and Zurich.

Hear the World spotlights the social and emotional impact of hearing loss, and addresses prevention of, and solutions to, a problem impacting more than 10% of the world’s population. In the context of the Hear the World initiative, Phonak has established the Foundation to help those with hearing loss through financial and technical assistance.

Some 40% of donations to the foundation will be used to help pay for a new wireles Auditory Evoked Potentials, Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions, which allows Phonak to perform studies on patients without anesthesia. The remainder will be used to provide 500 treating sessions on babies for early auditive and multisensoral stimulation.

[Source: Phonak]