By Ankitha Lavi
Playing the piano is my passion. I took lessons from ages 6 to 14 and now I teach the instrument to my own students. Playing the piano has been helping me greatly throughout the chaos of my high school years and the COVID-19 pandemic. It relaxes me and gives me a sense of joy whenever I am stressed.
In September 2020, I conducted my own fundraiser for Hearing Health Foundation (HHF) online. I don’t live with a hearing and balance condition and do not have any family members affected. Rather, I became inspired to help after a very memorable elementary school experience.
In 4th grade, I met other students with hearing loss for the first time in my life. The students used American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate and relied on transcribers in the classroom. I wanted to engage with them and make sure that they felt included and socially connected in our school. I felt powerless. I was unable to simply ask “How are you?” to start a conversation to bridge the gap between students with hearing loss and those with typical hearing.
Ankitha Lavi is a high school student who teaches both piano and ASL. Playing music has been an immense source of comfort to her during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since then, I have also met students who wear hearing aids. I realize that these are a helpful resource, but greater acceptance of them is urgently needed. Reducing the stigma around hearing aids would make life more comfortable for my peers who wear them.
Quickly, I understood that these students, whether they spoke ASL or wore hearing aids, were not able to listen to music the way that I do. The piano is so amazing to me, and students with hearing loss are missing out on some of its beauty.
Eager to break the barriers that persist between the hard-of-hearing and hearing communities, I learned ASL in high school and I am now teaching this amazing language to others along with piano for free through my organization, Quia Plus. Also eager to create more equitable access to sound, I requested that the parents of my students make contributions to HHF.
I chose HHF because it appeared to be the most credible organization helping people with hearing loss. I was impressed to see that HHF’s research projects and outreach methods help a large portion of this community. The scientists that HHF funds are working to create a world where everyone can choose to hear without limitations. With more research on hearing loss and related conditions, I hope that more people will be able to hear music the way that I do.
I used GoFundMe to raise funds for HHF. As a high school student, I needed to use a platform that was accessible to me and allowed me to keep track of the donations easily.
Awareness of the hard-of-hearing community has made me realize that people communicate and hear in different ways. It has also made me look at the world with more empathy towards others that may not be the same as we are and that we need to make every effort to learn ways to get past barriers.
Ankitha Lavi lives in Texas. She is the founder of Quia Plus.
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I do feel like something is lost when older adults are put into what feels like isolation chambers due to our hearing ability. We have something unique to contribute from the perspective of our years, and I would like us to find a way as a society to allow us to do that.