Child Aid - Building Brighter Futures

Twenty-two years ago, Child Aid founded a low-income hearing clinic in Oaxaca, Mexico. This clinic, called CORAL, has since grown into a full-service speech and hearing center, the only resource of its kind for poor families in southern Mexico.

Child Aid provides oversight and operating assistance to CORAL, bringing testing, therapy, clinical services, advocacy, family support and hearing aids to some of the poorest children in the country. CORAL staff work with families and schools to integrate hearing-impaired children into their communities. Using a mobile testing unit, they also visit remote communities and screen infants and children who would otherwise have no access to hearing tests.

CORAL reports semiannually to Child Aid about its goals and its progress against those goals.  Child Aid’s goal for 2010 is to help CORAL receive funding to cover about 30-40% of CORAL’s operating budget for 2011 through 2013 so that CORAL can meet four key objectives: 

1. To expand CORAL’s Early Detection Program and screen over 2200 impoverished children annually for hearing problems.  The program will provide OAE testing in daycare centers, preschools and community centers throughout the region.  This expansion represents an annual increase of 700 children and requires the hiring of additional screening staff.


2. To equip and dispatch a new mobile unit that will offer clinical services to underserved areas, primarily rural indigenous communities. This mobile clinic will offer diagnostic services in the field through audiometry and tympanometry testing of children.  The mobile clinic will be dispatched six times each year, serving a minimum of 500 impoverished people in approximately 30 remote communities. Currently, there are no hearing-related clinical services available to tens of thousands of people living in rural areas of Oaxaca.


3. To refine and expand CORAL’s Therapy Program, bringing 30 additional children into the program each year.  Through a new community-based rehabilitation initiative known as Therapy at Home, CORAL will host parents of children from distant communities one weekend each month for six months, training and guiding them in approaches that improve daily communication. The program involves in-home follow-up support to reinforce the training. CORAL will also continue improvements to the Therapy School.


4. To further improve CORAL’s capacity by upgrading facilities and equipment, maintaining optimal staff levels, diversifying funding sources, building awareness of CORAL’s services, and supporting the organization’s qualified and dedicated management team.

Over the last three years, CORAL has:

• Provided the only free audiological screening available to poor children in the State of Oaxaca, which has a population of 3.5 million people.  Otoacoustic emissions (OAE) studies were conducted for nearly 2900 children under the age of six.


• Expanded the geographic reach of the OAE testing unit program to serve 34 isolated indigenous communities up to 10 hours travel distance from the Oaxacan capital.


• Established a free, ongoing screening regimen in all government sponsored childcare centers in and around the city of Oaxaca, testing 1394 preschool aged children for hearing problems.


• Provided continuous language therapy to over 40 deaf and hearing-impaired children each year, giving them the tools they need to participate meaningfully in family and community life, while supporting them in their educational advancement.


• Initiated the Therapy at Home Program which now serves 15 families. The program provides six months of training to parents in auditory stimulation methods.  It serves families that live in areas too distant from CORAL for their children to attend Therapy School, enabling the program to extend its reach and impact considerably.


• Improved and professionalized the Therapy School through the hiring of a new Program Director.


• Restructured and enhanced CORAL’s systems for evaluating the therapeutic needs of students, and for coordination of care between the clinical, therapeutic and social work staff.


• Moved the Therapy School and administrative office to a new building in a more centralized part of Oaxaca, offering increased space for program activities and closer proximity to CORAL’s clinic.  The organization made significant improvements to its physical space in order to create an environment that is adaptable and appropriate for group classes, individual instruction and private consultation.


• Provided free or low cost clinical treatment and services to approximately 3400 low income people, including the provision and fitting of hearing aids for those in need.


• Moved the CORAL Clinic, in 2008, to the grounds of the Clínica del Pueblo Hospital.  The new building offers easier access to the public, provides a modernized testing facility with lower ambient noise, and includes office space needed to effectively administer clinical services.


• Expanded the clinic staff to two audiologists, one audio-prosthesis technician, two social workers, and one receptionist.  With the added staff, the clinic was able to reduce its waiting list time from two months to between one and three weeks.