CONVERSATIONS

Those who have been following the work of the Lehnhardt Foundation know that education and information support is at the heart of what we do. PORA! is a series of webinars for parents and families of children who are hard of hearing or deaf – and experts working to support these children’s development. For more than 10 years PORA! has been a source of contemporary knowledge and an interaction forum for families and specialists hailing from mainly countries of Eastern Europe. Among our speakers we have had opinion leaders from a multitude of countries and backgrounds: surgeons, acousticians and engineers, speech-language pathologists and teachers of the deaf.

In 2019 PORA! will continue its tradition of delivering on the most important subjects within management of hearing loss and improvement of outcomes for children with cochlear implants and other hearing devices. In collaboration with an international panel chaired by our long-term collaborator and friend Dr. Bodo Bertram we have compiled a preliminary program.

Please find it embedded below – the slides are trilingual (English, Russian, German) and are best viewed if expanded full-screen.

To follow the PORA! program over the months, please subscribe to the PORA! blog.

Life and work have kept us exceptionally busy – so busy that it was only this year that we realized we have been breaking with this tradition for far too long. Here it comes, then, – our review of the previous year. We have lot to share, a lot to be thankful for and, unfortunately, a few losses to grieve. The cumulative number of protegees of the Lehnhardt Foundation reached 160 this year. Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Germany and Italy were only some of the countries we visited for personal and work travel. We hope that in the process of doing so we have been able to lay the groundwork of changes for the better that are needed by deaf people in certain countries – and globally.

Welcome to our summary of the year 2018!

Yours truly,

Dr. Dr. h. c. Monika Lehnhardt