Fall 2003 Newsletter Top Story

Soledad came to Child Aid’s CORAL project in Oaxaca, Mexico at age 8, unable to speak a single word.  Her parents suspected there was something wrong with their child’s hearing, but were unable to pay for expensive diagnostic tests. So they did what many poor Oaxacan families without access to proper medical care, they just made do.

On her first appointment at the CORAL clinic, Soledad was diagnosed with severe hearing loss and fitted with her first pair of hearing aids.  Then, in order to help Soledad make sense of the new world around her and to begin the long, slow process of learning a language, she was promptly enrolled in CORAL’s school, specializing in auditory-oral education for deaf children.