Super Bowl Week Event Includes Distribution of Hearing Aids to 200 Hearing-Impaired Children, After-Party Concert by Sparks, and a Special Tribute to Leslie Nielsen
(Eden Prairie, MN) January 19, 2011 — With the help of a star-studded line up of music artists and football legends, The Starkey Hearing Foundation announced today that it will deliver the gift of hearing to 200 under-served hearing-impaired children from the Dallas and Arlington, Texas area on February 2, 2011 during Super Bowl week. The event will be held at the Arlington Convention Center, Grand Hall Salon A from 11:00am to 2:00pm (note: a pre-event press conference with celebrity guests in attendance is scheduled for 10:30am). The Starkey Hearing Foundation's title sponsor for the event is Jones Audiology.
The Starkey Hearing Foundation's Better Hearing Mission is part of this year's 4th Annual Jordin Sparks Experience (JSE), during which Sparks, will host a series of community-driven events. On February 2, Sparks, a hearing ambassador for the Foundation, will team up with celebrity volunteers JoJo, Honor Society, and football legends Jason Taylor, Larry Fitzgerald Jr., Michael Irvin, Adrian Peterson, Phil Hellmuth, Vernon Davis, Vontae Davis, Chris Smith, and Johnny Knox, to help others hear for the first time. Hall of Fame players also in attendance will include Lem Barney, Elvin Bethea, Joe DeLamielleure, Ted Hendricks, Kenny Houston, Paul Krause, John Randall, Mel Renfro, Jan Stenerud and Dave Wilcox. All will join Bill Austin, founder of the Starkey Hearing Foundation and his team of experts in giving the gift the hearing to children in need.
The Starkey Hearing Foundation's mission will include the precise fitting of custom-made, state-of-the-art hearing aids for each recipient, along with testing, batteries, counseling and instructions on follow-up care.
Following the mission, the recipients will have an opportunity to enjoy their new-found ability to hear with a live concert by Jordin Sparks as part of her Teddy Bear Picnic.
"There is no greater gift than to open up the world to a person, particularly a child, through hearing that they may smile, laugh, and enjoy a life that had previously been unavailable to them due to a hearing loss disability," says Bill Austin, Chief Executive Officer of Starkey Laboratories and Founder of the Starkey Hearing Foundation. According to the Starkey Hearing Foundation, an estimated 63 million children worldwide suffer from hearing loss.
The Starkey Hearing Foundation's Super Bowl Week Mission event will also include a special posthumous tribute to comedic actor, philanthropist and hearing loss prevention advocate, Leslie Nielsen. In honor of the actor and his support of the organization and its work, The Starkey Hearing Foundation established a memorial fund in his name following his passing on November 28, 2010. Donations made to the memorial fund will be presented during a Nielsen family tribute during the February 2 mission.
The Starkey Hearing Foundation's Super Bowl Mission is one of dozens of missions conducted each year both domestically and internationally. The Starkey Hearing Foundation, So the World May Hear, is the global leader in hearing health care and is striving to change the social consciousness of hearing and hearing loss prevention. Each year, the Foundation delivers more than 100,000 hearing aids through hearing missions in countries stretching from the U.S. to Vietnam. Since 2000, the Foundation has supplied nearly 500,000 hearing aids to people in need and is striving to achieve its goal of over one million free hearing aids in this decade. In addition to giving the gift of hearing, the Foundation partners with Best Buy and the Grammy Foundation to promote 'safe hearing' and hearing loss prevention among teens and young people, through its national program, Soundmatters.
For more information on the Starkey Foundation, visit www.starkeyhearingfoundation.org. You may learn more about Starkey at www.Starkey.com or the Starkey web channel on AudiologyOnline.
