Photo caption: Oliver Stern
August 2, 2017
Oliver Stern, Community contributor
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Oliver Stern, 16, established a program that educates students about disability awareness and provides free hearing assistance to low income children and their families called Our Abilities.
Meet the Miami Teen Empowering Hearing-Impaired Children
I was born deaf, but after receiving cochlear implants and undergoing 20 surgeries, I was able to recover my hearing. As I grew up, I realized other children with disabilities were not as fortunate as I am. In response, I launched Our Abilities, which has educated over 900 students at North Beach Elementary School about issues concerning disability advocacy.
Living with a disability is hard. Children especially face a series of challenges every day, that make living a normal life a near impossibility. Everything ranging from lacking the resources needed to address their disability adequately to not being socially accepted by their peers makes disabled children feel inadequate, uncomfortable with themselves and powerless to pursue their dreams.
Being born deaf, I fully understand the immense difficulties these children face. Our Abilities is helping to solve these problems by promoting disability awareness and providing loaner hearing devices to low-income children in South Florida.
Our Abilities is a two-part program, the first of which includes an educational initiative called
