Farah’s mother in Syria talks about her daughter’s newfound serenity, after starting a language rehabilitation programme, thanks to the Seeds of Hope programme.
Farah is a hearing-impaired 10-year-old girl living in Homs. In 2015, she underwent a cochlear implant (whereby an electronic device is inserted in the skull that allows deaf people to hear sounds). After the operation, Farah was followed by a language rehabilitation specialist but the war, and the immense difficulties Syria was facing, unfortunately meant that the programme had to be interrupted.
The little girl’s mother then turned to one of the offices of the Seeds of Hope programme in Syria, and that was a crucial step because the little girl then started to be followed by therapist Mays: “It was difficult for me at first, and I did a lot of research into how best to deal with this kind of situation which is very different from student cases we deal with at the centre. I divided the treatment session into two parts: verbal rehabilitation and hearing rehabilitation”.
Farah and the therapist proceeded slowly. As an initial step, the therapist worked on connecting shapes and colours with the outside world through sight. 
Secondly, by speaking to Farah behind her back in such a way that she could only rely on the sounds she perceived, she encouraged her to use just her sense of hearing, without observing the movement of her lips. Acquiring verbal rehabilitation, on the other hand, took a lot longer.
Farah’s mother is happy with the progress her daughter has made: ‘Farah has changed, and this change is very noticeable, especially in the way she pronounces sentences. Understanding others now no longer depends solely on the movement of the speaker’s mouth, but also on her own hearing’.
At school, the child has become much more integrated: ‘Before, my daughter was very sad and didn’t like going to school. Now she is much calmer. In the mid-semester examinations Farah was able to answer most of the questions. The improvement is evident’