By Hiroko Endo

I am the mother of three beautiful daughters: Sakura, age 11, An, 7, and Riri, 3. We live in Osaka, Japan. When Sakura was born I didn’t know anything about hearing loss. But after having An I learned a lot about hearing loss. An and Riri both have profound hearing loss due to Usher syndrome and will develop vision difficulties around age 10.

I am the founder of an online language school called Anfini that teaches English to children who use cochlear implants. It is the first school of its kind and I created it to help fulfill the hopes of parents of “CI kids” across the globe. 

People in Japan often ask me, what is the meaning of “CI,” I explain how it stands for cochlear implant, a device implanted into the cochlea, or inner ear, to help children as young as age 6 months hear sounds and acquire speech.

They say that necessity is the mother of invention and that is very true in my case. I found myself feeling helpless and desperate to find solutions for my daughters. I didn’t have a moment of peace because I was stressed all the time. My husband Takashi gave me some words of wisdom, saying, “It’s not right for you to base your happiness on what the health situation of our daughters are. It’s debilitating.” 

The bottom line was: What were we going to do with what we had available? We decided to use our special circumstances as a stepping stone and set the goal to raise our daughters as global citizens of the future.

The First Steps

To figure out how to give our children the best chance for success, I wrote many emails and letters. I made countless calls. I visited many institutions and centers all over Japan to meet with teachers and doctors who have the knowledge on how to correctly educate children with hearing loss. Finally I met a university professor in Japan who was very helpful. He taught us about an innovative way of teaching kids who have cochlear implants in Australia.

We traveled to Australia as a family and learned so many great things and met so many wonderful people. Our daughters were enrolled in auditory verbal therapy sessions. Their teacher believes not only in the abilities of CI kids but also in the possibilities they will have in the future. She is such a strong teacher determined to bring out the abilities of children with hearing loss. It is my understanding that 90 percent of children with hearing loss in Australia attend mainstream schools through speech and language therapy.

I spoke to so many mothers who had developed their children’s speech successfully. I then realized that CI kids are not disabled. The handicaps are not the cochlear implants but rather the low awareness of the parents and caregivers around them. I believe immensely in the possibilities these children have and find that adversity is an opportunity. When CI kids push themselves to achieve greater things, the sky's the limit.

I launched Anfini with this mindset. At Anfini we believe the possibilities are endless for CI kids. They are the key to opening doors for themselves and others in the future. And as the saying goes, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” We want our students to become the hope and inspiration for future generations.

Our dream is to establish an international online school for teaching English to CI kids. We have 17 countries represented already! The students here are not the ones who “need to be saved” but rather can be the ones who save others. Each student is an individual with their own special talents and soon enough they will become leaders of the future in an international society that is more diverse, embracing all backgrounds and talents.

Global Friendships

I would like to introduce a member of Anfini who has soon become my best friend. Sometimes I think it was a miracle that we met each other. Sahar and I both gave birth to children with hearing loss in our respective countries. Sahar is an Iranian-Australian living in Iran. We both decided that our children needed cochlear implants. We both chose a center in Australia called the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children to get speech therapy for our children. It has over 20 branches in Australia and we happened to have the same teacher teach our children albeit in different years.

But that’s not even how we met! Sahar moved back to Iran and I moved back to Japan. Sahar wrote a children’s book called “My Cochlear Implants” and was sending it out to parents of children with cochlear implants she found on Instagram. She would ask parents if they were willing to translate her book so more children with hearing loss could benefit from her book. She reached out to me and I gladly translated her book to Japanese—and that’s how we became friends. As we started to exchange more information about ourselves we realized that we had so many things in common. We are now best friends, and we work together at Anfini and share goals and ideas.

Children with hearing loss are a minority in every country, and CI kids are even more of a minority. So it’s understandable that parents would worry about their CI kids fitting in, adapting and learning in their communities. There are also other issues to think about such as making friends, being bullied, and the challenges of online learning. We want these families to expand their horizons from their home country to the world. We want CI kids to create a global community and make lasting friendships like Sahar and I did.

To make friends in other countries requires me to learn English. That’s what I thought at first, but I was wrong. The way I see it now, I try harder to learn English once I have made friends outside of my country and am eager to build friendships with them. Our global network is growing, and is powerful and personal at the same time. We truly believe CI kids can do anything.

Hiroko Endo lives with her family in Osaka, Japan. To learn more, see anfini-global.com or instagram.com/anfini_global. Sahar Reiazi wrote the cover story of the Spring 2021 issue of Hearing Health magazine about her family’s own journey with cochlear implants.

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