Photo: Iqaluit’s Joamie School holds hearing fair

Amy Kalluk of Iqaluit’s Joamie Elementary School works with students May 4 on a station which depicts sounds heard by Arctic animals. The station was one of five set up in the school gym at an all-day fair about hearing—how people hear, how to take care of ears, and more. Joamie students will now be able to hear what goes on in class better thanks to the Better Hearing in Education for Northern Youth program which has trained teachers and support staff at Joamie in new sound systems installed in the school’s classrooms. By the end of 2017, all Qikiqtani elementary classrooms should be outfitted with similar sound systems. The new technology is in large part thanks to BHENY’s big win last winter when the group took home $300,000 of the 2015 Arctic Inspiration prize, for wellness projects across Canada’s North—an area where the incidence of hearing loss is 40 per cent higher than in the South. (PHOTO COURTESY OF S. LONSDALE)