In this pilot project, All Ears Cambodia will offer music therapy sessions for children who have irreversible sensorineural hearing loss. This will not only support the children but also help engage parents and improve parent-child interaction, encouraging responsive parenting to support the child’s communication development.

Music has been proven to be a beneficial tool for brain development and can play a role in cognitive and language development, as well as speech and auditory skills, crucial for children with hearing loss. Learning to sing and play rhythms and melodies on instruments helps discriminate differences in these musical elements that can then be translated to elements of speech. Playing an instrument requires the same brain processes required for performing sorting activities and spatial-temporal reasoning. Exposure to the beat in music, such as percussion, can refine the sense of rhythm, benefiting the perception of speech. Singing offers many opportunities for vocalization. Benefits include an increase in auditory skills and neural structures, sound perception and discrimination, attention allocation, verbal intelligence, phonological awareness, and faster neuronal timing.

The project will enable four clinicians to be trained in the use of music therapy to improve cognitive and language development, psychological well-being and the development of speech and auditory skills.

Music sessions will be offered to children and families, creating opportunities for meaningful social interaction, self-expression and motivation and focus on all accessible ways to experience music: auditorily, physically by tactile senses or internally through vibrations.