Chloe's and Sophie's Special Ears Fund
'Brightening the lives of Deaf children'

How it all began... 

Chloe’s and Sophie’s Special Ears Fund (CSSEF) was set up in 2010, inspired and motivated by sisters Chloe and Sophie Jackson. When Chloe was 4 years old, her parents went along to a routine yearly hearing test. Chloe’s parents were told the words they never thought they would hear, Chloe was deaf. A question mark hung over Sophie’s hearing. After being told Sophie could hear on many occasions, her parents were told that Sophie was deaf as well.

Shortly after Chloe started school, her parents found out there was things out there that could help her hear more in the classroom and school. Initially, CSSEF was a community fund, raising pennies to put hessian and thick pile rugs into Chloe's classroom.  A lot of friends and family got behind the Jackson family and with this, on 21st October 2010, CSSEF was founded.

As CSSEF grew, it became apparent to the family, that not only Chloe and Sophie would be in need of deaf equipment.  They soon realised that many other children could benefit from what they do as a charity.  With this in mind, they set themselves a target to raise as much money as possible to apply to be a charity as well as considering what their objectives would be, and on the 15th March 2013, they became a Registered Charity.   
 

As a charity their main objectives are to:

• Raise Deaf Awareness
• Enhance the sound acoustics in classrooms and school halls, for deaf children in mainstream schools through specialist equipment and materials
• Provide resources and equipment to deaf children to support their emotional wellbeing.

What do the funds raised go towards?

• Providing Deaf Awareness sessions in schools, companies, brownies, scouts and more;
• Providing Deaf Awareness Resources to schools, pre-schools and nurseries;
• Hosting Deaf Awareness Workshops in conjunction with Sign for Thoughts, Farnborough;
• Give a Deaf Awareness Story book to all children in local schools. Children get to choose from a selection of titles that we have including 'Dachy's Deaf', 'What the Jackdaw Saw', 'Wonderstruck' and many more.  This book is for the child to keep and take home.

What deaf awareness resources do they supply?

A school can request to have a selection of Deaf Awareness Resources provided to them, free of charge.  We do work with the school to make a suggestion of quantities required.

Some examples of what you can request are:

• A teddy bear wearing hearing aids
• A Living Puppet with signing hands
• A teddy monkey wearing a cochlear implant
• A mixture of beautifully illustrated children's books on deafness
• BSL reward stickers (British Sign Language)
• BSL DVDs
• British Sign Language Dictionaries
   

Deaf Awareness Sessions

Karen, the founder of the charity, makes visits to local schools and companies to provide FREE Deaf Awareness Sessions.

Schools Visits

CSSEF can provide a presentation designed for child engagement.  These last roughly 30 minutes per classroom.  We use a lot of interaction from the children and make it as fun and informative as possible.

They cover:

• Who they know that is deaf
• Different types of deafness
• Fingerspelling the alphabet
• How to communicate to a deaf person

They also do a show and tell using real hearing aids and gadgets that help a deaf person in the home or in school. 

Company Visits

CSSEF can provide a workplace Deaf Awareness Session and suggest that this would take 2-3 hours.  They would fund a local company, Sign for Thoughts, to come to your workplace to do this.  The sessions include statistics, communication skills, lipreading challenges and more. 

How can you help?

Just4Kids Stores

Visit one of their 'Just4Kids' retail outlets where you can buy or donate anything 'kid' related, from toys, games, clothing and anything in between. 
 

Just4Kids Fleet: Unit 32/33, Hart Shopping Centre, Fleet. GU51 3LA

Just4Kids Aldershot: Manor Chambers, 304 High Street, Aldershot. GU12 4LT

Just4Kids Camberley: 27 Obelisk Way, Camberley. GU15 3SD

Just4Kids Borden: Unit 3, The Forest Centre, Bordon GU35 0TN
 

Volunteer

Give up some spare time to help out in the retail outlets, where they need help sorting through donations, serving customers and making eye-catching awesome product displays.

Fundraising Events

Follow CSSEF on social media to hear about the latest fundraising events - show your support by going along or volunteering to help run the events.

Donate

If you want to support this amazing charity, you can donate via the link below:

How to Contact CSSEF

Website: cssef.org.uk

General Contact: contact@cssef.org

Just4Kids Email: just4kids@cssef.org