Deaf Kids Can: Cooking with Kirby

Stigmas and biases persist against people living with hearing loss. We've experienced this firsthand with our daughter Kirby who has profound binaural hearing loss due to Renal Tubular Acidosis and Diabetes Insipidus, a genetic condition that first started to rear its head in 2017 when Kirby was just two years old. What started out as a "common" fever and ear infection turned into a 17-day hospital stay – and then into a whole new normal for our family.


We regularly traveled 160 miles twice a week for Kirby's doctor visits for almost a year. Add to that therapies, multiple daily feedings, and med administration through her g-tube. It would be fair to say that we stayed busy doing what we needed to do to keep our baby alive while  caring for her siblings, running our family business and juggling the chaos of military life. We're pretty optimistic people. Believe it or not, there are silver linings that come with having a life-threatening illness.

This is The Kirby Project. Our mission is to support families of children living with hearing loss by encouraging a love for learning and language skills through food. Thanks to Kirby's preschool teacher Mrs. Jessica, we noticed her excitement for learning is mostly centered around cooking. Working toward our mission, we created "Cooking with Kirby" a hands-on edible education YouTube series which fosters stronger family bonds and celebrates learning, language development, problem-solving, creativity, and fun (sometimes) healthy eating.


Exposure to vocabulary is vital in a child's language development. Language play is much more meaningful and has more impact when it is presented in a relaxed and context-based environment. And being in the kitchen is certainly Kirby's happy place.


To help us produce Cooking with Kirby, the HearStrong Foundation has chosen us as a recipient of its 2019 Visionary Fund. Through recognition, funding and resources, HearStrong empowers people with hearing loss to inspire change and break down the barriers that prevent others from seeking the care they need. And the Visionary Fund helps provide funding for medical care, starting a new business, or training for a competition, etc.

This is a tremendous honor, and the way that it works is simple: once we raise $2,500, they will match the total amount raised, bringing our start-up capital to $5,000. This amount of capital will enable us to produce Cooking with Kirby to a high standard and build an audience for our program so that we can not only spread our message of hope but also to help  other families of children living with hearing loss.


Make a contribution to this GoFundMe campaign and help us get the first twelve learning episodes of Cooking with Kirby on YouTube!


See you in the kitchen!