Murray Blondell, born hearing, began experiencing changes in his hearing at age three and wore hearing aids throughout childhood. Passionate about sports, he excelled in the Special Olympics, winning multiple national and international medals.

With a cochlear implant, Murray gained new ways to hear and engage with the world. Using both the implant and a hearing aid, he enjoys balanced hearing, improved communication, and greater confidence in daily life and work.

At just 11 months old, Lucia has already been on an extraordinary journey. She lives in Birkenhead, Auckland, with her mum Chelsea, dad Michael, and big sister Daisy, who is four years old. The rest of the family are hearing, but Lucia was born profoundly deaf.

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Lucia’s hearing difference was first identified through the newborn hearing screening programme when she was just two days old. Both ears did not meet the typical hearing threshold, and she was referred to an audiologist at Greenlane Hospital for an Auditory Brainstem Response (ABR) test. By the time the appointment came around, she was six weeks old.

Ray, Jenny, and Janet’s grandmother, Avis, was born deaf in the early 1900s. Without access to hearing aids at the time, she developed strong lip-reading skills to communicate with those around her.

Avis had five children, all of whom were also deaf. Growing up in both Deaf and hearing spaces, they remember feeling included and accepted, with no sense of being treated differently. The only extra effort was encouraging people to face them when speaking so they could read lips — a skill their mother had mastered and passed down.

Identical six-year-old twins Ashe and Jett, who live in Tairua on the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula, received their cochlear implants in June 2024, after having been identified as being deaf since birth.

The boys were implanted on consecutive days by Auckland-based ENT surgeon Colin Brown, who mum Danielle says, “was awesome to work with.”