Silence is Powerful

Presented By:

Kibrom Abraha
Donna Dodd
Carlos Fajardo
Xin Gao

To Dallas Chamber of Commerce for Business Gives Back Competition 2016

Table of Contents

1.Introduction...............3
1.1 Objective of Proposal.....3
1.2 About Us3
1.3 Why in Dallas?...............................................................................................................4
1.4 The Effects of the Proposal........4
1.5 Summation of Proposal.........4
2. Background..........5
2.1 Testimonial.........5
3. Silence is Powerful Event6
3.1 Preparation for the Event...6
3.2 Hearing Loss Simulator Booth..6
3.3 Deaf Action Center Booth.7
3.4 Dallas Ear Institute Booth......7
3.5 Game Booth...7
3.6 Activities for Kids..7
3.7 Food Truck.8
3.8 Promote the Event..8
4. Budget and Staff..9
4.1 Staff........9
4.2Budget...10
4.3 Budget Analysis...11

5. Release of Liability Form..12

6. Authorization Form....13
7. References..14

2-Page
1. Introduction

1.1 Objective of Proposal

This proposal is intended for the Business Gives Back Competition held at the University of
Texas at Dallas during Fall 2016 semester. The Project Management Team for The Hearing
Center at Dallas Ear Institute has created an event to present to the Dallas Chamber of
Commerce concerning the hearing impaired in the DFW area. This event is focused on raising
awareness for the hearing impaired, hearing loss prevention, and fundraising to support the
mission of the Deaf Action Center of Dallas.

1.2 About Us
The Hearing Center at Dallas Ear Institute is the leading center in the care of ear and hearing
problems and recognized as the gold standard in hearing and balance care. We offer
comprehensive diagnostic testing and treatment of hearing loss by using cutting-edge technology
to provide expert care for people of all ages (The Dallas Ear Institute).

Dr. Brian Robert Peters, our leading Otologist/Neurotologist, has practiced in Dallas for over 20
years. He is the founder and president of the Dallas Hearing Foundation, a non-profit
organization established in 1997, and dedicated to give the gift of hearing and speech to children
and adults with hearing loss. Through this non-profit, Dr. Peters has helped secure funding and
performed cochlear implant surgery on patients from 12 different countries around the world, as
well as the DFW area (The Dallas Ear Institute).

3-Page
1.3 Why in Dallas?
The Hearing Center at Dallas Ear Institute devotes multiple resources through our non-profit
organization Dallas Hearing Foundation. Our foundations mission is to provide medical and
surgical treatment, hearing technologies, speech and hearing rehabilitation, and educational
support to those who are in financial need (Dallas Hearing Foundation).

The focus of our event is to support and promote the mission of the outreach organization, Deaf
Action Center (DAC). The DAC, is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization and recognized as a
national and international benchmark service provider. For more than 30 years, DAC has
provided those who are deaf and hard of hearing the means to ensure advancement through
education, economic security, and good health (Deaf Action Center, 2016).

1.4 The Effects of the Proposal

Raising awareness is vital for the success of any program that is dependent on physical and
financial support to meet the needs of their targeted community. Our event is a large step in
accomplishing this need; therefore, allowing the DAC to continue and grow their outreach
helping to eliminate barriers that are imposed on people who are deaf and hard of hearing
(Deaf Action Center, 2016).

1.5 Summation of Proposal

The Hearing Center at Dallas Ear Institute has created an event to raise awareness and donations
for the non-profit organization, Deaf Action Center. This event will be held during spring 2017,
at Klyde Warren Park, located near downtown Dallas, and is free to the public. Event participants
will be exposed to the daily challenges and hardships faced by the deaf and hard of hearing
population by engaging in a variety of hands-on demonstrations. The DAC will be onsite to
highlight their various services, give testimonials, and answer any questions donors may have
regarding their contributions. Attendees visiting and participating at every booth will receive a
voucher good for one free lunch at one of the participating food trucks. One hundred percent of
donations will go directly to the DAC to continue and grow their mission for the deaf and
hearing-impaired community.

4-Page
2. Background
Approximately 15% of American adults (37.5 million) aged 18 and over report some trouble
hearing. About 2 to 3 out of every 1,000 children in the United States are born with a detectable
level of hearing loss in one or both ears.
More than 90 percent of deaf children are
born to hearing parents (NIDCD, 2016).

2.1 Testimonial
Kibrom Abraha, who is one of our team
members, was born in Addis Ababa, the
capital city of Ethiopia, a country located
in the Horn of Africa. At the tender age of
ten, he lost hearing capability in both ears
during a short sickness caused by
meningitis. Meningitis is a bacterial
infection which causes hearing loss in in
15 to 30 percent of children (Suszynski).
Life after this sudden loss of hearing was
not easy as anyone can imagine. He had to
learn to accept this new reality and adjust
to it. This new reality also brought
challenges in his social life and education,
which as the result of the poor economic
and technological development of his
country at that time, accommodation was impossible. Hence, he had to dig into his willpower
and face this challenge by himself with determination, by relying only on the notes he was
copying from the board and reading Textbooks if available without any extra help from teachers
or the educational system as the whole.

After moving to the United States, he had a new challenge of learning and getting accustomed to
a new set of language, culture and technology. Fortunately, after a few months of his stay in
Dallas, TX., where he is residing since moving to the US, he got words about the Deaf Action
Center (DAC) and the services the organization provided to the hearing impaired at no cost. He
contacted them and shared the problems he was facing and the assistance he needed to overcome
his disability. The DAC immediately provided him with a voucher to get special
telecommunication device to enable him to send and receive texts from family and friends, the
opportunity to learn the basics of the American Sign Language, to enable him to interact with the
hearing impaired community and learn their culture. In addition, the DAC provided him with

5-Page
counseling and assistance in getting information to fulfill his dream of continuing his education.
Furthermore, in collaboration with The Texas Department of Assistive Rehabilitative Service,
they provided him with a free diagnosis to see if there was a way that his hearing could be
improved with the few development in medical technology, training on how to search for jobs
and provided interpretation services for job interviews.

We met Mr. Abraha in Business Communication class at The University of Texas at Dallas
(UTD). Through his testimony we learned the heartbreaking hardships and difficulties he
endured for most of his life and the heartwarming and invaluable assistance and encouragement
he received from DAC. This philanthropy of the nonprofit organization has inspired us to support
the DACs mission of making their services available to as many as possible by proposing a
program named Silence is Powerful that is aimed at raising awareness, recruiting volunteers
and collecting donations.

3. Silence is Powerful Event

3.1 Preparation For The Event
To raise awareness for the hearing impaired, we are
planning on hosting an event called Silence is
Powerful at Klyde Warren Park in Downtown
Dallas. For the event to be successfully taken place in
Spring 2017, we will reserve a large space in the park
where we can set up four booths. In order to reserve an
area in the park, an application needs to be sent in and
approved by the Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation. At
this event, we will also have food trucks available,
bounce houses and face painting available for kids.

On the event day, we will have volunteers to set up booths and bounce houses before the event
starts. We will have four different booths, each booth will serve a different purpose and each
consisting of a different component geared towards awareness.

3.2 Hearing Loss Simulator Booth

The first booth is for the hearing loss simulators; in this booth, people will experience different
levels of hearing loss and maybe they will understand how difficult is for the hearing impaired to
spend every day. We want people to experience the feeling of losing hearing in this booth,
because most of the healthy people take hearing for granted, and they would never realize how
difficult is to live without hearing unless they experience it.

3.3 Deaf Action Center Booth

6-Page
The second booth is for Deaf Action Center. We will have members from Deaf Action Center
inform everyone about this nonprofit, such as their mission, the services they provide, and the
goal they try to achieve. People can also donate for Deaf Action Center in this booth, so DAC
can get more money to buy equipments to help more hearing impaired people.

3.4 Dallas Ear Institute Booth

The third booth is for our company, Dallas Ear Institute. We will have doctors from our company
to test everyones hearing, and educate them about different levels and types of hearing loss. The
hearing tests are free and we will provide some educational handouts for them to take away.

3.5 Game Booth

The fourth booth is for the game called bop it, we
will provide earplugs for people, and they need to
wear earplugs when they play the game. Bop it is
all about listen to the instructions and follow it, if
we take the hearing from people, they will have a
hard time playing the game. The purpose for this is
that we normally do not think it is hard to play
some kids game, however, for people with hearing
issues, they cannot play this easy game because it
requires them to listen to instructions, we want
people to understand hearing plays a huge role in
daily life, and it is very difficult for hearing
impaired people to spend every day, so we encourage people to have more support and more
understanding towards hearing impaired people.

Moreover, we think it is very difficult to live a life without hearing, but for hearing impaired
people, they still have a positive attitude towards life, they do everything that healthy people do,
they go to school, go to work, make friends, and go to different social events, they did not give
up on life. That is why our event name is called Silence is Powerful. We want healthy people to
understand and support hearing impaired people and we also want to pass their positive attitudes
and strong spirit to healthy people to never give up on life no matter what happens.

7-Page
3.6 Activities for
Kids
We will have bounce
houses and face painting
outside the booths for
kids, they can have fun
in the bounce houses
while parents going
through different booths
and learn about hearing loss, children can also go into the booth to learn these stuffs as well.

3.7 Food Truck

We will provide everyone a card when
they arrive to the event, the card is similar
to the reward card you get from tea shop,
and each booth has ink stamps, so if a
person completes going through the
whole process of one booth, they will get
one ink stamp on their card, when they
collect all four stamps, they can go to the
food truck and get a free food item.

3.8 Promote the Event

After planning it, we need to promote our event and let people come and join us. First of all, we
can use traditional marketing tactics, we can make flyers about this event, hand over them to
people in school and hang them on the wall in the community or in the mall. We can also use
direct mail marketing campaigns. Second of all, we can form partnerships with Deaf Action
Center. Since Deaf Action Center is a local nonprofit organization, they have some followers and
supporters, if we form partnership with them, the organization and their supporters will also
come and help us promote the event. Third of all, we will get everyone involved, let your
parents, friends, neighbors know about the event; tell your family members and friends about the
event when you have dinner with them, and let them pass the information to their family and
friends. Fourth of all, we will use social media to spread out the words, such as post the event
information along with the flyer picture on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, get Deaf Action
Center and everyone to forward and retweet our posts, so more and more people will see the
event information and come to our event. LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are great ways to
reach people that will attend the event. Facebook and LinkedIn offer affordable advertising that
targets the audiences. We can also easily promote the event by creating a page for the event on

8-Page
Facebook (15 creative ways). We can also use some old fashion ways to market our event, such
as newspapers, even though most of young people do not read newspapers nowadays, but elderly
people are not familiar with technology and social media, they still like to read newspapers daily,
so it is a great way to promote our event to elderly people by using newspapers.

There are so many different ways

to market our event, our goal is to
spread the words out and get as
many people as possible to come
to this event and raise awareness
for the hearing impaired.

4. Budget and Staff

For this budget we have aimed to keep it as modest as possible as we did not want to overshadow
our overall message of raising awareness for the hearing impaired community in Dallas. Our
main goal when developing the budget was to work with mostly Dallas based companies. We as
the Dallas Hearing Institute feel that working with Dallas based companies is the best way to go
about tackling this issue that affects our community. Our staff for this event will all be
volunteering their time and efforts for this great cause.

4.1 Staff
The staff for this event will consist of twelve members from the Dallas Ear Institute and six
members from the Deaf Action Center. Volunteers from the Dallas Ear Institute will aid with the
event setup and will also be stationed at each booth to insure everything runs accordingly. Our
six members from the Deaf Action Center will primarily focus on the informational booths as we
want them to raise awareness for the Deaf Action Center and the hearing impaired community in
Dallas.

9-Page
4.2 Budget:

Staffing
12 Dallas Ear Institute Volunteers $0.00
6 Deaf Action Center Volunteers $0.00
Staffing Total: $0.00

Event Setup
Klyde Warren Park (Rental Fee) Permit
Tent Rental (A-A Party & Tent Rental) $1,450.00
4 ( 4 x 6 ) Tents ( 4 x $200.00 per day)
2 ( 8 x 10) Tents ( 2 x $325.00 per day)
Chair Rental (A-A Party & Tent Rental) $120.00
50 Chairs ( 50 x 2.40 per day)
Linen $30.00
4 Table Cloths (6 x 8) ( 4 x 5.00 per day)
2 Table Cloths (10 x 12) ( 2 x 5.00 per day)

Event setup total: $1,600.00

Food & Beverage

Bottled Water ( 8 oz. ozarka) ($5.00 x 20 cases) $100.00
Juice Box ( 8 oz. Welch's) ( $6.00 x 20 cases) $120.00
Easy Slider ( Food Truck) $1,450.00
SSAHM BBQ (Food Truck) $2,000.00

10-Page
Chowhound ( Food Truck) $1530.00

Food & Beverage Total: $5,200.00

Family Entertainment
Bounce Houses ( Bounce n More) (2 x $270.00) $540.00
Bop It Game (Toys R Us) ( 4 x 22.50) $90.00
Family Entertainment Total: $630.00
Supplies
Crafts ( Hobby Lobby) $350.00
Essentials ( Office Depot) $150.00
Supplies Total: $500.00

Speciality Equipment
Earplugs box (ULINE) (2 x 35.00) $70.00
Hearing Loss Simulator (Immersive Helps)(3 x $1,200) $3,600.00

Speciality Equipment Total: $3,670.00

Grand Total For Event: $11,600.00

4.3 Budget Analysis

The major cost for this event is the food and beverage portion at $5,200.00. This cost was
significantly high due to the speciality of the food products. With that said we pitched our idea to
the food truck owners at SSAHM BBQ, Chowhound, and Easy Slider and they are willing to
contribute to our cause by providing food at low cost.They will not be profiting on this event and
would be volunteering their time as well.

Speciality Equipment will cost $3,670.00 with the majority of the cost coming from our hearing
loss simulator at $1,200.00 per device of which we will have 3 available. The remaining cost
from the specialty equipment will be from the ear plugs that will cost $35.00 per box each box
containing 500 pairs.

For the event set up all tents, chairs, tables, and linen will be available for 24 hours before any
additional cost or fees are incurred. These fees are not a concern as this is a one day event that
will only take place for a few hours. These cost include delivery and pickup, we would only be
responsible in the setup and disassembling procedures.

11-Page
 For the craft supply portion of this budget, we will be calculating face paint cost and other
necessities for the family fun at $350.00. The rest of the craft supply budget will go towards
essentials, such as pens at $31.00 for two boxes, multiuse paper for handouts and forms at $47.00
(1 box) and brochure cost at $72.00 (2 cases).

Klyde Warren Park does not charge to reserve a space at the park, we would only require a
permit from the Woodall Rogers Foundation (Klyde Warren Park, 2016 ). That cost is to be
determined due to the unset date of the event as it may vary in the Spring of 2017, but with that
said we as the Dallas Ear Institute will cover that cost.

Release of Liability

1. By agreeing to take part in the Silence is Powerful event, to be hosted in Dallas, Spring 2017, the
undersigned agrees to the following statements. This Release of Liability is to be reviewed and
signed by all volunteers and participants of the Silence is Powerful event.
2. I agree to observe and obey all posted rules and warnings, and agree to follow any oral
instructions provided by the Silence is Powerful event representatives. I agree to explain the
importance of observing and obeying all rules and warnings, and following instructions to my
child, if applicable.
3. I agree to indemnify and the Dallas Ear Institute,Deaf Action Center, Woodall Rodgers Park
Foundation and the city of Dallas against all claims, causes of action, damages, judgments,
costs or expenses, including attorney fees and other litigation costs, which may in any way arise
from my, or my childs, participation in this summer camp.
4. I agree to pay for all damages caused at this event by my or my familys negligent, reckless, or
willful action.
5. Any legal or equitable claim that may arise from participation at this event shall be resolved
under Texas Law.

I HAVE READ THIS DOCUMENT AND UNDERSTAND IT. I FURTHER UNDERSTAND

THAT BY SIGNING THIS RELEASE, I VOLUNTARILY SURRENDER CERTAIN LEGAL
RIGHTS.

12-Page
Name of Participant at Event:_______________________________ Participant is a Minor

Address of
Participant:________________________________________________________________

Phone Number of Participant/Legal Guardian:_______________________________________

Emergency Contact:________________Phone Number:_____________________

Legal Guardians
Signature:_________________________________________Date:_____________

Authorization Form
Please authorize initiation of our Silence is Powerful Event with the form below.

Authorization

The Dallas Chamber of Commerce hereby authorizes the Silence is Powerful event as presented
in November 2016. The Dallas Chamber of Commerce also agrees to remit funding for the
project by Spring, 2017, including half of the cost - $5,800.00 and the Dallas Ear Institute will
fund the remaining $5,800.00.

Notarized Authorization Signatures

______________________ _____________________________ _____________

Printed Name Signature Date

13-Page
Kibrom Abraha ___________________________________ ______________
Signature Date

Donna Dodd ___________________________________ ______________

Signature Date

Carlos Fajardo ___________________________________ ______________

Signature Date

Xin Gao ___________________________________ ______________

Signature Date

References

Business Wire (2016). Teens Showing Potential Signs Hearing Loss. Retrieved from

14-Page
 http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140923005641/en/Teens-Showing-Potential-
Signs-Hearing-Loss
Deaf Action Center (2016). About. Retrieved November 17, 2016, from
http://dactexas.org/about/
Deaf Action Center (2016). Donations. Retrieved November 17, 2016, from
http://dactexas.org/donations/
Improving the Outcomes of Children with Hearing Loss - Success For Kids With Hearing Loss.
(n.d.). Retrieved November 17, 2016, from http://successforkidswithhearingloss.com/
http://www.hearingloss.org/sites/default/files/docs/HLAA_Comments_FDA_PSAP.pdf
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) (2016). Quick
Statistics About Hearing. Retrieved from
https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/quick-statistics-hearing
Reserve Space | Klyde Warren Park. (n.d.). Retrieved November 30, 2016, from
https://www.klydewarrenpark.org/host-an-event/index.html
Suszynski, M ,Meningitis and Hearing Loss in Children. (n.d.) Retrieved November 30,2016
from http://www.everydayhealth.com/meningitis/hearing-loss-in-children.aspx
The Dallas Ear Institute. (n.d.). Home. Retrieved November 17, 2016, from
http://www.dallasear.com/
The Dallas Ear Institute. (n.d.). B. Robert Peters, M.D. Retrieved from
http://www.dallashear.com/hearing-doctor-robert-peters-md.html
Dallas Hearing Foundation. (n.d.). About Us. Retrieved from
http://dallashearingfoundation.org/about/
The Nations Voice for People with Hearing Loss. (n.d.). Retrieved November 17, 2016, from
http://www.hearingloss.org/sites/default/files/docs/HLAA_Comments_FDA_PSAP.pdf
Will., & Bagel, -. M. (2015, May 18). 15 Creative Ways To Market Your Event | OnSpot Social.
Retrieved December 01, 2016, from http://onspotsocial.com/event-promotion-101-15-
creative-ways-to-market-your-event/

15-Page