Voice Amplified

[Raina Giorno]

On September 8th, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake hit Morocco with devastating effects. Meanwhile, on September 10th, Mediterranean Storm Daniel brought heavy rainfall and flooding to eastern Libya, causing large-scale destruction as a result of two dams collapsing south of the city of Derna. These events will have profound and far-reaching impacts on lives and livelihoods in months and years to come.

VOICE calls on international NGOs and the international community to devote more attention to the situation in Syria and to raise their voices in support of the women and girls who are at great risk. It is imperative that their voices are heard and that their fundamental rights are preserved, especially in the aftermath of this disaster.

In August 2021, as the Taliban took over Kabul, the international community evacuated thousands of Afghan women human rights defenders whose lives were at risk. These women and their families were taken to countries such as Turkey, Greece, Albania, and Qatar while their resettlement processes began. More than a year later, many of them are still in transit. Many of their family members are still in Afghanistan; their friends and colleagues are dispersed around the world in search of safety and security; and their lives are seemingly on hold.

Food insecurity is a growing issue impacting the lives of refugee women and girls in Hungary, according to a new report produced by VOICE and in collaboration with local partners throughout the country. The report is based on data and stories collected from refugee women and girls at food distribution sites and from the local organizations working tirelessly to serve them.

When young people share their stories, they can change the world, but some youth voices still go unheard. Join hosts Gennessa Fisher and Brian Johnson for this youth-led and youth-focused monthly interview series as they talk with young people about their life experiences with homelessness, foster care, disabilities, teen parenting, and more. Each conversation will uncover stories of hope and strength from youth storytellers who want to reach back and share the best ways we all can support youth in similar situations as theirs. If you want to know how to do better for youth or simply be inspired, this is your show!

Beginning with its September regular Board meeting, the Kern County Board of Education has returned to an in-person meeting format. Members of the public wishing to comment on matters within the Board's jurisdiction will need to attend the meeting in person to do so, at the time and place stated on the meeting agenda. The agenda can be accessed at www.kern.org

The Board in the future may need to return to a teleconferencing format as permitted by the Ralph M. Brown Act based on conditions relating to the ongoing pandemic or as otherwise permitted by law. The meeting agendas will clearly indicate whether this is the case.

Report on 2020 Census and Criteria for Rearrangement of Trustee Area Boundaries
Public Hearing To Receive Public Comments Regarding Sample Draft Rebalanced Trustee Area Maps
Kern County Board of Education Existing Area Data

Speaking can be fatiguing. Even if your speech is considered articulate and clear, you use a great deal of energy to speak as you are using the muscles of respiration, phonation, resonation and articulation all at the same time. By amplifying your voice when you speak, you can use less energy to talk. For many people, this means that fatigue related to speaking occurs much later in the day than it does without the amplifier.

Because our goal is to minimize fatigue and maximize function, a voice amplifier would ideally be used throughout the day in many environments. At the very least, you should use a voice amplifier when you will be speaking in crowds (family gatherings, social events), when you will are competing with background noise (traffic noise, air conditioner, office noise, in the car),when you are speaking in large open spaces (in a conference room, restaurants, shopping plaza) or when you will be speaking for extended periods of time.

While we have found a small number of amplifiers being satisfactory, after trial we most often recommend the Luminaud Spokeman voice amplifier. There is wide individual preference, however, for type of headset (over the head, behind the head, over the ear, light weight, flesh colored, around the neck, etc.). We have many in our ALS program to try. It is important that you work with a speech-language pathologist who, based on your speech skills and other considerations, will try multiple headsets so you can decide which works best for you.

I place the amplifier in the middle of the table during card games. With five of us playing cards it can get pretty noisy but with the amplifier and despite my weak voice, I am still the biggest mouth at the table!

The music department requires an accompanist for jazz voice candidates. You may bring your own accompanist for an audition or use a pianist provided by URI. Please email to let us know which you prefer. You do not need to provide sheet music for your repertoire.

URI currently offers two vocal tracks: Classical and Amplified Voice. The Classical Voice track primarily studies Classical Music in addition to Folk Songs, African-American spirituals, and classic Musical Theater repertoire. If you think that might be right for you, please click here to see the audition requirements.

Giving voice to the voiceless is sometimes more a clich than an ethical cornerstone of journalism. You can read through whole editions of most newspapers or magazines, or watch a full network or local newscast, without finding anything that would qualify.

And that is hard, not only for journalists, but also for our subjects: An undocumented worker may fear that an interview will lead to deportation; a worker unemployed for months may be embarrassed to talk publicly. Hegarty told me her story only after listening to me interview her friend, who had also had an abortion.

After exchanging messages with Hegarty, I decided I needed to hear the voice again, to update it and perhaps amplify it one more time. She hinted that she had stories to share from the past two decades. I was planning a trip to the Midwest in February, and I added a stop in Omaha.

But first some background. In 1993, when I became a reporter at the Omaha World-Herald, the paper was covering abortion on an ad-hoc basis: a cops reporter covering a protest, a political reporter covering legislative efforts to restrict abortion, a courts reporter covering challenges to legislation. The editors wanted one reporter covering all abortion stories, and it became part of my job. It was a busy time for abortion-related news in Nebraska and Iowa, and I wrote a lot about the protests and the politics, developing strong relationships with key figures on both sides of the issue.

We agreed that I would let the women decide after their interviews whether I could use their names. Few, if any, would agree in advance to talk on the record about such an intimate, divisive issue. But I wanted to hear their voices, spend an hour or two listening, and take a shot at earning their trust. I had to interview 11 women to find the six who made it into the story, but the five who decided not to let me use their names helped me understand the issue better and win the trust of the six who did.

As Hegarty moved on with her life after the 1996 interview, I did, too. I left reporting behind and spent much of my time training journalists and planning digital strategy for my employers. I started a blog about journalism, The Buttry Diary. I write frequently about confidential sources and occasionally I post old stories on my blog, noting journalism lessons learned, and sometimes noting how I might approach the story differently today using social media and other digital tools.

In December 2013, I posted the story I had written about Hegarty in 1996, interspersed with a discussion of how I got women to talk on the record. Though my sources had agreed to publication of their names 17 years earlier, that was before the World-Herald published stories online. It was before Google made stories easily searchable for years after publication. The women had agreed to an uncomfortable week or two before my story became old news and most of the people who might have disagreed with their decisions moved on to other matters. So I used only their initials in my 2013 post about updated lessons from the story (I explained my decision in the text).

First step? Make sure your system is enrolled in Nureva Console, our cloud-based management tool included with every Nureva device. Aside from letting you turn on Voice Amplification Mode, Nureva Console also lets you adjust settings and install updates from anywhere.

Many teachers are proficient at projecting their voices. But spending hours every day talking more loudly than normal can tax their vocal cords in concerning ways. On average, teachers are twice as likely as non-teachers to suffer from vocal strain. And the longer you teach, the worse the issue gets.

These same problems happen in postsecondary classrooms, with students at the back straining to hear and instructors straining to be heard. Soft-spoken professors can particularly struggle to maintain the right volume for effective learning.

Instead, it lets students in the classroom hear their teacher or instructor, no matter how far back they are. Remote learners hear everything as well, thanks to our full-room audio coverage. And because we work seamlessly with lecture capture solutions, you also can also capture clean audio for your recordings.

A growing number of workplaces are also looking to provide better audio for their employees. And with a large number of people now preferring hybrid work (83% according to this survey), any solution must meet the needs of remote participants as well.

Being a leader to me means practicing what I preach. To be honest, I never saw myself as a leader within my own community. I never wanted to lead but I learned we are all influencers in our respective communities. I hope that people are inspired to live their life to the fullest, make choices that make them happy regardless of what anyone thinks or says. I hope to inspire people to lead their lives with authenticity and grace.

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