Iona College’s Speech and Hearing Club attended the Walk4Hearing, an annual event held at Riverside Park in Manhattan, to raise money and awareness for the deaf and hard of hearing population on Sept. 24.

The walk is sponsored by the Hearing Loss Association of America, which sponsors walks in 13 locations in the fall as well as seven locations in the spring.

Since 2006, the Walk4Hearing has raised more than $12 million and has become the largest walk for hearing loss which takes place across the United States, according to the HLAA website.

Iona College’s Speech and Hearing Club, a local chapter of the National Student Speech Language and Hearing Association, raised over $2,000 for this year’s Walk4Hearing, earning it a spot on the team honor roll list on the HLAA Walk4Hearing website.

Freshman Nicole Genser raised $710 for the Iona Speech and Hearing Club and is on the individual walker honor roll.

Genser has hearing loss in both ears, known as bilateral sensorineural hearing loss. Genser is dedicated to helping others who suffer from hearing loss, according to her post on the Walk4Hearing website.

“I’d love to work with children as a pediatric audiologist because I feel as though I can help them cope with their hearing impairment from a unique perspective and in an empathetic way,” Genser said in her post.

Freshman Jenna Stevens was second to Genser in fundraising, raising $270 for Iona’s Speech and Hearing Club, and junior Rebecca Falcon was third with $240.

The 2017 fundraising goal for the Walk4Hearing is $1.4 million, and so far the organization has raised just under $1 million, according to the HLAA Walk4Hearing website.

The walks in New York and Chicago, which took place on the same day, were the first of the Fall 2017 walks. Eleven more walks will take place with the HLAA just under 70 percent of its fundraising goal.

The HLAA offers incentives to those who raise money. Those who raise $100 or more receive a free Walk4Hearing t-shirt, and those who raise $500 or more receive a free Walk4Hearing backpack.

The Walk4Hearing, a 5k walk just under three miles, is the Speech and Hearing Club’s first big event of the school year, according to senior Jamie Moschitta, the club’s vice president. After the walk, there were speakers, informational booths and activities for kids such as face painting.

Moschitta said her favorite part of the walk is seeing the children who have some type of hearing loss or disability meeting and having fun with children that have similar disabilities.

“Growing up deaf or hard of hearing in a world that hears presents its challenges and struggles, and it’s heartwarming to see children developing relationships with others so they know they are not alone,” Moschitta said in an email.

The Speech and Hearing Club contributes to other fundraisers and events dedicated to autism awareness, the deaf or hard of hearing community and those with cleft lips or palates, according to Moschitta. Some of these organizations include Strides for Speech and Operation Smile.

Strides for Speech is an event similar to the Walk4Hearing, but it focuses on raising money for the Triangle Aphasia Project. Aphasia is an impairment of language, affecting the production or comprehension of speech and the ability to read or write, according to the National Aphasia Association. TAP, a nonprofit organization, aims to reduce communication barriers between people with aphasia and those whom they want to communicate with.

Operation Smile is an international medical charity that provides surgery to children who are born with cleft lip, cleft palate or other facial deformities, according to the Operation Smile website. A cleft lip or palate can cause problems with feeding and speaking clearly, and affects over seven thousand babies in the United States each year, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Speech and Hearing Club also holds events for its members, such as inviting guest speakers and holding graduate school information sessions.

“The main goals of the Speech and Hearing Club are to advocate for those that fall within a speech pathologist’s or audiologist’s scope of practice, and to create bonds between speech pathology majors so that we can help out one another throughout our time here at Iona!” Moschitta said.