Oregon teen creates clear face masks to help the hearing-impaired

(Image credit: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images)

published 24 April 2020

Eric Kim wants to make sure that amid the coronavirus pandemic, people who are hearing-impaired can communicate safely.

A high school junior living in Oregon, Kim lost the hearing in his left ear a few years ago. He had been volunteering at an elementary school for hearing-impaired children, and "wondered how these kids there would even be able to get masks and communicate so they could live life normally," he told The Oregonian.

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"It was a lot harder than I thought," Kim said, since he had never sewed before. His mom helped him a little in the beginning, but "it took a lot of mistakes with the materials before I got used to it," he said. It takes him between three and four hours to make each one, and so far, he has churned out 13 masks — and has many more to send out. "As long as people keep requesting, I'll be making masks whenever I have time," he said. The masks are free, and Kim will send them anywhere.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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