Contact: Kim A. Hanna (813) 932-1184, ext. 22, khanna@bolestacenter.org
BOLESTA CENTER, INC.

• Bolesta Center, Inc. was founded in 1961 as a nonprofit organization dedicated to enabling hard-of-hearing and deaf children to listen and speak. Founded by Ethel “Denney” Bolesta, this independent center has its headquarters in Tampa Bay with a satellite program in Lakeland.
  
  
• Bolesta Center, Inc. is the only nonprofit Auditory-Verbal center in Florida and only one of a handful in the USA.
  
  
• Individuals and families who benefit from the Center’s services are infants, preschoolers, and adolescent children, both hearing aid users and cochlear implant users. The Center also serves adult cochlear implant users.
  
  
• Bolesta Center, Inc. is a training center for professionals who come from all around the world to learn how to be Auditory-Verbal therapists.
  
  
• The Center does not teach sign language or lip reading.
  
  
• The Center uses a learning method called Auditory-Verbal Therapy (AVT) which is child-focused and parent driven. Therapists provide services at the Center and in the home.
  
  
• Parent skills are developed in AVT in order to incorporate individualized daily therapy sessions between parents and children. Hearing is integrated into children's personalities and socialization when they begin to understand what they hear. They become functionally hearing children and effective users of our regular telephones. Children are main-streamed into hearing families, schools, and communities.
  
  
• Bolesta Center, Inc. has served hundreds of children from more than half of Florida’s counties, as well as from Central and South Americas and the Caribbean.
  
  
• No family is denied services because of inability to pay. Bolesta Center, Inc. receives about 40% of its income from a sliding scale of program service fees. The remaining 60% of Bolesta Center’s revenue is from grants, individual, and corporate donors.
  
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