So today is the day! We are finally announcing the winners of our ideas4ears contest! We’d like to say a big thanks to everyone for participating, it has been fantastic to receive your creative and imaginative invention ideas.

Overall 215 children from 28 different countries participated and sent in 171 ideas. From these entries the top 12 invention ideas were chosen.

And now we’d like to congratulate the winners who have won a trip to Innsbruck, Austria!

• Anuk Gohlke, 11 years old from Geesthacht, Germany
• Aliona and Aryna Vlasenka, 8 and 11 years old from Hrodna, Belarus (joint entry)
• Dylan Monaghan, 10 years old from Rolleston, New Zealand
• Eden Birdsey, 7 years old from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
• Federico Malagnino, 10 years old from Florence, Italy
• Freya Chipperfield, 9 years old from Sale, United Kingdom
• Kenzi Cayton, 8 years old from Vancouver, USA
• Gergana Petrova Angelova, 9 years old from Ruse, Bulgaria
• Julián Gómez, 12 years old from Medellín, Colombia
• Noël Grolimud, 11 years old from Grenchen, Switzerland
• Renata Bravo Staiti, 9 years old from Godoy Cruz, Argentina
• Tejasveer Sharma, 7 years old from Noida, India

For those of you who sent in an entry but were not one of the lucky winners chosen, we thank you for your efforts and we will be sending out participation certificates to you soon. Again, a big congratulations to all of the young inventors, and especially to our winners!

The contest challenged children aged between 6-12 years old from across the world to create an invention to improve the quality of life for people living with hearing loss.

Whilst celebrating children’s creativity, ideas4ears aimed to engage parents to participate in an interactive activity with their children to improve the whole family’s understanding of the challenges associated with hearing loss and deafness as well as the benefits of treatment.

Competition entries came in the form of video presentations, detailed drawings, colourful paintings and even real-life prototypes, all aiming to improve the lives of people with hearing loss.

During the winners trip to MED-EL’s Headquarters, the winners will have the opportunity to meet other young inventors from around the globe and get to know the engineers and scientists behind MED-EL’s many life-changing inventions.

During and leading up to the winners´ trip, the children along with their guardian will be capturing and sharing their journey on social media using the hashtag #ideas4ears and being featured on the ideas4ears Facebook page.

If you are worried about the hearing loss of a family member or for your own hearing loss contact ideas4ears@medel.com to receive a free information package on hearing and the solutions available.