Image Credit: CFJC Today / Adam Donnelly

By Jill Sperling

Ear Savers

KIBIHT and Riversong Guitars partner to provide ‘ear savers’ to healthcare workers

Apr 29, 2020 | 3:11 PM

KAMLOOPS — There are many in Kamloops who are looking for ways to help others during the pandemic.

People are especially concerned for frontline healthcare workers, who need personal protective equipment, like masks, to avoid contracting COVID-19.

The masks can become uncomfortable after long periods of use.

Ear savers, devices used to connect the elastic straps of the mask behind one’s head, have been in high demand recently.

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“I started seeing the pictures of people on TV having the bruises on their faces,” said KIBIHT Board Chair Jan Antons.

“My brother is actually a doctor in Europe and he was telling me about it, and I’m like, there must be a better way.”

Antons soon discovered that Mike Miltimore of Riversong Guitars had been creating ear savers and donating them to people in need.

“I saw a story about a young guy in Vancouver making a band that went on the back, similar kind of a thing,” Miltimore said. “But, he was doing it with a 3D printer. I felt that a 3D printer’s a really cool technology but it’s really slow and it takes hours to build a single one.”

Miltimore says he can create 21 ear savers in about 16 minutes, using the same material he uses for making guitar picks.

“It’s five layers with the centre layer being recycled water bottle, maple on either side and mylar, that would make a really strong material that we could use,” he said. “So we use this material and we also have a full wooden material, it’s three layers that makes for a great, strong, but very fast process.”

Antons says it made sense for KIBIHT to partner up with Riversong Guitars.

“We did have some money left over from last year,” Antons said. “We always run the tournament just as a break-even. We try not to make money, but we’ll probably have to cut back on a few things this year, just the way the economy is going. But like I said, it just made sense.”

Since partnering up, around 1,500 ear savers have been donated to the RIH Foundation.

CEO Heidi Coleman says the hospital staff have been grateful.

“It just means a lot,” she said, “because I don’t know if you buy these things or where you get them, but suddenly they were just being printed and they were on my porch and I brought them to the hospital.”

Riversong Guitars is among a growing list of businesses and organizations working to support frontline healthcare workers.

Community-led initiatives like Sew the Curve have provided thousands of masks, caps and bags, and Domtar has donated respirators and other protective equipment.

“It’s Kamloops,” Coleman said. “I see on Facebook, ‘This is Kamloops.’ Whether it’s Helmcken Chocolates calling me from Clearwater that they want to donate or Rocky Mountaineer that wanted to do something with Fresh Slice Pizza.

“It’s just, everyone was so worried about the hospital and the healthcare workers.”