Balbus Speech: Helping People Who Stutter Find Their Voice
Growing up, my stutter seemed to define me. When teachers asked me to read a sentence aloud in front of the class, I would open my mouth and out poured choppy sound repetitions, gasps for air, and mispronounced words. Other times, I would simply babble out, “Forgot my homework.” There are few worse feelings in school than knowing almost every answer, and raising your hand to answer none of them.
With the support of my family, I attended speech therapy regularly for my entire childhood. As a result, my perspective on stuttering has changed almost as drastically as my speech itself. Although my level of fluency may never reach the triple digit mark, I now speak with a wealth of confidence. It took years of dedicated practice and commitment to re-training myself to speak fluently, and it was far from easy.
As effective as speech therapy was for me, it came with several inherent drawbacks. Speech therapy is expensive, usually requires travel, and lacks the larger group engagement that plays an important role in interpersonal communication. If I attend therapy once a week for an hour, what happens when I leave and head back into the real world? At times, I felt uninspired and disconnected from my own therapy. Simply put, I knew there must be a better way.
Today, I am working to make the world a more connected place for people who stutter. As a Compass Fellow for Social Entrepreneurship at Tufts University, I am building a new solution to transcend the limitations of traditional speech therapy. What does this mean? My social venture, Balbus Speech, looks to connect, support, and inspire people who stutter across an online community of speech therapy. We believe that connective technology can be harnessed to meet the needs of stutterers and therapists alike. We believe that, by uniting this technology with proven therapy methods, speech therapy can become more accessible, effective, and efficient. More than anything else, we hope to help people who stutter find their voice as I have found mine.
Balbus Speech is currently looking for partners, advisors, and angel investors to make this vision a reality. Visit www.BalbusSpeech.com to learn more and follow Balbus Speech on and on Twitter: @BalbusSpeech. Contact Jack directly at Jack@BalbusSpeech.com.
Jack McDermott – Compass Fellows at Tufts University, Class of 2014
Balbus speech looks amazing, and potentially transformative for many lives. I admire your vision and very much hope you find financial support to make this a reality!