Two young sisters in Oconomowoc set up their lemonade stand for the fourth year in a row this month, and this time they blew past every number they had ever posted. Lainey Mieden, 6, and Millie Mieden, 4, both of whom have hearing loss and have worn hearing aids since they were babies, brought in more than $11,100 for pediatric hearing care, with donations still trickling in.
Their mother, Jess Mieden, said the girls received over $11,100 in donations, with more still coming in, according to TMJ4 News. The stand, held at the family's Oconomowoc home, has grown every single year since it began: it pulled in $260 in its first year in 2023, $1,000 in 2024, and more than $4,300 last year, according to a Facebook post from the family. This year's haul of over $11,000 more than doubled that 2025 total.
Before this year's stand even opened, the sisters had already raised and donated nearly $5,700, per the TMJ4 report. Lainey and Millie promoted their cause with a simple message this year: hearing aids are cool. It is a message rooted in their own experience, since both girls have needed the devices since infancy.
Where the Money Is Headed
This year's proceeds will be split between the audiology department at Children's Wisconsin and a nonprofit called Chasing Greatness, the station's report notes. Last year's fundraiser instead benefited the UW Speech and Hearing Clinic's Wishes program and Chasing Greatness, showing how the girls have shifted which local and statewide partners get a share each year.
Chasing Greatness was founded in 2021 by former Penn State All-American volleyball player Jonni Parker during her senior year of college, according to Dignittany Volleyball. Parker, who received her first hearing aids at age 4 and grew up wearing them, built the organization to help cover the financial cost of hearing care and to show kids that hearing loss does not have to stand in the way of their dreams. Representing the nonprofit, Parker said Lainey and Millie are truly inspirational, per the same TMJ4 account.
Chasing Greatness has already built a statewide profile beyond Oconomowoc. In November 2024, the University of Wisconsin women's volleyball team partnered with the group for an inaugural Silent Set match at the UW Field House in Madison to promote hearing loss awareness and raise funds for youth hearing care, according to University of Wisconsin Badgers Athletics.
A First Responder's Foundation Lends Support
Matt Haerter, who is affiliated with the K9 Tesla Foundation, also supported the sisters' stand this year, telling TMJ4 that the foundation supports surrounding communities. Haerter created the foundation in 2025, a retired Lake Country Fire & Rescue assistant chief who launched it after his therapy dog, Tesla, died of a sudden stroke, according to the Daily Dispatch. The K9 Tesla Foundation's mission centers on funding K-9 and therapy dog programs for first responders and public safety professionals.
Why the Money Gap Still Exists
Wisconsin has actually led the country on this issue before. Under Wisconsin Statute § 632.895(16m), enacted in 2009, private health insurance policies in the state must cover hearing aids, cochlear implants, and related treatment for children under 18, according to the Wisconsin Legislature. But the mandate allows coverage to be restricted to one hearing aid per ear every three years, a limit that leaves families facing real out-of-pocket costs for replacements, fittings, and follow-up care as children grow.
The stakes of closing that gap are significant. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that between 1 and 3 out of every 1,000 infants born in the United States have permanent hearing loss, while roughly 15% of children aged 6 to 19 experience some degree of hearing loss. Research cited by the Hearing Health Foundation puts the lifetime educational cost of permanent childhood hearing loss at more than $134,000 per child, with reduced adult wage-earning potential accounting for 63% of that total financial impact.
Timing matters just as much as cost, according to Children's Wisconsin. If an infant wears hearing aids for only four hours a day, it takes six years for that child to gain the listening exposure that a typically hearing infant picks up in a single year. That research underscores why consistent, uninterrupted access to working hearing aids in early childhood carries such weight for a child's language development.
A Growing Center for Pediatric Hearing Care
The Masters Family Speech and Hearing Center at Children's Wisconsin, one of this year's two beneficiaries, has provided pediatric audiology, hearing aid fittings, and speech therapy since 1965, handling cases from newborn screening failures to complex genetic conditions. The hospital also made national headlines this month when it became the first hospital in the United States to deliver an FDA-approved gene therapy for genetic hearing loss outside of a clinical trial setting, according to Children's Wisconsin.
For families in the Oconomowoc area, that combination of frontline research hospital and grassroots fundraising is exactly the kind of support network the Mieden sisters set out to build, one cup of lemonade at a time. The virtual LemonAID stand remains open for donations through September 5, accepting contributions via Venmo at @jessica-mieden.
-4.webp?w=160&h=400&fit=crop&crop=edges)
