By Velda Addison, Hart Energy

With all the talk about oil prices, spending cuts, mergers and reduction in workforces, it’s good to hear that some companies in the oil and gas industry are still making charitable contributions.

MicrosSeismic Inc. is among the companies that have spread goodwill during these turbulent times for the energy industry. The Houston-based oilfield services company—which provides hydraulic fracture, reservoir and seismicity monitoring services among other offerings—donated $50,000 to the Memorial Hermann Foundation in 2014. The donation is providing hearing aids to patients in need.

“MicroSeismic’s pledge is that for every well monitored, the company will make a financial contribution to hospitals in Houston, Denver and Calgary to help under-privileged children with hearing disabilities,” according to a news release.

The company hopes to surpass the $50,000 mark in 2015, enabling it to help even more children who need hearing aids.

So far, 20 children—who range in age from 2 to 18 years old—have been fitted for hearing aids. They include 8-year-old Tremion who is unable to hear between 70% and 100% of conversation and sounds at normal levels, according to the news release.

The MicroSeismic grant has also helped Raniyah and Isabella, who were ages 4 and 5, respectively, at the time, according to an article about the company’s gift of hearing on the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston’s website. Increasingly less intelligible speech and turning up the volume on the TV were warning signs for Raniyah’s mother that her daughter was experiencing hearing loss. The article stated that Isabella was diagnosed with bilateral mild sensorineural hearing loss.

Hearing aids have resulted in improvement for both girls. The news release states that a 7-year-old boy having difficulty hearing will be fitted in January.

“I am very pleased to see that our continued success as a company and thus related contributions to the Memorial Hermann Foundation are providing so many children with the opportunity to improve their hearing,” said Greg Burns, vice president of human resources for MicroSeismic, in the release. “We use the tagline ‘better frack, better world’ at MicroSeismic. It's wonderful to see thisgift of hearing program come to life in such a significant way.”

According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, one in eight people in the U.S. at least 12 years old has hearing loss in both ears and about two to three of every 1,000 children in the U.S. are born with a detectable hearing loss level in one or both ears.

Contact the author, Velda Addison, at vaddison@hartenergy.com.