LITTLE Maia Pavord contracted meningitis shortly after her birth leaaving her with chronic hearing loss.

Now aged four, she has had a cochlea implant and is beginning to learn to speak, but she still needs help with language development.

When staff at Llwynu Infants School, Abergavenny, heard about a trip to America which will help her, they organised a sponsored walk to raise money towards the cost - but they did not choose an easy route. Instead they opted to walk to the Sugar Loaf mountain after a hard day in school.

Maia and her mother, Erica, who live in Abergavenny, will spend three weeks in the John Tracy Clinic, in Los Angeles, having lessons in a language-learning environment.

While in America Maia will be in a class of eight or ten children, and will have one-to-one sessions with special teachers, helping her to acquire language skills.

She will be taking part in small and large group activities to promote spoken language, and will receive daily individual speech, listening and language therapy.

The lessons are presented at the child's level of development and Maia will receive audiological and educational assessments.

Llwynu Infants School head teacher Mrs Maggie Teague said: "Maia is a delightful little girl who has been in our nursery class for the past year and we wanted to help her with the costs of this trip.

"Seven members of staff did the walk and we have raised more than £600 so far, but by the end of the week, as more people get to know about the fundraising, we are hoping to increase that figure."

Mrs Teague added: "Maia has made some progress with language development, so this summer school will help her even more. The accommodation and travel costs for Maia and her mother are very expensive and we wanted to do all we could to help her."

She said Maia will be starting in the reception class for hearing-impaired children at Hollybush School, Cwmbran, in September.

Pictured: Head teacher Maggie Teague leads the teachers of Llwynu Infants School up Sugar Loaf mountain, near Abergavenny, on their walk to raise money for pupil Maia Pavord