NorCal SCI launches Virtual Meetups connecting SCI communities

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacted a heavy toll on virtually every sector of the economy and population as well. The many spinal cord injury support groups that used to hold meetings, bringing those with SCI together, have ceased to meet. Using video conferencing technology, NorCal SCI is launching an ambitious program to bring together members of the SCI community through regularly-scheduled Virtual Meetups starting this week.

This past weekend, we held a trial run with a small group of 10 persons with SCI and used a Zoom Video Conferencing platform that was easy for everyone to use and provided a lot of technical capabilities to deploy during a virtual meetup. With that under our belt, we will be inviting a larger group this week to further validate our experience and ensure that we can conduct a productive event as the number of participants increases.

Not forgotten for us are the many new patients currently at various medical or rehab facilities who cannot have visitors of virtually any type, much less meet with inpatient peer supporters. We are currently working on a strategy to quickly deploy these Virtual Meetups for the inpatient groups exclusively and make that capability available to any facility housing such patients. The fact that these newly-injured individuals are going through their rehab without any counseling and guidance from their fellow peers is of a high concern to us.

Finally, once we’re past the pandemic, we’d like to continue these virtual meetups and make them available to anyone interested, especially those individuals with little to no access to a support group.