Message from the Executive Director: Cultivating a Sustainable Future in 2025 and Beyond
2024 is in the books and what a year it was! I'm proud to announce that 2024 was another year of growth and impact.
A few highlights I want to share:
Our largest grant programs – Neilsen/Newly Injured Grant & The Franklin Project – continued to provide essential and specialized rehabilitation and exercise to people less than 2 years out from their spinal cord injury.
We know that the initial months and years post injury are crucial for recovery and that with healthcare companies reducing their support during this time, these grants have become indispensable to the Northern California community to receive some much needed assistance and improve their physical outcomes.
The Road to Recovery Grant is still our most popular program and with 21 people receiving these quality of life grants in 2024 for everything from hand controls to home modifications to exercise equipment and mental health services, we know that these grants have tremendous benefits to our community. Since these grants are for anyone with a SCI at any stage post injury, we're confident the interest and demand continues into 2025.
Our theme for 2024 was "Building a Thriving SCI Community" and we held true to our objective by hosting several events throughout the year with the objective of bringing the SCI community together.
We held purely social events like our our 2024 Kickoff Social, April winery gathering and our holiday party in December, unique recreational events like our day on the beach in Santa Cruz in June and our meetup at Vasona Lake, and partnered with our friends to co-host events like the SCI Connections about spinal cord stimulation and the Fieldwork Brewery get together. We also promoted and had a presence at a number of other events throughout the year, like the Kaiser Vallejo Adaptive Car Expo and the BORP Adaptive Sports Expo.
As we transition into 2025, I'm looking forward to our organization strengthening our foundation and planting the seeds for success for the coming year, and many more beyond. As such, our theme for 2025 will be: "Cultivating a Sustainable Future"
Yes I snuck in a couple of gardening references (it's a big hobby of mine) and it's appropriate as I look to this year being crucial for NorCal SCI as we maintain assistance for our community while planning for the longer term sustainability of our organization.
As always, we will continue providing direct assistance to people with SCIs in Northern California through our aforementioned grant programs, as well as our events, virtual meetups, fitness class and extensive YouTube library, and Donated Medical Equipment program – which now has two locations: Los Gatos and Fresno.
Peer support is an area of growth and with our newly revamped peer mentor program and large team of volunteer mentors, we will keep providing valuable mentorship and assistance directly from the SCI community, whose lived experience is an invaluable resource.
We plan to have more engaging and fun in person events for our community and if you have any ideas or suggestions, don't hesitate to reach out to us!
Our education and advocacy efforts will continue strong as we partner with our friends and partners on new initiatives and ideas. On that note, in just a couple weeks, we'll be co-hosting the very first symposium aimed at addressing the lack of proper outpatient PT and rehab, to be held virtually. If you didn't already hear us on the recent episode of the Unite to Fight Paralysis podcast discussing the motivation behind our symposium, listen here and if you want to learn and register to attend (it's free), you can do so here.
I’m excited to get this new year started strong and to see what 2025 brings. Thank you all for reading and for being part of the journey with us.
– Arash