Man's fight to raise awareness for spinal cord injury continues

[Max]

Man's fight to raise awareness for spinal cord injury continues

BY JOYCE RUSSELL
joycer@nwitimes.com
219.762.4334

VALPARAISO | Joe White will be taking his efforts to raise awareness about spinal cord injuries to the streets this week.

White, of Valparaiso, was paralyzed from the armpits down after being thrown from a mechanical bull at the 2003 Porter County Fair.

White will be setting up an information booth Sept. 10 at this year's Popcorn Festival.

"Spinal cord injuries know no boundaries, it can happen to anyone in the blink of an eye," said White, adding he wants to provide information about all aspects of spinal cord injuries, which affect 250,000 to 400,000 people in the United States. It is estimated that 14,000 new injuries occur each year.

"I will have information packets and fact sheets for people to take with them. There will be fund-raising items for sale, including awareness bracelets, ribbon car magnets, Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation dog tags and more. All proceeds will go to spinal cord injury charities," White said.

Since his injury, White has established a support group that meets at 1 p.m. the last Friday of each month at the Porter Education and Rehabilitation Center, 1401 Calumet Ave. He also attended a rally in Washington, D.C., for the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Act.


http://www.thetimesonline.com/articl...7200830c1e.txt

[Jeff Weeks]

I believe this article is about our member jplw.

[john smith]

You go Joe!

John

[Jadis]

yeah jOE!

[caton675@aol.com]

You go joe ;

[betheny]

jplw is a born advocate.

[jplw]

Well, I think that I may have sufficiently recovered from the week of the festival. We ended up raising about $500 dollars that day and about $1300 all together.

We presented a lot of information, unfortunately many were not interested. Whether they were interested or not, they at least read the info on the board. I heard a lot of people say or mutter "Every 41 minutes...?"

We handed out 200+ information packets and sets of letters to Indiana senators concerning the CRPA and the Stem Cell Enhancement Act. These letters were pre-written and the envelopes were pre-addressed. I wanted to make it as easy as possible for people. I have all of the files still and think a presentation like this would go over well at a college campus or something like that.

The booth wasn't as professional looking as I would have liked. The coppies of hand outs didn't get to my house until 10pm and set up was 12pm to 6am. The display we were told to use didn't work out either. I had to improvise at 1am. I know that I should have had it set up in a mock setting before hand, but I let someone else be in charge of some things. It was definately a learning experience.


Here are some pics.

[Leif]

Good job and pictures, - wish you good luck in your future work.