Giving
SAFE@HOME
Connecting in a Crisis
The risks associated with COVID-19 are high for everyone. And even higher for people with spinal cord injury.
Vital support and services have become hard to find, dangerous to access or simply unavailable or unaffordable. You can help connect our community.
We are pivoting dramatically to
respond to the needs of our community.
Our staff and peer mentors have always met face-to-face to serve people reeling from a new spinal cord injury, to support their parents and children, and to help find accessible housing, mobility devices and other urgent care.
But how can we do that now? When the very act of helping is a risk? When getting close is the last thing we should do, instead of the first.
Our answer is Safe@Home, our investment in a diverse mix of services and support we’ve compiled to meet our community’s urgent needs:
VIP4SCI
Our Virtually Integrated Platform for Spinal Cord Injury allows our regional staff and peer mentors to connect with newly injured people and their families, and to solve critical problems for all clients in a private, supportive online environment.
Advocacy and Resources
We’re working with government to make financial support, supplies and mobility devices available to Ontarians with SCI. And we’re sharing vital information, with free access to Cortree learning and the new Roadmap to Recovery.
Emergency Support
We’re sourcing personal protective equipment (PPE) and other urgent supplies for clients and staff to ensure the highest level of protection. People with SCI are a high-risk population in the face of this pandemic, so this support is critical.
Funding is needed for these critical Safe@Home initiatives to support Ontarians with SCI and their families in these challenging times. We don’t want to leave anyone behind.
Our approach is not face-to-face. Right now, it’s better. It’s safe and it’s immediate. Which is how you communicate in a crisis. And only a few dollars stands between isolation and connection.
SHARE NOW! #SafeAtHome
Double your dollars. Double your impact!
To support our fundraising goals, Spinal Cord Injury Ontario volunteer Board of Directors will match up to $75,000 in 2020.
Meet Peter
When Peter Athanasopoulos learned he had a spinal cord injury, he had thoughts of suicide. “I was a young kid, I was 17 years old,” says Peter. “I didn’t want to live anymore at that time. I didn’t see the path towards me being who I wanted to be.”
It was only when he met others with an SCI who had found their path that Peter found his. “It was through meeting with peers, people who were in the exact same situation as me, doing amazing, bold, tenacious things – and that was my personality… so I wanted to pursue those kinds of active things again.”
And what if those peer mentors couldn’t have reached out, couldn’t have visited Peter as often as they did, sharing what they knew and embodying the kind of life that is possible after a spinal cord injury? What if COVID-19 got in the way?
