Today I had the pleasure of attending the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA) “Kids Day” event. The event was a wonderful and inspiring event to attend. Kids Day is an annual special event that is part of the National Veterans Wheelchair Games. Each year a day is set aside to introduce children with disabilities to adaptive sports. This year children were introduced to a variety of different sports. They had the opportunity to play basketball, softball, and work their way through an obstacle course – all with the help of veterans who are participating as athletes in the National Veterans Wheelchair Games.
The event was truly inspiring to attend. I attend the event with two of my GovLoop colleagues, Emily Jarvis and Stephen Peteritas. We took a lot of great video, which we will work on putting together shortly and be sharing with the GovLoop community. We interviewed some of the participants, representatives from PVA and HP representatives, who was one of the corporate sponsors for the event.
The overriding theme from the interviews is that today is about the kids, and seeing the joy on their faces from being exposed to new sports and engaging with veterans, who now serve as mentors for the children. Many participating veterans mentioned that the relationships built extends beyond today, and for many, it is the start of a life long mentorship between the children and the veterans. The veterans believe that today is not only a great way to help expose children with disabilities to new sports, but also a great way to continue to serve their country and community. For me, that was the highlight of the day, the passion of the veterans to continue to give back and continue to work to serve their country and community.
The National Veterans Wheelchair Games has been sponsored by HP for the last 14 years, and HP has sponsored Kids Day for 12. At the end of the event, each child was presented with a medal for participating in Kids Day. Be sure to check out some photos from the event (Photos taken by Emily Jarvis), and be sure to stay tuned for an upcoming video.
Find more photos like this on GovLoop – Social Network for Government
 |
HP’s mission is to invent technologies and services that drive business value, create social benefit and improve the lives of customers — with a focus on affecting the greatest number of people possible. Check out their HP for Gov group on GovLoop as well as the Technology Sub-Community of which they are a council member. |
Fantastic event. Thanks to GovLoop for covering this.
Thanks Chris, was a lot of fun and inspiring event to have attended.
Heros, squared!
Visiting Walter Reed the other day, a “?28 year old? man held the elevator door for me. He was a quadruple amputee.