Global Connections Employees Raise Funds for Spinal Cord Injury Recovery Center
Overland Park, KS (August 25, 2010) –- For the third consecutive year, employees of Global Connections, Inc. (GCI) (www.exploregci.com), a nationally respected travel club, helped to raise money to benefit Quest To Walk, an exercise-based spinal cord injury recovery center founded by one of its employees.
Global Connections staff members, vendors and company friends aided the non-profit facility through a week of corporate fundraising events, culminated by the Hospital Hill Run, Kansas City’s oldest half-marathon and Quest To Walk’s largest fundraiser of the year. More than a dozen Global Connections employees participated in the race as Team Global, generating over $5,000 in donations. This team was the largest charity group running in the race, which included more than 120 runners.
Additional events organized by Global Connections’ employees – including a bake sale and hot dog “grill out” – raised over $575. The majority of the money collected will help purchase equipment and supplement out-of-pocket fees for patients of the Quest To Walk spinal cord injury recovery center.
The Overland Park, Kansas facility was co-founded by GCI’s Vice President of Sales Thomas Eddy after he suffered a stroke in June 2005, caused by a blood clot in the spinal cord and leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Today, four certified therapists and trainers serve about a dozen patients at a time. Patients from outside the Kansas City area come for a trial period of several weeks and receive a training program, videotape and instructions to manage the program back in their hometown.
Explains Eddy, “Through our exercise protocol – which utilizes the Dardzinski Method of training and therapy – all Quest To Walk patients, including paraplegics as well as quadriplegics, have enjoyed varying degrees of positive results. Since we are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, the donations generated by our fundraisers are extremely important to our continued success. We are most appreciative of the wonderful Global Connections employees for their support of our recovery center.”
Eddy has been a Global Connections employee for 24 years, remaining VP of Sales since sustaining his stroke, with time off for treatment and rehabilitation. Now 62, he is responsible for coordinating the company’s sales distributorships and contract processing for multiple sales centers. The centers are distributors of the Global Discovery Vacations travel club product, which offers a membership based on Star Credits allowing members to select a program to fit their lifestyle and budget. For more information on Global Connections, visit www.exploregci.com or contact Melanie Gring at 561-417-7559 or mgring@gcitravel.net.
To learn more about Quest To Walk, visit www.quest2walk.org or call 913.451.1500.
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