As we enter a new year, I hope you have taken the time to reflect on what you have. If you have been reading my column, you will notice a common thread to my message: that thread is responsibility.
Specifically
• Responsibility to yourself
• Responsibility to your friends and loved ones
• Responsibility to your community
• Responsibility to the people you come in contact with on a daily basis
Taking responsibility seriously, particularly responsibility to those around you, is what makes our community strong. It shapes what people see when they see a person with a disability. When you use your skills to work in a community that motivates people, you are perceived as a responsible person and as worthy of respect. The respect you earn carries on to the next person using a chair or walking with crutches or a cane because of their spinal cord injury and or disease SCI/D.
Earning respect and being viewed as individuals rather than as a disability category is what your organization is constantly striving to achieve. As the organization grows and embraces a broader membership population, it continues its outreach to hospitals, businesses, government and social agencies in order to bring our services to members and potential members and be a leader in health care, rehabilitation, and access.
This year you will notice additional changes within our organization, not the least of which is the new look of our magazine. The board of directors and staff collectively decided to change its name back to Action because it best describes what we do as members and staff: we continue to take action wherever and whenever there is a problem or a task that needs to be tackled. That action translates to healthier, more active, members, and healthier families.
Over the past year, we have worked diligently to serve our new members, as well as the members that made our organization what we are and have been for many years. We continue to take responsibility for our organization, to grow its membership, and to look for opportunities in all the essential disciplines. We continue to work to provide recreational opportunities, to strengthen health care, and to help direct appropriate legislation for those with spinal cord injury and disease.
The participation of our members is needed to make our efforts successful. We each need to take responsibility by taking an active role in our communities, by writing to our legislators about health care, by showing our unity and strength. We need to take responsibility to demonstrate that we are the most caring individuals in our communities. By working together, our programs will become stronger and stronger, and our communities will want to help because they will know it is the right and best thing to do.
I hope you will like the changes and give us feedback and suggestions. Be well and become as active as you can.
Clair Russell Hesselton, PhD
President
