THE THRILLING TASTE OF FREEDOM- BIKE DAY FOR KIDS at BEAUMONT!
Do you remember that thrilling taste of freedom (and terror!) when you took off on your first bike ride on the new bicycle your parents bought for you? Away you went, teetering and unsteady, but with the wind blowing in your hair and the ability to explore your world in brand new ways-wasn’t it exciting?
Unfortunately, there are many physically challenged children here in Detroit with parents who cannot afford to give their children what their heart most desires to have-a chance to be a normal kid on a bike.
That’s why we are so happy here at Gardner White to be sponsoring Beaumont Hospital’s Pediatric Rehabilitation BIKE DAY this year in conjunction with Fox 2 News and the Children’s Miracle Network.
For every individual donation you make in our stores, we will match your donation up to $10,000.00 so special needs kids who might not otherwise ever have a chance to own a bike can experience the feeling of independence and delight that we had as kids!
A bit of background:
Our local Beaumont Hospital is the only hospital in Southeastern Michigan to be part of the nationwide Children’s Miracle Network. One of the many things that the Children’s Miracle Network supports is the purchase of specially adapted bikes for special needs children at Beaumont Pediatric Rehabilitation. The mission of this program is to provide every participating child with a free bike and a free helmet. This year, Beaumont Hospital has identified 40 children who will benefit from attending Bike Day. Each bike costs an average of 1700.00 as they are specially fitted for each child.
Since 2004, when Beaumont Hospital initiated Bike Day, 218 bikes have been funded for children that have been referred for these special bikes through their physical therapist at Beaumont Hospital or, occasionally, through one of our local schools.
For these special needs kids bike riding offers numerous physical and social benefits they would otherwise never get to experience as most insurance companies will not cover a specially fitted bike and many parents cannot afford the high cost of these bikes.
We hope you will join us in helping to get these kids these special bikes by coming into our stores and making a donation- we welcome one quarter as much as we welcome 25.00! Every donation will be matched by us up to 10,000 and given to Beaumont to help these kids locked in by their physical limitations get a feeling of freedom they’ve never experienced before.
If you have a few minutes, watch this short video clip http://home.comcast.net/~wjbkpromo/spotapproval/CMN_BikeDay.mpg to see what it means to this young Mom and her son to have one of these bikes .We’d love for you to share what it meant for YOU to have your first bike-can you please leave a comment here or share that feeling with us over on our Facebook Page at http://facebook.com/GardnerWhiteFurniture or on our Twitter feed @GardnerWhite ?
We hope we’ll see you in our stores this weekend to help make these kids dreams come true-we’re open Mon-Saturday 10-9 and Sunday 12-6!
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