Awesome Boston Based Non-Profit: Helping Hands Monkey Helpers

 We recently learned of the Helping Hands Monkey Helpers non-profit based in Boston and are impressed with their awesome work. According to their website, Helping Hands “helps adults with spinal cord injuries and other mobility impairments live more independent and engaged lives…by providing them, free of charge…with a highly trained capuchin monkey to help with their daily tasks.” Since 1979, Helping hands has been carefully matching monkey helpers with disabled recipients giving them “the priceless gifts of greater independence, companionship, and hope.” 

Check out the video below to meet Mary Kay Young and her monkey helper Amy.

Click here for the Helping Hands website: http://www.monkeyhelpers.org/

Beyond the Tasks from Helping Hands Monkey Helpers on Vimeo. 

The Sky's the Limit: Quadriplegia Doesn't Stop Skydiving Enthusiasts

Watch the below video, courtesy of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, to see how Randy Haims, a wheelchair-bound man on a ventilator, made his dream of skydiving a reality. A little disclaimer: While we're not necessarily encouraging you all to go skydiving, we are encouraging you to go out and challenge the limits and make what might seem impossible, possible. 

As fellow skydiving enthusiast Kim Anderson, PhD, says in the video, "You have to get back into life and you have to keep trying. The more you try and the more you prove people wrong, that you can do things, the more satisfaction you feel from that. It's the freedom I've been looking for for the last 15 years that I've been injured."

For more videos on people testing the limits and living their lives, check out the Sports & Recreation section on the Reeve Foundation's website:

http://www.christopherreeve.org/site/c.ddJFKRNoFiG/b.5848659/k.5E06/Reeve_Foundation_Videos.htm

Reeve Health Minutes - Video Tips for Individuals Living with Paralysis

The Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation is an organization “dedicated to curing spinal cord injury by funding innovative research, and improving the quality of life for people living with paralysis through grants, information, and advocacy.” In addition to their numerous initiatives and resources is a video series called Reeve Health Minutes. As the website describes, these videos provide “actionable tips for individuals living with paralysis to help them improve their health and wellness.” To check out what this site has to offer, click here: Reeve Health Minutes. Also, to learn more about the Reeve Foundation and how it helps, follow this link to the website’s home page: The Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation.

Ekso Bionics: Providing Hope through Innovation

Check out the below video to see the amazing work being done at Ekso Bionics. Through technology, the researchers at Ekso are hoping to help those who have lost the ability to walk to reclaim a sense of independence. As Joey Abicca, a 17-year-old who became paralyzed in an accident 3 years ago, describes the equipment, “It’s awesome — I love getting back up, even just standing up straight is awesome.”

Also, click here to read Brian Chen's article about Ekso in The New York Times, "New Breed of Robotics Aims to Help People Walk Again."