|
|
ThinkFirst Waterloo
about us
ThinkFirst is pleased to welcome its newest Chapter to the ThinkFirst team!
ThinkFirst Waterloo, under the leadership of Sara Thorne Van Damme, is sure to be a success. As a champion of ThinkFirst, Sara got her feet wet by organizing a highly successful concussion workshop in Waterloo in 2009. The workshop was delivered to a multi disciplinary audience and had some of the top Canadian concussion experts, such as Dr. Charles Tator and Dr. Paul Echlin speaking.
If Sara's name seems familiar, it may be because you read about her and her family in 2009's annual report:
Every year my extended family gets together at Christmas, just like many other families, and because I have four sisters and they all have families, this amounts to 27 people altogether. Now you may ask why this is important...Well, instead of exchanging gifts we donate to the charity selected by a the host family and this year that's us!
We have selected ThinkFirst Canada as the charity for this Christmas because we know how important concussion education and research is to prevention of concussions and it has touched the lives of our children far too many times. In fact, our son Jack who is now 13, received his first concussion a couple of weeks ago and we have decided that he can no longer play competitive hockey. It was a sad day for him when he had to return his jersey so that someone else could take his place. But it is the right thing to do for Jack's long-term health and wellbeing.
The children from the host family also have the opportunity to select their own charity to donate to at Christmas rather than exchanging gifts. This year my children have also chosen ThinkFirst Canada. It is a testament to the work that you and all the other people associated with ThinkFirst do every day.
ThinkFirst Waterloo looks forward to many more injury prevention initiatives, including delivering ThinkFirst Brain Day to the Waterloo region. Stay tuned for more updates.