April is Paralyzed Veterans of America Awareness Month

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Mar 29, 2011, 01:48 ET

Changing Lives, Building Futures

A Time to Honor America's Veterans with Disabilities and Their Families

WASHINGTON, March 29, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Paralyzed Veterans of America (Paralyzed Veterans) is marking the 65th anniversary of its founding in April by encouraging all Americans to take time out of their busy schedules to honor and help empower our nation's veterans with disabilities.

Paralyzed Veterans' National President, Bill Lawson, a paralyzed U.S. Army veteran, will honor veterans with disabilities by traveling around America throughout the month to raise awareness for Mission: ABLE, a new campaign to help veterans with disabilities fully live the lives they deserve and to receive what they need most: care, benefits and jobs. The campaign aims to enlist all Americans — citizens, communities and companies — in an effort to help paralyzed veterans and their families live full, independent and productive lives.

"Please take a minute during April to think about the enormous challenges paralyzed veterans and their families face every day and then do something good to help empower their lives," Lawson said. "From a community saying thanks to a paralyzed veteran who has just returned home from Afghanistan or Iraq to an employer deciding to hire more veterans with disabilities, everyone can do something special to change lives or build independent futures for those who have served and sacrificed for our freedoms."

With events and activities across the country and the theme Changing Lives, Building Futures, Paralyzed Veterans of America Awareness Month highlights the unique challenges facing veterans with spinal cord injury and disease. It spotlights the work of Paralyzed Veterans to empower seriously wounded heroes and their families with everything they need to thrive.

Paralyzed Veterans and its 34 chapters:

Fight for quality VA health care and veterans benefits.
Promote and provide wheelchair sports and recreational activities.
Lead the charge to make America more accessible.
Empower paralyzed veterans with the tools they need to secure good careers, at a time when the unemployment rate for veterans with severe disabilities is 85 percent.
Invest in research to find new treatments and a cure for paralysis.
Provide our services to all veterans and their families free of charge. We simply couldn't do it without the public's generous support.

Paralyzed Veterans of America was founded by a band of spinal cord injured service members who returned home from World War II to a grateful nation, but also to a world with few solutions to the challenges they faced. These veterans from the "Greatest Generation" made a decision not just to live, but to live with dignity as contributors to society. They created Paralyzed Veterans, dedicated to veterans service, medical research and civil rights for people with disabilities. And for more than six decades, Paralyzed Veterans and its 34 chapters have been working to create an America where all veterans, and people with disabilities, and their families, have everything they need to thrive. (www.pva.org)

SOURCE Paralyzed Veterans of America