PLAY IT FORWARD FOUNDATIONS
Make a Difference Today
Play It Forward Foundations helps in-need, young athletes experience the formative and life-changing opportunities that sports and exercise has to offer and also helps adolescents who have sustained life-altering spine and brain injuries.
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Play It Forward Foundations is a registered non-profit 501(c)3 organization. As such, all donations are eligible for taxable deduction treatment.
WHO WE ARE
Our Roots
Play It Forward Foundations helps in-need, young athletes experience the formative and life-changing opportunities that sports and exercise has to offer and also helps adolescents who have sustained life-altering spine and brain injuries.
Furthering our cause is the most important goal of our organization. We seek to support, empower, and provide high quality resources to our community in a safe and secure environment. Our success isn’t measured in terms of wealth or profit margin, but by the value we provide to those we serve.
EQUIPMENT DONATIONS
Giving So Others Might Receive
With our organization’s mission always in mind, we strive to find new strategies for dealing with this challenge. Food Donation Drop-Off is something that we take very seriously, and our team is working each and every day to make a positive impact. Contact us to learn more about our commitment to this cause.
BIKE DONATIONS
Helping youths transition into adulthood and the workforce
Play It Forward Foundations has partnered with and donates bikes to organizations like Bearings Bike Shop on Atlanta’s Westside. Bearings is a youth development organization that teaches kids how to repair and maintain bikes. After working in the shop for a prerequisite number of hours, each child has the opportunity to earn their own bike! Bearings represents the kinds of strategic partners Play It Forward Foundations has aligned itself with to ensure donated items end up in the best and most deserving hands possible.
SPORTS-SPECIFIC FOOTWEAR
Allowing Access to Everyone
For many sports, having the right sport-specific footwear is not a luxury or fashion statement, it is a necessity! Cleats on a football or baseball field, basketball shoes, tennis shoes, wrestling shoes, ice/hockey skates and golf spikes…not having access to the appropriate footwear can single-handedly derail a youth’s access to a sport or team experience that could change his or her life!
The average cost of sports specific footwear is skyrocketing. With limited discretionary income, buying footwear for a single season sport can be an insurmountable hardship for a family. The vast majority of discarded cleats and sport-specific footwear have substantial utility for someone else. Play It Forward Foundations is always looking for sport-specific footwear with a few miles, innings, quarters or games left in them.
SHEPHERD CENTER ADOLESCENT RECREATIONAL REHABILITATION FOUNDATION
Helping Make a Difference
Shepherd Center is one of the top private, not-for-profit hospital specializing in medical treatment, research and rehabilitation for people with spinal cord injury, brain injury, multiple sclerosis, spine and chronic pain, and other neuromuscular conditions. Play It Forward Foundations has partnered with Shepherd Center to assist with the cost of the Adolescent Recreational Rehabilitation Therapy program. Although unfunded by insurance, Recreation Therapy is an essential part of Shepherd Center’s continuum of care, and is provided at no cost to patients and their families. This vital support service is made possible by donations from individuals, corporations, and foundations.
Shepherd’s team of highly specialized, experienced clinicians are dedicated to helping their patients rebuild their lives with hope, independence and dignity, advocating for their full inclusion in all aspects of community life while promoting safety and injury prevention.
Play It Forward funds recreational rehab for adolescents who have experienced life-altering brain and spinal injuries. Recreational rehab is often the first opportunity for many adolescents to leave the hospital since their injury and the first glimpse at how their public life will be different. Recreation Rehab funds specials field trips that might involve a patient getting to swim with whale sharks at the Georgia Aquarium, trips to Chick-fil-A, and visits to the mall or other retail settings. Rec Rehab also may include picnics at a lake and even water –skiing in special circumstances.
These crucial steps in the continuum of care and rehab are not covered by insurance. With your generosity, Play It Forward has made funding as many and as much of the program as possible a priority.
Here are just a few of the activities that fall under the recreational rehabilitation program for adolescents that we help fund.
Five Health & Wellness Clinics focusing on Golf, Tennis, Archery, Cycling, and Para-triathlon instruction
An overnight horticulture trip to Unicoi State Park and Lodge in Helen, Georgia
Adventure Skills Workshop – a 3-day nationally recognized outdoor workshop at a wheelchair-accessible facility in Jackson’s Gap, Alabama which includes adaptive water-skiing, scuba diving, fishing, canoeing, kayaking, jet skiing, four-wheeling, swimming, target shooting, wall climbing and more
Sponsorship of the Peachtree Road Race Wheelchair Division – One of the largest and most competitive 10K wheelchair races in the country showcasing more than 75 elite wheelchair athletes from around the world
Discover Scuba classes & Deep Dive Scuba Trip
Disabled Sports Tournaments – Wheelchair Basketball, Quad Rugby, and Power Soccer
Water-ski workshop
Community hunting trips
Community reintegration- trips to the grocery store, restaurants, furniture shopping, etc.
EMPOWERING YOUNG FEMALE ATHLETES
Every Avalanche Starts With a Snowflake
Sometimes the obstacle obstructing the way forward is so obvious…but only after someone has pointed it out to us. One of the single largest barriers that inhibits middle and high school aged female athletes from participating in sports or exercise can be the lack of a proper fitting and functioning athletic bra. At Play It Forward Foundations, we work to acquire new sports bras for female athletes to feel comfortable and confident as they perform at their best.
Play It Forward is working with several national sports apparel companies to implement a strategy that would help address this important issue. If successful, we believe we can remove a substantial obstacle that inhibits young females from experiencing the beneficial and transformative attributes of playing sports and adding exercise to their daily routine.
"I am in awe of your passion to help others your age! It is truly inspiring and had me donating immediately to the cause. There's no doubt your heartwarming endeavor will touch so many lives!"