Subaru Share the Love Check Presentation

June 2021

 

Piazza Subaru of Limerick Raises $20,515 for CoBI!

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Piazza Subaru of Limerick has been an amazing partner to the Council on Brain Injury (CoBI) for the past 4 years. Each November and December this wonderful dealership led by Mike Hinkle has chosen CoBI as its hometown partner and a donation is made for every car sold. With all of the challenges of COVID this past year, Mike and his team did amazing things and raised $20,515.

This past week, CoBI President, Joanne Finegan, MJ Schmidt, Board Chair, and Lexi Hinkle, David Drive the event Coordinator took a thank-you lunch to Mike and his team and held a check presentation celebration.

 

A huge THANK YOU to the team at Piazza Subaru, you have helped CoBI support so many organizations during one of the hardest years ever!!

CoBI Announces
Two New Board of Directors

 

May 2021

 

The Board Would Like to Welcome Two New Members!

Cristabelle Braden - Cristabelle is an award-winning singer/songwriter, speaker, writer, podcast host, and advocate for brain injury. After suffering a traumatic brain injury, she began to write music. Since then, she has surpassed medical expectations and thrived in her newfound gift of music; she has come from re-learning daily life tasks in brain injury rehabilitation to setting her feet firmly on the ground as a songwriter, speaker, and artist with a message of hope. Whether speaking or singing, she brings her powerful testimony and a message of freedom, healing, and love wherever she goes. She is devoted to bringing support and education through her brain injury podcast Hope Survives and her online support community Hope After Head Injury. Hosting weekly live videos for nearly five years, monthly online support meetings, and engaging daily with survivors in her online support group, her commitment, and attentiveness to encourage brain injury survivors and their families is evident and inspirational. Her passion to share hope has also led her to create Brain Injury Bible Study, the first and only online Bible study group for the brain injury community. She has not let her brain injury define her and has continued to pursue her education; as of May 2021, she holds a Master of Theological Studies from Liberty University and a Bachelor of Arts in Music and Religion (double major) from Lebanon Valley College. She is a dedicated volunteer with the Brain Injury Association of Pennsylvania and advocates on a statewide and national level with the Brain Injury Association of America. Cristabelle has continually persevered through the daily challenges that come with living with a brain injury. Through her setbacks, re-injuries, and struggles, she discovered a stronger and clearer voice and message.

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Joshua Strauss - Josh has been an active participant with COBI since its inception.  Having grown up around brain injury, Josh maintains a passion to help further the work his father was so passionate about.  Recently, Josh joined NFP as an Advisor with a dedicated focus on Commercial Property & Casualty Insurance programs.  Prior, Josh was a Commercial Producer with the Insurance Office of America.  A graduate of Drexel University, Josh lives in Philadelphia with his wife Melissa and son Jesse.

Welcome, Spring!

 

April 2021

 

It feels so good to be heading into warm weather, sun, and hopefully a better year overall. We have been busy at CoBI and wanted to share some of our updates with all of you. First, warm weather means golf, and what better way to get ready for the season than to watch the Putting Clinic by Doug Hendricks, Golf Professional. Doug breaks putting down into some very easy tips for all of us to practice and benefit from.

David’s Drive
Make sure you mark your calendar for Tuesday, September 28th, Penn Oaks Golf Club in West Chester, we have a great day planned!

Grants

We are happy to report that the Council on Brain Injury Board of Directors approved over $40,000 worth of grants for 2021 to a number of well-deserving organizations. After a very challenging year with the pandemic, these organizations have come through it and are ready to offer some great opportunities to their recipients and we are happy to support these efforts. Click to see who
has received a 2021 CoBI Grant.

Clinical Forum

Yes, our Clinical Forums are back up and running. We will continue these virtually this year as we have found we are reaching a much broader audience. The first one in February had over 30 attendees from a variety of states and we are happy to announce our second Forum slated for May 12th on Telehealth. Click for details.

ReDiscoverU 
Our coordinators, Marlene Rivera and Holly Auth, have been hard at work making many improvements to the ReDiscoverU programs. Most importantly, ReDiscoverU now occurs every Monday night and we have seen increased attendance and participation. Additionally, on the CoBI website, www.councilonbraininjury.org we have added a new Resource Page under the ReDiscoverU tab to share great ideas and information for individuals and organizations to access and use in their programs.
A huge thank you to Marlene and Holly for continuing to enhance ReDiscoverU!!

 

I hope you take the time to check out all of the things we are doing and feel free to drop me a note if
you have other ideas you would like to see.

Joanne Finegan, President
jfinegan@councilonbraininjury.org