User:Ccc/Push Amercia

PUSH America started out as an acronym for Play Units for the Severely Handicapped then changed to People Understanding the Severely Handicapped. Now PUSH is no longer an acronym. PUSH America was founded in 1977 by Tomas Sayer a member of Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity. PUSH is now ran and operated by Pi Kappa Phi and gets most of its donations and volunteer work from fellow brothers in the fraternity.

PUSH focuses on three main goals. Spreading Awareness, Fundraising, and Volunteering. PUSH sponsors yearly events like the Journey of Hope which has a team of cyclists ride from one ocean to the next spreading awareness and collecting donations as they go. Other events like Gear-Up Florida, Give-A-Push Weekend, Push Camp, AccessAbility, and many others help spread awareness and offer support to people with disability all over the nation.

Another event is Build America. This event entails a team of men going to special needs camps all over the country giving up there time and money to work at said camps. This event takes an entire summer of building facilities and making places more accessible to people with disabilities. Build America lets team members directly interact with the kids at these special needs camps.

The local Pi Kappa Phi chapter in Kirksville, MO puts on Push sponsored events twice a year in the form of no boundaries week. During this week we plan Empathy dinners, cycling trips around Kirksville, the Mrs. Push America pageant, and we find one special needs family in or around Kirksville and we build them a wheelchair ramp. All money donated during no boundaries week goes directly to Push. This semester we will be riding stationary bicycles on the quad all ours of the week. We are going to ride the equivalent of the Journey of Hope ride in less than a week. We will be collecting donations as we ride 4000 miles without leaving the quad.