How to help children with disabilities this Giving Tuesday

TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. (WFLA) — Giving Tuesday is about helping others, and on Tuesday your donation could go further than any other day to a program for kids in wheelchairs.

The Broadrick Family Foundation is doubling donations to the Wheelchair 4 Kids program in Tarpon Springs by up to $10,000 to take 20 kids on an annual ski trip.

“They don’t get invited to birthday parties, or to the mall or just to hang out,” Wheelchairs 4 Kids Program Manager Nina Shaw said. “We are here to prove that life is very different, that they can do everything they want, maybe just a little bit differently.”

The kids wanting to take this trip range from 5 years old to 21 years old.

Most have a condition called Spina Bifida which affects their ability to be able to walk. Kiley Griggs is one of them.

She has been on a past Wheelchairs 4 Kids ski trip.

“It was truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and an experience I still talk about to this day,” Griggs said. “I am so grateful for it.”

Some of these kids have cancer, and others have Cerebral Palsy or Muscular Dystrophy–all affecting the way they get to live life.

Donations help the kids get to socialize, ski, and then accomplish something most of us wouldn’t even think about.

“Kiley said she wanted to be able to go to the snow so she could fall because she doesn’t get the chance to fall and be on the floor,” Shaw said. “She’s always in a wheelchair in different equipment so she just wanted to kind of fall and roll around in the snow.”

This trip costs about $3,000 per kid with their parent. It covers everything including two days of skiing and two more days to connect with people.

“It is because of people like you that a whole new group of kids gets to do it again,” Griggs said.

Wheelchairs 4 Kids is collecting donations through this link on their website.

The trip is in April.

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