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‘The Movement’ premieres in Skokie
Adaptive Adventures Executive Director Joel Berman of Wilmette with Program Director/Co-Founder Matt Feeney of Colorado. | Lee Litas~For Sun-Times Media
ADAPTIVE
ADVENTURES
Wilmette-based charity seeks to provide challenging outdoor sports opportunities to children, adults and veterans with physical disabilities.
www.adaptiveadventures.org
Article Extras
Updated: June 4, 2012 10:40AM
The Event: Finding that turning point where physical disability is no longer a limitation but instead has become part of one’s character is the message of “The Movement,” a short documentary film narrated by Robert Redford and Warren Miller. It made its Chicago debut April 19 at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie.
Produced in association with Wilmette’s Adaptive Adventures in an effort to “increase awareness, participation and opportunity in adaptive sports across the country,” the premiere was attended by more than 350 guests.
Cause Célèbre: “The message of the film is very much like the message of Adaptive Adventures,” said AA Co-Founder and Executive Director Joel Berman, an above-knee amputee. “It really goes to our mission about how people with challenges in life overcome those challenges [and] don’t let traumatic injury or disability define who they are.”
Since 1999, Adaptive Adventures has been providing progressive outdoor sports opportunities and necessary equipment to children, adults and veterans with physical disabilities.
“It’s remarkable what challenged people are able to achieve,” said Jim Kaiser, CEO of Scheck and Siress, a private orthotic/prosthetic practice. “As they go through and meet the challenges of every day we try to enable them to continue to do whatever they want to do.”
AA Program Director and Co-Founder Matt Feeney was an avid mountain biker and skier before a cliff diving accident left him paralyzed from the waist down.
“You never know what can happen,” said Feeny, citing the old adage that life is 10 percent what happens and 90 percent how we react to it. “I like to tell people that ‘you might be a little different but you can still go out there and do it.’ ”
Bottom Line: The event raised more than $30,000 for Adaptive Adventures.
