Global Brain Injury Picnic: Craig Part Twenty Eight

Global Brain Injury Picnic: Craig Part Twenty Eight 

In Part Twenty Eight Craig shares with us information on the Global Brain Injury Picnic and it’s international response and how much it has grown.

How many people are part of the TBI Survivor’s Network now?

I don’t know.   At our picnic we have 38,000 show up to our global brain injury picnic (the Global Brain Injury Picnic) on our end.   But I don’t know to be honest with you.  When we did the picnic we had groups that I didn’t know about.

Global Brain Injury Picnics Are World Wide

Tell me about the global brain injury picnic.

Annie Rickets in Great Britain, she had a dream. I don’t know if you know Annie at all.   She had a dream, she woke up one day and she says, we’ve got to have a picnic.  Okay.  Well, and this was kind of an after thought so we did, we did a global picnic, and I want to make sure she gets credit, Annie’s little like the professor who hit his head, the flux capacitor.  She had this dream and damn if we didn’t have 500 picnics around the world and in 26 countries.

The Global Brain Injury Picnic’s are all on the same day?

All on the same day.  We did  two days, only because I do Hoop Fest, and that’s like my biggest. I got people from all over the country, disabilities come into play that. So she planned it on that day, so I did mine the 16^th, and she did hers the 30^th, and then after the fest we, in commemoration, we did that.

So if people want to get a sense of, sort of like a table of contents, a guide to what it is that Craig does in his advocacy, where do they go?

And see that’s what’s hard.  One of the things I’ve learned is that people need to feel important.  So I really try to keep my name out of papers.  Like Joe Martin just gave me a wonderful advocate, but he needs to feel empowered, and so whatever he does has to be his.  So I really try to not give my name.    You can find some things about Craig, like the state that I’m in, TBI WA, give an example of, and that’s all of our groups.

TBIWA?

TBIWA.org, but I really want it to be theirs, because if I die tomorrow and it falls apart, what good would that have done. So when people do things, I truly make it theirs. I don’t charge any fee.  I don’t want to own it. I don’t even need credit.  I just want  them  to provide the services in their community.

If you go to our map, the ones that want to be on it, I think I’ve got 160 groups on the map, because they wanted to.

Where’s the map?

You can go to TBIWA and see the map and it covers mainly the northwest.  I have a few groups that want to be, some in Florida.

So the picnic that was 500 picnics? What site is that?

http://biglobalpicnic.org/ and biglobalpicnic.com.   One is ran by Annie, because she wants to do it.  The other I let people put their own sites on, because again, they want to feel important.  If everybody has the opportunity to be a leader, then they’re more apt to get involved. That’s where we’re coming into conflict.  You get personality any way, combined with a brain injury and you get people who don’t get along because they don’t feel their own personal power.  So I want it truly to be their own.

Next in Part Twenty Nine – Legislative Change Thru TBI Leaders