What is #GivingTuesday?
“We have a day for giving thanks…now, we have #GivingTuesday, a global day dedicated to giving back. On Tuesday, December 1, 2015, charities, families, businesses, community centers, and students around the world will come together for one common purpose: to celebrate generosity and to give.” www.givingtuesday.org
Why give? Why now? Why us?
The holidays are close and so many things need my attention: shopping for holiday meals, a hair cut for my son, new clothes my daughter. I will want buy gifts for my dear family and friends. Especially now, the daily demands on my time and budget are innumerable. I ask myself, why give, why now?
Right now we are healthy. My aging parents don’t struggle with disease. My children are thriving. We are so very lucky.
What will my small gift do? And what does giving to research really accomplish?
My friend has macular degeneration. I watched my grandmother lose her clarity to Alzheimer’s to the point of not recognizing her daughter, my mother. I have a colleague whose daughter lost her eye to retinoblastoma, a rare cancer of the eye. My cousin’s son has autism. Will my small gift change their lives? I don’t want to risk the possibility that it might. And without my gift, it surely will not.
Every gift helps quicken the pace of research.
NSCI is the first private stem cell institute in the US. We have a history of turning small gifts into progress….
-NSCI is currently using stem cells to model Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease to understand why the cells in the brain degenerate and identify novel drugs to prevent this.
-NSCI uses stem cells to model the early stages of brain development to understand how it is affected in Autism.
-NSCI has discovered a stem cell population in the human eye with the ability to generate cells that can be transplanted into Macular Degeneration patients. NSCI has translated this discovery into a therapeutic product that is on track to begin an FDA approved clinical trial in 2017.
-NSCI has developed a novel way to encourage stem cells in an injured spinal cord to activate and promote repair.
Your generosity and partnership can be powerful tools enabling scientific discovery. Help us build the foundation that future therapy and treatments will be built on.
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