Non-profit Gives Spinal-Cord Injury Patients Dreams a Lift

For the Fifth year in a row, the D-Man Foundation is helping to give life to the dreams of wheelchair patients as they organize their annual Dreams Come True on Woodward, in conjunction with the Woodward Dream Cruise. This year’s event takes place on Friday August 19, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., at the Kingsley Inn in Bloomfield Hills.

Each year, The D-MAN Foundation transfers more wheelchair-bound individuals into convertibles to participate in the world’s largest one-day auto event.

“The experience is often an incredibly emotional one,” says D-Man Foundation Founder and Chairman of the Board, Ziad Kassab. “Many of the participants are auto crash victims, and haven’t ridden in a car since the debilitating accident.”

Making the experience even more memorable is the music that the passengers will be listening to is music they’ve produced themselves in D-Man’s unique “barrier-free” music therapy studio. The only one of its kind in the U.S., the studio was designed with special assistive technology that allow users to control recording equipment in a hands-free environment.

To help facilitate the programs growth, D-Man is calling on “Angels” to help make the event a success through sponsorships, which can be either in the form of monetary donations or by the providing the use of classic cars in which the participants will ride.

Proceeds from the event will go toward D-Man’s Assisted Travel Mission, which provides knowledge, experience, coordination, and financial support for disabled clients to make their travel dreams come true.

Kassab, who started the foundation in memory of his younger brother Danny, who was confined to a wheelchair after an auto accident, knows first hand how difficult common mobility can be for patients with a severe spinal cord injury.

“It’s easy to take for granted a simple thing like getting in a car or getting on a plane to go on a vacation,” says Kassab. “But for many of these patients, mobility makes them prisoners in their own home. D-Man’s mission is to help break them free, and give them back a piece of their lives.”