CRIS Adaptive Adventures is extremely proud to announce that Troy Becker, our favourite founder and force of nature, is one of this year’s Canadian Living Me to We Award Winners! With the help from voters all across Canada, Troy has received the “In the Community” award which honours the extraordinary impact he’s made for people with physical and mental disabilities in our community in and around the Kelowna, BC area.

The Me to We organization, whose sister organization is Free the Children, honours “ordinary” Canadians who truly think “we” before “me”. Winners are offered $5,000 to donate to a cause that they are passionate about to help those heroes to continue helping and inspiring others.

Troy is a local West Kelowna firefighter who has devoted his time and resources to making outdoor activities accessible to people with disabilities. Founding CRIS Adaptive Adventures in 2001, Troy believes that CRIS outings create a strong sense of community and belonging in both the participants and the able bodied volunteers. 

According to Statistics Canada, about 4.4 million Canadians (14.3 %) reported having some sort of disability in 2006. CRIS Adaptive Adventures has provided over 5,700 outdoor opportunities to hundreds of people with disabilities with the help of over 80 active volunteers (providing over 90,600 volunteer hours) since the beginning.

Troy will donate his Me to We Award money to CRIS Adaptive Adventures and hopes to secure more local and provincial funding so that CRIS Adaptive Adventures can help even more people.

Please see October’s issue of Canadian Living (pg 102) for more information and the full article of Troy’s Me to We Award. For more information about Me to We, please visit their website.

Thank-you to all who voted to support Troy!