Today, March 25, is the federally recognized Cerebral Palsy (CP) Awareness Day! In honor of national CP Awareness Day, our board is matching any donations two to one (2:1) today only! (We also have a MyCP Webinar tonight.) We are excited to announce the winners for our fifth annual CP Awareness Month photo contest. In February, we began accepting submissions in four categories that we thought were important to represent our community:

• Adults at work, volunteering, enjoying day programming
• Diversity and inclusion representation
• Freestyle
• Genetic CP

Each of the following submissions were selected by being the top three photos in these categories in votes out of 8,500 counted and more than 19,000 views of photos on our website:

Congratulations to each of these photographers and subjects for their selection and their prizes of $100 for 1st place, $75 for 2nd place and $50 for 3rd place.

In addition to these winners, the staff of the CP Research Network voted for best overall photograph in terms of what represented the CP Research Network’s values. The decision was SO hard as there were so many great photos. The winner is:

Congratulations to Caleb and Liz Norling for her picture and story of Caleb entitled “Shining on Stage” for the $500 prize! Caleb is a musical theatre performer with Arms Wide Open, a non-profit organization in San Diego. Arms Wide Open is dedicated to enriching the lives of children and adults with special needs. Caleb receives training in acting, singing, and musical theatre and is able to participate in high-quality, broadway style musical theatre productions.

Our selection as best of overall was a combination of picture content, emotion and story behind the picture.

The photos were so great again this year that we decided to expand our funds for honorable mentions. The staff recommended a number of honorable mentions. Thanks to you all for these great photos!

Thank you to EVERYONE that participated – submissions of photos and stories, shares and votes. What incredible pictures and stories our community shared! We hope the sharing of pictures and stories along with our awareness banners helped you all create awareness for CP and celebrate our vibrant community! Wear your green proudly today! We will be in touch about your prizes over the next week!

And if you like our work, don’t forget that we are matching donations 2:1 for any donation of any size today in honor of national CP Awareness Day!