Brain Awareness Week (BAW) is the global campaign to increase public awareness of the progress and benefits of brain research. Members of the Great Bend Pilot Club met with Mayor Joe Andrasek and were honored by his signing of the Brain Awareness Week proclamation.
This is the sixth consecutive year for recognition in Great Bend of this important awareness issue. We are celebrating the Alliance’s 20 years of education and outreach.
Brain Awareness Week is one of our greatest successes. The Great Bend Pilot club mission will continue in April the club is sponsoring an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Workshop from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, April 7, at the Fine Arts Building on the Barton Community College campus. Attendees can sign up early by going to the Pilot Club’s website at www.greatbendpilotclub.com to print the brochure/ registration form. Then, mail the form to Pilot Club Autism Workshop, P.O. Box 503, Great Bend, KS 67530. Interested parties may also register with a credit card at www.eventbrite.com and Pilot’s Facebook page.

What is Brain
Awareness Week?
The Brain Awareness Week campaign unites families, schools, and communities in a worldwide celebration of the brain. The Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives founded the now-global campaign in 1996. Since its start, more than 2,800 partners in 82 countries have participated in the campaign. The Society for Neuroscience and many others serve as partners. Neuroscience education and outreach is encouraged year-round. In this year round initiative the Great Bend Pilot club serves to advance Pilot International’s local, national and international purpose and goals for education to communities regarding protecting your brain for life. The Pilot Club volunteer members conduct programs, projects, that include many areas of charitable service at the local level. With emphasis supporting the overall service focus of Pilot International: brain safety, brain research, and assistance to those with brain-related disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, chemical dependency, traumatic brain injuries, brain cancer, Autism and numerous other developmental, emotional and mental disabilities.
Since Great Bend Pilot Club and Pilot International are considered outreach organizations working with the Dana Alliance to raise awareness on issues about brain safety and injury prevention and brain related diseases. We try to reach out to people in all lifestyles as young as 8 and as old as 100. March is also Brain Injury Awareness Month. This effort is led by the Brain Injury Association of America (BIAA), as it strives to educate the public about the incidence of brain injury and the needs of people with brain injuries and their families. This is the optimal month for Pilots everywhere to engage their communities in awareness and education. As the BIAA states on its website, “Brain injury is not an event or an outcome. It is the start of a misdiagnosed, misunderstood, under-funded neurological disease.”
To find out more about Pilot Club and its focus on Brain Initiatives attend the Great Bend Pilot Club Autism Spectrum Disorder Workshop on April 7 at Barton Community College.