ABOUT THE CAUSE

IM ABLE FOUNDATION

IM ABLE Foundation was founded in 2007 by Christopher Kaag ten years after he had a life-changing moment. “I was 21 years old serving our country in the US Marine Corps. Everything changed in 1997 when I was sent to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The eventual diagnosis was AMN (adrenomyeloneuropathy), a degenerative nerve condition that cut short my career in the military. Over those nine weeks at Walter Reed, and in the years since, the diagnosis could have consumed me, defined me. I still remember seeing kids hooked up to all sorts of machines. Seeing parents and siblings by their sides, questioning what their future would look like. It rocked me to my core. I wanted to hug all of them. It was then that I realized a new purpose. I chose to show them that life wasn’t over for us. We would need to adapt, but we could still achieve and accomplish incredible things.”

Chris chose to show other people with any kind of physical, cognitive, and/or behavioral disability that our challenges do not have to limit our ability to live a healthy, fit lifestyle.

The mission of the IM ABLE Foundation is to remove obstacles that prevent people with physical, cognitive, and/or behavioral challenges from being physically active. We are a community changing attitudes by redefining what is possible. No excuses, just move!

In IM ABLE’s seventeen years of experience, we have seen that the two most common obstacles that prevent people with challenges from being active are financial limitations and lack of opportunity.  We strive to remove the obstacles that prevent people with disabilities from getting active by providing grants to help individuals with challenges purchase expensive adaptive equipment and hosting fitness-focused program and event opportunities for people of all abilities to achieve both physical and mental well-being.

IM ABLE awards grants to individuals to purchase adaptive equipment, provides programs, hosts events and fundraisers, and encourages participation in sports. Our goal is to create an inclusive environment where people of all abilities are supported, empowered, encouraged, and celebrated by each other, by volunteers, and by their families. They don’t get that everywhere. They get it at IM ABLE in abundance. Our adaptive fitness trainers and veteran mentors provide personalized plans and instruction to help individual clients and/or small groups achieve their goals, and then set new ones. Our emphasis on mindset is what sets IM ABLE’s adaptive training programs apart from the rest because with the right mindset, we firmly believe you can achieve anything.

To learn more about IM ABLE or to get involved, please visit https://imablefoundation.org.