Winner Update: Dive Guardians

All right, I’m Randy Lung. I’m the founder of dive guardians. Just a case you weren’t here last time. You don’t know who we are. We’re a 501c3 or our mission is to bring awareness to the mental health issues and high rates of suicide among first responders. Our goal to try to reduce the numbers through education support using the therapeutic properties of water and scuba diving. And now a new addition to our program is biofeedback. Um, when I talked to you guys in October, I told you that was 263 first responders that, uh, committed suicide trust the United States. Well, there’s a couple more months left in the year, so that number changed. So at the end of 2019, the number actually increased and actually ended up at 322 for the year first responders that committed suicide. The kicker is we’re halfway through the first month of 2020. We’ve already had two first responders in the United States commit suicide in the first 15 days of the year. So this problem isn’t going away. Um, so when I introduced myself to you guys, October 16th, I gave you guys my pitch and introduced you to dive guardians like the other organizations to hear tonight. And I was surprised at the end when you guys awarded me 11,300 bucks and what I did with some of the money, I haven’t spent it all yet. We’re new in the year. Um, I was able to purchase a biofeedback machine. Um, I went through the training to administer that and hook people up and use the machine and I was also able to purchase six more units. They’re called inner balance of what’s your take home units that I give to my applicants and they hook up to themselves to get their breathing and heart rate variability back in sync as they’re going through our program. So I wouldn’t have been able to purchase that without the money that I received here at all. Um, January 4th, we started our first class of the year and we able to start it on time again. Thanks. The donation I got from all of you. Uh, we actually had four start. Only one had a cold, so she couldn’t finish. So we have three going through that class right now. Two of them are local, uh, law enforcement. One of them is a local paramedic. I started another class, believe it or not, January 12th, that contains three local law enforcement officers. Um, we have five more classes scheduled throughout the year. Each class has four to six people that’ll be going through our classes. Um, and this money that I got from here is going to spread out through the year and help me pay for all these classes. So I, uh, I couldn’t tell you how much I appreciate, um, being awarded that money and how important it was to my organization because being a smaller organization and raising money is tough. Everybody knows that. So when you’re given a check like that, um, you take that breath of relief and, and can relax just a bit and concentrate on what the mission is, which is to help people.