About Us

Since being established in July of 2000, People Reaching Out has validated both its name and its mission: to raise and distribute critically needed funds to lesser-known charitable groups in New York City, the greater United States, and, increasingly, internationally. Founding Director Christina DeSimone started the organization as a result of her passion for—and lifelong devotion to—the field of physical rehabilitation and medical case management. Her interest was fostered by her father, Anthony DeSimone, who in the late 1950s started the first sheltered workshop for persons with disabilities. He later became the Regional Commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services Administration, an agency in the Department of Health Education and Welfare for 31 years. Mr. DeSimone served as a Regional Commissioner in three different regions, with offices in NYC (21 years), Seattle (5 years), and San Francisco (5 years). Through his pioneering work, he also cultivated in each of his five children a special sensitivity toward social welfare issues and an elevated awareness of those in need who can be helped with charitable endeavors.

Through the development of Future Care, a for-profit company providing medical care programs and medical advocacy services, Ms. DeSimone and the Future Care staff invested their time into creating the beginning stages of "People Reaching Out" to gain support of those utilizing Future Care's services. The charity's goal was to provide financial assistance to under-funded local rehabilitation centers so that they could expand their programs. And while expanding Future Care, both nationally and internationally, Ms. DeSimone strove to reach out to her Future Care clients for their potential contribution towards the charity's projects and events. In this way, Ms. DeSimone wanted to set the standards for Future Care to become a business that gives back to the community as well.

People Reaching out focuses on the need for financial and other assistance, including help in structuring educational programs and outreach and locating donors of food, clothing and essential equipment. The charity has thus far donated to Fountain House Foundation in New York, which offers community-based support to people recovering from mental disabilities, the 9/11 Neediest Cases Fund for Recovery Workers, and a children's AIDS adoption center in Ghana, West Africa. It even broadened its focus to the arts when the organization hosted an event in May of 2007 called Emerging Young Artists Salon View to donate proceeds to the Miss Rockaway Amanda project, a group of intrepid performer/artists with names like ``Visual Resistance'' and ``The Infernal Noise Brigade,'' who believe in a hands-on, live-by-example approach to creating change within our culture. Ms. DeSimone has also widened the scope and vision of People Reaching Out by opening opportunities for charitable giving internationally.

People Reaching Out is now planning an event to be held in October, 2008 to raise money for the Arthritis Foundation, which benefits people with severe arthritis.

Today, People Reaching Out counts as its members a group of philanthropic, civic-minded New Yorkers from all socioeconomic levels. Their shared concern is for others who rely on under-financed, under-resourced and under-publicized local charities for their daily sustenance. Through People Reaching Out, Ms. DeSimone and the board members intend to continue to identify and assist those not-for-profit institutions and groups that would most benefit from their aid.