As a local, San Diego based company, the employees and CEO of Positive Adventures count ourselves lucky to be a part of the same community as Rady Children’s Hospital.  According to the hospital’s website, as “a nonprofit, 464-bed pediatric-care facility dedicated to excellence in care, research and teaching … We are the only hospital in the San Diego area dedicated exclusively to pediatric healthcare and the region’s only designated pediatric trauma center.”  The hospital operates in partnership with the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, and they the region’s teaching hospital, supplying our southern Californian community with the next generation of pediatricians.

And so it’s always with the greatest pleasure that Positive Adventures CEO Ryan Shortill spends his birthday, which he has been doing for the past five years, entertaining and playing games with children who are waiting on organs at Rady Children’s Hospital’s Annual Transplant Party.  Our efforts are as much for the parents as they are for the children. 

Ryan explains,

When we play and we dance [with the children],  we allow the parents to enjoy the moment and see smiles on all the faces in the room.

Though it may seem small, we believe that seeing their child smile and play again is an enormous holiday present for the parent of a child awaiting an organ transplant.

It’s the attention to smaller details like these that makes Rady an absolute pleasure to work with, and we always look forward to this event because it affirms why we love coming to work as an Experiential Education company.  Ryan reminds us that it’s always by helping others that we achieve our own true happiness, which is a philosophy that resonates with Rady’s general mission statement. 

They “believe equally in keeping children well”, and we couldn’t agree more.  Seeing a child waiting on an organ smile is one of Ryan’s favorite birthday presents, and he can’t wait to participate in next year’s event.