In 2017, Javaris Benson was playing a game of pickup basketball with a group of friends on the campus of Chowan University in North Carolina. When he collapsed, his friends had no idea what to do. None of them had even heard of Sudden Cardiac Arrest. None of them recognized that their friend had stopped breathing or that his heart had stopped. None of them had learned CPR and the AED in the gym was never gotten nor deployed.
Javaris's family, determined to prevent this from happening again, began their journey to eventually found the Nola Network and to implement our Keep the Beat: Vari Benson SCA prevention project.
Though a major part of this initiative is providing preventative heart screenings as a form of prevention, we are equally invested in providing hands on CPR & AED training to improve the survival outcomes when a sudden cardiac arrest does occur.
The same year as Vari's death, the South Carolina legislature passed a mandate that all students graduating in South Carolina would receive CPR instruction. Being from South Carolina, Javaris's family was thrilled about this; however, as the Nola Network began offering screenings at schools throughout the state, they found out that many times there was no CPR & AED training. Many schools wanted to offer the training, but due to it being an unfunded mandate & with many schools not having the staffing to oversee and support this, it was just not happening. That's where we come in.
Not only do we offer free CPR & AED training to students, but we are also now able to offer low-cost certifications. We also have partners throughout South Carolina, Georgia, and North Carolina who will work with us to support CPR & AED certifications. We want to support CPR so that we are working diligently to ensure that it is available to all students. Not only do we offer it in English, but we also have a bilingual instructor who can offer it to our Spanish speaking students and families. If you'd like to learn more about our CPR & AED trainings or certifications, reach out to us today.
