SVRR Speaker Series: Shared Adventures; 30+ yrs in Santa Cruz County & beyond!

Topic Information
On Wednesday, March 4, 2026, Silicon Valley Rainbow Rotary is pleased to host Foster Andersen who helped co-fund Shared Adventures. Whether people are born with a disability or able-bodied people have an accident later, Shared Adventures offers opportunities for social and recreational interaction

About the speaker
Foster’s incredible adventure began when, at seventeen, during the summer between his junior and senior years of high school, life as he knew it ended. An active and athletic youth, Foster was riding his motorcycle—his source of freedom and independence—in the Upstate New York woods where he often journeyed to commune with nature. When he awoke in the hospital, unable to move, it had been two
weeks since the accident. He’d been in a coma. For six seconds, he’d touched death when his heart stopped beating. He vividly recalls the out-of-body experience. But Foster was far from done with the world. Seven months later, he left the hospital. First priority? “I wanted to go outdoors. I wanted to smell the fresh air and be out in the woods again.”
He wouldn’t be able to walk, but he would go on to bungee jump out of a hot air balloon. Not to mention scuba dive, surf, sit-ski, sail, follow the Grateful Dead, drive across the country in his converted van, attend engineering school, invent and patent a Frisbee for
quadriplegics, the Quad-Bee… An inventor and an innovator, Foster’s adventures were far from over—they were beginning… just in a very different way than he ever could have imagined.
Living an adventurous life, Foster decided to Share the Adventure with others in the disabled community. Whether people are born with a disability or able-bodied people have an accident later, life changes with a new challenge of a second life.
Foster helped co-found Shared Adventures with a sit-ski program in 1985, in Rochester, NY. And in 1992, Foster started Shared Adventures in Santa Cruz when pro surfer Terry Simms took him and a group of students from the Adaptive PE program at Cabrillo College. After thirty-three years, thousands of participants' lives have been enriched
with the help of thousands of volunteers. Let the adventures continue...

How to Join this Event
This is a virtual only meeting:

• Join us via Zoom by sending an email to svrainbowrotary@gmail.com and we’ll provide the Zoom meeting link.