Our Mission
Schurig Center’s mission is to provide continued rehabilitation, hope, and community for people affected by brain injury.
Schurig Center is a non-medical non-profit organization offering an array of rehabilitative and supportive services designed specifically to help adult brain injury survivors and their families live their best life possible. Scholarships are offered for those living on a low income to ensure everyone has access to the support they need regardless of their financial resources. Our programs are hosted in a welcoming community center surrounded by a beautiful garden located on the College of Marin campus in Larkspur, CA. We welcome people from throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
We help people …
- Adapt to their “new normal”
- Better understand the injury they have experienced
- Improve their abilities
- Re-engagement with the community
- Discover new possibilities and build new lives of value and purpose
The people Schurig Center serves are “us.”
Acquired brain injury (ABI) has many causes and is more widespread than is generally known. Brain injury does not discriminate. It can happen to anyone, at any time – from a stroke, concussion, accident, fall, sports, recreation, infection, aneurysm, tumor, heart failure, and other causes. Our clients are professionals, parents, sons and daughters, friends, neighbors, and family members – our local community. We serve adults ages 18 and up whose lives have been impacted by an acquired brain injury. We also serve their family members and caregivers.
We believe …
- Everyone deserves a good quality of life.
- In the healing power of the arts and community.
- That unconditional compassion, innovative collaboration and unbridled generosity can make anything possible.
- In the power of creativity and fun. Not just as a powerful trauma healing tool that stimulates the brain, but as an engine that fuels our staff, board and community partners.
- That success is about progress, not perfection.
- That everyone can come as they are and be accepted.
Our Commitment to Inclusion & Connectedness
We don’t heal in isolation, but in community. At Schurig Center, our mission is to help all people feel less alone and live their best life possible after experiencing a brain injury. Our team is committed to fostering an inclusive, safe community where all are welcomed and accepted as they are, regardless of their sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, education, religion or financial circumstance. If your life has been changed by a brain injury, you are not alone. Schurig Center’s community is here for you.
Our History
Born of need, built with love.
In 1975, Karen Schurig’s life was dramatically changed when her daughter, Lisé, suffered a traumatic brain injury at age 14 from a car accident in Mill Valley, CA.
Lisé survived, but was badly injured and required full-time care. Karen was a single mother who had neither the know-how nor the income to support her injured child. She was forced to navigate this new reality entirely alone during an era when the understanding of brain injury was limited and there were no resources or services to help them navigate this “new normal.” Like more than 44 million Americans, Karen and her family became primary caregivers overnight.
Smart, fearless, and determined, Karen founded Marin Brain Injury Network (MBIN) in 1985 to help others adjust to a changed life after brain injury. She began by gathering survivors and their families to create an extended web of support. Over the next 24 years, she worked tirelessly to build a trusted hub of diverse, specialized brain injury services. Karen passed away in 2009, but her loving legacy lives on.
Today, 35 years since its founding, MBIN is now known as Schurig Center for Brain Injury Recovery. What was once a loose network of advocates has become a community center staffed by a team of dedicated professionals providing an array of brain injury support services not available anywhere else in our area.
The Evolution of Our Name
- In 1985, our organization was incorporated as Marin Brain Injury Network, which continues to be our legal name.
- In 2010, we become Brain Injury Network of the Bay Area (BINBA) to reflect the reach of our services throughout the larger Bay Area.
- Today, we do business as Schurig Center for Brain Injury Recovery, in honor our founder Karen Schurig and to highlight the healing that is possible after a brain injury.
