Posted by Keith Harmis on April 09, 1998 at 13:45:26:
In Reply to: How To Say "Thank you" posted by Dianne Terry on April 08, 1998 at 23:36:16:
Al and Robin,
Thanks once again for the representation. It really seems as though government may be listening to us, due in no small part to your efforts.
Dianne, funny you should mention going out into the community. In our neck of the woods, New Jersey; the JDF will be having 2 springtime walk-a-thons. Once again we plan to get out with our new for '98 petitions, and spread the word on islets and the promise they hold for a CURE.
For those of you that are new to this forum we'll post a refresher course on what we did and how to do it in your own area. Last fall we gathered over 1,000 signatures at 4 walks on petitions that were sent to the President, Donna Shalala and James Mulvihill. Besides just gathering signatures, we had a 1 page fact sheet that explained about islet transplants and the address for TIF's website. I know this was duplicated by MAR up in Massachusetts as well as by Sue Huson in Canada, and a few other states. Of course Sue's results were a little different than ours, but that's another story.
The main point was that we got information out to people with a vested interest in seeing diabetes cured. Information they might never have gotten otherwise, and moved this information off the web and hopefully into people's homes.
We'll post more specifics on this in another post, but for now if you want to get the ball rolling, call the JDF's 800# for springtime walks in your state.
Keith