Spare a Rose, Save a Child

The power of social media in awareness campaigns, e-patient support and subsiding the psychological effects of diabetes has been documented relatively well, especially over the past year.

This year, for valentines day Diabetes Advocates are doing something extra special.

Kelly Close, Manny Hernandez, Bennet Dunlap, Adam Brown, Kerri Sparling, and Jeff Hitchcock got together with the help of some friends at Johnson and Johnson to create the Spare a Rose, Save a Child campaign in support of the Life for a Child program sponsored by the International Diabetes Federation.

The theory behind this campaign is that everyone buy one less rose/flower this valentines day, and the savings you make off the smaller purchase can be put towards a donation to the Life for a Child Program. This way your loved ones are still getting flowers and you are helping a great cause.

For those wondering the Life for a Child Program is in place to help children in developing countries have access to basic needs after a diabetes diagnosis: insulin, testing supplies, clinical care, education etc. These are all things that we in developed countries take for granted.

If you are another blogger/member of the diabetes online community and want to take part in this social media blitz here are a few tips:

• The week of February 10 – 16th, please help raise awareness for the Life for a Child program by blogging, Tweeting, Facebooking, etc., about the organization and the Spare a Rose, Save a Child effort.  The earlier we can get the word out about this, the better.
• If you’d like, you can download an image to use for your post, or host it on your site for the week of Feb 10 – 16th.
• http://www.thebetesnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Spare_A_Rose_1.jp
• http://www.thebetesnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Spare_A_Rose_2.jpg
• http://www.thebetesnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Spare_a_Rose_small.jpg
• Please use the URL: http://bit.ly/SpareRoseSaveChild to link to the IDF site.  (This is a short URL we’ve created so we can see how much impact our social media campaign has generated.)  For more information on the Life for a Child program, please check out that link.  
• Also, if you do decide to post about this effort, please include a link to this page somewhere on your blog entry: http://diabetesadvocates.org/c/spare-a-rose-save-a-child/ so we may track all entries supporting this effort.
• The hashtag for this effort is #sparearose, should you be feeling Twittery.

Also, you can always send me flowers after you donate to this great campaign. Because I like pretty things.