Promise Campaign Blog
Welcome to the Promise Campaign blog. Check back each week to get the inside scoop on completed Promise meetings from your fellow volunteers, catch profiles on JDRF advocates from across the country and read periodic Campaign updates from our co-chairs.
Aaron Kowalski, JDRF’s Program Manager for Metabolic Control and the head of our Artificial Pancreas Project, volunteered to answer your questions via live video feed through our Promise Campaign blog on Wednesday, January 27. We recorded this broadcast for those of you that weren't able to watch it live.
It’s been an amazing start to the New Year for JDRF Advocacy! The good news keeps rolling in and it all started with you helping us get to 200 meetings with Members of Congress. By the way, we’re at 221 meetings as of today.
On December 31, 2009, the 2010 Promise Campaign reached the 200 meeting mark. We’re half way there! In the first 15 days of this year, we’ve added 19 more meetings. Our goal of 400 meetings is in sight. The most exciting part about all of this is that this success isn’t because of some JDRF staff member in DC making this happen but it’s local volunteer advocates like YOU that made it happen. To put things into perspective, at the beginning of December of last year, the Campaign was at 169 meetings. Read on to find how YOU made it happen and click here if you would like to register for a national Promise call for a live update.
Wow! The past five months of the Promise Campaign have been a spectacular exercise in what a dedicated group of advocates can accomplish with teamwork. From the beginning of the Campaign in August 2009 to the end of December 2009, JDRF advocate families scheduled 200 meetings with their Members of Congress, placing the Campaign half way to its goal of 400 meetings by May 1 of this year. Already, with just six days into the New Year, our current total of meetings scheduled or completed is 209.
Over the past few months, many of our advocates who attend Promise meetings come back from the experiences feeling more excited and hopeful about our quest for a cure for type 1. Many have shared their thoughts and feelings about the impact they made with the Promise Campaign staff. We wanted to share some of them with you below. Please take a minute to read these. If you have a story of your own, please add it in the comment section. Thanks!
Many of you probably know that Members of Congress have been heading home during November, which has put our Campaign Coordinators into overdrive and they’re working hard to keep the Promise Campaign moving forward. Please take a moment to thank them by clicking this link, http://bit.ly/9HEP1. It’s important we keep our Campaign Coordinators motivated and encourage their efforts. Their work is an important part of getting our message of cure for type 1 debates to the halls of Congress!
After posting a blog earlier this week about helping the Promise Campaign during Diabetes Awareness month, we realized that some of you might not have time to organize meetings. No problem! You can still participate with advocacy efforts right from you computer. Continue reading to find out how you can help in less than 5 minutes!
As most of us know,
November marks the start of Diabetes Awareness Month in the United
States. As the nation’s attention turns to issues related to
diabetes we, as advocates for a cure for type 1 diabetes, can take
advantage of this added attention and make sure our Members of Congress
are hearing from us about the need to find a cure!
Let’s start this with a big THANK YOU to all of our advocates that are
supporting the Promise to Remember Me Campaign. The Promise Campaign
staff wants to take a moment to thank those of you that are not only
following the Campaign but also have attended a Promise meeting in your
local areas. You have truly taken the next step in advocacy and
translated your passion for a cure into action on the ground!
I received a call from Roderick McClary, Congressional Aide to
Representative John Conyers, at 3:30 in the afternoon on Thursday,
August 27th. He was calling to offer me a Promise to Remember Me
meeting time with the Congressman--for the next morning at 9:30 AM!
Often in Minnesota when it comes to scheduling Promise Campaign meetings, it’s always best to get them out of the way sooner than later. As the winter season sets early in this part of the country, it is nice to get them scheduled early while it is nice weather for families and legislators to get to Promise meetings.
It’s amazing what a little prep work can do and this certainly holds true with JDRF advocates in Connecticut and their meeting with Representative Jim Himes (D-CT-4)! Late last month, Carl Zuckerberg, the Promise Campaign Coordinator and Government Relations volunteer for the Fairfield County Chapter was able to gather 102 advocates to create a meeting that had an impact on Rep. Himes.
Abby Grosshuesch, a student at DePaul University and a JDRF advocate, shares her experience of attending a town hall meeting during the August 2009 congressional recess to complete a Promise Campaign meeting:
Although the chill of fall is in the air, things continue to heat up with the 2010 Promise Campaign and all that is going on in Washington! Yesterday the House of Representatives introduced HR 3668, a bill to reauthorize the Special Diabetes Programs.
A few weeks back, JDRF Government Relations launched an email asking it’s advocates to submit encouraging messages that highlight what the Promise to Remember Me Campaign and the work being done by the Campaign Coordinators means to them.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen has always been a strong supporter of JDRF and our issues, so contacting his office to schedule a meeting isn't a chore.
The month of September has become even more important than it has been in past campaigns. With a full legislative agenda for Member of Congress, rumors abound in Washington that legislators won’t be home for the Columbus Day holiday! This may seem like an obstacle for our campaign efforts, but read on to find out how the campaign plans to work around it!
What a month! For the past 31 days you and your Campaign Coordinators have called, emailed, and organized to get our message of finding a cure for type 1 diabetes directly to our Members of Congress.
We’re so close! Since last week, we’ve scheduled or completed 10 more Promise meetings, giving us a grand total of 75 meetings as of this update. We know more are to come over the next several months but let us keep focus on our first milestone of 100 meeting by the end of the August recess!
Watch an update on the progress of the 2010 Promise to Remember Me Campaign!
Another exciting week for the 2010 Promise Campaign! Your efforts are not going unnoticed, if you have been logging into your Twitter and Facebook (FB) profiles, you would have noticed highlights from some very successful meetings. Currently we’re at 61 meetings and many are in the works, read on to see what Campaign Coordinators are doing to get us to 100 meetings by August 31:
What a terrific 12 days! Achieving our first milestone of a 100 meetings by August 31 is starting to become a reality as you continue your efforts in the field. As of writing this update, you’ve already scheduled or completed 44 meetings and more are getting scheduled daily. Keep up the pace and THANK YOU!!
We’ve had a great start to Promise. As of this writing, we’ve already held or scheduled 27 meetings. Our goal of 100 for the month of August is well within reach.
The 2010 Promise Campaign is getting off to a quick start. We've already got 25 meetings that have either been held or scheduled.
We’re thrilled to be leading the latest installment of JDRF’s Promise Campaign. Promise turns 10 years old in 2010 and what a decade it has been! Over that time, all of your hard work has generated nearly 1,500 meetings with Members of Congress across the country. In 2008, our efforts helped secure the second largest amount of funding ever dedicated to type 1 research—$450 million!
This sixth edition of Promise still brings challenges, though. Our goal for the Campaign is nothing less than to set another all-time record for completed meetings…400! We need your help to make this goal a reality. You can help us by clicking here to register to attend a local meeting. You can also let us know if you’d like to help organize a meeting.
To begin this journey, we wanted to just tell each of you a bit about ourselves and our connections to type 1 diabetes: