While pondering how the Minnesota Promise Campaign team might go about setting up meetings with its senators in early fall, to my surprise, I noticed a sign while at work that said Senator Klobuchar would be speaking to the medical students at the local university. I immediately realized that this might be the perfect venue for Minnesota advocates to complete a Promise meeting with one of their senators. So I quickly went back to my office, arms flailing due to the excitement of a potential meeting, to call Ann Strader to let her know about Senator Klobuchar’s talk on campus. Ann is the other Promise Campaign Coordinator in Minnesota whose role is to coordinate meetings with our state senators. As soon as Ann heard the news, she was on the phone dialing away to Senator Klobuchar's office to ask if we would be able to get some time with her after her talk. The Senator’s office, gracious as always, was more than willing to meet with JDRF advocates families but this only left us four days to get all our advocate volunteers lined up to attend the meeting!
Since Ann would be heading out of town, I offered to help get the meeting coordinated. As you can see, although one person on the team may have the responsibility to get the meeting scheduled, others often jump in to help when needed. My specific role for the Campaign is to coordinate meetings with members of the House of Representative from Minnesota.
So as I was saying, with only four days to get the word out to our advocate base, I worked quickly to get a message emailed to all advocates in our state letting them know that we had a meeting time with Senator Klobuchar. Although on short notice, I was able to gather up some families to attend the meeting. However, as Murphy’s Law would have it, we had three inches of snow on the ground which led to one of the families canceling. Fortunately, the JDRF Minnesota Chapter president was able to find another family to come along to the meeting at the very last minute.
Moral of the story: You never know when or where a Promise meeting can happen. As campaign coordinators, we’re always on the lookout to see where we might be able to share our message of a cure for type 1 diabetes with our Members of Congress. Remember, if your legislator is on a committee working on healthcare reform, they may have several meetings or talks at Universities with medical schools or public policy programs. So always be on the look out to see where you can run into a legislator, and if you think you can help complete a Promise meeting then be sure to send a note to the JDRF Government Relations office at advocacy@jdrf.org so they can help get you all the necessary information!
PS: You can read the summary of this meeting here: http://bit.ly/PromiseMNS1.
Debbie Evans
JDRF MN Recruitment Leader
2010 Promise Campaign Coordinator