12 Days of Christmas - Day Eight Donation/Volunteer Ideas

Day Eight of my 12 Days of Christmas is big brag of my friend, Anne. She is dedicated to raising funds and awareness of Juvenile Diabetes. Most news coverage of diabetes is focused on Type II diabetes, while Type I or Juvenile Diabetes gets very little funding dollars. So, now I'm going to throw a lot of information at you, so read and link carefully.

First, you can check out the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation for loads of information on the overall organization.

Second, you must check out Anne's blog at annetics.blogspot.com. Anne documents her very daily struggles with her diabetes and living a normal life...oh, and she is running marathons and triathlons. That's how I met her! I almost tripped the first time I saw her test her blood sugar WHILE running in a marathon with me!

Now, Anne has taken her fund raising and awareness building up a huge notch. She became part of an awesome training team last year that is comprised completely of athletes with Type I diabetes. I don't mean people running 5K's on Sundays...they are running complete IronMan Triathlons. They have a great website at www.triabetes.org.

Triabetes/insulindependence qualified as a nonprofit earlier this year (501(c)3 to be exact). The goal of this project is to improve the lives of people with diabetes through exercise. A new group of ~15 athletes with type 1 diabetes will be competing in Ironman Arizona 2009 in an effort to spread awareness that living an active life with diabetes is possible. They are also organizing local groups where people can learn from each other. Also, a major push is to conduct research on how to make exercising with diabetes easier. A documentary was also filmed this past year, documenting the teams' training efforts and challenges. The documentary, which was filmed this year, also still needs financial support to reach a wide audience.

Check it all out!