.

But, unlike some of the other entrants, I do not seem to have as large a base of people who I can call on to shoot over and vote for my idea. I’m making an appeal to my online community and colleagues one by one and ask you to read this and then go vote for my idea.

Please take a moment and help me get my National  Yard Sales for ALS – or “Yard SALS”- as I’ve coined it, out of the bottom and into the running, so that I can see this project through and make an impact on awareness for this devastating disease!

VOTE HERE!

Here is my project entry as it appears on the site:

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National Yard Sale for ALS

What is your goal?

The goal of this project is to utilize the common practice of holding a “Yard Sale,” which people do as a normal course of community engagement and combining it with the intent to educate the public and raise awareness for ALS.

What is the social impact of your project?

The social impact in using this widely accepted form of exchange –selling your used items for cash – while combining it with the name of the disease will increase understanding, strengthen the ALS community of patients, advocates, and organizations, and dedicate a national day of ALS awareness and education. The more people who become aware of the disease, the more chance we have to find the advocates and connections to defeat it.

What is your plan?

The Plan:

“Yard SALS” (“Sell, Speak, Support for ALS)

Coordinate and collaborate with ALL (or at least, as many as possible) organizations that work for ALS issues to bring their advocates, patients, and families together to hold/host yard sales across the US on the same day of the year, each year.

I think that planning the national day of Yard SALS on the weekend that June 19th occurs, or the first weekend after the 19th when it occurs on a weekday to honor Lou Gehrig’s birthday, would raise the attention, awareness, and interest of others.

We will reach out to organizations like Les Turner ALS Foundation, ALS TDI, ALSA, MDA, ALS Untangled, Treat ALS Now, Patient’s Like Me, Iron Phi, and the many other wonderful places working on patient support, research, awareness and advocacy, etc, and ask that they assist us in spreading the word to their employees, patients, and families about a national day of grassroots advocacy – home by home, yard by yard, person by person, community by community.

We would ask these orgs and participating places to help get the signs (that we would like to provide) that will advertise the sale to those individuals who are hosting a yard sale on the day. Businesses and churches could also be invited to participate.

The orgs can also provide their information/pamphlets to the individual participants to display during their yard sale. This would help them increase awareness of the disease and to also explain their orgs work on ALS issues.

Families can then donate their Yard SALS profits to whichever ALS organization they are participating with.

I’d like to create a site that would allow for participants to “sign up” and share to their social media platforms that they are participating in the sale. We would update it each year and use it to communicate with the organizations as well.

Having this website could also allow others, who do not have a direct connection to ALS, to decide they want to participate and donate the money raised from their Yard SALS. Participating orgs that partner in this project could be listed on the site with a link to their information.

What makes your project innovative?

What makes our project innovative?

1. Using an easily identifiable and understood activity with a dedicated day of awareness and combining it with the intent educating the public at large.

2. Having all the organizations, families, and patients who advocate and work for ALS issues collectively join forces and giving them the tools to advocate from their homes. For many patients who can’t easily get around, this provides a way to advocate from their own home.

3. Providing a twist on a household term that will make people stop and ask “What is that for?”

4. The potential ability for communities to become more involved as the yearly Yard SALS date approaches.

5. Planning an event that local media could be engaged to pick up on as a human interest story and thus broaden the ALS awareness reach.

6. Giving the grassroots front a new way to garner donations.

Can your idea live on?

Can the idea live on? Absolutely. Yard sales happen everywhere, every year. So, why not dedicate yours to ALS? As long as we can provide the signs, get them to the participants, and send out reminders for the date to help get the idea out there each year, it is easily sustainable.

Like this idea? Would you ever donate your yard sale earnings to a good cause? Please take a moment to go to ALSConnections.org to vote. Thanks!

Simply Put -I really need you to help spread my idea and to vote for National Yard Sales for ALS today.

Ever had a really good idea for using an event, social media, fundraising idea, tech design, your business, etc. to promote something good, but couldn’t get it off the ground. Or out of your head and into the world?

Well, I have an outlet for you.

ALS Connections is looking for innovative ideas from creative individuals or groups to raise awareness for ALS.

Are you …

• an entrepreneur
• a tech geek
• social media savvy
• a college student
• a school-age student who can create awesome projects
• an ALS patient or family member
• a blogger
• an event planner
• creative, crafty, or artsy
• generally known to come up with good ideas
• someone who likes to help others
• a storyteller, videographer, writer
• innovative
• connected to any of these types of individuals

Any one of these qualities or combination of these might land you $3,000. All you have to do is create a sustainable project to raise awareness for ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

Let’s find out a little on the contest from ALS Connections:

Awareness Tipping Point

When we started building ALS Connections, we started by compiling video.  We found that more than half of the video, we collected were personal stories from ALS patients.  Storytelling is a powerful tool and we believe that it will be key to tackling awareness, but stories alone will not achieve this goal.  We need innovative ideas to tip the awareness scale, making it go viral and engaging key audiences.

Goals
Participants are asked to design a project that meets at least one of the following goals:

• Builds upon current communications channels to deliver ALS information in innovative ways
• Creates opportunities for engagement from key audiences: drug companies, researchers, health care professionals, politicians, and or the general public
• Raises awareness of ALS for those not directly connected to the disease via a patient or organization
• Generates a platform to facilitate viral spread of information through new media and/or other unique means of storytelling

The contest deadline is September 15, 2012. Submissions will be open to public comments during that time. Online voting after the deadline through September 30th will determine the winner. The winner of the contest receives a $3,000 cash prize that is theirs to do with as they choose.

More information on the contest or how to enter can be found here: http://als.myupsite.com/contest-area/competition-summary/.  The current list of entry ideas and the contest form can be accessed in the Contest Area dropdown box.

I really hope you are inspired to participate in an awareness contest. Or if not, that you might be able to help us spread the word  for the ALS Connections contest to “tip the awareness point” for ALS.

Ready to go? Great! I know you’re going to deliver something awesome! Don’t forget to connect on Twitter with @ALSConnections

Need more motivation?Let me step back a bit and tell you why we are doing this…

ALSConnections.org was developed by Christopher Whitlatch when his mother was diagnosed with ALS.  I blogged about that several months ago

We did what many families and patients do when the diagnosis was confirmed – we started searching every detail we could find in hopes of answers, resources, and information.

What we found with all of our research is that the information is spread out all over the web and that there is a severe lack of funding for research on the cause and pharmaceuticals for ALS.  Christopher set out on a mission to create a website, ALS Connections, where information about ALS and related research, news, stories, and videos from all over the world is aggregated and shared.

Christopher’s goal, now in memory and honor of his mother, is to use the site to raise awareness and encourage projects and ideas to find the cure, so that one day no one has to endure ALS.

In an effort to bring more attention to ALS,  this contest was implemented to get big ideas to ‘tip the awaress scale’. ALS Connections plan to do more contests with different goals, in the future. We hope to gain as many entries as possible, so that when Christopher speaks this fall at the Communications Network Conference being hosted by The Gates Foundation in Seattle, he can bring both the contest planning, development, and outcome, along with the winning and all viable ideas to the conference.

So what do we need?

We need your entries to make this a true competition. We also need people to spread the word about this contest. We want as many people as possible to share the contest with their readers, family, friends, and social media followers to let them know we are looking for their innovative ideas and entries in this contest. Ask your community to visit the contest entries page and comment.

Can you help us spread the word? Your potential to reach thousands of creative, intelligent, innovative minds can make a huge impact. You never know who you know who might come up with the winning idea. Maybe it’s you. Good luck!

Get thinking and get rewarded! Let me know when you submit your idea.

Simply Put- Using the blog to find YOU. Yes, you.

Oh, you mean Lou Gehrig’s Disease…

I’ve been trying to write this post for over a month. I promised myself I wouldn’t write any other posts until I finished this one. I can’t put it off any longer.

Even though nothing I can say will do this post justice. There are no words to describe the range of emotions the impact of watching someone with ALS has put me through.

Even though there are no thoughts that can adequately convey how deeply ALS has affected me.

You see, if you had said those 3 little letters – A L S – to me last October, I would have said, “Oh, you mean Lou Gehrig’s Disease?” And the extent of my knowledge would have been that it was a disease made “famous” by a baseball player.

It’s six months later and I can tell you that ALS stands for Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, although I still have to Google it to spell or say the full name correctly.

I can tell you while it slowly killing you, you lose things like  muscle function and the ability to breath and swallow. But, it doesn’t take your mind, so you know every debilitating symptom and regression that is happening to you. The reality is that it has no cure and generally gives a person a life expectancy of 2-5 years after diagnosis.

I learned more about ALS through the Pittsburgh Foundation’s work with Neil and Suzanne Alexander who recently launched Live Like Lou, inspired by the grace and positivity with which Lou Gehrig faced his ALS diagnosis. Neil has ALS. The more I read, the harder it was to imagine handling any disease like this with grace. It was devastating to learn “Most patients die of suffocation or other respiratory failure.”

It’s a weird twist of fate that has happened, that in a six month span, I can now name six people diagnosed or recently passed who have less than six degrees of separation to me. One was a neighbor and ‘church lady’ I’d known for years. Two are parents of friends I’ve known since high school. In a disease that has roughly 5,500 people diagnosed per year and only about 20- 30,000 patients living in the US at any given time.

One of those people is the mother of the person I hold nearest and dearest to my heart and whom I have known for over 20 years. Christopher’s mom is one of the kindest, most loving, honest, and immeasurably wonderful people I know. And, much sooner than we’d ever want, she’ll be taken away from us. Things we take for granted, she will be unable to do.

It’s one thing to read about the progression of ALS.  It is quite another to experience it first hand. To visibly see, over very short spans of time, the loss of motor skills, speech, and breathing. All while viewing a person who is still caring and happy, and who smiles as she shares funny stories about life and shows great pride in your accomplishments. It’s hard sometimes to hold back the tears that threaten to overflow, but you do, so you can enjoy the happy memory you are creating together in this moment.

But in those same moments, when you realize that the person you love can no longer lift their arms to hug you, you’re aware that the goodness of their heart still lifts your soul and their laughter brings you joy. You appreciate every word they struggle to speak clearly. Those words give emphasis and clarity to what is important in life. You stop complaining, berating, or self-deprecating. Instead, you recall fond and happy memories, give voice to your appreciation, love, and pride in those around you, and share your wisdom. You find that the little things bring such immense pleasure and you hold on to every moment. You begin to be present in every moment. That is a true gift. And somehow, that gives you strength.

I now understand why people who have the diagnosis and their families become so invested in advocating and researching and generally helping others who are touched by this disease. There is no cure and there is little motivation for pharmaceuticals to invest in researching one. People die too fast, which means there aren’t enough people with it at any given time to drive the drug companies to find meds that could work. So families become the advocates and donors, storytellers and researchers.

That’s where you find real strength – patients are willing to share their stories and document the progression of the disease for future work on treatments and cures; families are willing to spend time sharing hope and resources. There is strength in numbers.  There is strength in working together for a world without ALS. Even the weakest of ALS patients has the strength to light a spark of hope in us all.

Connecting info and resources for ALS Awareness

That spark of hope, the hours of research, and love for a mother has inspired a site called ALS Connections. Christopher’s goal is to put tons of information about ALS together in one place so that people can make connections from research,  videos, and other sites; draw conclusions; expand on technologies that might make life with ALS a little better and easier; and find others who give strength to and grace in a tough situation. The site is still being developed, but it has been rolled out and is accepting video submissions.

It’s my small way to help by finding information to share with ALS Connections and in participating in the Pittsburgh Walk for ALS, and sharing this with you so that one day we might “create a world without ALS.”

And, I can ask you to help so that I am using all my strength.

Simply Put – In the 60 years since Lou Gehrig’s death, there have been no major advances, treatments, or cures for ALS. Can we hit a home run and change that before another 60 goes by?

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