Raising Awareness

First of all, I'd like to congratulate Katie at From IF to When on her 2011 Hope Award for Best Blog!!!  There's also an article in today's Wall Street Journal about infertility.  I had seen an excerpt from this online a few days ago, but I enjoyed reading the full article.

The bigger (ok, to me) item related to raising awareness, though, was an email I got from RESOLVE yesterday and was finally able to read in depth today:

Dear Jessie,
Bloggers are so important to the infertility community.  You share your stories and insights into a very personal journey.  We have another way for you to raise awareness.  RESOLVE has partnered with a major women’s magazine to develop an exciting project to raise public awareness about infertility.  We need your help to make this a success.

A big part of this awareness campaign will be a video component.  We need a number of RESOLVE community members to submit the first videos.  Your videos will serve as examples and inspiration for when we ask the larger audience to submit videos when the campaign launches in November.  

So here is your script:  “I wish I’d known…”  

Then it’s up to you.  What message do you want to share?  Tell us what you wish you’d known about fertility drugs… or about adoption...or about IVF...or about being a foster parent...etc.  Tell people who haven’t dealt with infertility how you would like to be treated.  

Videos should be short and sweet – one to three minutes. We are taking a grassroots approach to this, so don’t worry about fancy production.  Uploading your video will also be easy.  Videos will need to be submitted by September 1.

If you would like to participate, here’s what we need from you now:  send an e-mail to Andy at aschwarz@resolve.org with your name, age, state, and what topic you plan to talk about. You do not have to send a video right now. 

Andy will follow up with you in the upcoming weeks with a few more details as well as those upload instructions.  Thank you for considering lending your voice (and face!) to this exciting public awareness campaign!

 I already told DH I'll be needing help with filming my video about the things I wish I had known about insurance coverage of infertility.  Like when I participated in the Bust an Infertility Myth Blog Challenge and when I emailed and called my Senators about the Family Act of 2011, I feel good about being able to do something other than just my random posts to advocate for infertility awareness and consideration.