Hey guys! So I recently got in contact with my local JDRF chapter about volunteering and my first thing to do will be to attend a "family" meeting this week. It's mostly made up of parents of T1's and currently there isn't anyone close to my age at the meetings or older, who has T1 themselves.
I've been asked to go to help "fill in the holes" per say during the discussion, but also to bring light onto how the local chapter can connect to T1's my age and up, as well as make the Walk event more all-ages. Right now the walk is very plain in our town and the entertainment is for the young kids, there isn't really anything for the older siblings or older T1's and their families to do while waiting for the actual walk to start.
Currently, there is no support groups or social groups for T1's who are over the age of about 16.
Does anyone have any suggestions or examples of what their local chapter has done to reach out to these people? Obviously, Juvenation is great, but offline connection is great too! =)
I'm volunteer president for the Desert Southwest Chapter of JDRF's Young Leadership Committee. Basically, we are a group of young professionals dedicated to raising funds for and awareness of JDRF. The committee hosts various fundraising, networking, and social events that attract hundreds of young professionals and that provide crucial support for research to find better treatments and a cure for type 1 diabetes. Our age demographic is between 21-40 (21 in case some of the events are located in a bar or something). Our chapter just started this committee a few months back. A lot of the major chapters in the US have one. What city are you located in (or near)? I would suggest contacting the Outreach Director of your chapter and implimenting this idea if you want to get more people closer to our age involved.
Hey thanks for the info, I'll take a look at the links.
I'm in Canada, so I donno if our chapters have an "outreach director"..which i believe is why I'm coming to the meeting, because there's no one to figure this out but these parents of young kids with T1 and those working for the chapter who are used to dealing with young kids and finding things for them to do together, not teenagers/adults
First of all, your email made me laugh, because I almost didn't open it because of the title. I thought, I'm not "older", I'm only 48! :) Anyway, I agree that it would be nice to meet people in person, and I found a website called "meetup" (www.meetup.com) that has meetup groups all over the place for all kinds of reasons. I typed in "diabetes" and found a group for people with T1 diabetes in my area. The groups can be very specific. The group I found was for people who like be active, with Type 1 diabetes who are over 40. (Sorry, you guys are too young!!)
yeah there was a T1 here, whose ...in her late 30's early 40's? who tried to get a group going on meetup.com but...no interest in it at all =/ she tried for a few months to get it going too.