"The Flamingo Flock Campaign" and "PIF"

My 9 year old son, Noah, has type 1 diabetes. He was diagnosed when he was 6. After a year and a half of being on almost 6 shots of insulin a day, he started on the OmniPod insulin management system, which has completely changed his life. He has always been an active child but after being diagnosed, he didn't want to go out much because he was too embarrassed to go to a birthday party because he knew it meant having to have a shot before he ate anything, he couldn't go to a sleep over because he had to be on a constant schedule of meals and shots, and it was so difficult to have to lug around all the syringes and other supplies. He even had to drop out of some of his sports activities because they didn't work with his scheduled mealtimes or insulin shots. Now, being on the OmniPod, Noah is able to lead a very active lifestyle again, playing soccer, baseball, biking, swimming, just being a kid again. The biggest change, however, has been his urge to get out and talk about his diabetes and raise diabetes awareness!

A few months ago, Noah started a diabetes awareness campaign called "the flamingo flock campaign" where he takes blue plastic flamingos and "flocks" people with them. Each one has a name that starts with a "D" for diabetes and has a note attached telling people a little about Noah's story and his campaign. He asks that people "get out and do something" with his flamingos and send him a picture to his website. Noah knows that he can't do anything to prevent type 1 diabetes, which is what he has, but he can do something to help prevent type 2 by asking people to lead a more active lifestyle by "getting out and doing something". Noah has collected hundreds of pictures over the past few months and his campaign has now gone national! Noah tracks each one of his flamingos through his "official flamingo tracking map" on his website and he has a goal of tracking at least one flamingo to every state in the US by the end of this year. He is well on his way with flamingos from Massachusetts to California, Niagra Falls, and he's even had one visit Panama City! He has his sights even higher now and flocked rock star and diabetes advocate Bret Michaels just a few days ago! Noah wants to prove to everyone that people with diabetes, especially kids with diabetes, can do anything they put their mind to! Noah has generated quite a following not only on his website but also on Facebook and Twitter and he has also gained a lot of media attention along the way through radio and newspaper interviews and even television interviews! His hope is that by telling you his story, you might share it with your friends, readers, and visitors to your site to let them know about his campaign and let them know that "you may have diabetes, but diabetes does not have you", which is a motto he lives by every day! For more information on Noah's campaign, or to request a flamingo flocking, please visit his website, www.thediabetesdude.com http://www.thediabetesdude.com

UNLV Students and "PIF"

Hi my name is Shannon S. and I attend the University of Nevada Las Vegas, where I am also on the cross country and track team. This was the first year that I had heard of pay it forward day and I thought it was a great idea. I had seen the movie before, but didn't know they had a day dedicated to it. On April 29th, 2010 a girl on my team named Brett told me in our anatomy class that it was pay it forward day. We knew we had to do something on this day and during class we thought up things to do throughout the day. Our first deed, we pasted around a card we made for our professor and asked people to put their favorite anatomy story she told throughout the semester on it and the last person with it would give it to her at the end of class. Second, we tapped one dollar in change to a vending machine so the next person that came up to it would have perfect change to buy what ever they wanted. After practice we met up again and made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. In each sandwich bag we had 4 cookies and also had a bag full of fruit. We bought a case of water and made our journey around vegas looking for homeless people. It was a colder night and we drove around for one hour looking for people. For the most part they were very appreciative. It really made us feel like we were making a difference. We passed out bags to six different people, gave some change to one guy who didn't want food, and another guy just wanted water. So in total we impacted 8 lives. After that it was 9pm and we were supposed to meet up with a guy named Robert in our anatomy class to study for our final coming up. None of us really wanted to study so we met up at the recreation center to play some soccer and basketball. We brought Robert one of the sandwich bags with the cookies that we made up earlier that day. Robert was so happy we brought him a snack. We played some soccer and then switched to basketball. Brett saw this guy walk by that we wanted to help earlier in the day and I ran after him and asked him if he wanted to play with us. We always saw this guy, who is in his 30's, walking around campus by himself and he always ate alone in the dinning commons. We noticed he always read things up close. So we invited him over and really got to know him. His name is Jason and he is legally blind. He had a very rough up bringing and just wanted to have some friends. We played with him for a while and left there with the greatest feeling in the world. The day was over, but that just started our journey as friends. All of us, Brett, Robert, and I decided that pay it forward day should be everyday. From that day on Jason would hang out with us in the library and keep us on track with our studying. We spread the word about pay it forward to our whole team and to our friends. We are determine to make a even greater impact. Our ultimate goal is to start an organization on campus devoted to paying it forward. I would love it if we could get some bracelets to continue to spread the word.

Thanks,

Shannon S