For the past three years we have acknowledged World Diabetes Day at Caleb’s school. This was born from the need for awareness – Caleb’s first year in elementary school included some unfortunate bumps in the road. As his principal and I took steps to improve protocols, at her suggestion, we decided an annual World Diabetes Spirit Day would not only benefit Caleb emotionally and physically, but also serve to educate the community at large.
It has been an enormous success!
The first year we asked staff and students to wear blue and donate $1 to the JDRF.
The next year we asked staff and students to wear blue and I created an awareness video that was shown during each lunch wave. (Please feel free to download it and use it too!)
Last year, we asked staff and students to wear blue, we showed the awareness video, assembled all of Caleb’s grade in a blue circle and asked people to donate dollars and supplies to support Team Type 1’s initiative to assist the children of Rwanda living with diabetes.
We like to call this annual initiative School Blue-nity.
There are many ways you can coordinate something similar at your child’s school, your workplace or both.
Check out Sanofi’s blog, Discuss Diabetes, and how they’ve mapped out how you can “Make Blue Cool at School.”
Mike Lawson from the Diabetes Hands Foundation gives you simple instructions on how you can incorporate the Big Blue Test as an event. Each person that participates translates to $5 donated to people living with diabetes in need. Do you have ten people in your office? That’s $50. 100 
people? $500. 400 staff and students at your child’s school? That’s $2,000!!! So easy and such a worthy cause!
I created a flyer that can be used to promote the Blue Fridays initiative of “Think Blue, Wear Blue.” and The Big Blue Test in one. Copy and distribute – IT COULD NOT BE EASIER!!
If you’ve ever wanted to do something for diabetes awareness or to recognize World Diabetes Day but didn’t know where to start, please check out any or all of these resources!
It’s easy and it makes a difference.
This is Caleb... 
