YOURAH, Belgium

Project name: YOURAH - Mobilizing Youth to Raise Awareness and promote Healthy living with diabetes.

Project location: Brussels

Project description:

We will establish an online platform tailored for the purposes of education, uniting advocacy work and supporting networking for all persons with diabetes across Europe. Through this platform we will provide education in the form of videos, pictures, presentations and documents and signpost to alternative resources; works, achievements and events from European diabetes associations will be showcased to facilitate international collaborations, creating maximum impact. Finally, at the heart of the platform will be videos and stories from persons with diabetes and their loved ones, outlining all they have attained despite the additional hurdle(s) of living with diabetes.

In the spirit of unity, we will host international webinars for educational and advocacy purposes to engage actively in the conversations around diabetes. We will work with motivational speakers and celebrities with diabetes to raise awareness of our initiative and this platform will be omnipresent on social media, hence providing the opportunity for further fundraising campaigns for diabetes. Particular focus on under-resourced areas like the support for diabetes youth; educating around diabetes and alcohol, smoking, drugs and sex, and opening discussions to share experiences and appreciate the shared but underestimated challenges diabetes present in adolescence. The platform also targets friends and families of children newly diagnosed with diabetes, offering a forum with accurate and pertinent information they need all in ONE place! This resource will be maintained by International Diabetes Federation European Region’s (IDF Europe) youth advocates voluntarily, in association with the organisation.

Goal and purpose of the project:

The burden of diabetes is ever-present and a continued cause of premature yet preventable deaths; undoubtedly, this has to stop. Excellent diabetes treatments alone are not enough. Persons with diabetes need to feel empowered to self-care, need the education to understand and need peer support to share experiences and enhance their quality of life; this is what diabetes care has to improve in Europe. Therefore we want to empower and support persons with diabetes. Give them a one-stop information portal; unite the European diabetes associations youth to join voices and forces for political change and offer a forum for peer support, for networking, mentoring and motivating. We appreciate the scale of our ambitions, but we as a team are galvanised and committed to this critical cause.

Motivation of the applicant / applicant team:

We are a team of 10 young persons who are all living with diabetes and international advocates for diabetes, devoted to turning our vision into reality; to unite persons with diabetes, their loved ones, and the European diabetes associations to drive much needed change and improvements in diabetes care across Europe. We know first-hand the trials diabetes presents but we are invigorated, vibrant and intrepid! Our team is equipped with >100yrs of combined diabetes experience, extensive national and international diabetes advocacy work, varied professional backgrounds from medicine to law and are now united under the premise of IDF Europe, the umbrella organisation for diabetes associations. We are therefore empowered and competent to suppress the burden of diabetes.

Use of prize money:

The following budget is designed to sustain and build up a platform and network over a 3-year period.
1. Develop an online platform including- multiple pages, links to social media, varied content discussion forums, international events calendar, maintenance costs =€3000-5000 start-up, plus €200-300 maintenance costs/yr
2. Advertisements-social media =€200/yr
3. Presence at international diabetes events and publishing of material to raise awareness of our platform to health care professionals and policy makers =€2000/yr
4. Motivational and celebrity diabetes speakers-travel costs only =€500/yr
5. Webinars- Gotomeeting: for up to 100 participants at least initially and to record the meetings for the website, 4 per year =€527/yr
Total costs/yr = €3477
Total for 3yrs = €10431 + website start-up