After Breath of Hope established itself as a public charity, we had to find our nitch in the CDH Community and we came up with the idea of launching the first ever CDH Campaign for Awareness by establishing a Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness Day in 2007. March 31st was chosen because at that time, we had no CDH angel or survivor who was born on that date nor became an angel on that day either. We didn't want to take away from special days of those children and families. We did discover, quite by accident that one story of a child published in the newsletter, the child's birthday was indeed March 31st. It was not intentional at all. We thought at that time it was just something that we meant to be. We sent out that Newsletter with ribbons and our announcement. Our Board of Directors had already sent in requests to their respective states. Iowa was the first State to Issue a Proclamation for March 2008 - the whole month to be Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness Month. Thirty-four states followed issuing Proclamations for March 31st to be Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness Day.
This year, March 31st is on Easter Sunday and in an effort not to infringe upon the religious holiday we are sending requests to have the last week in March (25th - 31st) to be Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness Week. This also gives family and friends more opportunity and flexibility to plan local events! If you would like to send a request to your Governor or Mayor or locality, you can go to our website
here and download the documents or if you have difficulty doing this, contact us at cdhawareness@breathofhopeinc.com, we are happy to send you this information! We have already had one Proclamation received and we only request you send us a picture or scan of the document via email.
We also have a Facebook Event you can
join here and we are giving ideas on how to celebrate Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness Week. If you plan an event in your area, please let us know and we will help promote. All funds raised for the month of March 2013 will go into our Research Fund which has a balance from March 2013 of $1,380.00.
We also have started a Petition to have the White House turn Turquoise a day or the week of Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness. Here is the Petition and we must have 25,000 before February 6th to be considered,
please sign and share here is the link! Wouldn't it be amazing to see this image below or something similar?
Please feel free to contact us (cdhawareness@breathofhopeinc.com) if you have any questions or would like us to help promote your event! Thank you all always!
