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Blue Ribbon Avatar for the Month of May 2010!

Messages
74
Dear Everyone,


We all know that May is International ME/CFS Awareness Month so I thought of an idea to raise awareness without a lot of exertion on our parts.

Cort mentioned in another thread that despite inviting thousands of patients a meeting of CFSAC only about 50 showed up! One of the reasons for this low participation in advocacy events is quite obvious we are just too sick!

However anyone reading this uses the internet at least some of the time...

...Id bet that most of us either have:

A.) A Facebook
B.) A Myspace
C.) A Twitter
D.) A Blog
E.) Some other Forum(s) where we post on topics not related to ME/CFS.

Some of the Techi people may have more than one or even all the above.

So I suggest the following: for the month of May lets all change our avatars to a blue-ribbon design and link them to a description of ME/CFS or a personal story of someone who has(had) it!

I have attached a sample blue-ribbon design only a sample, please someone more creative do it better!

MySample..png

How do you link your avatar to a webpage? Well you can only on certain types of blogs or forums. In most cases you will have to put the link and a short description in your Signature (if a group or a forum) or in a comment on your avatar (if Facebook).

Here are a few things I thought of on my own that I thought you might want to link your avatar to:

Alison Hunters Speech About M.E./CFS.
(URL="http://www.ahmf.org/forgetmenot.html"]Alison Hunters Speech About M.E./CFS[/URL )

Sophia Mirzas Story with M.E.
(URL="http://www.sophiaandme.org.uk/sophia%20&%20m.e.%20her%20story.html"]Sophia Mirzas Story with M.E.[/URL)

About M.E. from Blue Ribbon for the Awareness of ME.
(URL="http://www.brame.org/productssimple.html"]About M.E. from Blue Ribbon for the Awareness of ME[/URL)

A Sudden IllnessBy Laura Hillenbrand.
(URL="http://www.cfids-cab.org/MESA/Hillenbrand.html"]A Sudden IllnessBy Laura Hillenbrand[/URL)

Blue Ribbon Campaign for ME/CFS.
(URL=" http://www.blueribboncampaignforme.org/Learn_about_ME_CFS.html"] Blue Ribbon Campaign for ME/CFS[/URL)

Im sure there are many more touching stories and/or information pages which could serve as an easy introduction to this illness! These are just those I could think of off hand. For this thread please post them with the links in parentheses (instead of brackets) so the link will be viewable.

Additionally on this huge board there have to be a few people with artistic ability who can design a really gorgeous blue-ribbon avatar! Please post those here also, mine was only a sampleI stink at most art-type things!

Its not May yet and this is only a rough draft so to speak. So lastly please post comments on how this idea could be improved! :Retro wink:



 
Messages
74
I thought this would be a very good idea... Changing your avatar requires almost no energy whatsoever. Adding a link to your avatar requires almost no energy whatsoever.

This idea would work best if some people who are good at art uploaded avatars they designed for this purpose (Awareness Month) so that we can all use the same one (thereby increasing the effect).

Also if people know links to other touching stories regarding ME/CFS please post! My links were only a few suggestions to kick-start everything.
 

creekfeet

Sockfeet
Messages
553
Location
Eastern High Sierra
I'mma steal some of those links to put on the Socks site! Thank you so much. And yes, I'll soon be sporting the blue ribbon everywhere I can.

EDIT: How about here at PR for another link (for avatars we're displaying elsewhere) or how about Osler's Web?
 

creekfeet

Sockfeet
Messages
553
Location
Eastern High Sierra
We're ready to share the Socks site so that's another link you could use with your avatar, and in fact, you can use the socks ribbon!
Edit: oops, I need to make a smaller version of the logo. I'll come back and fix this, soon.
 
Messages
74
Thanks Creekfeet, I think it's a great idea to have each idea complement the other. With that fedora of yours I feel like at any instant you will yell at me, "it belongs in a museum!" --maybe with enough effective advocacy we can finally put ME/CFS in a museum for good!

About the PR site, since most of the people clicking on the links wouldn't know that much about ME/CFS, or maybe nothing, does PR have a good page to introduce people to ME/CFS in a way that is concise and interesting (to a healthy, normal, person)? I know some people have their stories on PR blogs, but does anyone in particular have a story that is concise and fairly representative?

Thanks for Osler's Web, that's one of the many I hadn't thought of.

Now off to check the socks thread !