DHF fosters a supportive environment where people touched by diabetes can connect with each other, hold informed discussions and share their experiences. As a result, their members find comfort in not feeling alone and together they promote a better understanding of life with diabetes. Since 2007, they have launched two social networks: TuDiabetes.com (in English) and EsTuDiabetes.com (in Spanish). Through their online communities, they’ve developed diabetes awareness initiatives such as Word In Your Hand, Drawing Diabetes, Diabetes Supplies Art, No-Sugar Added Poetry and the 14,000 People With Diabetes Test-in.

Click here to learn more about The Diabetes Hands Foundation and to make a donation to support this important initiative.

In January of 2009, the two founders of the Diabetes Hands Foundation, Manny Hernandez and Andreina Davila, asked the Madera Group to help them envision and execute the next steps in their organizational growth. Since 2006, DHF has joined creative programming with a sophisticated web platform to build an active online community of more than 11,000 people with diabetes.

Over the course of a ten-week engagement, Madera collaborated with DHF to create a strategic development plan. The plan included:

• A strategic fundraising plan outlining projected income and expenses.
• Fundraising targets and benchmarks.
• Recommendations on organizational structure.
• Staff roles and responsibilities.

“Engaging the services of the Madera team was one of the best things that we at the Diabetes Hands Foundation could have done. Their experience and background shined at every step of the engagement. We have received great value out of working with the Madera Group and learned a lot in the process. I highly recommend them to any nonprofit seeking strategic advice on fundraising and development.”

— Manny Hernandez, President and CEO, Diabetes Hands Foundation

… Athena Williams-Atwood (in photo at left) thinks so. She knows about the importance of working with enjoyment and relaxation— 16 years ago, at a time when she was working 60 to 80 hours a week, Athena had to radically change the way she managed her stress and tremendous workload. Eventually Athena founded Work With Ease, based in the US and Australia, to work with individuals and organizations to achieve better results, with peace of mind and health intact.

Some of her advice includes:

For managing a project with ease, Athena recommends:

• Create a project plan (even for short projects) with goals, actions and timeline.
• Identify what you are doing and also understand what you are not doing.
• Capture the intention and “essence” of the project (necessary when managing conflicting priorities).
• Determine areas that are negotiable and non-negotiable (e.g. outcomes, time, budget, resources).
• Resolve any conflicting priorities daily.

For me, key learnings from Athena’s teaching are about completing tasks (“closing the lid on jars”) and staying current on a daily basis to prioritize what needs to get done.

Today we feature Teens for Safe Cosmetics based in Marin County, California. While attending the Brower Youth Awards last month, I was moved by the young people being honored there for the environmental work they perform in their communities. For me, it was Earth Day 1970 and the “litter bug” campaign that shaped my early values on what it meant to be an environmentalist. One of the young people speaking that night was Jessica Assaf from San Rafael who helped found the teen-led campaign Teens for Safe Cosmetics.

These young women’s achievements are inspiring and impressive: they organized a statewide campaign that led Assaf and her other teens to lobby Senators and the Governor’s office to pass SB 484, a bill that requires cosmetic manufacturers to inform the Department of Health Services if their products contain carcinogens or other toxic substances. Teens for Safe Cosmetics and a coalition of other groups pressured OPI Products, Inc. the single largest nail polish company in the world to remove dibutyl phthalate (DBP), a toxin known to cause reproductive harm from its nail products.  Oh—yes, dear sister friends, that nail polish you use on your yogi toes!

The teens are now launching The Acne Project, a research campaign to educate teenagers about what they are putting on their skin and what the healthier alternatives are. On February 2-4, 2007, they are hosting the 2nd Annual Teen Summit where they are inviting girls from across the country to gain the tools to launch similar efforts in their own hometowns. Stay tuned as we have Jessica Assaf joining the Goody Bag blog team to keep us informed on their campaign and upcoming events.

Thank you, Jessica and thank you, teens!

To learn about the potential harm of the products you use and to find safer alternatives, go to the Environmental Working Group’s “Skin Deep Report”:
http://www.ewg.org/reports/skindeep.