Spare A Rose, Save A Child.

What if the cost of one less rose for your schnookums (hey, I'm not judging your pet names) this Valentine's Day could help save a child's life?

It can!

A small group of diabetes advocates – Kelly Close, Manny Hernandez, Bennet Dunlap, Adam Brown, Kerri Sparling, and Jeff Hitchcock – with the support of some friends at Johnson & Johnson, got together recently to see how the diabetes community could use social media for social good, and here's the great idea that came out of that meeting:

This Valentine's Day, the diabetes community can help the Life for a Child program, sponsored by the International Diabetes Federation, which aims to take “contributions from donors [to] go to established diabetes centers enabling them to provide the ongoing clinical care and diabetes education these children need to stay alive.” The idea is to take the typical “dozen roses,” so popular on Valentine’s Day, and save just one rose to spare the life of a child. “Spare a Rose, Save a Child” is simple: buy one less rose this Valentine’s Day and share the value of that flower with a child with diabetes in the developing world. Your loved one at home still gets flowers, and you both show some love to someone who needs it.

Want to help spread the word? Here's what you can do:

• This week, February 10 - 16, spread the word through your blog, Facebook, Twitter (use the hashtag #sparearose), Google+, Tumblr, or your menagerie of carrier pigeons about the "Spare a Rose, Save a Child" idea, which will also help raise awareness of the Life for a Child program. (And if you do post about this effort, please leave a comment on Kerri's blog post so that everything can be kept track of.)
• If you're so inclined, download one of these images to use in your post, on your site, as your social media avatar, whatevs, during this week: Banner 1, Banner 2, Banner 3. 
• Please use the URL: http://bit.ly/SpareRoseSaveChild to link to the IDF site. (This is a short URL created to see how much impact our social media campaign has generated.) For more information on the Life for a Child program, please check out that link.

Let's help spread the love offline to those in our diabetes community that most need it.