Today, the Changing Diabetes Bus arrived to the capital of The Netherlands. We were invited to come to the VUMC, the Medical Hospital of the University of Amsterdam.
At the main parking area, the bus driver (Leif) found a nice spot among the cars of the hospital visitors: Should there be a better place to get more people around the bus?!
I am sure that the answer is ‘NO’ on that.Before the bus even opened its doors, people were already waiting to come in! Although it was raining practically the whole day, people continued coming, with thanks to all brave volunteers of the Changing Diabetes Bus crew that kept on standing outside to hand out flyers: definitely not made out of sugar (Dutch expression)!!
At 10.00 am, Professor Heine of the VUMC unveiled the Bus in Amsterdam with a speech about the importance to pay a lot of attention to diabetes. And he is sure that the Novo Nordisk Changing Diabetes Bus will have a huge impact to increase awareness in the whole world!
After Professor Heine, Jelle Spree talked about his bicycle trip to the Northern Europe with his girlfriend to raise money for the Dutch Diabetes Foundation. They almost gathered 10,000 euro together. Jelle has type 1 diabetes since 1995.
Wietske closed the floor by talking about her life with diabetes, the Dutch Novo Nordisk and the IDF Youth Panellists and the reasons why everybody should support the ‘Unite for Diabetes’ campaign and sign the petition for a UN Resolution on Diabetes.
It was a great start of a great day in Amsterdam! Different to yesterday, more specialized people as nurses, doctors, but also diabetes patients themselves came to sign the petition for the UN Resolution. Visitors made questions about medication, situations out of the normal day of a diabetes patient, and gave lots of supporting words.
After all, we can say that the weather was totally in contrast to the success we again booked today: hundreds and hundreds of signatures. We once more felt that the Dutch people are seriously responsive to our call for signatures and are willing to support our World Tour!
The online petition, available on www.changingdiabetes.nl, has already gathered over 900 signatures.
Cheers,
Wietske & Roy
|
