To celebrate World IBD Day on the 19th May 2016, we held a fun little competition. We asked our followers to tell us "How do you stand up to IBD?" We then chose 5 quotes that stood out, these quotes were then illustrated by one of the projects friends and submitters Squirl-Art.
The response from the GCASFM community of followers was positive, with many different ways and outlooks on how people stood up to the illness that tries to dictate how they live their lives. It was such a welcome relief to read such positive messages, unified in one thing, not letting Crohn's disease bully them into submission and to take it and their lives by the scruff of the neck and show the world who is boss.
The submissions were gathered and Greg aka Squirl-Art selected the ones he felt his illustrative work would best recreate. He has done an exceptional job, each piece hanging on the words around it, bringing these short sentences to life in hand drawn form. His fun characters are also part of the projects sticker submissions, the 'Race To The Toilet' stickers really have caused a great reaction, with great humour and brilliant creativity, to interpret the brief.
We hope to do more interactive ventures in the future, be it competitions or asking you guys for help with things, we hope to build a nice community spirit, not just leaving you as outsiders looking in, but being part of this project as we push forward with raising awareness.
A massive thanks to those whose words were chosen, some close friends of the project Ro, Jack and Thomas as well as newer faces Matthew and Darya. We also had two runners up whose entries sadly didn't get illustrated due to time restraints but thanks to Mary and Alexandra.
Our little competition was just a little way to connect with our followers on a very special day, although everyday should be celebrated. So many people around the world embraced the day with such passion and dedication. Many fundraising activities taking place, charity organisation t-shirts being worn with great passion, a plethora of fundraising events and making sure the awareness was being spread across the social media platforms. We have to give a big shout out to the project known as 'Get Your Belly Out', an organisation that has been running a bit longer than us, with an almighty army of followers and a large core team who have made it their mission like us to raise funds for Crohn's & Colitis UK. Their work is very impressive and GCASFM congratulates them on reaching a staggering £50,000 with their fundraising, that is a pretty amazing feat.
So onwards we go, we will try and emulate the benchmark set by those guys, as our project fully unfolds it's fundraising wings. If you want to DONATE feel free to hit that big pink button, and give what you can afford to a very worthy cause.
Thanks for your continued support everyone.
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