World Meningitis Day was held on April 24 2013. It is a
global annual event that raises awareness of the disease. This year the Confederation
of Meningitis Organisations (CoMO) spent the day at Perth City Murray Street
Mall alongside their organisation member the Meningitis Centre, raising
awareness of the need to get government recognition worldwide to put prevention
vaccines into their National Immunisation Programs (NIP). This was the first
time the organisations had held a booth in the city.
The day was a new experience where I had to step out my
comfort zone and go up to people and ask them if they knew about meningitis and
would they be interested in signing the petition to help prevent meningitis. This
proved to be a bit of challenge as some people are against vaccines and some
people think you’re trying to sell them some sort of product or take their
money and therefore ignored me. Some people were the opposite and were willing
to sign the petition and were happy to be provided with information about the
disease. I also had to shake the donation tins during the day which also had
its challenge as I didn’t want to make people feel like they had to donate.
Despite the challenges of shaking tins and signing the petition it was a fun
day out of the office and a great opportunity to get the message about
meningitis directly into the community.
Our target on the day was parents and grandparents with
young children. Balloons, stickers and brochures where given out on the day. I
was surprised by how successful the uses of balloons were to gain attention
from children and to draw in parents.
The Meningitis Centres ambassadors Brett Sheehan father of a
survivor and survivor of meningitis Adam Selwood attended the event to assist
in getting people’s attention and share their experiences with the disease. Survivors of meningitis and their families and
friends also attended the event. This
created a great atmosphere where many parents, grandparents and even young
people were provided with plenty of information about meningitis, signed the
petition or donated to organisation. It was great that it was school holidays
so there were plenty of parent and children around the city.
The event was covered by channel 10 news on the day where
they interviewed Adam Selwood and Brett Sheehan. It was great to get to have
this media attention.
It was a great opportunity to see how a non for profit
organisation engaged with the community and raised awareness. I would say it was a successful shake and sign
event.
-Alyce
