I became an Arthritis Ambassador

This week I signed up to become an Arthritis Ambassador for the Arthritis Foundation.  Arthritis Ambassadors are volunteers committed to taking part in the democratic process and serve as liaisons between the Arthritis Foundation and their Congressional District’s Representative.  Every other month I am asked to listen to a conference call and then asked to do a special project "to advance the Foundation's advocacy efforts and to share their story with important decision makers."   I am also encouraged to attend the annual Advocacy Summit in Washington, DC at the end of February.

This month I have my pick of two assignments: 1) call my three Health Legislative Assistants (one Representative and two Senators) and request support for arthritis research in the FY 2012 budget or 2) either attend a town hall meeting or schedule a district meeting with my Representative.  Since we all know our Representatives are still in DC dealing with that debt issue, I will be calling my Health Legislative Assistants this week. 

Some of the tasks I may be asked to do are: Contacting my members of Congress, recruiting new advocates, and writing letters to local newspapers.

I am really excited to be a part of advocacy work again.  I loved it when I did advocacy work with Mobilization Against AIDS.  I always felt like I was working directly toward something.  Telling my story. 

If there are any activities that are easy to do, like the e-letter earlier on my blog, I will post them here for folks to participate if they want to.