The #insulin4all Campaign – World Diabetes Day 2014

The Pendsey Trust putting the ‘WORLD’ back in World Diabetes Day 2014: The #insulin4all Campaign.

One of our very first interviews when we started out as a charity was with the amazing Elizabeth Rowley at T1international – a blog dedicated to exposing the situation for those with diabetes internationally and the difficulties of access to insulin. We decided back in October to take our relationship to the next level, by joining together to form ‘The Access Alliance’; a consortium of charities dedicated to getting this message out there.

We decided to kick the consortium off with a bang by launching #insulin4all to tie in with World Diabetes Day 2014. Elizabeth outlined the main focus behind this campaign in her blog: ‘Is the world missing from World Diabetes Day’.

The request was simple, asking people to send in photographs of themselves holding a piece of paper with our slogan written on to www.insulin4all.tumblr.com, and to tweet and talk about our hashtag #insulin4all. The response was overwhelming.

We have received photographs from 309 individuals in 34 countries to date; the video we created to promote the campaign has received over 400 views, and across Twitter we have had a reach of 304,706 with 689,071 impressions (potential views). Famous faces taking part include Ana Ivanovich (female tennis player) and MP Adrian Sanders.

Not only that, but the campaign caused ripples across the diabetes community, with a huge number of prominent bloggers choosing to write about us both on the day and afterwards (see links below), and new tweets and uploads about #insulin4all every day. The campaign also got the big diabetes charities talking, with Karen Addington, CEO of JDRF releasing this statement.

So what is next for #insulin4all? At a most basic level, the page functions as a testimony to people all over the world waking up to the situation for those without access to insulin in the 21^st century. We hope it will become the lever as we campaign to improve this situation in the months and years to come.

Together, we can get #insulin4all, and this campaign was just the beginning of what we hope will be a successful consortium. Thank you to everyone who did get involved- and to those who didn’t, it is not too late to contribute by posting your photo at www.insulin4all.tumblr.com.