Autism Speaks.. a cause I care about!

This week for the blog challenge it is about a cause you care about...

Obviously, something near and dear to my heart is my "bubby" Kameron who is diagnosed with Autism. I just recently started or tried to get more involved with Autism Speaks. Our chapter is for Tampa Bay and their office is located in Clearwater, but they say it's basically Pinellas Park. It's about a 45 minute drive to get there, but thats ok.

Last year, how I got involved was by forming a team for the Walk. It was last February and we raised a little bit of money and the team consisted of: Myself, Steve, Kameron, Faith, My Mom, Aunt Paula, Aunt Reba, and my 2 cousins Jasmine and Brandon. It was a 1 mile walk at MOSI and it was a cloudy day but we still enjoyed ourselves. There was a resource fair and other stuff afterwards, but we didn't stay for that.

This year, what I've done to get involved is to get all the cities and my county to proclaim April as Autism Awareness Month. I'll be going to each of the Cities City Commission Meeting to accept the proclamation. I've already gone to one, the City of Bradenton where I accepted that proclamation last Wednesday. After that meeting (it was at 6pm) I headed up to Clearwater for an Open House type of meeting which was fun. I gave the first proclamation to Krista who is like our chapter manager. She was excited to receive it and so happy that I'm helping. She calls me the "proclamation guru".

The walk is coming up for March 28th at MOSI again and I can't wait! I've raised $690 by myself to date. I've sent letters to over 90 different people. People who I wouldn't even expect to donate have, so that is awesome! My goal is to raise $1000.00 or more so I hope I can do it. There is one guy who has raised over $10,000 by himself!!! I'm not sure how he did it, but I'd sure love to pick his brain :-). We are also going to have a garage sale on Saturday the 14th and I'm hoping we get a good turnout for that. Our team is a lot bigger this year too! I wanted to get at least 10 of us to walk and that's exactly what I got! Me, Steve, Kam, Faith, My Mom, Aunt Reba, her son Brent and daughter in Law Jennifer, my Uncle Sterling, and my Aunt Paula. I'm sure my 2 cousins Jasmine and Brandon will walk too, but they are teenagers and too cool for stuff so we'll see if they come or not.

I won't be walking though, but helping at the registration booth since I will be 38 weeks prego and I can barely walk around walmart without having to pee a bazillion different times. I'm hoping to get more involved with the monthly meeting and see what else I can do for my area. There isn't much awareness about Autism and there needs to be!