April-->Autism Awareness month

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April is autism awareness month. Now, I do realize that April is over a month away, but I figured that it might take a few weeks to come up with and implement any ideas....

Speaking of ideas, I thought maybe we could brainstorm on neat things to do to raise awareness and tolerance and education? This is our chance to try to get through to the NT's!

A few budding ideas, off the cuff.

Have a T-shirt printed up....what should it say? :thinking:.......

Print out information on AS or autism from the net and let people who are curious read it. Hmm....sites...it needs to be concise enough not to lose their interest but also informative enough to combat any misinformation or preconceived ideas they might have.

Bumper stickers- I wonder if there are some...

I will go and talk to the ladies at the library, see if we can get an autism related display for April. "Nobody Nowhere" and "Somebody Somewhere" along with other relevant books could be part of the display. Maybe if they have a little notice they can get other books from inter-library loans....

What I would really like to see is a gathering of the local people who are on the autistic spectrum. I know they are out there, but most of us lay low for the most part...

I've been trying to find out if Autism Awareness month exists in other countries as well as the US- the best info I could find was about autism awareness week in the uk, but that info was a couple of years out of date and the week was in May( I think).
In anycase I think it would be great if we come up with some ideas for something to do. I'd only had a couple of basic ideas but I thought if we could take volunteers who would like to design a poster and leaflet about autism and AS that could be put online (possibly here- Alex??) for people to print off and distribute locally.

It might also be an idea if we could write to local newspapers, etc pointing out that April is Autism awareness month and ask if they will be running a feature on it.

Would love to see what other suggests members can come up with it and it might be an idea to add a poll to see how many of us would be interested in getting involved

Have made this a sticky for now so it doesn't get lost among all the other posts.

April is Autism Awareness Month in The US.

Autism Awareness Week for Australia is May 8 - May 14, 2005 according to

http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv ... endocument

Autism Awareness Week in the UK is Sept 26- Oct 1 according to

http://www.dotpharmacy.co.uk/events.pdf

Hope this helps.

Yes it does RJ thank you- I searched and searched for the Uk week and could only get info on ones that were a couple of years old (and it was in May then )

When I went to the library, they were excited by the prospect of doing a display for April! Now I need to get some ideas for what information to include for the display..... It needs to be concise and to help combat some of the current misinformation people seem to suffer from. (It never occurred to me that I had Asperger's because I thought autistic people hardly spoke and rocked constantly from babyhood...I didn't know that there WAS a high functioning possibility).

Next I need to go to the local newspaper...I think I will see if they can print somethign such as the following, right away: April is Autsim Awareness Month. The Priest River Times is looking for articles, information, and input relating to autism; including Asperger's Syndrome and PDD. If you are autistic or know soemone who is, please call at 888-8888.

Does that sound OK?

I think another idea would be if people purchased WrongPlanet merchandise. They have sweatshirts, hoodies, t-shirts, bumper stickers etc. I think those items would be a good conversation starter, b/c nobody, except us, knows what it is. It would help Alex out with the cost of maintaining this website we all enjoy and need.

I think the idea of seeing if your local library would put books on autism on display, like they do with Black History Month, i.e. this month.

IMO,
Tallgirl

Good suggestions Tallgirl - and you are right, merchandise sales would help a lot with the running costs here.

The press release also sounds like a good idea chamoisee - a useful addition might be an email address as well though, given that a fair few aspies hate using the phone.

Dunc

I turn 18 in April. So I may be able to buy merchendise for my birthday.

This seems like a good thing to get working on - http://www.wrongplanet.org/ is now ready, so if anyone wants to design flyers or has ideas for raising awareness, lets share them!

Dunc

Can you guys make this thread sticky again please?

ElfMan

So what are some things people would like to see in an awareness pamphlet? And what images come to mind for people when they thing of autism/aspergers?

C'mon folks, ideas! If we can get some thoughts together, I'll get a pamphlet ready as a PDF and/or Word file for download by visitors, here and at wp.org.