Awareness Postcards

[a VEDSer]

I was diagnosed with Vascular Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and was informed that it would be my job to educate my doctor's on what that is because it is rare.

I came up with the idea of using awareness postcards to mail during awareness month. Postcards are easy to customize, and are cheaper to mail in bulk.

I like to take advantage of the vistaprint sales, 100 standard size postcards for free with $6.49 for slow (21 day) shipping and use one of the many images they have to offer. I just ignore the suggested info they put for lines to fill in the cards and come up with my own info.

If they offer other items for free I recommend taking advantage of the offer as the shipping isn't that much more and they have magnets that can be customized, as well as pens, stamps that can be made into an awareness message, address labels that can be customized into awareness stickers, cards that can have an awareness message printed on them, the have window clings, sticky notes, and so on.

I just want to comment that only the standard size postcard offer the reduced mailing cost (currently 27 cents- US postage) and the oversized cost as much as mailing a letter.

There are also many sites that can print off the awareness bracelets, I found three that does not require a large order. I am using some of those to encourage my family member to mail out awareness cards for me by offering them a gift for doing so.

Others have applied for talk shows like Oprah and The Doctors or gotten articles in the local newspapers. I suggested looking into taking out ads in magazines, thinking of medical journals in particular.

[PeggyF]

I like this idea very much!