Coincidence last year led us to put forward a lighting request to BC Place Stadium in support of October 15 – Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. The Vancouver Sun ran a story about it which was great to bring awareness to the topic of miscarriage, stillbirth and neonatal death. We had a get together with other families in the evening of that day to watch the stadium change colors from pink to blue.
For 2014 we are a little better prepared and won’t organize everything in the last minute. Requests to illuminate landmarks have been put forward weeks ago, we contacted our MLA to get the day proclaimed again, we are preparing a media campaign and have finished a new website. Initially, we planned to build only a site that would be useful for outreach around the event in Vancouver, but we quickly realized that there are many fantastic initiatives happening across Canada. While these events and activities are known locally, it was difficult to get a full picture about what is happening in Canada. So we extended our site to include a listing of events across the nation. The site is still in progress and we have to do more research to uncover additional events.
Please take a look at the site at www.october15.ca. Feedback, positive or negative, is always welcome and we will do our best to reply and improve the site so that it truly represents what bereaved parents care about and need in terms of support.
We added the site into the UBC Your Evolution competition as well. You can help us win a professional video for our cause by voting for our project before April 30. Please vote at https://yourevolution.ubc.ca/projects/156/pregnancy-and-infant-loss-awareness-day.
