#MEAction is a global health network advocating for people with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, an often misunderstood neuroimmune disease affecting millions.
We need to raise $100,000 through this Indiegogo campaign to support our work for the remainder of the year to expand our reach, build community, increase our advocacy, educate doctors and scientists, and inspire new researchers and clinicians to join the field. Here is what your support can help us achieve.
REACH ME
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We're working hard to gain mass and strategic recognition of ME as a debilitating disease suffered by millions by engaging press and developing a wide variety of multimedia education tools.
You support helps us create short-form educational videos and infographics to make it easier than ever to raise awareness, dispel myths, and help patients find diagnosis. It also helps support an ongoing press and communications strategy to keep ME in the spotlight and increase public pressure for change.
CONNECT ME
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We're growing a thriving community of support, friendship, fun, creativity, and purpose.
You can help us grow a community of peer support and activism, build better tools for connecting volunteers with worthy projects, and support community initiatives like our literary magazine and BedFest.
Whoever we once were in our lives before illness – scientists, nurses, artists, parents – we still have so much to give one another and the world. We believe fostering greater connection is a good unto itself, one that improves quality of life, but also builds our capacity to create and take action together in order to save our lives.
ADVOCATE with ME
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We're mobilizing patients and allies to advocate for more public investment in research, public awareness, and medical education. Our emphasis is local, strategic action in order to build, our time, our capacity for national impact.
Your support will help us build a new suite of tools for local organizers; grow our network of local, state/provincial and national groups; support our events and petitions tools; add a new contact Congress and Parliament tool; and help us keep supporting the work of amazing patient advocates engaging with a variety government institutions including the US Congress, National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, CFSAC, the UK Parliament and much more.
EDUCATE ME
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We're doing outreach to doctors, nurses and other health professionals to encourage empathetic, knowledgeable care for all.
Your support will help our efforts to deepen and expand Unrest as a tool for medical education and outreach. Unrest has already screened at many medical schools around the world, but now through a new partnership with the American Medical Women's Association, we have an opportunity to accredit the film for continuing medical education and build a medical school curriculum around it. We then hope to work with local organizations around the world to adapt and translate these curricula and materials for other national contexts as we expand screenings of in medical and nursing schools across the US and around the world.
INSPIRE ME
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We want to inspire a new generation of researchers to join this field.
Your support will help us to expand and improve MEpedia and bring new students into the project, including budding neuroscientists and immunologists; launch a quarterly newsletter for clinicians and researchers summarizing the latest science, conferences and funding opportunities; build new partnerships with related disease organizations; support network-building efforts between ME researchers and scientists in related fields; and our collaborations with existing research organizations to link all of our outreach efforts to their incredible work.
SHARE
We cannot thank you enough for all you do for #MEAction. Help us continue this fight!
OUR BUDGET
$100,000 is a big goal but these are also ambitious plans! Our 2018 budget is $300,000, of which we have raised $140,000.
Even if we meet our crowdfunding goal, that alone will obviously not be enough to achieve all of this vision, many of which involve multi-year projects and program. But it will go a long way toward helping us take some important first steps and build on all of the success and impact of this last year. And as ever, the more we are able to raise, the more we can do.
You can read more about our financials here.
Live in the UK? You can also support our efforts to hire a full-time UK team member for advocacy & outreach here.
REWARDS
All rewards will ship in July 2018 (earlier if we can!). MEAction is a 501(c)(3) organization. All rewards are tax-deductible, minus the value of any tangible rewards. Rewards may be slightly different in appearance than the images shown.
OUR TEAM
Learn more about our team here.
