Big news for the great TuDiabetes.com family!!

A couple of weekends ago, we shared the news about the creation of the Diabetes Hands Foundation. This is a non-profit that we formed to serve as an umbrella for TuDiabetes.com, EsTuDiabetes.com, Word In Your Hands and other programs and initiatives to come in the future.

We will be creating a simple website for the Foundation in the coming days, with the relevant information about it. We will be making an announcement about this as soon as it is available. But today, we have some big news to share with everyone.

Going on to work full-time for the Foundation
Starting this coming Tuesday, April 22, I will be dedicating myself full time to the activities of the foundation. This foundation is starting as a very small entity with only two full-time employees: myself and Andreina (my wife).

A while back we created a Group for this purpose, which I invite you to join if you want to give back to the community and be involved in future projects.

We also have a great Board of Directors. We will be introducing the members on the upcoming site for the Foundation.

Announcing a partnership with OneTouch
Last year there was a running discussion in the community about how to make TuDiabetes sustainable for a very long time. The thoughts everyone poured into this discussion were taken to heart, to make sure we looked for ways that helped ensure the future of the community while preserving our integrity as a big family.

After evaluating the suggestions, we decided to explore the options that most members that participated seemed to be comfortable with. Though we still are looking for more ways to continue to sustain the community, we are happy to share with everyone the news about a new partnership, that is helping us kick start the labor of our foundation.

In early February, a guy by the name of Michael approached us at the San Francisco Diabetes Expo in Santa Clara (he had read here that we were going to be there). Landileigh was there and saw it happen. It was very surreal to find out he represented LifeScan, the makers of the OneTouch meters, specially after we had attempted for many weeks in 2007 to find out who we could speak with there to explore the possibility of a partnership.

After two and half months and a LOT of work and trips to San Francisco and one trip to L.A. (the one where I did podcast at the Oscars), we have chosen to partner with OneTouch, licensing to them the concept and the name of the Word In Your Hand project that came to life within our community in 2007.

The concept of using a word to describe what diabetes means to people resonated with them and they will be working with us to support the Word In Your Hand project and find ways to grow it.

What does this mean to our community?
1) Our foundation and our communities (EsTuDiabetes.com included) will remain independent. We will continue to be a place where members can freely exchange ideas and information and network with other people touched by diabetes in a comfortable and fun environment. If you have things to say about any product or company, as long as you do it respectfully as stated in the Terms of Use, you can freely do so.

2) We worked with Luis E who came up with the initial idea that we all fell in love with and started contributing to. Luis kindly assigned the rights he had to this idea to the Foundation to help make this possible. So now, the Diabetes Hands Foundation is the owner of the rights to the Word In Your Hand project.

3) The photos members contributed as a part of the project are owned by whoever took them. A few of our members were kind enough to release their rights to the photo the contributed as a part of the Word In Your Hand project last year, so this partnership could happen too. Thanks to each and every one of you!!! We want to acknowledge you by name:
-Tom
-Beatriz D.
-Ed
-Amylia Grace
-Lea B
-Landileigh Nelson

Besides them Luis E, Andreina (my wife), Santiago (our son) and myself also volunteered our photos to make this happen.

4) If you visit the OneTouch web site and click on the Word In Your Hand project link at the bottom left (or the Sharing tab at the top center) you will see how the licensed concept is being embedded as part of the OneTouch campaign starting April 21.

5) One of the many cool dimensions this has for us as a community is that people who land on the "Sharing" page in the OneTouch web site will hear the story about TuDiabetes and the Word In Your Hand project. This means our family is going to grow as we reach out to many, many more people touched by diabetes, so they TOO don't feel alone.

So what's next?
Keep your eye on TV and magazines (at the present time, this is going in the US only): you will see the words on people's hands as part of the OneTouch campaign.

We foresee an important growth in the size of our community in the coming months as a result of this partnership. I want to ask you to please welcome folks as you see them join, just like others welcomed you when you first joined TuDiabetes. Remember how you felt when you first arrived and realized that you were not alone in living with diabetes...

Pardon the length of this post. We felt we had to go into this much detail to make sure everyone had as much information as possible about this big milestone in the life of our great family. In addition to this post, we have created an FAQ about the OneTouch partnership. If you have other questions or thoughts about this partnership, please share them here.

Congratulate yourselves for this! We got noticed because of what every single one of you does in the community every single day.