For most of the last year, I’ve been working to help my nephew, Tanner. I’ve been telling his story for a few years now, but – as you probably already know if you read this blog, and/or my other blog – his condition has deteriorated dramatically over the past year, and he and his family are facing some unique and difficult challenges, and I’ve been working really hard to do something about that, to figure out a way to help, both for his sake and for the sake of other children facing similar circumstances who might need the same sort of help in the future. I don’t claim to be going about it gracefully – even wearing a tutu, I am the antithesis of graceful – but I am going about it passionately, or at least I’m trying to, because I want to make a difference, for him and, hopefully, for other children who need to have difference made on their behalf.

Anyway. This post is not about Tanner, exactly. It’s more about the spirit of Tanner, or the spirit of the tutus, however you want to look at it. It’s about making another kind of difference, in a slightly different kind of way, but a difference – a necessary difference – nonetheless. It’s about other children, children who are not like Tanner in the obvious ways, but who need help just as much as Tanner does. It’s about helping those children.

It’s about helping these children. Babies, who are at risk of getting sick – very, very sick; terminally sick – but whose risk of illness can be eliminated, entirely. Babies whose lives can be saved.

I’ll let Carla Bruni-Sarkozy explain it:

These lives can be saved, before they even need saving. Transmission of HIV from mother to child can be prevented, entirely. It’s been almost entirely eliminated in the so-called developed world – let’s eliminate it from the developing world. Because we can. Because we should.

Because those lives are just as precious as Tanner’s. I can’t save Tanner’s life – I can only do what I can to ease what’s left of it, and work toward a future in which other boys don’t have their lives shortened like his. But these lives – the lives of babies who are being born to mothers with HIV – these lives we can save now. Right now. I want to try.

I’d love it you would help me try. It just takes a few words – the words that are your name, signed to a petition, asking your government to support this effort. That’s all. So little, and yet so much.

Just signatures. We can do that, right?

(Oh, and? I am going to Africa – to Lesotho – to see this effort first hand, and to wrap my heart around it, and to write about it, of course. If you help, you could join me. Really. Just click that link. It will tell you that if you can rally your community to sign that petition, you might be able to go to Lesotho, too. To see this all first-hand.

You should totally do this. Trip to Africa or no trip Africa, it’s an important – life-saving – cause. Please help?)

Here are more detailed details about what you can do to help AND join me on the trip (from the Facebook page):

We put this in your hands. We’re going to pick the person whogathers the most support for the campaign. We’re going to pick thesupporter that recruits the most people via to our Causes petitionand raises the mostawareness for the campaign.

Do you want to go? Here is what you need to do:

1. Click on http://www.causes.com/fighthiv and click invite your friends (or use this link: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/petitions/466/invite?step=0 ) and invite as many of your friends to sign up as possible (be sure to publish the link on your profile too).
2. Gather support elsewhere. Write to blogs you know, persuade anyonethat can reach a big audience to promote the campaign, host promotionalevents at your local club. Persuade employees to sign up. Reallyinnovative promotional ideas will go down well here.
3. Send an e-mail to socialmedia@theglobalfund.org telling us who you are, how many people you have recruited and what you did to promote the campaign.

At 5:59am, EDT, Sept 3rd, competition entries close and we will contact the winner the following day.

(That ‘gather support elsewhere’ thing is important to consider – the contest won’t be determined on signatures alone, but also on how much you can do to get the message out there: blog it, vlog it, tweet it, start a meme, anything. The more people get involved, the further the message goes; the further the message goes, the more signatures; the more signatures, the more likely it is that this campaign will get the funding it needs and will be able to get down to the work of saving lives. So.)

Julie of The Mom Slant is doing it. Aimee of Greeblemonkey can’t go on the trip, but she’s helping out anyway. As people jump on board, I’ll compile a list of participants to follow here, and post them here and at Her Bad Mother.

You’ll join us, right?