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Here in Washington, D.C., the temperature may finally be
warming up, but our national political climate has been heated for what seems
like the entire 2013 fiscal year. 
Partisanship continues to rule the day on Capitol Hill, and so during
the final hours of 2012 we were elated when Congress agreed to JDRF’s top
legislative priority, the renewal of the Special
Diabetes Program (SDP), fully funded at $150 million for one-year.  Thanks to the advocating of JDRF volunteers
and staff, the SDP continues to enjoy broad bipartisan support, as illustrated
by the program’s renewal being one of the few success stories to come out of a
gridlocked 112^th Congress.  Coming
into the summer months, we now have about seven months left in our calendar
year, and so we’re starting to kick SDP renewal into high gear once more,
making sure a multi-year, fully-funded renewal is on Congress’ fall agenda.

With a new Congress in town, naturally we have new Members
to meet and educate about JDRF, T1D and the SDP.  As soon as the 113^th Congress was
sworn in, we kicked off their arrival with our New
Member Outreach Initiative (NMOI).  Now just five months later, we have met with over half
of these new Members in their home state/local district offices, and we
continue to set up these intro meetings with high success around the country.  Coming up in fiscal year 2014 is one of
JDRF’s signature events, the 2013 Children’s
Congress (CC), held in early July. Each delegate has a unique story and they are all being featured in a blog series between now and July.  CC will be followed
by the Promise to Remember Me campaign,
which will kick off in August and run until the end of the year.  We will be hitting the Hill, and visiting
state/local district offices, getting our personal touches in by telling our
T1D story, and making sure critical T1D research funding is at the forefront of
lawmakers’ minds.  It remains imperative
that the SDP is renewed this year because if cut, JDRF would not be able to
make up the $150 million difference in important T1D research funding dollars being
driven to NIH, and essentially research would be lost.

To learn more about Advocacy and to get involved, please
visit:  advocacy.jdrf.org.

If you are on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, make sure to follow the Children’s Congress (#JDRFcc13) and Promise to Remember Me campaigns (#JDRFPromise).