Who is your favorite Superhero?

Because today is National Superhero Day we ask the question: Who is your favorite Superhero? Is this person fictitious or is it a real Superhero who has inspired you?

I love Superheroes because they want to help others. They want to make the world a better place. They are unselfish and are a positive influence.

My favorite Superhero is a real person. She is someone who has inspired me for many years and has changed my life - my Sister Tracy - also known as Superwoman T-Si. She never tried to be an inspiration to others. She would say that she was just trying to live her life, but in doing just that, she was and still is an inspiration.

On this day to recongize our Superheroes, be sure to share with us your favorite Superhero and why?
Smiles,

Jackie
President & Founder

National Pay It Forward Day

Doing something for someone else can be exhilarating plus you can possibly help someone else in ways that you may never quite know how it will effect them or even you.

National Pay It Forward day is today, April 24 and we want to honor that day at Help Your Hero. Help Your Hero was built on a 1991 Pay It Forward promise that my sister Tracy and I made to each other that has been life changing for both of us and now many more people and that is awesome!

To help jump start your Pay It Forward, we have listed out many Pay it Forward ideas that are simple and free. Be sure that you share with us how you paid it forward so we can all celebrate this National Pay It Forward day!

Smiles,

Jackie
President & Founder

Sometimes you have to ask for help.

Sometimes you have to ask for help and this is one of those times...

When my team and I first began working on the unique concept for HelpYourHero.org to honor Tracy and Grant's legacy, we agreed early on that it should always be free to register and use. By eliminating membership fees, we are able to provide tools and services to the supportive communities around children with medical conditions without increasing financial burdens. After all, families of children with medical conditions don’t need to worry about coming up with money for one more thing. We know what it’s like to already have so much your mind and to be burdened by money, worry and fear.

As such, we have designed HelpYourHero.org to be sustained through a combination of corporate partnerships, merchandise sales, and later on as we grow, the sale of mobile apps and games. Until these things take off, however, we need your help while continuing to offer our free service. Creating and growing Help Your Hero is requiring a much greater financial investment than I am able to handle on my own. If my pay-it-forward promise is going to succeed, I must ask for help.

For those of you that know me, you know that I would rather give than receive, but I have to remind myself that this is not about me. I am asking for your financial support to help us continue developing HelpYourHero.org into what we've envisioned. To do this we need your financial support.

Trust me when I say I know that times are still tough for all of us. The financial toll of launching and maintaining Help Your Hero has become more than I had planned and certainly more than I can afford on my own. Every contribution help - in big or small ways!

If you are not in a position to help with a donation at this time, please share our website with your social circles to help us reach more people. Thoughts and prayers are also extremely welcome, as Help Your Hero has always been based on the foundation of positive thinking!

Thanks so much for your kindness!
All the Best, always!
Smiles,

Jackie
President & Founder

Sharing stories and spreading awareness

March 21, 2014 marks the 9th anniversary of World Down Syndrome Day. We are grateful every day to have this platform at HelpYourHero.org to help children and their families, and days like today are exactly why we do this work – to empower and enable children with medical conditions to communicate, in whatever way they can, and share their stories.

Part of this means we work to inform and spread awareness. We all have our experiences that make us who we are, and sometimes we need a little help to understand the experiences of others, sometimes even those in our own families.

So for this reason, we embrace the many days of awareness throughout the year like today, and we hope you’ll join us in spreading the word as we join in with the local, national and international conversations.

According to the website worlddownsyndromeday.org (WDSD), Down Syndrome International is focusing on:

“Health and Wellbeing - Access and Equality for All”

All people with Down syndrome have the right to access healthcare when required on an equal basis with others without discrimination and with proper assessment of the specific health needs of the individual. We will be highlighting that:

1. Having Down syndrome does not make a person unhealthy.
2. Down syndrome is a genetic condition, not an illness.
3. People with Down syndrome may have health issues throughout their lives, just like everyone else and they should have access to healthcare on an equal basis with others.
4. There are specific known health issues which may affect people with Down syndrome, for which accurate, evidence based information is available.
5. Health professionals should be aware of these specific issues when treating a person with Down syndrome.
6. Health professionals should not discriminate against people with Down syndrome by:

• a. refusing to treat them
• b. blaming health issues on Down syndrome in general
• c. or considering only specific known health issues which may affect people with Down syndrome.

 Best,
T. Bartlett
PR Manager & Story Writer

How words can affect us...

I have been amazed for years by author Masaru Emoto’s studies and experiments with water. Emoto wrote several volumes in a work entitled Messages from Water, and it is a must-read.

I have always believed that words are very powerful and Emoto’s work is helping to prove this. In this study, they use examples of positive words like Love and Appreciation and negative words like Adolph Hitler and they go on to show the effects that the words had on water. You can see more information about the work and photographs here.

My sister Tracy began to surround herself with positive words such as Believe in 1991 when she was received the grim diagnosis of her brain cancer. She knew it was not good news, but she believed that she needed to stay positive and surround herself with positive words as well as positive people. Her 21-year journey against all odds even ended with the words "In Remembrance of me…Don’t Stop Believin’.”

So with this in mind - Tracy’s inspiring journey with important and positive words and the findings of Emoto’s studies - when we created our line of motivational merchandise, we knew that positive words were a must, and this is why you see the words Believe and Hero peppered throughout our merchandise. If Emoto’s studies and findings are accurate, then wearing some positive words can be very healing. After all, our body is made up of about 60% water.

Check out our motivational merchandise for yourself or send the merchandise directly to someone else (with a gift message which you can include) that may need a positive message reminder.

Today I am sporting my Don’t Stop Believin’ Sweatshirt just so I can feel the effects of these positive words.

All the best, always,
Smiles,
Jackie 

Paying It Forward One Superhero at a Time

We get really excited every time we get to connect with various media outlets. We are incredibly thankful and humbled when we get to see HelpYourHero.org featured on CNN, USAToday.com, or WomenYouShouldKnow.net. But there’s an interesting thing that happens when the dust settles between stories. We instantly begin brainstorming about the next media project because we know we haven’t reached every Superhero that needs us, and we’ll never stop working toward this goal.

It’s always been one of our goals at HelpYourHero.org to get international attention for our unique and free services because we know that there are Superheroes everywhere around the world. So today we are really excited to be one step closer and on our way to getting some of this international attention with the book Your Unique Pay-It-Forward Story: Passing on Experiences of Giving.

The book, developed by Gideon Nelsen of Pifexperience.org, is designed to inspire and increase awareness of one another. A collection of pay-it-forward stories will be featured in the book, and Jackie’s and Tracy’s inspirational story and how HelpYourHero.org came to be will be one of them! There will also be a story by Catherine Ryan Hyde, author of Pay It Forward from which the popular movie was based on, will also be featured in this book.

The book is still in the early stages of development, so we don’t yet have a timeline for publication and we don’t know where it can be purchased. However, as we learn more about it, we will update you here and on our social media pages. I gave Jackie the news last week and she wanted to pass along some of her thoughts about it:

Upon receiving this news, I am just elated to know that this awesome book Gideon is creating and is going to be published internationally will helps us to reach even more families that can benefit from our services. Tracy asked the question in 1991 about those that have done so much for her and our family: “How are we going to pay all these people back, Jack?”  Well, it is now being answered in a big way by being honored as one of the stories in this book.

We look forward to sharing our story with the world, but it is our profound hope that by sharing our story and getting the word out about HelpYourHero.org, Superheroes around the world will feel empowered by it and therefore be able to share their stories, too.

Best,

T. Bartlett

PR Manager and Story Writer

Story-Telling through the Facebook Cover Image

All Facebook timelines, for people as well as pages, use a large header image known as the "cover photo". While there are some rules about what you can and can't display in this prime real estate, the space is essentially a billboard, and with one quick glance, your timeline visitors can get a real sense of who you might be and what you might be going through.

If you've set up a Facebook page for your Superhero child, perhaps as a way to help keep in touch with long-distance family, then you no doubt encountered the cover image dilemma. What image do I put here that lets people know what this page is about. The natural fall-back is an image of your child, but let's face it- that may not be the most flattering or telling image to plaster at the top of your timeline. For starters, it's potentially embarrassing for your child, but also most candid photos are, in general, just not good photos. Blown up to the dimensions of the Facebook cover space, most amateur photography is going to look a bit blah.

But let me offer this idea as an alternative: how about using the cover image on your child's page the same way most people do on their personal timelines? Save the photo of your child for the profile image, and certainly share them through your timeline, but use the cover image to share a deeper understanding of what's going on with your child's life.

We've had a pretty rough winter, and I know most of us are pretty jazzed about spring. Is your child? Are they getting excited about getting out of the house, or finally being able to get the windows open and hear the birds? Share their hopes with an image that evokes the season.

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Or maybe your Superhero is getting anxious to see the new Captain America movie (I know I am), and is hoping to have the chance. Maybe it's all he's talking about right now. Let your followers know it's on his mind with an image of the First Avenger.

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Perhaps your daughter has recently been a bit down in the dumps, and you've been using rainbows to cheer her up. Plant the idea in people's minds with a rainbow-themed cover.

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Or maybe, like my son, your child is in love with trains, and likes just about anything having to do with old-fashioned locomotives. A rotating gallery of train cover images that fit the season, your child's mood, or somehow tie into a current milestone or life event can tell a story without ever needing a post in the timeline.

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Think about the ways you can express the events, feelings, hobbies and things that matter to your child through the first image people see on your child's timeline. Use your own images if it makes sense, but think about how the image is composed, and whether it really is a good enough quality to make so big online. And, of course, as much as you can, have your child give you input and advise on what they would like to see, and don't shy away from their suggestions (unless they are really inappropriate, of course). Cats, for instance. Everyone on the internet likes cats, right?

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The best images to use are those already sized for the cover format, which is 851 x 315 pixels. Images of other dimensions can be used, but they will either be enlarged to fit the width, or you'll need to crop them. Doing a Google image search that includes "facebook cover" will provide a huge number of images already sized correctly. This also offers you a chance to use great photography and design beyond what you might be able to create at home.

And with that, I'm going to go change my own cover photo now.

Cheers,

Janis
Director of User Experiences