August 2023 - Getting ready for the fall, another donation update, and where we go from here...

Hello Lewy Warriors!

The summer has flown by and it's time for another monthly update from the CLBDI team! We hope that everyone has had a fantastic August and that you have a wonderful long weekend ahead of you. We have some awesome things to update you on, so let's get right to it!

First of all, we had some issues with finalizing some of the donations and transferring the money from Bob's Trust Fund to Dr. Pasternak's team in June/July but we're happy to say that thanks to Ashely, our liaison at UWO, and Andrew, who works with our founder on the Trust, everything has been sorted out. Pair the money from the Trust with some other donations from wonderful members of our community and we've reached $64,427 in total donations. I know that I sound like a broken record most of the time but... WOW! THANK YOU!

We're seeing organic growth and building surprising new connections all the time. It's so humbling but also gratifying for us. We appreciate everyone who has donated, shared our page, or connected with us on social media. As we have previously mentioned, we're ahead of our initial timeline for donations. This has lead us to having some internal conversations and to us feeling comfortable enough to branch out and shift our focus towards advocacy and community outreach for the rest of the year.

So, we will not be having any sort of Holiday Season fundraiser this year. Instead, we are going to do a limited run of some really cool CLBDI merch and focus on connecting with other advocates, community members, medical professionals, politicians, and anyone else who will listen to us. We will also be working on getting out into the community and interacting with other Lewy Warriors in the Waterloo Region. To start things off, we are launching our "CLBDI Community Walks" series in late September or early October. These short, informal walks will be free to attend and be a great place for networking, sharing stories, and finding support. We'll have more information on them soon, but we hope that you'll consider coming out and getting active with the CLBDI team.

So, this is where you might come in. We're looking for more opportunities to connect with people in the community. Whether you are interested in having us come and speak, want to help our cause or have some suggestions, are interested in collaborating, or you are an advocate yourself... send us an email! We would LOVE to hear from you.

We also know that we have not yet uploaded our new video content and some of you have asked about it. As you may know, there were some unexpected delays on both sides. With that being said, we're working on finishing our first video up in the next month or so. We're hoping that there will be some new YouTube content for everyone in the fall season. Thank you for understanding.

That's all from us for this month! We will be taking a few days off for the long weekend so if you reach out to us directly, we may not get back to you until next week. Otherwise, we'll see you here again at the end of September.

Wishing you all the best,
Joe