Hey everyone! As most of you know, we just got done traveling to 7 cities and speaking to 49 states. We are so excited to have seen actionable game plans that will affect legislature moving forward. We also are beyond thrilled that the booklet we wrote about exactly why and how we went from anti-vax to pro-vax is being spread in so many places. This is so cool to be on the ground watching things change in real time and we wouldn’t trade this for the world.
We have been invited to speak to several states, coalitions, and conferences across the US this Fall. Heather plans to start testifying at legislative meetings throughout the US with the help of a nonprofit she will be communicating with.
After our speeches in Maine this past Friday, a state told us they are now motivated to try to pass legislation to improve the support new moms receive to help them not to be pulled into the anti-vax community. This will also support post partum depression etc, as the US is hugely lacking in that area. We cried when we heard!
We plan to go full speed ahead with pro vaccine activism and say yes to everything we can.
However, we are starting to hit a lot of financial walls due to this side of the fence (the pro-vax side) not being the side that one makes money on. Ironically, some anti-vaxxers make an absolute killing doing this. We, on the flip side, are paying almost 100% out of our own pockets, and it is getting to be financially impossible to continue. The dollars in our bank accounts can no longer fund us. We don’t want this to sound like an ultimatum-it simply is just the financial reality of self-funding our own activism against the giants of the anti-vax world.
We still have regular bills to pay and kids to feed, and will need to be working full time non-activism jobs in our home cities just to survive, which unfortunately leaves virtually zero time for activism at the speed we’ve been going.
We can make posts here and there, but when it comes to speaking in front of legislators and at conferences across the nation, we will not be able to continue paying out of our pockets to fund our activism.
That being said, we are asking for any amount of monthly donations via Patreon or BuyMeACoffee to allow us to press full speed ahead with activism. This will help offset the tremendous personal costs of funding our efforts and missing out on paying work in our home towns in order to speak and testify across the US.
In exchange for any monthly amount, we want to send you a weekly newsletter of our behind the scenes moments. This will include videos, blogs, quotes, audio clips, etc. We will divulge our embarrassing moments, our cool conversations we’ve had the opportunities to have with public figures fighting for every child to be vaccinated, the hard battles we face with anti-vax bullying toward us, etc. It’ll be like a weekly diary from us to you so you can be completely in the know about the details of our activism.
If you give $20 or more monthly, you will receive the weekly newsletter and be invited to a once a month hour long live Zoom video chat.
Thank you so much for your continued support and consideration. If even one person changes their mind and starts to vaccinate because of all of this, it will all be worth it.
(Also, please reach out to us at [email protected] if you are interested in having us speak at your next event either in person or virtually, for info on how to get our booklet distributed at your practice or in your state, and for private consultations!)
Sincerely,
Heather Simpson and Lydia Greene