Walks are an excellent excuse to get ALS into the media. If you live in an area having a walk, please send items to community calendars and church bulletins, put handbills up in every store and coffee shop and school and bank and dry cleaner and doctor you frequent. Offer to do on-air interviews. Send op-eds and letters to print media. Having thousands of members of the public see the letters "A L S," is itself a key component of spreading awareness of this often forgotten disease.
If you are fixated only on the fundraising (which is indeed important), you lose perhaps the bigger benefit of the walks. They are demonstrations against ALS, they are supportive activities for those dealing with ALS or grieving, and they get the public health problem in front of people who don't realize that Lou Gehrig's Disease hasn't been cured yet.
We here all know how urgent the problem is. We need to shout to the rooftops to get the attention of others. News outlets will give a walk some coverage, and we all need to take advantage of that to get the ALS message out.
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