(NAPSA)—Every handprint is unique and personal. Now, hands are the focus of a new project celebrating personal expressions of living with diabetes, a disease that affects nearly 24 million Americans. The new project, the Global Diabetes Handprint, is a collaboration between OneTouch, a leading brand of blood glucose monitoring systems, and the Diabetes Hands Foundation. The Global Diabetes Handprint invites the millions of people with diabetes to submit images of their hand, decorated with words and graphics depicting their personal expressions about living with diabetes. These thought-provoking images will be showcased on the Global Diabetes Handprint site (www.DiabetesHandprint.com), encouraging visitors to share their own hand images in a welcoming environment. And for each image submitted between now and March 31, 2009, OneTouch will donate $5 up to a maximum of $250,000, to support diabetes charities. This new initiative was inspired by the “Word In Your Hand”project created on TuDiabetes.com, the online diabetes community owned and operated by the Diabetes Hands Foundation. “The idea behind the original ‘Word In Your Hand’ project was to inspire people with diabetes to connect with one another and not feel so isolated,” said Manny Hernandez, president of the Diabetes Hands Foundation. “Now, the Global Diabetes Handprint ex- pands this concept by reaching more people than ever before, encouraging them in their daily struggle with diabetes while giv- ing back to the diabetes community with company donations.” The funds generated by parti- cipation in the Global Diabetes a? For each hand image posted to www.DiabetesHandprint.com OneTouch will donate $5 to diabetes charities, up to $250,000. Handprint will be donated to the Diabetes Education and Camping Association (DECA) to support children’s diabetes camps and to Taking Control of Your Diabetes (TCOYD) to support adult educa- tional and motivational conferences for people with diabetes, those at risk and their loved ones. In addition, five individuals and their images will be later featured in a national campaign sup- porting the Global Diabetes Handprint project. To participate in the Global Diabetes Handprint, visit www. DiabetesHandprint.com and up- load a digital photograph of your decorated hand or use the site’s simple, online design tool to create and submit an image. As the project progresses, the images posted by site visitors will be combined to create an interactive, hand- shaped mosaic. Complete information and rules are available on the Website. AW 3035063B
