What is #HAT4HD?

There are 1100 families living with Huntington’s disease (HD) in Scotland. These families – grannies, granda’s, aunties, uncles, mums, dads, brothers, sisters – are all facing the extreme challenges which come with HD. For the person with HD this will mean gradual physical, mental and emotional changes requiring a complex suite of care to manage the condition which has no cure. For the family this also means heavy caring responsibilities, financial strain, and possibly most debilitating, social isolation.

Social isolation is caused by low awareness and misunderstanding of the condition as well as lack of resources to support families to stay an active part of their community.

#HAT4HD aims to reduce social isolation by asking SHA supporters to spread awareness amongst their own networks. We’re using the ‘Hat’ theme because HD is a neurological condition and there’s a few different ways you can get involved both online and offline!

How will this campaign help?

We’re hoping that this campaign will raise awareness of HD, and a bit of money too, all while making us smile, because fighting for families affected by HD can be fun too.

We’ll be making silly hats all the way through May and June and posting them online to raise awareness of HD. There will also be living busking events on social media, bucket collections across Scotland and we’ll be running a summer raffle as a part of the campaign with some great prizes – why not use your #wackyhatselfie to encourage your friends to put some money in a hat for the chance to win great prizes?

If you’re feeling creative check our our handy guide, ‘How to make a tricorn hat for your #HAT4HD selfie‘

Photo credit – Sally Brewer

 

Ways to get involved…

1. ‘Wacky Hat Selfie.’ We’ve already mentioned wearing a silly hat. We all have those strange hats at the back of our wardrobes we can’t really remember where they came from. You can spruce it up and decorate that hat, make your own or simply pop your hat on for a selfie and share it along with an awareness raising message and link to the campaign to help us reach a whole new audience of people.

 

 

 

2.‘#HAT4HD Busking Challenge.’ Do you or people you know have a special talent that people would sponsor you to perform? You could do this on the street (don’t forget to get permission) or on Facebook live! Find out more by downloading our #HAT4HD Busking Challenge Guide.

 

1. Volunteer at a #HAT4HD Bucket collection or organise your own! We’re bringing #HAT4HD to the streets, shopping malls, offices – wherever there’s people! Get your volunteers to wear their best wacky hats to capture people’s attention and help raise awareness!
• Saturday 29th July – Glasgow Airport #HAT4HD collection
• Saturday 19th August – Glasgow Central #HAT4HD collection

Check out our handy HAT4HD Bucket Collection Guide to see how to organised your own collection.

2. Play to win our #HAT4HD summer raffle – if you’re on our mailing list you will receive an envelope with raffle tickets, return address hat envelope. To be in with a chance of winning one of our fantastic prizes you need to fill in the raffle ticket and send it back to us using the provided hat envelope.

3. If you want to help, but don’t have the time, then you can donate. For those on the go, we’ve made it really easy to hand over some cash. Just text HDAT44 £10 to 70070 to donate £10 to SHA and make a difference today.

And if you’ve got a better idea, just pop us an email at fundraising@hdscotland.org. We’d love to hear from you.

Come on! Let’s get some spring in our steps and go and raise awareness and funds for HD, by getting everyone asking ‘where did you get that hat?’

 

Photo credit – Bob Bogle