Last November saw the thirdNational Fertility Aware ness Week(NFAW) and, as ever we wereover whelmed by the support andencouragement from everyone.

Yet again the clinics took upthe Embryo Challenge, bydonating money for every Embryocreating during NFAW. We wouldlike to thank GCRM Belfast,Jessop Fertility, Origin Fertility,Zita West Clinic, Cambridge IVF,Herts & Essex Fertility Centre,Newlife and The Bristol Centre forReproductive Medicine for theirongoing support.

In addition to this we also onceagain had bakers from all acrossthe UK getting creative with theirdecorating skills! Friends, supp -ort ers, nurses, patients andcompanies all baked during theweek, raising money for I N UKand raising awareness by hostingcake auctions, tea parties andbake sales. As you will see from the photographs –the results are simply AMAZING! It alwaysastounds, and frankly, impresses me the level ofimagination and effort everyone puts into theirbaking. The cakes and cupcakes are always reallyspecial.

We also had support from our friends at NuffieldHealth. They agreed to give out free one daypasses to their gyms, en cour aging people torun, walk or swim 5k for us. They also didsome res earch into male fertility issues –and it made some inter est ing reading, seepage 6 for a roundup of the survey results.Contin uing along a male theme there wasa wonderful webinar from Russell Davis, AFertile Mind who spoke about The SilentHero, and how to help your partner, son,friend or brother going through fertility. Hedis cussed the differences bet ween men andwomen and how we deal with things in very

diff erence ways. You can listen tothe full webinar here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XFlDFzEDGw

Another highlight was the seriesof both inter esting and informativepodcasts, which were postedthroughout the week by The Fert -ility Podcast, all of these can stillbe heard on their website: http://www.thefertilitypodcast.com/category/podcas t/season-2/. Then on the NFAWwebsite we asked for infertilityblogs to be shared with us. Thesorties that people shared areheart-warming, sad, happy,poignant, funny and ofteninspirational. Read them foryourself: http://www.infertilitynetworkuk.com/nfaw/media/

Finally, we had our social mediacampaign. Social media is, in thisday and age, a wonderful way to‘spread the word’, it is a naturalway to raise awareness. We askedeveryone within the fertilitycommunity to use two #’s –#1in6 and #NFAWUK. Our

wond er ful Twitter and Face book follow ers sent intheir photo graphs showing supp ort for thecampaign. The photo graphs are wonderful and theyremind us all exactly why we have National FertilityAware ness Week, and why we will cont inue to

support #1in6 however andwhenever we can.

Kara MyhillCampaign

Manager

NATIONAL FERTILITYAWARENESS WEEK2 - 8 NOVEMBER 2015

12 I N UK Winter 2015-16

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