First International FASDAY
September 9, 1999
In
One Magic Minute, We Changed the World: 1999/9/9 9:09 am
In late February of 1999, a small group of
burned-out parents, most of whom had never met face-to-face, set out to change
the world.
We are parents of children with Fetal Alcohol
Spectrum Disorders (FASD), a group of disabilities caused by maternal drinking
during pregnancy. FASD is now the
leading cause of mental retardation in western civilization, one which could be
totally prevented. FASD affects about 1 in 100 people in North America. (There
are about 3 million people with FASD in the U.S., and 300,000 in Canada, most
undiagnosed.) In Eastern Europe and countries of the former Soviet Union, the
rate of undiagnosed FASD may be higher.
Our original volunteers were mainly adoptive and
foster parents, plus a small but committed number of mothers in recovery, who
have been working hard to inform and support other women with substance abuse
problems. All of us lived daily with children whose prenatal damage caused
mental retardation or learning disabilities, plus severe acting-out behavior
that disrupted our lives and their classrooms, and often physical problems
requiring much medical attention. For most of us, life revolved around our
children’s crises: most mothers had been forced to abandon any thought of
full-time career.
Frustrated by the lack of public awareness of FASD
by both public and professionals, we had sought help for our problems on the
online support group, Faslink, for two years or more. And on that February day,
we began to wonder:
What if, on the ninth minute of the ninth hour of
the ninth day of the ninth month of the year one thousand, nine hundred and
ninety-nine, we asked the world to remember that during the nine months of
pregnancy, a woman should remain alcohol free? And, what if we also asked the
world to remember those millions of people who will never fulfill their genetic
potential, because of prenatal alcohol exposure? At this magic minute in
history, could we begin to change the world?
And we began to work on it, building alliances,
with only the help of the Internet. Our group grew to include about 70
volunteer coordinators in eight countries. Our northernmost volunteers are in
Alaska, Yukon and Nunavut, our southernmost in New Zealand. We’ve had FAS Day
proclamations from many cities and towns, and several U.S. states.
FASDay began in Auckland, New Zealand, where “Minute
of Reflection” bells rang at 9:09 a.m., at Mt Albert Methodist church. Then it
moved to Adelaide, Australia, and then to South Africa, where at 9:09 a.m.,
Cape Town volunteers gathered to hear the War Memorial Carillon that rang when
Nelson Mandela was released from prison. Volunteers in Italy, Germany and
Sweden held events – and then FASDay crossed the Atlantic. There were events in
every time zone across Canada and the U.S., including ringing of carillons in
Toronto, Niagara Falls, Hastings, NE, and Austin & San Antonio, Texas. The
westernmost activity was the community breakfast on the tiny island of Kitkatla,
B.C., near the Queen Charlotte Islands, where the village bell rang at 9:09
a.m. followed by prayers in the native tongue by village elders.