Frozen Pea Fund

Have you added your name to our Frappr map as one of the PEAple who will not appease cancer? The map shows support for the Frozen Pea Fund across America and around the world.

Click the map to add your name.

Children reach out and grab us, as Shashi‘s (@shashib) son does here in his plea for donations for the Frozen Pea Fund.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IimOFfgvLE[/youtube]

Please take a few minutes, click on the Donate button in the sidebar and donate the price of a couple of bags of frozen peas to the American Cancer Society. That can, and will, make a difference in breast cancer research.

The buzz about the Frozen Pea Fund continues in the blogosphere, and jumped into the mainstream press with a recent article in the Washington Post. The fund is also being considered as a case study in social media marketing and community-driven fund-raising. The story resonates with young PR practitioners because of its reliance on online means of communication through social networks, and especially through Twitter.

Michael Allison (@michaelallison), a Canadian grad student pursing a master’s degree in communications and a part-time marketing assistant, recently presented the Frozen Pea Fund as a case study to a group of PR peers.

“Twitter acts as a sort of stream of consciousness between groups of asymmetrically reciprocal followers,” Michael said. “I think it can be argued that Twitter, or similar critically-massed application, is valuable and can convey meaning to communities that can affect real-world change.”

The Frozen Pea Fund was featured on two Internet radio talk shows today; both are now available for listening or downloading as a podcast.

Forward Podcast, hosted by Paull Young (@paullyoung), with guests Susan Reynolds and Craig Colgan, writer of the Washington Post story featuring Susan.

The Social Mediasphere, hosted by Tris Hussey (@trishussey) and Jim Turner (@genuine), with guests Susan Reynolds and Connie Reece.

You might have heard by now that there were peas in the Post this morning, frozen peas with Susan’s name on them. But did you know that she’s on the front page of the Loudoun Extra’s page?

Craig Colgan from the Post sat down with her to ask her how frozen peas came to be and what makes them so special to her. Read what she had to say.

(Photo was taken by Katherine Frey for the article.)

We created a new page for the site — Who’s Talking About Peas. The new page aggregates all the links to blogs and podcasts that have talked about the Frozen Pea Fun.

Special thanks to Marcel Lebrun (@Lebrun) of Radian 6 for providing social media monitoring services. As of the initial report on 12-24-07, some 120 different blogs have covered the story of Susan Reynolds and the creation of the Frozen Pea Fund.

Thank you, one and all!

UPDATE: Now over 200 blogs … as time allows, we will add links on the Who’s Talking About Peas page.

Here are some stats on the first official Frozen Pea Friday:

1. Susan’s 2 surgeries (mastectomy and reconstruction) went well and report on lymph nodes came back negative, an encouraging sign. She’s resting well in a private room (finally!) and it’s possible she may be released on Saturday.

2. In the first 15 hours after launch, we raised $3,493 for the Frozen Pea Fund. Cathleen Rittereiser rounded it off to $3,500 and, as promised, is kicking in an additional amount because we met her challenge goal of exceeding a certain amount by a certain time. (Sorry, the exact amount is lost in a mountain of emails and tweets.)

3. Donations came from 118 peaple on 3 continents. While the money will fund research and programs in the U.S., generous-hearted souls from other countries are able to give to the Frozen Pea Fund using the ACS donation form.

3. 272 members of the Frozen Pea Friday group on Flickr have uploaded 262 peavatars. For most of the day, Twitter was awash in green.

4. Susan Reynolds hit the #1 spot on the Tweeterboard. Most of the top 10 most popular today and this week were sporting peavatars!

5. Duncan Riley’s post on TechCrunch was a highlight of a wave of blog coverage; it also was mentioned on the official Twitter blog and was picked up on the front page of the technology section of BBC News online.

Our Princess of the Peas, Susan Reynolds, went in for her pre-op testing today, and afterward she met up with Jim Long, aka NewMediaJim, at a “global burger chain.” Jim, a photojournalist and NBC News cameraman, did an on-the-spot interview with Susan via Utterz.

It was wonderful to hear Susan’s voice and to know that she has been tremendously encouraged by the community that has rallied around her to show their support.

[video]http://www.utterz.com/fp/embed_img.swf?37[/video]

Note: RSS readers may need to click through to site to listen.

All contributions to the Frozen Pea Fund until October 2008 will go to Making Strides, the breast cancer campaign of the American Cancer Society.

The Society has invested more in breast cancer research grants over time than any other voluntary public health organization – $322.7 million since 1972! And it was the American Cancer Society that established mammography as the gold standard for the early detection of breast cancer.

Here is Susan’s explanation, from Boobs on Ice, the blog she’s using to chronicle her cancer experience:

When I discovered a very thick area in my breast I called the doctor. The next day I was in her office. A half hour after that I was in the diagnostic radiologist’s.

A full afternoon and multiple stab wounds later we had a variety of samples of malignant tentacles of tissue that were on their way to the lab.

I was in a little pain – it would increase as the local anesthetic wore off – but left his office with a soft cold pack in my bra.

To keep bleeding down & relieve pain I’d need to keep things cool. Traditional ice packs are hard and heavy. As much as I try to be a good sport I’m not into having a brick sitting on my chest.

Enter a bag of frozen peas.

I tucked it in my bra, took a picture, and was ready to tell the story later that night. That bag of peas added a touch of lightness to what could have been a sad and serious tale.

• A bag of peas was something everybody could relate to.
• Some people love them, some hate them, some use them for their own injuries.
• A bag of frozen peas was a vehicle for conversation and let people tease me instead of having to cry.
• It let people share instead of bemoaning.

I napped a lot during the first few days after the biopsy. The news was sudden and stunning after all and my body was being assaulted.

Mmmm peas for lunch?

When I fell asleep with peas in my cleavage I’d wake to the smell of freshly cooked peas. That made the story funnier, and more human. Of course I shared it because what is life but a series of stories.

After enough cooked peas I moved on to baggies with ice cubes or larger gel-packs which truth be told still are too big and too heavy to be comfy but help with pain.

The peas however live on in the form of stories from others about their use of pea-packs and the line-up of twitter avatars sporting peas in support of my struggle.

This makes them a comfort in more than one way.