Help Support World MS Day - May 26, 2010; Join with 62 Countries to Mobilize the Global MS Movement

New York, NY (Vocus) May 27, 2010

This year on May 26, the world unites once more in the MS movement to highlight the international effects of multiple sclerosis (MS). Organized by the Multiple Sclerosis International Federation (MSIF) with the help of MS Societies in 62 countries, including the United States, the day will be marked by more than 200 events around the world in a concerted effort to build awareness for MS and enhance collaboration that will bring us closer to a world free of multiple sclerosis.

This year to bring home the importance of what an MS diagnosis can mean, which occurs hourly in the US, the MSIF initiated the first global survey covering 125 countries and examining the Global Impact of Multiple Sclerosis. Estimates among the 15 nations tracking such data, indicate that the average annual costs of MS to the person affected and society as a whole to be $ 41,335, and most currently in the US, $ 69,118. Based on an MS population in the U.S. of 400,000 that would mean the total yearly impact of MS in the United States is $ 28 billion. Loss of employment, or early retirement, was considered to be the single largest factor contributing to this financial cost.

http://www.msif.org/en/get_involved/world_ms_day_2010/economic_impact.html

MS is found in every country in the world, and is one of the most common neurological diseases amongst people in their 20s and 30s. It is a prime of life disease striking just when people are building their careers and families. MS affects at least twice as many women as men and up to 60% of people diagnosed with MS will experience long-term disability, though continuing medical breakthroughs have brought partially effective treatments to many.

How to Get Involved in World MS Day

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Help Support World MS Day - May 26, 2010; Join with 62 Countries to Mobilize the Global MS Movement

Thousands in 25 Countries to Celebrate 1st Global Oneness Day Oct. 24; Tutu, Ono, Chopra, Beckwith, Keating Among Supporters

Boulder, Colo. (PRWEB) October 18, 2010

Thousands of people in more than 25 countries will celebrate the first Global Oneness Day Oct. 24 by demonstrating humanitys inner unity and outer diversity, organizers announced today.

The day — initiated by the global grassroots Humanitys Team movement and supported by the Association for Global New Thought and some three dozen other groups — is a day when the greatness of the whole is reflected in the greatness of its parts, Humanitys Team Worldwide Coordinating Director Steve Farrell said.

It is also a day that is a key steppingstone toward creating lasting peace in the world, organizers said.

Lasting peace requires that we awaken humanity to our underlying oneness, educate people to the beauty of our diversity and alert the world to the imperative that we must embody these values so that life as we know it may not only be preserved, but renewed and transformed, AGNT President the Rev. Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith said.

PROMINENT GLOBAL ONENESS DAY SUPPORTERS include South African Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu; artist-musician Yoko Ono; spiritual writers Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Neale Donald Walsch and Andrew Harvey; Trappist monk and priest Father Thomas Keating; futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard, and U.N. Culture of Peace emissary Anwarul K. Chowdhury.

The day, planned as the first annual worldwide celebration, provides opportunities for individuals, organizations and nations to create practical acts demonstrating unity, diversity, harmony and compassion on a shared date, comparable to what happens on Earth Day.

Practical action will provide tangible, experiential proof of how we can live when we come from a place of oneness, Beckwith said. It will encourage us all to expand our hopes, beliefs and behaviors so that at any moment oneness may permeate all aspects of life.

Would the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have occurred if humanity had already recognized we are all one? Beckwith said. Would we now tolerate accelerated global warming, extreme poverty and hunger, and gender inequality? Would we fight each other under the banner of organized religion and in the name of God?

Recognizing the oneness of humanity and all of life is the key to solving most chronic and acute world problems, Beckwith said.

U.N. ENVOY: NO PEACE WITHOUT ONENESS

Indeed, peace efforts will continue to fail until people embrace humanitys oneness, Chowdhury said May 20 on receiving a grassroots plea to the United Nations, signed by more than 50,000 people from 168 countries, appealing to the world body to affirm humanitys oneness and endorse an annual Global Oneness Day.

I believe that unless we have that sense of solidarity among the peoples of the world, all our efforts of peace and security will go nowhere, said Chowdhury, a former undersecretary-general and high representative of the United Nations.

A sampling of scheduled Global Oneness Day events, to date, includes:

Thousands in 25 Countries to Celebrate 1st Global Oneness Day Oct. 24; Tutu, Ono, Chopra, Beckwith, Keating Among Supporters