Lars found out three years ago that he has type 1 diabetes. “You find out slowly, you don’t notice at first. We noticed that he was very thirsty and often had to go to the toilet,” says his mother Annelies.
“During a school trip, the mother he was in the group also noticed. Then we went to the doctor and he turned out to have diabetes.”
Fundraiser
Lars does not sit down. He is doing well again, although he has to take it into account all day, with food, sports and insulin injections, for example.
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When he finds out that the Diabetes Fund collects bottle caps – the bottle caps – he decides to help. The collected caps are sold to a recycling company in Friesland and the money goes to scientific research.
Container in front of the door
“My husband said immediately after the diagnosis: I want to do something to give it extra attention,” says Annelies. “We read an article about this national fundraising campaign of the Diabetes Fund and said: why don’t we participate?”
No sooner said than done. “We put a container in front of the door through a friend of ours and put stickers on it, and we also paid attention to it via social media,” says Annelies. Lars herself also likes to work on it this way: “It’s nice, sometimes you sit on the couch and you hear caps fall into the bin again. You go talk to those people and that is fun.”
4 million caps
When a collector from Ursem hears of the action, he decides to donate his collected caps. There are four million. Annelies: “He wanted to get into the Guinness Book of Records, but it never happened. We came in contact via Facebook. This was a great way for him to give those caps a different purpose.”
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“We picked up three cubic meters of caps there. With a tractor we drove to Ursem and put the boxes on a cart.”
They are also collecting a lot in the rest of the village. “We are working on the third roll container. Sometimes someone rings the doorbell and suddenly has a few boxes. I am also sometimes approached by restaurants or the cinema. Last weekend a couple came with two garbage bags full of caps.”
Money for research
The money goes to research and that is very important, according to Annelies. “Diabetes is an autoimmune disease. If it is not well controlled, it can cause a lot of damage to your body in the long term. The goal is to develop means to prevent this as much as possible.”
The Diabetes Fund can still use a little help with this. Whoever has caps can look here where they can be handed in. “The Diabetes Fund is also eager to help people who can transport the caps.”
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