Croatian Alliance for Rare Diseases holds a Hug for Rare campaign every February leading up to Rare Disease Day (last day of February) in an attempt to rise awareness for health issues that are not very known to the general public, but can be very serious and threatening to people who have them. The idea is for people to take photos hugging someone, be it a family member or a stranger, and send them to the Alliance that embeds them into a giant collage and online gallery.
The main goal of the Alliance is to improve the quality of life of people living with rare diseases and their family members, by providing them reliable information about their rare disease, ways of treatment, medical experts and expert centers but also by providing them psychosocial support and helping them in obtaining their social and medical rights.
The Hug for Rare campaign has seen success since its implementation, but the organizers are upping the ante this year- by trying to break the Guinness World Record for biggest online gallery of hugs (because of course there’s a word record for everything). Current record holding gallery has 108 121 photographs of people hugging and is held by GISHWHES, an international scavenger hunt organizer.
The Alliance is asking people to take a photo hugging someone and upload it to their web site hugforrare.com or their social media pages, and they’ll compile those photos into an online gallery and a large poster. It might not seem like much, but that’s the point. It doesn’t take much to make someone’s life a little better. So while you’re in Zagreb, give a hug and we’ll hug you right back.
