Alright friends (and strangers) I wanna try something out here. First of all, this post is relatively long in this world of tweets and texts. It will probably take you a whole 4-5 minutes to read, which is pretty much an eternity in today's fast paced world, but I beg of you to please continue on. Please give me 5 minutes of your time. Please and thank you.

For starters, if you were tagged in a post that brought you here, congratulations! You should feel honored. It means the friend that tagged you, believes you're an amazing person! They believe you are compassionate, caring and willing to help others in need. Most importantly, they believe in YOU!

This weekend at work I met a young girl named Bree from Greenville, South Carolina. Bree is the sweetest little soft spoken young lady you'll ever meet. She loves her friends, her family and she loves to dance.

Bree is currently fighting an extremely rare disease called cystinosis. Only an estimated 500 people in the U.S. currently have this disease and only roughly 2,000 in the entire world. Due to it's rarity, funding and awareness for Cystinosis is very limited.

The life expectancy of those diagnosed with this disease is only 30 years.  

The good news is five years ago the life expectancy was even younger; so who knows, with more significant scientific break throughs, public funding, and a little bit of hope, maybe that age will climb higher and higher in the years to come.

Now a little bit about me. Last Friday I celebrated my 33rd birthday.

I was fortunate enough to enjoy a few days off with my lovely girlfriend down in New Orleans celebrating. We had an awesome time. On top of that, I was so grateful for all the well wishes I received from many friends and family members alike here on Facebook. It was such a kind reminder of all the great people I have in my life.

I met Bree the following day and maybe it was the timing of it all, but it really hit me hard: It must not only be frightening for her, but I can't even begin to imagine how she goes about her day to day life. It must be difficult to simply 'have fun' knowing her time here will most likely be cut short due to this awful disease.

It saddened me deeply.

I thought about how fortunate I am, how fortunate the majority of us are, to have had such blessed and carefree childhoods. Adversely, the day to day struggles that Bree bravely battles are nearly incomprehensible to say the least.

No child should ever have to deal with these kinds of worries. No child should have to grow up that quick. Bree should be able to just 'be a kid.' Just be a kid and 'have fun.'

SO HERE'S MY IDEA:

We've all seen the incredible powers of the Internet and crowd funding. We've seen memes, videos and simple comments spread like wildfire. The potential is limitless. And that's where YOU come in!

1. Go donate ANYTHING to the gofundme campaign in the link provided. 5, 10, 20  measly bucks. I'd be willing to bet a couple days from now you won't even notice it's gone.

2. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART!!! Once you're done with step one, share this post to your Facebook wall and nominate 5 friends to donate and nominate 5 friends of their own as well. 

*BE SMART ABOUT WHO YOU NOMINATE/TAG! The first criteria is obvious: you want to tag someone YOU ARE CERTAIN will follow through. On top of that, be sure to pick some friends from different groups, areas, etc. so we can reach the largest audience possible.

That's it!

$5 and 5 minutes of your time.

$5 and 5 minutes seems like a very small price to pay to help a child out who has already been through more than any of us can possibly fathom.

$5 and 5 minutes to have a profound and positive impact on a young child's wellbeing and happiness.

$5 and 5 minutes to 'help Bree have fun.'

Obviously money alone can't buy happiness, but it can help alleviate the worries of financial burden and provide financial freedom for expenses such as toys, shows, vacations, fun events and joyous experiences. That's where your donations will go. Who knows, maybe Bree will even want to donate to research or other things or people she finds as important as we find her.

It's that easy guys. These small donations, COLLECTIVELY, will go a long way.

Once this snowball gets rolling, there's no telling how large it will become. Wouldn't that be cool to be a part of it? Wouldn't that make you feel good?

Thank you all so, so much and I'm excited to see how this pans out. Please message me if you need further details, have questions or ideas.

Know that YOU are appreciated, and know that YOU are making a difference.

Thank you again,

With love, happiness and hope,

Andy