Desert Dingo provide hands-on diabetes lesson to schoolchildren

Desert Dingo Racing, the team who have entered the official World Diabetes Day race car in the Baja 1000 off-road race later this month, recently took the car to Holly Oak Elementary School in San Jose, California to give the children a hands-on lesson in desert racing. Students in Ms. Battistella's fourth grade class got the opportunity to add a little colour to the car, dipping their hands in red, blue or gold paint and pressing them to the car's fenders.

"We love getting involved with the community and getting the word out about the growing threat of diabetes," said team co-founder Jim Graham. "The kids had a great time and we got a cool paint job out if it."

Check out photos from the event. The students will be following the team's progress via a Web-based satellite tracking system and Jim will be providing updates to them during the race in Mexico.

The International Diabetes Federation helped us with hero cards that have a photo of the car on the front and the warning signs of diabetes printed - in English and Spanish - on the back," Graham said. "We handed them out to the students and expect to give away thousands of them in the days leading up to the race."

The team is conducting a drive-a-thon fundraiser with 100% of the money raised going toward the IDF's Life for a Child Program and IDF's education and awareness efforts. The race team has also partnered with the Federacion Mexicana de Diabetes to have a booth on Contingency Row in Ensenada, Mexico, where the race starts and finishes. The two groups will pass out hero cards, information on diabetes and nearly 4,000 boxes of crayons with the warning signs of diabetes printed on the boxes.

The Baja 1000 attracts up to 300,000 people along the length of the course and we see this as an opportunity to get the word out to a segment of the population that might otherwise be hard to reach," Graham said. "And we also enjoy the racing."

You can follow the Desert Dingo team as they prepare for the race via their blog at http://www.desertdingo.com. The team will be updating with photos and video during the race and via Twitter at http://twitter.com/desertdingo.