Imagine for a moment that your life depended on daily injections of insulin just to eat, and 10-20 finger pokes for blood testing a day. Emma Goldberg is a 12-year-old girl who has been living her life like this since she was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes six years ago.

One of the challenges Emma and kids living with T1D have is carrying around the expensive and necessary tech medical equipment they depend on to manage their condition and deliver insulin. Some kids use insulin pump management systems that have remote controls and meters to deliver insulin, some take shots and need their needles and insulin pens. Others are wearing external Glucose Monitoring devices to get their blood sugar levels sent to their cell phones instead of finger pokes.

Luckily there are many exciting advances in technology happening and all of this is helping T1D kids to manage their diabetes much better. And Emma is leading the charge.

Soon after Emma first received her insulin Pump, she grew tired of the plain, small black carrying pouch that came with the product. Easy to leave behind in a dark restaurant or movie theater, cheap in construction and unable to hold up to the wear-and-tear of typical life, it was inconvenient and—most importantly—unfashionable for a soon-to-be-teenage girl to carry around at all time. She had to carry something for her meters and supplies, but most bags did not properly fit her devices, looked too childish, or were not made for this purpose and inconvenient for her needs. That’s when Emma took matters into her own hands and decided to design her own.

Emma joined forces with tech device accessories designer, Caryn Sterling of Rolf Bleu.  Emma and Caryn worked diligently on designing a functional, purposeful, and fashionable solution to Emma’s specifications. What they came up with are three prototypes and styles. Two are for girls and one is for boys. Emma is currently raising money to place her first order of these bags so that she can start her company and get these bags out to other T1D kids and adults. She has started a Go Fund Me campaign and has a web site showcasing her new bags.

Emma is not just doing this for herself, she wants to create something to help others, to give back to a community of people who have to live life struggling in silence on a daily basis. This life threatening disease is unfamiliar to most people and she wants to bring light and education to it.  She wants to help others and sees this as a way to give back to others like her.

She is a compassionate girl. Emma’s goal is to help bring a little bit of joy to the daily lives of kids like her who live with T1D by making fun, functional and fashionable pump PAX!

November is Diabetes month, and Emma is on a mission to raise awareness of this very confusing and often misunderstood disease affecting millions of kids around the world today. Type 1 and Type 2 are very different diseases. Please learn more at the www.jdrf.org web site for more facts on T1D. And for more information on Emma or how to fund the Pump Pax, go to www.emmaspumppax.com.

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