It all started with a few dedicated volunteers and mothers of FAS children, most of whom had never met face to face decided to make the world aware of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Something that is 100% preventable and 100% irreversible . It was 1999 when it was all planned to happen, at exactly 9:09 on the 9/9/1999 bells all around the world were to ring for one magic moment when all the world shall stop and think of those with FAS. The idea of holding it on the ninth of the ninth was to represent the nine months of pregnancy that you should not drink alcohol.
Every 1 in a 100 people in the US are FAS, which is 4 times the incidence of HIV/AIDS. There are about 3 million in the US and about 300,000 people in Canada with FAS, the majority is still undiagnosed. In Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union, the rate of undiagnosed FAS is even higher.
The idea all started with a few dedicated people, Bonnie Buxton & Teresa Kellerman. They then published it on the FAS email list, where others added their support and ideas, one idea was to have bells ring right around the world starting in New Zealand moving to Adelaide, Australia then on to Cape Town, South Africa where the Cape Town volunteers got the War Memorial Carillon, that has rung on many historic, such as the release of Nelson Mandela. Volunteers in Italy, Germany and Sweden also held events, the minute of Reflection then moved over the Atlantic. Events in Canada and the US were held in every time zone. Carillons also rang Toronto, ON, Hastings, NE, Wichita, KS, Minneapolis and Rochester, MN, Austin and San Antonio, TX, and Chicago, IL.