[Plugin: Participants Database] work around for date_create_from_format for php 5.2.x

Hi I am running participant Database in PHP 5.2.17 environment, which is throwing an error undifined function date_create_from_format(). Is there a work around, as ISV is unwilling to update PHP version to 5.3 on a shared server.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/participants-database/