After having an eventful day at Mangalore, the Sankalp Disha expansion team moved on to visit Bangalore's sister city of Mysore. Again sufficient background work and inputs from senior transfusion specialists from Bangalore meant that the plan was well in place for another day of extreme buzzing.
Taking Disha across Karnataka is an activity that will take some time to materialise. Sankalp however, has made a firm and sedate start to this activity. Phase 1 of the expansion plan is to visit the major medical hubs across Karnataka and understand the ground realities that exist there.
After the blood bank meet, lots of changes were to be made in the working of CTC Disha, we had an elaborate discussion with CTC management about bringing out these new changes.
We need to learn from nature. According to scientists, the bumblebee's body is too heavy
The phase 0 of CTC Disha has been completed. 13 govt hospitals visited. The volunteers being primarily engg students had only saturdays to effectively spread the information to the hospitals.
Already the calls from these hospitals for blood have started to come. Two of these hospitals have agreed to participate by sharing their blood stocks. All this happened in just 2 weeks!
It has been one year of our fight to revolutionize the blood banking system in Bangalore.One year to make a system which helps people find blood information at ease. Its the first Anniversary of CTC Disha.Its time for celebration and also to reflect and look forward.
Please share your views.
It started on 23rd May, 2005 when few Sankalp Volunteers dreamt of how to better the present blood donation scenario. Few questions arose: If somehow the blood banks were transparent enough to show their blood statistics. How nice it would be if we had a single number which would cater to all blood requirements in Bangalore.
Any person searching for blood needs to dial just a single - 9480044444 number to find out the closest place where safe blood is available. 
42 Kms, 15 Hrs, 40 Students.. One Message "Need Blood Call 1062" Walk for Life was an awareness drive conducted by the Sankalp Volunteers to bring to the citizens of Bangalore "CTC Disha" the single point access Blood Helpline!" Somewhere in Mid October we realized that inspite of the great media coverage, there was very poor response to CTC Disha. Very few calls were coming and many people were still searching for blood.
