Rakta Kranti - the news from the blood donation drives

There was a time when we at Sankalp considered September and October has months of relatively less workload, however as you will see, now each team is fully occupied serving their mission objectives all year round. Let’s see what happened in the month of September 2014.

The month of September saw 16 blood donation camps being organized and 982 units of blood collected. 1299 people participated in these events.

1) JNCASR: September started with a camp organized at Jawahar Lal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research, As always college students and volunteers were present throughout the camp to provide good support to the camp. Posters were put up across all the notice boards and helped creating awareness. This time a lot of faculty members came to donate which shows how good was the donor motivation. 94 people came forward and 63 could donate blood.

2) Akamai: Akamai organizes regular camps once a year. This time they organized a complete health check up camp and blood donation was a part of this. The camp saw a very good response from company associates. A lot of people working in night shifts, came an hour early just to donate blood. Their enthusiasm to donate was overwhelming this time and unfortunately not all people who were keen to donate were able to do so within the camp hours. 110 units were collected in this camp.

3) Terapanth Yuva Sangh: Terapanth supports the cause of blood donation by organising blood donation camp across the country once a year. On September 6th, they organized a mega blood donation drives across several cities in India, in an attempt to break the Guinness World record for highest number of voluntary blood units collected in a single day by a dingle organization. This time 15 camps were organized in Bangalore of which 5 were managed by Sankalp.

The first Terapanth camp was at a temple in Kengeri. All the arrangements by organizers were proper. However, there was complete lack of donor awareness. While the organizers claimed a minimum of 200 units, only 33 people turned up for the event and 24 donated. This is not very different from the experiences in previous public drives where the organisers often tend to over-estimate the number of people who would come to donate.

Camps at CB Bhandari College and Adarsh college saw a better response mainly due to the college students. 64 units were collected at Adarsh College and 44 units at CB Bhandari. A lot of deferrals due to low haemoglobin were seen in CB Bhandari college. Both the colleges organize annual blood donation camps and help in the cause of voluntary blood donation.

September Blood Donation

Fourth camp was organized Jai Bharath Nagar. The camp was inaugurated by Mr KJ George, Home Minister of Karnataka. A lot of people from nearby companies spent an hour on Saturday for this noble cause. There was a good turnout here. 92 people came forward to donate. 52 units of life saving blood collected from this event.

Fifth and final camp was organized at Rajajinagar. Even though the drive location was small here, a good donor turnout was seen. 70 units of blood collected with 85 people turning up with an intent to donate.

4) Hilton Hotels: Hilton Hotels joined hands with us and organized first voluntary blood donation camp on September 10th. Good amount of awareness was created from a week prior to donation. Close to 50 people from all the departments of hotel came to donate. Be it IT, chef, catering or security, all were equally excited. Company has promised to organize regular camps with us and an even better participation once their headcount increases. A total of 32 people donated blood.

5) Tata Power Solar: Tata power solar organized a camp on 12th Sept. It's a sister organization of Tata Powers where we conduct regular camps. The camp was organized after an interval of 6 years in the company and people were very excited about it. Many donors came because their friends and team mates came forward to donate. About 65 donors turned up in a 150-200 employee company and it was really good. 40 units of blood was collected in the camp.

6) Jones Lang La Salle: JLL is a company that regularly supports our cause by periodic blood donation camps. 3rd blood donation camp at JLL was organized on 12th Sept. 31 people came forward to donate with 27 of them donating. As always, the support from the company was good.

7) Kennametal: Kennametal is one of the few production organization that holds regular blood donation camps every year. This time they came a step forward and organized organ and eye donation camp alongside blood donation. A lot of people pledged their eyes and other body parts after donating blood. Though the response this time was poorer than the past 2 events, still there was no lack of donor motivation. People came in batches whenever they got time to donate. A lot of people post 40 or even 50 were seen to donate blood defying all the norms and misconceptions. 103 units of blood were collected and distributed to 2 blood banks.

8) DHL: Camp was organized at HSR Layout location of DHL on 19th September. The enthusiasm of the donors was at its best and in-spite of the low headcount close of 100 people participated in the event and 81 could donate blood.

9) Al Ameen College: A second blood donation camp was organized at Al Ameen on 22nd Sept. This drive was organized after an interval of 6 months. Al Ameen college of Pharmacy supports us with all the arrangements though all the colleges in campus participate in the events. Class talk was done to motivate students and a small team of volunteers was made who were trained to handle blood donation camps. Camp saw a very good response. A lot of first time donors had a first-hand experience of donating with their friends and felt good after donation. Students were so enthusiastic that a lot of first year students, who were just 17 came and wanted to donate! 70 units of blood was collected in the event.

September Blood Donation

10) Idea: Idea organized 4th camp with us on 25th Sept. Prior to camp, floor talk was done in all the floors of the company. Though floor talk is just a 5-10 minutes of casual discussion about blood donation, it has a tremendous effect. In Idea, in past camps, 40-50 people used to turn up. But this time close to 100 people came forward to donate! A lot of them were deferred on medical grounds and 56 units of blood was collected.

11) Alliance University: Alliance University organized a 2 day camp on Sept 30 and Oct 1. In all a whopping 117 units of blood was collected on first day.

Sankalp Unit
Patrika Section