Project Life Movement was back on campus at Boston College this fall to partner with students for a campus wide mega-drive to sign up individuals for the global stem cell/marrow registry. This was Project Life Movement’s 5th year partnering with Boston College’s Student Government (UGBC) and Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), along with four of Project Life Movement’s campus ambassadors, Madeleine Karnikis, Gerard Buono, Margaret Kuffner, and Meghan Heckelman. These student leaders worked with the Project Life Movement team in the months leading up to this two-day registry event. The volunteers recruited their peers on campus, educating as many people as they could about the need for potential donors to join the global registry for the chance to become the miracle match for a blood cancer patient. Thanks to the hard work of these students, 635 new potential donors (and lifesavers) were added to the global registry.
This year, Project Life Movement was able to facilitate a donor-recipient meeting to occur after the first day of this event. Drew, a survivor of aplastic anemia and senior at Morehead State University, was able to meet his lifesaving donor, Kash, a current student at Boston College. This meeting was special not only to Drew and Kash, but to the entire Boston College community, which is extremely proud of their fellow classmate for choosing to donate. To learn more about their story, click here.
Over the last five years, UGBC and SAAC at Boston College have partnered with Project Life Movement to add over 2,600 individuals to the registry, with 92 matches found and six transplants completed. Without the recruitment efforts of these student volunteers, these patients may never have found their lifesaving donor. It is the hope that matches and transplants will continue to be found from these events to save the lives of many more blood cancer patients.