Please consider joining the National Bone Marrow Registry today, and enter the lottery to save a life.
UVA GCF Bone Marrow Drive: 79 New Donors!
Jan 22 2012 | 2 Comments | posted by cheekswab | in Blog
On Friday a few friends and I had the pleasure of running a bone marrow drive at Grace Christian Fellowship at the University of Virginia. The response from GCF was overwhelming.
View from the Swabbing Table
As the first "official" cheekswab drive, there were a lot of unknowns going into Friday. I was told that a reasonable estimate for attendees was in the ballpark of anywhere from 60-80 people, based on previous events of a similar nature. It's always a difficult exercise to make any worthwhile estimates about the number of kits needed for a group of x size because the response can be so variable. For example, the first drive I was ever a part of was coordinated through a different bone marrow organization. The drive was scheduled for a church congregation of 100 people, and the drive organizer was told that for a congregation of 100 people, we'd be lucky to get 10 registrations. For whatever reason, more experience seems to set the level of expectation lower rather than higher.
Read more..UVA Bone Marrow Drive, Tomorrow 1/20/2012
Jan 19 2012 | No Comments | posted by cheekswab | in Blog
Just a reminder that I'll be speaking briefly/running a bone marrow drive at Grace Christian Fellowship at UVA tomorrow, starting at 7:00pm in the Student Activities Building.
Event details can be found here: UVA Grace Christian Fellowship Bone Marrow Drive
For any GCFers that may be reading this page, I've requested that some brief introductory information be included in the Facebook invite. Remember, to help facilitate filling out the forms, the best way to make sure you have the information is to send yourself an email beforehand (if you have a smartphone). Otherwise, you can write info down on a sheet of paper and bring it with you.
I look forward to seeing you all tomorrow!
Promoting the cause
Jan 18 2012 | No Comments | posted by cheekswab | in Blog
So I just put the first public promotion of cheekswab on Facebook, and the response from friends has been overwhelming. To all of those who have re-shared, linked, re-tweeted and redirected others to this site, I thank you. Spreading awareness about the issue is the first step in changing lives.
There are those people out there, especially in the social media landscape, that are fantastic at self-promotion. Youtube channels, Facebook pages, twitter replies, etc. Unfortunately, given my personality type, I am decidedly not one of those people. But I do see the value in social media, and I think there's a delicate balance between using social media in an unobtrusive yet informative/engaging manner and the world of twitter-bots and Farmville updates. It'll be a work in progress, but I look forward to figuring out how to use social media in the most effective manner possible. Please let me know if cheekswab ever gets to the point where it begins to disrupt that balance.
For those of you coming to this site for the first time, I encourage you to do something along the lines of the following:
- Read the site content. I'm not interested in fooling anybody into joining anything. The commitment required to be a donor is too serious to be accepted under false pretenses. As a prospective donor you have the right to be objectively and honestly informed, and anything to the contrary will ultimately serve to undercut the need for more donors rather than substantiate it.
- Order a swab kit online. If you're not local to VA/DC/MD and don't know of an upcoming drive in your area, the fastest way to join the registry is to order a swab kit directly from the National Marrow Donor Program.
- Consider a financial donation to the NMDP. It costs $100 to register a single person into the bone marrow registry. If you have the means, please consider making a financial donation to help offset some of these costs.
- Host a drive. For VA/MD/DC residents, please consider hosting a drive. I would love to help schedule one with you. I welcome minorities of all ethnicities, but I'd especially welcome the opportunity to engage with any non-East Asian communities. To be honest, I don't have many ties to other minority groups and would love to develop some.
- Spread the word. Please share this site address in whatever capacity makes you comfortable. Awareness is the first step to real, effectual change.
Thanks again for visiting. Please use the contact page to get in touch with me for any reason.
Dan