An explosion of Soco beats, carnival dancers and colourful feathered costumes surrounded the Race Against Blood Cancer team as they took their donor registration drive to the Flagz Mas Band Carnival party on Sunday.
Beats, dancers and colours set the scene for the team’s donor drive at the Flagz Mas Carnival event at BoxPark in Shoreditch on Sunday 13th March.
Curiosity as to who we are and what we we’re doing split out of the carnival, with our team driving 91 people of all different ages, races and faces to donate in just under four hours.
Community outreach member Hayley Mills carefully explained to new donors that the most common misconception is that donating stem cells at the drive is a painful, or medical procedure, reiterating that the most torturous part is in fact the paperwork:
“It’s simple, everyone thinks it’s really scary, and we are going to stick something inside your arm, we are definitely not, we are not trained medical professionals, all it simply is is a swab.
“The longest piece of it is filling in a form, which is your doctors information and your ethnic mix, which we can help you with.”
A donor was drawn to donate for the first time because of the #Match4Tommy campaign, likening the gesture to the importance of helping a younger family member.
He said: “If I had a little brother, I would want to help him out, it took 2 minutes, it was painless, I felt kind of silly for a little while, but I knew the cause was good so I went for it.
Finding the process speedy and simple, he encouraged others to understand that a little amount of your time could save a life.
Continuing: “Try and save a little boy’s life, just doing a swab goes a long way.”
Race Against Blood Cancer community manager Alex was thrilled with how many donors the team managed to get in such a short space of time.
He said: “It was a fantastic day, we signed up 91 people in total, which was absolutely brilliant, thank you to everyone who came down and continues to support the charity and #Match4Vithiya and #Match4Tommy.
We have many drives upcoming, including one on the 19th of March over at Global Radio, where we are going to continue the search.”
See below a collection of photos from the day.
