Last Sunday Race Against Blood Cancer held a donor drive supporting Flagz Mas Band at Wandsworth Arts Fringe in London, where the team worked hard to sign up more potential lifesaving donors to the blood stem cell register.
We would like to thank all those that showed up to register and to the organisers for allowing us to pitch up and engage with the community. We would also like to give a special thanks to the work of our team members Alex Morrison and Lenah Lang who continue to help those people needing lifesaving transplants.
Nearly 200 potential lifesaving donors signed up in just two donor drives at Google offices
Last week the Race Against Blood Cancer team popped into the Google offices in London to do another donor drive. After last year’s visit where we signed up over 100 donors, we were kindly invited back to capture any employees who may have been away. It was snowing and cold outside but the feeling inside was far from it as we managed to sign up an additional 65 potential lifesaving donors!
A massive thank you to Sam Smith who organised the event and all of those at Google who took the time to register. We would also like to show our appreciation to our community engagement manager Alex Morrison and volunteer Alex Kiffin who once again were on hand to sign up willing participants!
Alex Kiffin and some new volunteer donors at Google
Last Saturday the Race Against Blood Cancer team hosted another donor drive at the popular event Shropshire Kids Festival 2018 at the Telford International Centre.
The event was full of busy families getting involved in all of the activities on offer, and the team still managed to sign up an impressive 57 blood stem cell donors amongst the madness! We’d like to say a massive thank you to everyone who visited the stand and took an interest in the charity, and a special thanks to those who registered!
New volunteers signing up as a stem cell donors at the festival in Shropshire
We’d also like to show our appreciation to the organisers Shropshire Festivals and our amazing team Gemma Elsmore, Sarah Elsmore, Beth Elsmore and Jodie Thompson for spending all day on their feet, encouraging the crowd and signing up new potential donors who could help save the life of someone with blood cancer!
If you would like help with organising a donor drive in your place of work, please contact our community engagement team:
May was a busy month for the Community Engagement team in London with various donor drives including one at Flagz Carnival in Croydon and at Soul’d Out in Central London.
The busy month was topped off with a drive at Google’s Tottenham Court Road offices on 30th May. Despite being during half term, Alex and his team managed to register 100 new potential donors.
With only 20 registrations by 1PM, the team took fate in their hands and went desk to desk. They were overwhelmed with the willingness and interest of Googlers to help the cause and have already arranged a second donor drive in the same location at the end of August!
Race Against Blood Cancer would like to give a special thanks to Sam Smith for organising the drive, Googlers for their interest in the cause and to Alex Kiffin who volunteered at all Race Against Blood Cancer drives in May.
Media Madness sees our Community Engagement team set a new record at Teads London office.
Teads, a global leader in the video advertising space warmly welcomed our team on Tuesday 6th December. This marked the second drive of Media Madness with the previous record of 97 bone marrow and stem cell donor registrations currently held by Bauer Media.
On the day itself the team registered a willing 60 new donors which was an incredible achievement considering there are only 70 employees in their London office and 65 were in on this particular day.
Despite Bauer Media still topping the Media Madness leaderboard in terms of numbers, Teads set a new record for the per person ratio of those people onsite who came forward to sign up at an impressive 92%. The team at Race Against Blood Cancer couldn’t be any happier with the way the day went, with Teads truly raising the bar in terms of active participation.
A massive thank you to Elle Panes and Jonathan Nash who organised the donor drive for us on the day and did a great job rallying the troops.
November 8th marked our 20th donor drive of a busy 2016 where we were warmly welcomed by an enthusiastic team at Bauer Media UK.
As one of Europe’s largest privately-owned media groups, Bauer Media is an entertainment network of iconic, multi-platform brands.
This particular donor drive was a long time coming and is somewhat fitting that in the end the drive kicked off Media Donor Drive Madness! The highly competitive 4th quarter is where we have several media companies lined up to do end of year donor drives, with each company we visit trying to top the leader board with the most donors signed up on the day.
A massive thank you goes to Ryan Hawking-Skeggs. Not only was Ryan instrumental in organising the donor drive he took Alex our lead on the day from desk to desk to sign people up to the register.
The team would also like to extend its appreciation to everyone who supported on the day and to an extremely willing audience. As a result of such goodwill Media Donor Drive Madness had a hugely impressive start with 97 new donors registering on the day.
Race Against Blood Cancer joins the government backed NCS programme which helps provide students with valuable skills for life.
The National Citizen Service (NCS) is an experience that any 15 to 18 year-old doesn’t want to miss! And with more than 200,000 young people signed up every year, Race Against Blood Cancer and the team were eager to play their part.
So, on Tuesday 5th July, Joe Bates and Alex Morrison traveled to Stoke-on-Trent in the Midlands to deliver the first of a four days’ worth of workshops to those enrolled on to the programme.
Giving young people the chance to embark on exhilarating challenges, make a mark and build skills for work and life, this hugely valuable initiative sees young people across the country effectively volunteer their summer to develop a social action project which can have a positive impact on their community.
Joe and Alex delivered four workshops throughout the day to 80 participants. The workshops raised awareness of different types of blood cancer, treatments available and the need for more donors on the registry – especially people from an ethnic minority and mixed heritage background.
On the day the groups were also taught how to carry out a donor drive, with the hope that many of the young volunteers will run their own donor drives over the summer to support Race Against Blood Cancer’s aim of registering another 3,000 potential lifesaving donors before Christmas.
Alex Morrison, the charities Community Engagement lead said “it was a fantastic day and we spoke with some really motivated and enthusiastic young people. They were a credit to the staff and we really hope that they can now go away and help us reach our targets. We will certainly help them in any way we can and I’m excited to deliver more workshops over the coming months”.
Jemma Knight, NCS Coach was equally as pleased with how well the students embraced the day “The young people were really inspired from the workshop, they found the talk interesting and some of the group have already set their sights on running a Donor drive as their social action project. We had a young girl within the group who suffers from a blood condition herself, and she said she felt encouraged throughout and really enjoyed the session”.
If you feel that you or someone you know would like to organise or attend a Race Against Blood Cancer workshop, please contact us at info@raceagainstbloodcancer.com
To all our supporters, we need your vote before 20th June.
Our beloved Community Engagement Lead, Alex Morrison, has been nominated as ‘Positive Role Model’ for the 2016 National Diversity Awards and needs your help to win.
Alex has been a driving force behind the charity since day one and has travelled around the country to raise awareness for blood cancer. In our first 12 months, he has helped us register over 2000 new donors and he was recently informed that our efforts have led to find our first of what we are confident will be many matches that will save the lives of blood cancer patients in need of a living saving bone marrow or stem cell match.
To give Alex some much deserved recognition for all his efforts and even more importantly, help get Race Against Blood Cancer more visibility at this increasingly influential event, we need you to take just two minutes out of your day to vote for Alex. It’s important that you do this in the next few days as voting closes on June 20th.
Every vote counts! Thanks for your support and stay posted for some hopefully positive news soon.
The May Bank holiday weekend was a crazy time for our engagement team as they completed two donor drives within 24 hours and 155 mi apart!
The marathon started on Sunday evening as the team headed to Myyst nightclub in Birmingham to join eager clubbers to raise awareness of the charity.
In our white t-shirts amidst the dressed up crowds, our team definitely stood out! Response was really great though as clubbers happily interacted with us, despite having been queuing in the cold for ages. They also managed to register just under 50 new donors, the majority of which from ethnic backgrounds, making it a very successful event.
The team wrapped up just before 2 AM and drove back down to London for a few hours’ sleep but were back up and running before they knew it as they headed to the Guyana Folk Festival in Croydon.
The tiredness quickly subsided as the music and carnival feel took over and the team started interacting with the festive crowds. With live music, performance, awards, extremely good food and various stalls, it was a great event to celebrate life and get people to sign up as new potential donors. After a brief speech on stage, Alex even ran into Ram John Holder, Porkpie from Desmond’s, backstage which confirmed that it was a great day.
This was a last minute drive and the response we got was great. While dancing and festivities made it hard to register many donors, we did manage to get 26 new registers. The team will also be back for the Guyanese tea party in July where, now that we are known, we expect to see great engagement and a lot more fun to come!
Alex Morrison & Ram John Holder at the Guyana FestivalSingers and dancing at the Guyana FestivalPresentations, speakers and animation at the Guyana FestivalMusic entertained the crowds at the festival
Positive energy and colourful vibes were what drove our Race Against Blood Cancer team to the Flagz Mas Band Carnival in Shoreditch in March to raise awareness for the #match4tommy campaign.
There was no better way to change the future of those in need than by engaging with the crowd, dancers and families that came to the event. Our first ever video of the event says it all. Check it out!
