21 August, Chennai:
On a fine Tuesday afternoon, students of Loyola Institute of Business
Administration were entering a room quietly instead of a usually bustling
campus. No, there was no test! Neither was it a prayer meeting. It was a
life-saving blood donation camp in the college premises organised by Radius
(the social outreach club of LIBA) in association with Lion’s
Blood Bank.
The donors hailed not only from LIBA, but also
from LICET, St. Joseph’s College. The list of donors didn’t restrict to only students
and professors but the non-teaching staff of the college also volunteered to
donate blood for the social cause. More than 130 volunteered and about 78 units
of blood were collected. This grand number was higher than previous year’s due
to the collective effort of the members of Radius to spread awareness about the
life-saving contribution of blood donation.
“There is definitely more joy in giving than in
receiving! What a wonderful moment it was?” exclaimed Roshni Sandhya, a
first-time blood donor. “As it has always been, I felt satisfied by donating
blood” says Nagesh Saralaya, a regular blood donor who also heads Radius club.
Nervousness, anxiety, fear- before donating blood for the first time vanished
and transformed to a smile when each of them knew in their hearts that their
blood is going to save somebody’s life. Regular blood donors want to continue
saving more lives. Those who volunteered but were not eligible to donate hoped
to get a chance to save life at least in future.
The event was graced by Rev. Fr. Peter Xavier,
Director of LIBA and Dr. Victor Louis Anthuvan, Professor and Faculty-in-charge
of Radius who shared a few important thoughts to motivate and appreciate the
donors. The organizers were congratulated for taking this initiative of blood
donation camp. The success of the programme was largely due to the awareness
created through social media, word of mouth, mails and posters circulated.
To promote blood donation to meet the demand
for blood requests, socially responsible presentations were done by the
juniors, Swathipriya Venkatesan and Subasri in co-ordination with the seniors, Srishty
Merlin , Swarupa Rani , Deepak Sridhar and Divyanshi Gupta . Donors came even
beyond the college; this would not have been possible without the powerful
Social media marketing done by Manoj Kumar and Bhuvanesh Mohanraj who are also
part of the Radius Club. The other co-ordinators who facilitated the programme
are Shelton D’Souza, Somtirtha Das, Leo Jude and Steffi Jose and many other
Radius members.
Personnel from Lion’s blood bank assisted
throughout the programme. All the donors were given Donor certificates for
their noble service and Donor cards are yet to be given. The Radius team
expresses its gratitude to all the people who came forward to support the blood
donation camp 2012. With the same support and beloved wishes, Radius would
bring out another camp soon to keep the flow of saving lives running in the
blood.
