BLOOD DONATION CAMP

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.