(Radio Iowa) – The Johnston-based LifeServe Blood Center is launching a program that rewards Iowa high school students who organize successful blood drives with scholarships and recognition while making a meaningful difference in their communities. LifeServe spokesman Tim Paluch says the effort calls for those blood drives to be held this summer, anytime before Labor Day, and to be spearheaded by students.
“You’re not only setting up the blood drive, but you’re acting as what we call the chairperson for the drive,” Paluch says. “So you’re out recruiting, sharing information about why it’s important, which we will give you all that information so you can become an expert yourself. And then you’re actually registering people and making sure they come up and follow through with that donation.”
To be eligible for the scholarships, students must recruit donors, act as the chairperson for the blood drive, and register 25 donors to earn a 250-dollar award, or 40 donors to earn a 500-dollar scholarship. “Don’t stop at 25, right? If you need a minimum of 25 to get that first level of scholarship award, we recommend just aiming a little higher and then reaching out and contacting those people who have signed up, just to check in on them a few weeks before, a few days before, to make sure they’re still planning to come out,” Paluch says, “and if they’re not, then you’ve got to put a little bit more work in to get a few more people on the list.”
The agency typically sees demand for blood products rise during the summer months, while at the same time, there’s a significant drop in the number of donations and blood drives.) “A lot of that is because a lot of our donations come from schools,” he says. “You know, we’re in high schools, thousands of our donations each year come from high schools. So how do we lessen that impact of school being out where we have consistent drives? This was the idea to, let’s make advocates out of those students to incentivize them to host their own drives.”
Each blood donation has the ability to impact three lives. Learn more and sign up for the program here:
lifeserve.info/students. The non-profit LifeServe Blood Center provides blood products to more than 175 hospitals in Iowa, South Dakota, Nebraska and Illinois.
