Gift of Life Marathon (Vermont)
As someone whom has been very active with the intense work that goes into a large blood drive, I greatly appreciate hearing how other communities take up the challenge. The community of Rutland, Vermont has well documented their proud story in creating the largest blood drive for the Northern New England Red Cross blood region. With 1,024 donations in one day, this small city beat out mega-cities like Boston that are 35 times the population. To make those numbers, 1 out of every 17 citizens of the community had to show up. How do they do it? Check out the video below!
In Oregon, the largest blood drives tend to be education related (Collegiate and High-school). The largest drive in this region is the four-day Oregon State University blood drive, that brings in over 1,000 units each term… and the next largest drive is the HP Campus blood drive, both in Corvallis (pop. ~56,000). Small communities can definitely show impressive results!
2 comments
It's been a great pleasure and an honor to work with such a great community. This project takes almost a full year to develop and we look forward to it every time. This was our 7th year of doing the Gift-Of-Life Marathon and it's grown by almost 20% every year. To put it in perspective, we're talking about a town with a population of 17,000 and such growth is astonoshing. In the end 1024 productive units of blood were collected and the little town of Rutland has become the new Mt. Everest in New England.
That is amazing! Incredible work you guys are doing over there. I know a side that is seldom publicized for mega-drives like this is the staffing, because it can be incredibly stressful while invigorating to go for a record and a chance to meet up with so many fellow staff that you don't get to see that often. It's also great to see the devotion the donors have- wanting to know how things are progressing and keeping their phone handy to call others down if needed!
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