By Idil Herzi
Four students in Laurier’s masters of social work community intervention course have taken a group project to both encourage involvement from the Laurier community and address a nationwide issue.
Jackilyn Alberton, Ashley McKnight, Monica Tan and Justine Kormann created a residence-wide blood drive for students to participate in.
Today, students living in Bricker residence were offered an opportunity to donate blood; they would be transported to the blood donor clinic via limousine, be provided with snacks, and offered some extra incentive for participating.
“We had the floor competition, which motivated me to get out in the first place,” said first-year health science student Nicole Reinders. “I’ve wanted to [donate blood] for a long time, but I never really had a reason to,” she said.
“I think its great what they’re doing. Getting the limos out and all the people here. I’ve never seen this many young people at a blood donor fund,” added Michael Steffler, a second-year economics student.
Korman explained that it was important for the organizers to promote an important cause.
“We decided we wanted to work with the Canadian Blood Services and we wanted to introduce a fun way to donate blood to students that might have never done it,” said Kormann.
“Our goal is to make first time blood donation a really positive experience. Which is why we had the limo, and the pizza and snacks and pop. We just wanted everyone to have a really positive experience so that they’re more likely to donate again. Right now there’s a huge blood shortage,” she said.
“There’s always a blood shortage,” added Tran.
The process of donating blood was a mystery to most donors, but some seemed a little more excited then others.
“I’m nervous, I’ve never [donated] before. I haven’t even done blood work,” said Kelsy Hellyer, a first-year student in psychology.
“[But I know] it’s important because it’ll save somebody’s life,” she added.
