The American Red Cross is looking for donors and volunteers to help with a life-saving effort.
For a little over a year now the organization has been holding blood drives in Sterling. While the drives have gone okay, the Red Cross is hoping to find more individuals who would like to donate blood on a regular basis and they are also looking for an individual or group to take over the coordination of the blood drives and recruitment of donors.
“We know that blood drives are more successful when it’s somebody local who’s doing the recruitment and the coordination of it,” said Amanda Wehnes, Red Cross account manager II for Western Nebraska/Eastern Colorado and EAC chairwoman for Nebraska/Iowa Region.
Wehnes, a Northeastern Junior College graduate, has been serving as the coordinator for Sterling’s drives but since she no longer lives here she doesn’t know that many people and has not been successful on her own in getting people to come in and donate blood.
“We’ve heard from people who are saying ‘We want to come in and give blood,’ ‘We want there to be a reliable schedule for when we can come in and give’ so that’s why we’ve worked so hard to set these up six times a year,” Wehnes said.
The Red Cross holds six blood drives in Sterling every year, one every other month. The blood that’s collected is provided to hospitals throughout Colorado and the nation. The next blood drive is scheduled for Tuesday, June 18, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. All of the drives are being held at Christ United Methodist Church, which is located at 104 S. Fourth Street.
“We’re incredibly appreciative because they have been great hosts,” Wehnes said.
She pointed out that one of the neat things about the Red Cross is that it has many different programs to offer not only through its blood services but also through its disaster, humanitarian and armed forces services. They also offer swimming and lifeguard training, as well as CPR and first aid.
“We really are just an all-encompassing organization,” Wehnes said.
Its blood services are particularly important though because every two seconds somebody in the United States needs blood. Unfortunately, that need quite often goes unmet, according to Whenes, because only three out of every 100 people actually come in and give blood.
The main responsibilities of the individual or group serving as coordinator for Sterling’s blood drives would be to recruit donors and manage the scheduling of appointments. According to Wehnes, that’s about 15 to 20 hours of work, including the day of the blood drive.
“It’s kind of a fun thing to do. You get that fellowship time with your community, you get to see people you don’t see very often and you know that you’re going to be helping to impact patients that desperately need that blood,” she said.
There are no complicated requirements to be able to donate blood. To be eligible you must simply be age 16 or older, weigh at least 110 pounds and be in good health.
Some of the common reasons people can’t give blood are because they are taking a blood thinner, have undergone recent cancer treatments, or have traveled to certain places, mostly tropical areas where there is a risk of developing malaria, so they must wait three months to be eligible. If you’ve gotten a recent tattoo or piercing there is no required waiting period to be able to donate as long as it was done in a safe, regulated facility like a tattoo shop.
High school students who want to donate blood must have parental consent if they are 16 or 17 years old but once they turn 18 it is no longer required. The Red Cross does offer a program for high schoolers who want to earn scholarship money. Students can earn scholarships every year ranging from $500 all the way up to $5,000 depending on how many units of blood they are able to collect.
There are also programs for groups that want to do fundraising, veterans groups, and programs for elementary and junior high students that are wanting to learn more about the blood donation process and help recruit blood donors too.
“There’s so many different arms of what we do with the Red Cross that I think once we get the right people in place it will be incredibly lucrative for those that are helping and those that are coming in to donate,” Wehnes said.
To sign up to donate blood, go to www.redcrossblood.org and put in your zip code. If you are interested in serving as a coordinator for the Sterling blood drives you can contact Wehnes at 308-660-6709 or email amanda.wehnes@redcross.org.
“We know that there are a lot of very generous and giving people in Sterling and we’re excited to be able to meet them and work with them,” she said.
