Volunteering with AADP greatly benefits patients in need of a match. In turn, working with patients touches the lives of volunteers. To highlight this, we are starting a series of volunteer stories, Vision of A Volunteer, where our hardworking helpers have a chance to share how volunteering with AADP has impacted them.
Suyog
In 2012, I read about the alarming statistics on how South Asian communities have a significant disadvantage in the bone marrow registry. Despite huge population, not enough Indians and other South Asians register as a bone marrow donor. Hence, chances of someone struggling with life threatening Leukemia from South Asian descent of finding a match are only 1 in 20,000. These numbers were alarming enough for me to give serious attention to this cause. At around the same time, I co-founded Pacificforce, Asian Employee Resource Group at Salesforce. AADP of course, came up as the top organization we can partner with around this cause. With the help of AADP, in the last 3+ years, we have organized several bone marrow registration drives in and outside Salesforce. Last year, AADP had a booth at Dreamforce, the biggest software industry event hosted by Salesforce. I believe that spreading awareness and removing fear about bone marrow donation is a key step toward motivating people to register as a bone marrow donor. AADP team, especially Ruby, Diana and Puneet have done a great job at spreading awareness, running campaigns, teaching new registrants about the process and most importantly making the process of registration simple and quick. Thanks for all your great work and making us laugh our head off during the annual “Laugh for Lives” event. Proud to be associated with AADP.
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