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Kayla Ferreira remembers being a precocious schooler, sitting beside her mother’s infirmary furniture and watching her person humor transfusions. It was that acquisition that made the assemblage request for donor humor a idiosyncratic ngo for Ferreira – and helped signifier her career.
“My ma has an autoimmune illness and had to person humor transfusions for aggregate years,” Ferreira shared. This firsthand acquisition with the life-saving powerfulness of humor donation sparked her involvement successful the cause.
The Jan and Bud Richter Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning astatine Fresno State partnered with the Central California Blood Center to big a field humor thrust Sept. 17 done 19. The humor thrust is 1 of 4 hosted annually astatine Fresno State, with the adjacent 1 scheduled for Nov. 19 done 21. Ferreira, a peculiar projects coordinator astatine the Richter Center, is 1 of the driving forces down the events.
“We had 432 palmy humor donations – the highest fig from a field Blood Drive since September 2018,” Ferreira said of the astir caller field humor drive. “This has the imaginable to prevention 1,296 lives. We’re not conscionable collecting blood; we’re gathering anticipation for patients successful need.”
Ferreira’s engagement with field humor drives began successful 2021 erstwhile she started volunteering for the Central California Blood Center. Her archetypal relation included distributing flyers, sharing societal media posts and providing snacks to donors. As she became much comfy with the process, she worked up the courageousness to donate humor herself.
“I retrieve being truthful tense my archetypal time,” Ferreira recalls. “But the unit was incredibly supportive, and erstwhile I realized however casual and impactful it was, I became committed to being a lifelong donor.”
Ferreira’s committedness to the origin deepened erstwhile she mislaid her puerility friend, Asher Gallegos, to germ compartment crab successful 2022. “Seeing that was a existent shock. It was the archetypal idiosyncratic I had gone to schoolhouse with for truthful agelong that mislaid their battle,” she said.
Understanding that crab patients often payment from humor donations, Ferreira recovered a mode to grant her friend’s memory.
“Losing Asher made maine recognize that down each donation, there’s a story, a beingness hanging successful the balance,” she said. “It pushed maine to flooded my ain fears astir donating and to promote others to bash the same.”
After graduating from Fresno State successful outpouring 2023 with a grade successful wide studies, Ferreira joined the Richter Center]. In her role, she oversees field humor drives, bringing her acquisition arsenic some a unpaid and donor to animate others.
Ferreira’s idiosyncratic transportation to the origin allows her to empathize with first-time donors who mightiness beryllium nervous. “I urge bringing idiosyncratic with you,” she said. “It’s adjuvant to person motivation support, preferably idiosyncratic who has donated before.”
She besides encourages unfastened connection with the staff. “Let them cognize you’re nervous. They’re incredibly supportive and tin adjacent fto you ticker idiosyncratic other spell done the process archetypal if that helps you consciousness much comfortable.”
As for the future, Ferreira and her squad person ambitious goals. “We’re aiming to surpass past year’s full of astir 1,300 donors implicit our 4 yearly drives,” she said. “We’ve already doubled our fig of pupil humor thrust ambassadors, which is truly exciting.”
“Whether you donated, volunteered, oregon dispersed the word, you were portion of thing bigger,” Ferreira said. “You were portion of a assemblage that saves lives, 1 donation astatine a time.”
For much accusation connected however to get involved, interaction Kayla Ferreira astatine kferreira@csufresno.edu.
(Story by Katie Xiong, pupil adjunct successful University Marketing and Communications)
