A joint-project between Lions Club of Subang Jaya with 5 of its Leo Clubs
The 2022 Covid-19 pandemic fear of being in the public seemed to have subsided by June 2022. Restaurants, cinemas, everywhere were full … but we were not sure if it’s the same for a blood donation campaign. We planned for a small campaign in Aeon Big Subang Jaya – due to the lack of space and potential poor public response, Pusat Darah Negara only provided 6 beds (in the past, we had up to 12 beds).
Every blood donor was given a thank you gift pack – consisting of not only food/drink items, but also environment friendly substitute like wheatstraw cutleries. This choice is not accidental; it is one of our Lions’ Global Causes – Environment Protection (https://lionsclubsubangjaya.org/what-we-do/). The aim of our project is to encourage the use of less plastics … eg. micro-plastics that leaked into the food chain, will eventually end up in our body when we consume seafood.
After 2 years of “lock-down”, our Leos were also eager to be present in-person with us, rendering community service. Naturally, we tapped on the creative energy of the Leos in helping us with these two combined projects. Thankfully, the Leos outnumbered the Lions volunteering their services … credit goes to:
- Leo Club of SMK La Salle Petaling Jaya
- Leo Club of Sri Kuala Lumpur
- Leo Club of Taylor’s University Lakeside Campus
- Leo Club of SMK USJ8
- Leo Club of Subang Jaya Alumni
The Leos prepared promotional materials to be used in the social media. Since we felt that the information and facts are so enligthening, they should be memorialized in this project news blog so as to be accessible to the world via our website.
Apart from helping us with the campaign promotion work, the Leos were also in-charged with distributing the thank you gift packs and vitamin to every donor. They provided coloring sets to children and helped looking after them while their parents were donating blood. They also went around to conduct an interview survey with the public about plastics, so as to get people to think more about the environmental destruction issues … Thank you, Leos!
Leo Michelle (above) showed the contents of the environmental friendly thank you gift pack – wheat straw plastic cutleries, bamboo comb.
Leos ‘educated’ the gift recipients of the benefit of wheat straw …
Pusat Darah Negara brought 60 bags for the blood donation campaign. Already more than 20 people lined up to fill up the forms in the first 5 minutes …
As the day went by, the queue got longer, the waiting time just got longer. Pusat Darah Negara brought in more bags – we were told that the maximum we could do was now increased to 92 bags. Yet, more and more people turned up 😅.
Due to unexpected over-whelming response, many were disappointed that the waiting time was hours; not minutes. As there were too many people whom wanted to give their blood, we, the Lions, had to skip our own donation so that we can give all the available slots to the public.
When we reached the afternoon session, Pusat Darah Negara had to bring in even more bags. But the cut-off time for registration had to be fixed at 4pm so that we could clear the backlog. We are sorry that we had to turn-away donors who came after 4pm.
The final tally was that we collected 108 bags of blood. As stated in the promotional media above, each bag could be used for 3 transfusions, potentially saving 3 lives.
Lions Club of Subang Jaya and our 5 Leo Clubs would like to sincerely thank all the interested donors who took the trouble to be in Aeon Big and had to wait patiently in the queue. Many of you were rejected for donation; nevertheless, we thank you from the bottom of our heart. We could sense that you are all benevolent people whom wanted to save lives; the trouble you had to go through did not dampen your goal.
- Lion YC Tan (Organizing Chairperson Blood Donation)
- Lion Joseph (Organizing Chairperson Environment)
- Leo Michelle (Organizing Chairperson Leos)
- Committee members: Lion Adrian, Lion Charlene, Lion President Hua Bing.
We would also like to extend our big thank you to the following organizations that supported this campaign:
- SJ Echo
- Majlis Bandaraya Subang Jaya MPP Zone 1
- Aeon Big Subang Jaya
- Pusat Darah Negara
For the many potential donors that came but were disappointed that they could not donate due to the various limiting reasons, please do watch out for our next blood donation cum environment protection campaign in a few months’ time. We will plan something bigger with more capacity, better convenience and efficiency.
