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Lane Memorial Blood Bank is constantly searching for people
who have never donated blood. The blood bank must find these
donors to replace those who drop off the donor rolls for
many different reasons. The ideal new donor is a person
who is just starting out in his or her adult life and who
will make blood donation a regular part of that life. The
Lane County high schools are an obvious target for recruiting
this particular group and LMBB has been conducting blood
drives at these schools for many years. However, even though
turnout at many schools increased dramatically when the
minimum donating age was dropped to 16 (as permitted by
Oregon state law), some other schools were producing meager
results.
To encourage more student donations, LMBB developed its
annual High School Blood Drive contest.
This contest, along with more LMBB personnel involvement
prior to and during the high school blood drives, has produced
the desired results. Many of the schools now conduct full-day
(5 or 6 hour) blood drives and several are scheduled to
hold three events during the school year.
The schools are divided into three categories: small schools
(2A), medium schools (3A) and large schools (4A) with plaques
awarded to the winner in each category. In addition, the
winning schools receive an invitation to send a representative
to the blood bank's annual appreciation dinner to receive
these awards.
In the school year 2003-04, 15 of Lane County's high schools
participated in the contest. The blood bank's goal is to
have 100% high school participation.
Download the High
School Handbook (PDF format, file size: 3.3 MB) for
additional information on organizing a high school blood
drive.

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