Kin Blog

Every year, Kin Canada members and their family and friends roll up their sleeves, give their time, and spread awareness about the importance of giving the gift of life through blood donation. In 2017, Kin members pledged to give 615 units of blood and they exceeded that goal by 64% with 1010 units! This success was due to dedicated clubs across Canada who encouraged others to give, organized group appointments, and adopted clinics in their community.

The Kinette Club of Greater Sudbury had huge success with their clinics the past two years and were recognized at our National Convention for being the club with the highest number of new blood donors AND the club with the highest number of blood donations in 2017!

Wondering what it takes to adopt a clinic? Below, Stacy Sathaseevan, President of the Kinette Club of Sudbury shares how her club made it happen!

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Step 1: Collect Information

We reached out to our local Canadian Blood Services (CBS) branch and got the information for Joanne Drake, our Territory Manager. She was an invaluable resource and was more than willing to help us get our project off the ground. We invited Joanne to a general club meeting where she was able to meet our members and explain to us the importance of blood donation, the impact it has on our community, and how our club could make a big impact by adopting a clinic. Bonus: she brought everyone free cookies! 

Step 2: Spread the Word

We knew that a social media campaign would be the fastest and easiest way to spread the word for our event so we posted on Facebook and Twitter - making sure to send reminders and updates to our followers every few days to keep the event fresh in their minds. With the help of Joanne, we drafted a press release and shared it with all the relevant media outlets in town. From that, we received a spot in the Sudbury Star, our most popular local newspaper, and we were even invited to do a radio interview. 

Step 3: Attend the Clinic 

The clinic that we adopted lasted a full week so our club members took turns working different shifts to ensure that we always had a Kinette representative present during the clinic's hours. We proudly wore our Kin shirts and hung our regalia. We greeted donors at the door and handed out snacks to them after their donations. All of our club members who were eligible to donate also rolled up their sleeves to contribute to the number of units given. 

The clinic allowed us to use their wifi so, with our laptops and tablets, we were able to register willing participants into our Partners for Life Program—now all of their donations in the future will count toward Kin Canada’s total pledge for the year. 

We were proud to be doing something good for our community and were happy that our presence at the clinic increased awareness about our club; we had a lot of great conversations with donors about who we are and what we do. 

Round Two

This year, we hosted our second donor clinic. We approached our advertising in the same way as last year and we were optimistic about the number of donations we would receive. To encourage participation, some of our members organized car pools, went over and above in their efforts to invite family and friends to participate, and I myself even offered my “new donor” friends a spaghetti dinner at my place to celebrate their contributions.

Our target was 224 donations and we had 196 people attend the clinic. From those participants, we successfully collected 155 units of blood. We assume that we weren’t able to register ALL of those donors, but the good it does for our community can’t be denied! The fact that our club’s donations have allowed us to more than double our District’s pledge for 2018 and surpass our 2017 numbers is a HUGE matter of pride for us! 

“Though they be tiny, they are fierce” is a saying that I have always associated with my club. We may only have 9 members, but every single one of us works hard and does our best to meet our community’s greatest need. I couldn’t be more proud of the successes our club has had and I look forward to seeing what we can do in the future!

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Due to the outstanding efforts of clubs like the Greater Sudbury Kinettes, Kin Canada is proud to be receiving the 2017 National Partner Award at CBS’ "Honouring our Life Blood" award ceremony on Friday, September 7 in Ottawa, Ontario. 

Do you have an idea for promoting blood donation in your community? Christine Stahl (National Partnerships Coordinator, Kin Canada) and Danielle Leguard-White (National Partnerships Manager, Canadian Blood Services) are available to provide support to help make your project a success!