Let’s have a look at the major events that took place in the month of May
Emergency Wing
The month of May was the month for celebration. The organization which started 10 years back was proud to look back at the course of its journey. Sometimes it’s good to look back as it gives quanta of energy to combat the upcoming hurdles and challenges. Nevertheless celebration does not mean "NO WORK". Rather it’s a promise for "MORE WORK" - the gift which a Sankalp Volunteer is endowed upon when happy. This month we had a total of 60 emergency blood requests out of which 24 seeking one or the other negative blood group. 20% requests were from hospitals outside Bangalore. The team also managed 5 request for Bombay Blood Group where in a total of 9 units were needed. Due to the quick response from some Blood Banks about the available BBG unit on their shelves, all these request were successfully managed with just 3 emergency donations. The Organization would like to thank Mr Uday, Mr Sridhar, Mr Harsha and Mr Basava Prabhu (all Bombay Blood Group Donors) who are always ready to help the needy and donate blood at any hour.
Rakta Kranti Bangalore
Summer time is the period of severe blood shortage in the city. Most of the colleges are closed and dengue is on the rise. Arranging blood drives in the months of May-June is very critical task for the Rakta Kranti team. The month of May saw a high number of drives organized by Sankalp to tackle this shortage. We organized 12 drives in the month collecting total 1533 units of blood in Bangalore alone.
Infosys: On 3rd May, a blood donation drive was organized in Infosys BPO, Electronic City. Camp site being in basement and away from public view, required good publicity to make people aware of the event. Repeated publicity on the camp day, posters and emails being sent, made sure there is good turnout. 160 people came forward to donate with 142 units being collected.
A second blood drive was organized in Bannerghatta Road office on 9th May. Even though the employees had tight schedules, they came out and donated. Had we increased the timings by 1 hour, we could have crossed the 100 mark. 87 units of blood were collected in the event
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Capgemini: Capgemini is the organization that we can bank upon for conducting blood camps. They keep having regular camps once every 3-4 months. During this shortage month, capgemini organized a blood camp in their Brigade Metropolis office. More than 140 associates turned up for the event and 124 donated blood. Due to the venue being a little hot, there were a few vasovagal reactions, but the donors were motivated and reactions didn't deter them from coming forward to donate.
Rohan Vasanth Apartments: A blood drive was organized in Rohan Vasanth Apartments, Marthahalli through the volunteers for a Better India initiative of Art of Living. Door-to-door publicity was done for the camp. Volunteers visited close to 270 apartments and distributed brochures. Being a Sunday, the response was not so great. Eventually 25 people came and registered for donation with 14 of them donating blood. Their sincere effort in fighting the summer shortage is deeply appreciated.
Wipro: A series of drives were organized in Wipro during the month of May. Drives were organized on 15th and 16th May in Sarjapur office, 22nd May in MG Road office and on 29th May in Sarjapur-1 office. The response from the company associates was very good in all of these drives.
A huge turnout throughout both the days in Sarjapur drive ensured that we had close to 400 donors coming in to donate blood in the span of 9-10 hours. Good publicity and support from the company ensured that it was a nice drive, apart from the fact that we had a few more reactions than expected. 591 units of blood was collected and distributed across three blood banks in Bangalore.
Equally good turnout was seen in the blood camps on MG Road and Sarjapur-1 offices. 37 units in MG Road and 104 units in Sarjapur-1 were collected.
Cox & Kings: Cox & King organized their second blood donation camp on 23rd May. With about 100 employees in the company, 50% of the associates came forward for the noble cause. With just 2 beds being put, 31 units were collected in a 4 hours camp.
ITPB: 17th Blood donation drive was organized in ITPB on 27th May. This was a camp organized on Blood Mobile. As always, there was a huge flow of enthusiastic donors throughout the camp. 95 units were collected in one day event with no major issues.
Deutsche Bank: 10th Blood drive was organized in Deutsche Bank on 30th May. This time there was better publicity of the event and announcements were also done during the drive. The support from company volunteers was very good and increased publicity resulted in increased turnout for the camp. 133 units were collected in the event.
Robert Bosch: After 2 Robert Bosch drives in March, another was held on May 30th at their Koramangala campus. Good publicity measures adopted ensured that more than 200 employees came forward to donate blood. Although the crowd was less in the first 2-3 hours, post lunch there were huge queues of donors waiting for their chance to donate. In total 175 units of blood were collected. With this, a total of more than 500 units have collected in the 3 Sankalp drives at Robert Bosch this year.
Rakta Kranti Karnataka
Tata Motors, Dharwad organized a camp with Sankalp on 20th May 2013. This was the second drive there. A total number of 181 units were collected with over 200 interested donors. A significant increase in numbers was observed compared to the last drive where 120 units were collected.
3 blood banks participated in the drive - SDM Dharwad, Cancer Hospital Hubli and District Hospital Dharwad.
Publicity was done prior to the camp by giving talk in person by Sankalp volunteers to the workers in the assembly lines of the factory. Posters, pamphlets (English/Kannada) were extensively used for publicity.
Company volunteers did a great job by giving the pre-donation and post donation advises for all donors throughput the day. Dr. Gajanan, the organizer from Tata Motors, himself was highly enthusiastic throughout the camp. This helped create further motivation among donors as well.
Disha
This month, we received an average of 40 calls everyday, with platelets and SDP requests on the rise. We also called the blood bank officers of almost all the 64 networked blood banks and discussed their concerns. Their feedback will help us plan better for the future.
We also did quality check of the responses we had given to the blood request we had received in the month of April. Feedbacks were taken from patient side and issues with the quality of response ere addressed.
Tech Team Updates
In the event of 10th year of Sankalp, the website sankalpindia.net was revamped. User Interface and accessibility features in the site were enhanced. This month we upgraded the server on which Sankalp’s site and internal portals run on. We now have more RAM and more power. We also brought in a new option for contributions [www.sankalpindia.net/drupal/contribute]
We also worked on the up-gradation of Thalassemia Site to include cutting-edge features. The internal finance site of Sankalp was also upgraded with better features to make all transactions and logging simpler. The employee interface of Sankalp’s internal site as also enhances with its leave management system integrated and improved. We have also started working on upgrading of teamred.in. Several other minor issues were fixed.
Public Relations
sankalpindia.net - the website underwent a major change in the front end. We also introduced practices to better manage newsletter articles. Additionally, Sankalp's Anniversary programme was covered by Times Of India on their 26th May edition.