Given our quest to do full justice to our principle of Giving Life A Better Chance, it was essential that we spent some time on balancing rapid growth with consolidation of existing work. We dedicated almost the whole of last year strengthening ourselves. Having won the immense confidence of the community including patients, caregivers, financial donors it was time to look at how to build sustenance before taking off on the next growth trajectory.
Our numbers do show progress - we had about 13,000 units of blood collected, trained about 2000 children on voluntary blood donation, had nearly 900 children receiving systematic management of thalassemia, completed 69 bone marrow transplants, addressed nearly 7000 blood requests with about 150 of them for the extremely rare Bombay blood group. However, what we see as a bigger achievement is the fact this progress has been accompanied with growth in people and processes at Sankalp. A small 500 sq ft office space in Bangalore with different teams being groomed for specialized work as demanded by the variety of projects at Sankalp is testimony to the fact that internal strengthening is going on at full steam.
The year also saw us reach a few important milestones, each of which gave us the belief that we are pursuing the right track in our journey - we had the 1000th blood donation drive since the inception of the Rakta Kranti program a decade ago and the 50th bone marrow transplant in our Bangalore facility since the start about 30 months ago. We had a BMT unit and a thalassemia day care center added to the existing set of centers.
Each blood donor that walks into our drives to donate, each patient that calls on our helpline seeking blood, each child that comes into our thalassemia day care or BMT centers and every donor who contributes for the projects deserves nothing short of the best. Sankalp exists because of the trust these people have in us. They are and will continue to be the ones who will help us grow. The work and strength built over the last year has brought in more potential collaborations with different institutions to expand our boundaries of work. We feel humbled but poised to take flight to embrace these opportunities to fulfill our mission of 100% Voluntary Blood Donation and Thalassemia Free India.