On 15th November 2017, the Mumbai Office was invited to NRS Medical College, Kolkata by the members of South Asian Medical Students Association (SAMSA) under The Donor Cup initiative, an inter college competition based on the theme of organ donation to be conducted over a period of 6 months.
Around 30 aspiring doctors of the SAMSA wanted to undergo a volunteer training programme with us to build up on their knowledge related to organ donation and help spread the word about the noble cause.
The full day workshop had the following sessions –
Mrs. Jaya Jairam introduced the broad framework of the workshop, including setting the expectations, a Pre training survey and Registration.
Mr. Amit Shenoy and Mrs.Jaya Jairam introduced the group to a mind mapping group activity which aimed at helping the participants to begin thinking about different aspects of organ donation.
This was followed by a detailed session on functions of vital organs, organ failure, organ donation and transplantation, types of organ donors, the concept of brain death, its causes, various brain death certification tests and the need for organ donation, conducted by Mr.Amit Shenoy. He also explained to them the process of organ donation, state wise initiatives, various government bodies and other relevant facts.
Thereafter, Mrs. Jaya Jairam touched upon the barriers to organ donation in India and the myths and facts to do with organ donation were also discussed in depth.
The next activity required the participants to write a thank you letter to a donor family which enabled them to put themselves in the shoes of a recipient and how grateful the recipients are to the donor family after getting a second lease of life. Some of the letters written by the volunteers were quite emotional and conveyed a recipient’s true gratitude to the donor and his/her family.
Mrs.Jaya Jairam shared her own story from a recipient’s point of view. All the participants were emotionally moved and were in awe of both the donor family and the recipient for having gone through the difficult situations.
The volunteers were then given handouts which contained four different stories of organ donors and they were asked to choose one of the stories that they were most inspired by and what was the thought process when they did that. Each one of them had a beautiful explanation to share as to why they chose a particular story.
All the participants were then invited to make a short presentation on organ donation and how they plan to volunteer for this cause, in their own areas of life, work and expertise. All of them shared how each one of them would contribute and it was wonderful to hear some very creative ideas.
All the volunteers signed up and took the Pledge to be organ donors themselves.
The session was concluded with a pledge taken by all the volunteers to spend a few hours every month, to spread awareness about this cause of Organ Donation.
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