The City of Joy, Kolkata, had its first batch of “Angels of Change - Volunteers for Organ Donation” trained by MOHAN Foundation on June 20 - 21, 2017 at Techno India University in collaboration with Anthyesti Foundation with a funding received from SBI Foundation. Anthyesti Foundation is a local NGO in Kolkata and this training was done under Project Amrit , an initiative launched in February 2017 by Anthyesti Foundation to promote widespread social awareness on Organ Donation in and around Kolkata and whole of Eastern India. Ms. Pallavi Kumar, Executive Director, Delhi – NCR was the resource person and was accompanied by Ms. Mareena Thomas, Programme Officer.

Angels of Change is a unique program where select volunteers from different walks of life are taken through a customized training module to enable them to undertake awareness initiatives on organ donation amongst various audiences. The training program was attended by 19 participants from varied backgrounds: First year students from Techno India University pursuing a course in Hospital Management, Life Members of MOHAN Foundation, representatives from Swadheen Foundation in Guwahati and from Anthyesti Foundation.

The two days training had the following sessions:

Day 1:

1. Introduction to Workshop – Expectations, Pre training survey and Registration Form

2. A session on Organ Donation and Transplantation – concepts, types, myths and other relevant facts

3. Mind Mapping – A group activity aiming to help the participants to begin thinking about various aspects of organ donation

4. Letter writing – The participants were asked to write a thank you letter to a donor family thanking them for an organ received. The aim was to help the participants think from the perspective of an organ recipient

5. Stories of Hope- The participants were asked to answer few questions on the basis of a case story. The aim was to help participants understand the donor family's perspectives

6. Panel discussion with various stakeholders. The panelists were:

• Dr. Aditi Kishore Sarkar, Additional Director of Health Services (Admin), CMRI and Nodal Officer of Dept. of Health Services
• Dr. Yashesh Paliwal, Intensivist, CCU – Head, Fortis Hospital - Anandapur
• Dr. Nidhi Agarwal, Junior Consultant Nephrologist, RN Tagore Hospital
• Dr. Tanushree Mondal, Asst Director of Medical Education & Assistant Professor, Assistant Director of Medical Education
• Dr. Syed S Siraj, Assistant Director of Health Services, Assistant Director of Health Services

7. Sharing by Mr. Sujit Chakraborty, who gave consent for the donation of his brother’s organs. He shared his feelings as he took the decision to give consent, the reaction of the family members and his experience with the hospital staff.

8. Concluding session and further course of action – Ms. Pallavi guided the volunteers on the basic essential information required to be included in an individual’s presentation on organ donation for a public awareness session.

Day 2: Presentation by the volunteers and the way forward

The volunteers made mock presentations. The main objective of this session was to help the students to prepare for an awareness session in front of general public. Feedback was given on the basis of the style of presentation, content of the information that was provided and its accuracy and validity, and overall presentation. Connectivity with the audience was also observed.

Some feedback given by the trainers are as follows:

• Avoid detailed explanation of brain death as the participants do not have the expertise and instead show the video on brain death given as part of their kit which gives a clearer understanding.
• Technical details to be avoided, focus the presentation on creating awareness on organ donation and encouraging the audience to sign up
• Having a separate slide on the organs that be donated in the case of cardiac death and brain death, thereby also clarifying the difference between the two types of deaths
• Usage of the term cardiac death instead of circulatory death and deceased instead of cadaver respectively.

Post the feedback, the participants were asked to incorporate the suggestions given during their individual presentations and send the same back to the trainers so that they could be approved. Anthyesti Foundation ensured full support with regard to follow up on the same.

Post this training the volunteers are expected to conduct public awareness talks or campaigns on their own for various groups of people.  The participants were given a training manual with information on various aspects of organ donation and CD which contains various videos and films for them to use.

The training concluded with a valedictory function where Ms. Shruti Reddy thanked MOHAN Foundation for accepting their invitation to conduct the program in Kolkata and the volunteers for their commitment. Following this Ms. Pallavi and Ms. Shruti gave away certificates to the volunteers of the first batch of Angels of Change, Kolkata. Later some of the participants shared their experience and gave feedback about the training.