MOHAN Foundation’s Organ Donation Ambassadors training program is comprised of three modules: 

• Module 1: 4-hour online learning - Gift of Life Course
• Module 2: 3-hour virtual interaction with experts, understanding communication and practices of presentations 
• Module 3: Public awareness activities by the Ambassadors

The Module 2 part of the training held on 28^th August 2021, was attended by 12 participants. The group included students of Medical Sociology from MMM College, students from ISDI Design School, a doctor from Tirupur, a social worker from Mangalore, two gentlemen and a researcher from Hyderabad, one of whom is a donor family member.

Dr. Hemal Kanvinde – Quality Assurance Officer and Ms. Ishwarya Thyagarajan – Research Associate of the Foundation were the moderators for the training session. Participants’ introduction, the first segment, brought out different aspects of their lives and their motivation to join the Ambassador Training.

This was followed by feedback sharing for Module 1 and questions were answered. Dr. Sunil Shroff – Managing Trustee, MOHAN Foundation, Dr. Rajeevalochana Parthasarathy – Nephrologist, MMM Hospital, and Dr. Bhanu Chandra and Ms. Kavitha Aneesh – Senior Transplant Coordinators were the experts who answered the questions. The discussions were around the organ allocation systems, organ utilisation, donations in case of death due to unnatural causes, donation after cardiac death, legal formalities, tissue donation, voluntary body donation and quality of life for recipients and living donors.

The next session was the Gratitude and Communication workshop conducted by Ms. Ishwarya. The participants were asked to place themselves in the shoes of an organ recipient and write letters thanking the donor families. Tips on how to express gratitude and communicate about the value of the second chance at life that has been offered were shared. Letters written by all the participants were read out and the importance of the emotional quotient was emphasised.  

Using an illustrative presentation, the different modes of taking the subject of organ donation to the community were explained by Dr. Hemal Kanvinde. The participants were exposed to creative ways of explaining the noble cause. She also gave tips on how to prepare a presentation and effectively present it to an audience using examples of material used by the Foundation.  

A poll to understand how the ambassadors would like to contribute was held and majority chose to conduct awareness sessions. In the last feedback segment, the participants shared that the session has guided them to direct their passion more precisely, thrown light on how they could contribute and provided a platform to request for specific resources from the Foundation.