When the Student Activities Office at Genesee Community College organized their first blood drive in 1987, just three students donated. Twenty five years later, those three-times-a-year drives have collected more than 3,500 units of blood, and Red Cross district director Debra Miller says those donations have saved more than 10,000 lives.
Miller says each unit of donated blood can be used to save three patient lives through the use of whole blood, platelets and plasma.
Miller was on the GCC Batavia campus Wednesday, April 11 to present an award to Student Activities Director Cliff Scutella and the department’s technical specialist, Joanna Barefoot. The cup-shaped trophy recognizes the school for more than two decades of blood drives and the lives saved by those donations.
Additionally, the Red Cross reciprocates with a scholarship program created in 2006 to recognize students at SUNY schools that show collection growth over the prior year. GCC students have been awarded Red Cross scholarships averaging $500 for three of the last four years.
