Students' plan to bring blood drive back to school pays off

Donor technician Carol Laing with Year 12 student Gemma McCarthy, while her classmates, teachers and blood service crew look on. Photo / Paul Taylor

For the past 30 years, Taradale High School has had a strong link to the New Zealand Blood Service, with its students an established part of the donor programme.

But that all changed when the service closed its Napier centre last August - although for one group of students, that sparked a challenge and a determination to get the blood crew back to the school hall it had long called at through the years.

Yesterday, the plan sparked by teacher Elvira Wylie's social sciences class turned to reality, with 72 donors lining up to donate blood. Several teachers, as well as principal Stephen Hensman, joined the students who arrived to do their bit. The class had been carrying out a sustainability unit focusing on healthy communities, and part of that involved getting the school's long-standing blood donation programme back on track - although initially they came up against a few walls.

The students took a "what are we going to do about it?" stance and in August made contact with the blood service.

They had a sympathetic ear with the service's chief executive officer Fiona Ritsma being a former pupil of Taradale High.

But the students still had to get a guaranteed full muster so went about publicising what they planned to do.

A communications group was set up and posters and flyers distributed throughout the school, and a collation group worked on sorting out the times and paperwork.

They managed to get not only 72 donors but 22 potential donors as back-up should any pull out.

The usual practice, since the closure of the Napier centre, has been to bring a mobile blood unit to Napier and Hastings three times a year.

While some school visits are still carried out around the country they are now something of a rarity.

But the service decided to make an exception in the case of Taradale High, given the community devotion of the students, and the nine-strong team arrived from Palmerston North to restore the three-decade link.

"I am proud of the old school," Ms Ritsma said after making a special trip down from Auckland to see the four-hour donation programme carried out.

"They are so enthusiastic and they are our next generation of donors."

Ms Wylie was also proud of her 12-strong class.

"They have worked really hard to achieve this."

One of her Year 12 students, Jake Hammond, summed it up for his class-mates - "it makes it all worthwhile to see the results", he said as the students took their places on the special couches for the 10-minute donation.

Josh Kluts said he was not nervous at all as he waited his turn. "I'm happy to do it - you get the feeling that somebody out there is going to need it and you can help them."

For the organising students, who also presented Ms Ritsma with a petition of 450 names from people wanting to see the blood donor crew return to the school again, there was good reason to smile.

"If we get the numbers we'll be back," she said.