Gift of Life’s Campus Ambassadors (CAPs) at Purdue University held an incredibly successful five-day mega-drive from April 1 -  5, 2024.  CAPs Keegan Perhacs and Mariah Ross plus a group of volunteers set up recruitment tables for five hours each day resulting in 470 students joining the registry.

With a 2,500-acre campus to cover, the CAPs decided to move the tables several times to engage with students in various high traffic areas, including the Bell Tower, and the Krach student union building.

“Hosting the mega drive at Purdue was incredibly rewarding!” said Mariah. “Thanks to the student volunteers from various campus organizations, our outreach efforts saw a significant boost! One particularly touching moment was meeting a student who had swabbed at a drive last year and was getting ready to fly out to donate stem cells to a patient in need!”

“Being behind the first Purdue Gift of Life Mega-Drive was an amazing experience,” said Keegan. “Being on campus and asking students to join the registry shows how many people there are on campus who want to help. We had to bear some rainy weather, but that didn’t stop us from adding people to the registry. We will build on the foundation we started this year to improve not only the mega-drive, but also our impact on campus next year.”

Though it may be years before some of these donors are ever called upon to help save a life, there are sometimes one or two who are matched immediately with a patient who has already been searching for a donor.  We hope every student who joined the registry has the chance to save a life someday!

Since 2017, Campus Ambassadors at Purdue have recruited close to 3,000 donors to the registry, resulting in 15 matches for patients.