Successful Bone Marrow Donor Registration Drive Held

Meredith College held a very successful registration drive for the National Bone Marrow Donor Program on April 22, 2008, in honor of Courtney Powell, the daughter of Meredith Associate Professor Walda Powell.

While the national registry reports that an average drive brings in 30 registrants, Meredith’s drive registered 230 people.

Francie Cuffney, who helped organize the drive, said she was told by the National Bone Marrow Donor Program representative that registering 100 people is considered a “big drive.”

The donor program representative also called the Meredith student volunteers “the best group of students [she had] ever worked with at a college.” 

In addition to the testing, a “Cards for Courtney” table was also set up so that participants could make cards of support for Courtney Powell, who is awaiting a bone marrow transplant.  Ribbons in maroon and hot pink, which is Courtney Powell’s favorite color, were also distributed.

Visit the National Marrow Donor Program web site at www.marrow.org for more information.

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Meredith Students Organize Leadership Event for Scouts

Meredith students recently organized a leadership conference for young women ages 11-17, as part of a Core 404 class project.

The team, which consisted of Rebecca Lovegreen, Susan Stewart, Jessica Driscoll and Sierra Andrews, decided to work with Girl Scouts in an effort to help achieve U.N. Millennium Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women.

“We planned, developed, and led a leadership conference, which occurred April 5 in Ledford Hall,” explained Sierra Andrews. “We had Meredith Director of Commuter Life and Diversity Programs Tomecca Sloane as our guest speaker and then each of us led a different breakout session that dealt with the dimensions of the leadership badge that the Girl Scouts were trying to earn.”

The Girl Scouts leadership badge dimensions are leadership skills, service learning, career goals, and media/technology. 

The event also included door prizes, certificates of completion and lunch in Belk Dining Hall. 

This was just one of the student teams in Core 404 who worked to achieve UN Millennium goals this semester. Other projects have related to improving maternal health, eradicating hunger, combating malaria and promoting environmental sustainability.

Projects included holding a food drive, collecting donations for the March of Dimes, increasing environmental awareness by selling reusable shopping bags, and raising money for “Nothing But Nets,” a grassroots campaign to save lives by preventing malaria, a leading killer of children in Africa.

“We decided to raise money for the “Nothing But Nets” campaign because this established organization coincides with our UN Millennium Development Goal,” said class member Regina Holmes.

Core 404 was taught this spring by Jody Roubanis, assistant professor of human environmental sciences.

For more information on the UN’s millennium goals, visit www.un.org/millenniumgoals.

 

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