“Our goal for this year is for our center to donate 600 pints of blood,” advised Marcus Dunlap, Student Government Association Specialist at the San Diego Job Corps.  Marcus, who coordinates the American Red Cross Blood Drives on center, attributes the success of this drive to the student and staff blood donors, and the students who volunteer before and during the event. 

 “This was our fifth drive this year and everyone was enthusiastic about achieving our goal of 90 pints for the day,” Marcus continued.  “The final total was 107 pints, which is a school record.”

During this year the Red Cross set up the Double Red Cell Donor system at Job Corps which allows people to meet certain criteria to donate two units of red cells during one appointment as an automated donation process.  At this month’s blood drive 9 Job Corps donors were able to do the Double Red Cell donation.  With the critical, ongoing need for blood throughout the United States, these donors’ contribution was especially appreciated by the Red Cross.

“Our last two drives of the year are scheduled for September 26th and November 28th and with expanded hours from 9:00am to 7:00pm we hope to have even more community involvement,” Marcus stated.  “We’ve collected 419 pints of blood this year, so I’m very optimistic that with everyone’s support we can achieve our goal of 600 units for the year.  Since each pint of blood has the potential of saving up to three lives, that means we’ll be helping 1,800 people.”