Gina Wesler of New Hyde Park and her classmates at the University of Scranton placed third in a college challenge as they engaged in a campaign to increase awareness and registration of organ donors.
Fifteen Pennsylvania and New Jersey colleges participated in this year’s challenge with Arcadia University taking first and Susquehanna University taking second. Brian Snee, associate professor of communication and media at Scranton, registered for the challenge in the 2024 Spring Semester. This was the first year that Snee’s class, Social Media Campaigns, took on this challenge, and his students utilized social media to post fun facts about organ donation.
Gift of Life International was started by the Manhasset Rotarians in 1975, but in almost 50 years it has expanded into a global initiative with local programs across 80 countries.
The Gift of Life Donor Program, a spin-off of Gift of Life International, encourages college clubs and organizations across the region to help save lives by raising awareness and encouraging their campus communities to register as organ donors.
The Gift of Life Challenge is a program for students to plan and promote grassroots campus outreach efforts aimed at registering new organ, tissue, and cornea donors. Participating student groups kept track of their efforts and submitted a scorecard for their chance at first, second, and third prizes, as well as a prize for the most newly registered donors.
“Throughout the semester, our class split up into separate groups,” Wesler said. “We had some people doing social media campaigns, some people doing events on campus.”
Wesler said she was tasked with being part of the events on campus. This involved multiple “awareness table sits” with her classmates, where they would have signs and pamphlets about organ donation.
To attract students to the table, Wesler said one of her classmates was dressed like Iggy the Royal Wolf, the school’s mascot. When people came over, Wesler talked to them about the Gift of Life donors program.
Wesler also used her advertising/public relations major skills to create many graphics and poster boards that enticed people to talk with her about the program. She also took part in a variety of special events, such as a cornhole tournament and an on-campus public painting event by an artist.
“At the cornhole tournament, people paid to come and that money was used to donate to the Gift of Life Foundation,” Wesler said. “People decorated the gym, talked to students about organ donation, and had them sign up if they were interested.
This challenge for Wesler was important, particularly because she’s a registered organ donor herself.
“I just think that this is something that maybe a lot of people don’t know about, but if you can help someone when you can’t help yourself anymore, I think that’s such a beautiful and cool thing,” Wesler said. “It was really fun to be able to inform people about that.”
“Gift of Life Donor Program encourages college clubs, organizations, and PRSSA Chapters across our region to help save lives by raising awareness and encouraging their campus communities to register as organ donors,” Donors1.org stated.
All of the colleges that participated in this challenge got a total of 304 people to register as organ and tissue donors.