President Gina Bortot: “At the moment, the future of donations is unclear, because we don’t know how we will be able to talk to people and especially young people”
BELLUNO. The health emergency distances young people from volunteering and, given the impossibility of organizing events and the difficulties brought about by an increasingly less physical communication, the ABVS struggles to reach possible future blood donors. A difficult situation that risks undermining a system based on pure altruism and that forces the association to look elsewhere to try to guarantee generational change. Thus, president Gina Bortot changes the target of her promotional campaign; no longer young, but over 40, to be contacted even in the workplace, first of all factories.
“At the moment, the future of donations is unclear, because we don’t know how we will be able to talk to people and especially with young people”, comments the president of the Belluno Blood Volunteers Association, “to explain to people what we need and as they are essential to achieve a common goal, it is essential to be able to talk face to face. Today, however, we are forced to keep our distance and this is weighing heavily on the collection of new members ».
In particular, the association annually held some meetings with high school kids to “recruit” future donors, a strategy that over the years had always guaranteed the generation turnover, but which today seems to be undermined by Covid: “We have lost every opportunity to contact with the public, but the most difficult to maintain is the one with young people “, explains Bortot,” it is understandable how today their first thought goes to regaining personal relationships, sociality and their own spaces, but this puts in the background interest in others. We are organizing meetings with Avis and schools on the subject via the web but, unlike what happened with face-to-face events, when we collect the questionnaire with the final impressions, very few people say they are interested or willing to become a donor. “.
The invitation, therefore, is to go back to thinking about others and to become donors, even if it is clear that, in order to share a project and the emotion that this causes in those who carry it forward, a return is increasingly indispensable. to the presence and direct eye contact: “The children are suffering a lot this situation and the flattening we register in the propensity to volunteer is very sad, even if understandable”, adds the president of the ABVS, “for this reason we are thinking of changing , at least temporarily, our target, addressing adults aged 40 and over, perhaps involving companies, even if this is not always easy to achieve “.
Furthermore, the discomforts linked to the pandemic also affected the internal organization of the ABVS, forced to postpone all the meetings of the members of the sections to next autumn, which in any case in this last year have never failed their service: ” 2020 was a particularly intense year for us, in which we further refined our skills and our potential “, emphasizes Bortot,” the fact that the emergency has drastically reduced the demand for blood due to the decrease in interventions and, fortunately, accidents are not a symptom of a lesser commitment on our part, on the contrary: the ABVS continued to provide its service, without collecting unnecessary donations, but calling donors in a timely manner when their intervention it was actually necessary. And from this point of view, everyone’s dedication was absolute. We have always fulfilled our task according to the requests received from the Ulss 1 Dolomiti transfusion center and from the Regions with which the company has an agreement. To this we have added an information campaign to reassure the most hesitant donors regarding access to the hospital in time for Covid, as we have always done in the face of doubts of any kind ». –