It was great speaking with Nele, from Anthony Nolan, about their experience working with UCL Marrow this year, she had amazing input about the volunteers' impact on their organisation!
A little bit of background...
Anthony Nolan is a UK charity that works in the areas of leukaemia and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The Student-Led Project, UCL Marrow, has been working with them to help save the lives of people with blood cancer by signing people onto the stem cell register.
Can you briefly describe the activities that you have done with UCL Marrow?
UCL Marrow is part of a wider network of groups across the UK. So Marrow is the student branch of Anthony Nolan. Marrow groups are in different universities across the UK and they put on donor recruitment events where they sign people directly onto the stem cell register and they put on fundraisers. They also do a lot of awareness raising around the importance of signing people up onto the stem cell register.
UCL marrow specifically has focused just a bit more on the donor recruitment side this year, but I think they've also got a fundraiser in the works for a half marathon soon, so that's really exciting! They really do all kinds of stuff, from raising awareness to putting on stalls all across the college campus and doing these fundraisers.
Specifically, UCL Marrow has their own campaigns, which means we have specific initiatives that we'd like our groups to follow, and UCL Marrow has been really, really great in following those and putting on campaign specific events. They've participated in quite a few of them from Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine's Day.
They also participated in our diversity campaign! We're trying to change the odds for everybody with blood cancer and reduce some of the medical inequalities in stem cell donation, and they've been really engaged in that. They've also been putting on some events for patients, so specific patients that are currently looking for a lifesaving stem cell transplant.
What impact did UCL Marrow have on your organisation?
Oh, absolutely huge. This is something that we always try to emphasize to them, that regardless of how many people are working on a UCL Marrow Group, they make a massive impact to the chances that blood cancer patients have of literal survival. So they are directly saving lives.
This year they have recruited 120 people so far onto the stem cell register and they've held 15 different events to make that happen. To put that into context, we roughly say that one in 100 people goes on to donate their stem cells, so they potentially save more than just one life. We always say “it only takes one person to go on to donate and save a life”, so it's really a quite direct impact.
For the fundraising obviously we don't have numbers yet on how much they're going to raise with the half marathon fundraiser. We say it costs roughly £40 to add a new life saver onto the stem cell register, so their fundraising is going to directly support, not just adding people onto the stem cell register, but also the lifesaving research that goes into Anthony Nolan's work.
A huge impact that really can't be diminished in any way. I can't shout about it enough because of how incredible they are.
Can you say a little bit about why your organisations decided to host one of our Student-Led Projects?
Yeah, sure. We're always happy to have students from any university in the UK, we’re happy to expand as much as we can. But UCL Marrow specifically has been going for quite a few years now. They're one of our very consistent groups and we're always really happy to work with them and put a lot of energy into them.
That's partially because they've always had great outcomes, but also partially because UCL is quite a diverse university and, as I said earlier, we are trying to reduce medical inequalities.
So what I mean by that is that a patient with blood cancer that comes from a white or Northern European background has a 72% chance of finding their perfect match. But if they are from a minority ethic background then that chance drops to just 37%. So that's a massive difference and UCL Marrow have been doing incredible in helping us combat those specific numbers and recruit more people from minority ethnic backgrounds. Of all the people they've recruited, 63% were from a non-white background, which is absolutely outstanding, that's really great numbers and a big reason for why we want to keep working with them.
What advice would you give to another organisation considering whether to host one of our Student-Led Projects?
It's difficult to give my “top 10 tips” because it always depends on what type of work you do, but I think the biggest thing that I've learned working with UCL Marrow has been to just trust the students. They often know their campus better, they know their peers better, they know what works and what doesn't work. I've learned so much from them that I feel like just trusting them to make the right decisions has been the most important thing I could do for them, and then just be there when they do need the support.
These students are incredibly capable and so enthusiastic to do the right thing.
It's been wonderful to work with students who just want to make the world a bit of a better place. It's so inspiring to see them do their job, and I'd never want to squash that by saying “no, we want to do it this way”.
Your school or organisation is interested in partnering with one of our Student-Led Projects? Find out more information here!