The Red Cross Celebrating World Donor Day, All Month Long

ZANESVILLE, OH – Today is World Blood Donor Day.

To celebrate the day, the American Red Cross Central and Southern Region are hosting blood drives in the area from now until the end of the month.

Don Hawkins, the Regional Communications Manager with the American Red Cross Central and Southern Region, says World Donor Day comes at the perfect time as summer travel begins to ramp up.

“We find ourselves struggling to get more folks in during the summer just because people are busy, people are traveling.” Hawkins said. “You got folks that are going states across to go to birthday parties, for whatever is taking them out of the state, on vacation, on whatever, and it’s tricky. [Sometimes] you have a person who normally would make a donation every 8 weeks, maybe they get sidelined because of travel, maybe they’re sick, maybe the weather is really bad and they can’t get out to go donate.”

Hawkins says that in the last month, nationwide, the Red Cross has seen 20,000 fewer donations due to the increase of summer traveling.

To help combat this number, and as a thank you for donating, the Red Cross is giving away gift cards when you donate blood.

“Once your donation is complete, you’ll get an email link to claim a $15 giftcard to a merchant of your choice.” Hawkins said. “There’s a whole bunch of merchants that are eligible for this. I donated last month and I got a giftcard to the movies, and I’m a massive movie geek, so I was very happy to get a discount on my movie ticket. There’s all kinds of other stuff you can claim that $15 giftcard for.”

If you are interested in donating blood, you can head to the Red Cross’ website to schedule your appointment.