Several Alvernia University courses, COM 240: Public Relations and COM 220: Event Planning, have joined forces with Gift of Life to create events to educate the Alvernia community and the Reading area about organ donation. These classes are taught by Dr. Jodi Radosh, professor of Communications at Alvernia University.
“I always try to give my students hands-on opportunities” said Dr. Radosh, “Organizing, planning, and promoting these events with Gift of Life is an incredible way to truly immerse the students into the communication field and give them that real-world experience”
The classes are holding events on two separate days at the end of April. The first, which will be held on April 20th, is a joint effort between the communications classes and Alvernia’s Office of Student Activities. It is called “Wild West Wednesday”. There will be live country music, a mechanical bull, photobooths, games, and free food for the students. Student Activities will be providing a taco truck and the communications classes will be giving out Rita’s water ice and soft pretzels. Alongside all of this, there will be “Hats Off to Organ Donors” table with information and trinkets on organ donation. There will also be an “organ” corn hole and life-size Operation game.
The second event will be held on National Blue & Green Day which is Friday April 22nd. The classes will be splitting up into three separate locations to promote organ donation. Each location will have information on Gift of Life and organ donation as well as wrist bands, pens, and stickers. The first location, which will be on the main campus quad, will also be giving out Twin Valley iced coffee. There will also be a location at the CollegeTowne Starbucks where the students will be distributing blue and green cupcakes. Lastly, there will be a table at Shillington Farmer’s Market where students will hand out blue and green lollipops as well as information on organ donation.
“I am very excited for all these events,” said Talia Galbreath, who is part of the communication event planning class, “We should be able to draw large crowds and really spread the word on the benefits of organ donation to Alvernia and the Reading community.”
Alvernia University
Alvernia University is a Catholic comprehensive university with a liberal arts foundation founded by the Bernardine Franciscan Sisters in 1958. The university serves over 3,000 students in Reading, Pottsville and Philadelphia with a unique blend of rigorous liberal arts education, strong technical training in many high demand majors, ever-expanding experiential learning opportunities through study abroad and internship experiences and community engagement through its Franciscan-based community service model.
Gift of Life
Gift of Life is a non-profit, federally designated organ procurement organization, working with 129 acute care hospitals and 14 transplant centers to serve 11.3 million people in the eastern half of Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and Delaware. Thanks to its compassionate community, for the past 14 years, Gift of Life has coordinated the most organ donors in the United States. Its annual donation rate, most recently 62 organ donors-per-million-population, ranks among the highest in the world. Since 1974, Gift of Life has coordinated more than 58,000 organs for transplant, and more than two million tissue transplants have resulted from the generosity of donors and their families. One organ donor can save the lives of up to eight people, and a tissue donor can improve the lives of more than 100 others.
