Mavin Foundation Partners With Student Groups To Launch National Marrow-Thon To Save Lives

MAVIN Foundation
Press Release – 22 February 2002

NEWS RELEASE

 

22 February 2002

Contact: Yasmine Tarhouni, Director of Public Relations
Ph: 206.622.7101, Fx: 206.622.2231

MAVIN FOUNDATION PARTNERS WITH MULTIRACIAL STUDENT GROUPS TO LAUNCH NATIONAL MARROW-THON TO SAVE LIVES

(Seattle, WA) On March 1, The MAVIN Foundation will launch its 2002 MatchMaker Bone Marrow Program with marrow drives coordinated by multiracial student organizations on eleven college campuses across the nation. The “National Campus Marrow-thon” aims to register at least 1000 people to the National Marrow Donor Program Registry® (NMDP), making this the largest effort ever to register multiracial donors.

Five-year-old Nicole of Seattle, WA, is of Japanese and Caucasian heritage and suffers from Chronic Myeloid Leukemia. Eighteen-month-old Luke of San Jose, CA is Vietnamese, Japanese and Caucasian and is suffering from JMML, a rare and aggressive form of leukemia. Twelve-year-old Francisco, or “Quito,” as he likes to be called, is both Mexican and Caucasian and has been battling leukemia for five years. A hopeful note is Darius, a 14-year-old boy of African-American and Caucasian heritage who is healthy, thanks to a marrow transplant. These children are just four of the thousands of people, both young and old, who desperately need marrow or blood stem cell transplants to save their lives.

This year, 30,000 people will be diagnosed with diseases that are treatable with a marrow or blood stem cell transplant. Patients usually find a match with someone of a similar ethnicity. Because of their unique heritage, multiracial people have great difficulty finding matching donors. MatchMaker was created in 2001 as the nation’s only program dedicated to recruiting multiracial people to the NMDP. Diversifying the pool of potential donors through multiracial and other donors of color offers the best hope of offering all patients an equal chance of finding a life-saving match. In 2001, an astounding 62% of people registered through MatchMaker were multiracial, compared to less than 2% of the NMDP.

Each partner organization will receive thousands of postcards featuring these four children to help galvanize their campus student body to save lives. MatchMaker chose college campuses because they have among the highest concentrations of multiracial young people. MAVIN would like to thank its campus partners, the families of the children, and the many businesses including Square One Printing and Hot Metal Creative, which made this effort possible.

The MAVIN Foundation is a 501-(c)(3) nonprofit organization that celebrates multiracial people and families. In 2000, nearly seven million Americans were able to check multiple races on their census forms for the first time. Our innovative projects like MAVIN magazine are providing a unique forum to increase awareness of the changing face of our multicultural society.

2002 CAMPUS MARROW-THON PARTNERS:

Coordinated by Yasmine Tarhouni, MatchMaker Program Director (206) 622-7101

For more information, please visit www.mavinfoundation.org.

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