De La Rey Community Awards

Bonga Plaatjie, False Bay College SRC President; Mandisa Njozela, False Bay College Student Support Officer and Thansanqa Ntsendwana, False Bay College Student Representative Council Vice Chairperson

The Aim of the Awards:

To give recognition and to motivate others to follow the lead of the winners as well as establishing a positive relationship with WPBTS and creating awareness of blood donation and promoting this cause. These awards are aimed at groups and organisations, not individuals, except for the Best Peer Promoter Award and the Angel Award.

Criteria of nomination

The activities must reflect initiative and lead to increased donations and/or awareness.

Project

The National Certificate (Vocational) Level 3 Engineering Faculty students from False Bay TVET College's Khayelitsha Campusorganised a health and wellness event as part of their Life Orientation project focused on issues affecting their community. The challenge was to come up with a topic that could help make their community a better place to live in. One group chose Awareness in Blood Donation and Blood Safety.

Mandisa Njozela, False Bay TVET College, Student Support Officer arranged a meeting with representatives from the Western Province Blood Transfusion Services (WPBTS) andlife orientation lecturers involved with the project. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss WPBTS services and to decide whichof these would be suitable for the students' life orientation project.

WPBTS was invited to give a presentation on Blood Donation and Blood Safety. City Vision published an article highlighting the event with more emphasis on WPBTS services and collaboration with FBC.Following this intervention a new clinic was opened with an attendance of 72 and 19x Full Units, from a target of 40. Most deferrals were due to low iron levels.

The partnership has opened room for more focused education.

Mandisa was invited to accept the award on behalf of the College at an event held on Friday, 28 November 2014.