ST. LOUIS —
People across the country had the opportunity to save a life from the comfort of their couch on Tuesday with help from a familiar face.
A nonprofit organization called Be The Match took to social media to help connect donors with patients suffering from life-threatening blood cancers.
An all-day live-stream event called “Couch2Cure” gave people the chance to virtually donate money or register to become donors for patients looking for blood stem cell matches in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Be The Match CEO Amy Ronneberg said it’s been even harder for patients to receive the help they need during the shutdown, so unique events and solutions such as this were brainstormed.
“Our products travel about 50 percent of the time,” Ronneberg said. “Either outside of the United States, or into the United States. So when countries started closing their barriers, we had to get really creative.”
St. Louis Blues superfan and Be The Match recipient Laila Anderson joined the live stream with Joe Buck and Blues PA announcer Tom Calhoun to share her story battling HLH, and express the gratitude she has for the donor who saved her life.
“The love and connection you have from that experience of having a stranger who just did this really selfless thing to save your life,” Anderson said. “I mean, it’s really special and really important.”
Laila has used the past few weeks to focus on her schoolwork while simultaneously finding ways to encourage people online to register to become donors.
“There was, HumanKind, put up a video about her story,” Be The Match social media strategist Ryan Pena said. “Her meeting her donor on Tik Tok. And it got over 22 million views, and inspired, again, 5,000 people to join.
Be The Match came close to reaching its event goal of raising roughly 1.5 million dollars in donations, and registering nearly 50,000 potential donors in eight hours.
If you’re interested in learning more about how you can help donate money or register to become a donor, visit BeTheMatch.org.
