Every year, the Washington High School leadership class hosts their annual spring blood drive. Due to COVID-19, they were not able to have one last year. However, because they lost that opportunity, they are pushing hard to make this year’s blood drive better than ever to make up for the lost item. 

Students Will Lingle and Ingrid Figas are in charge of organizing this year’s blood drive, along with supervisors Allison Graves and Samantha Loepker. Everyone involved has been working hard to encourage students and staff to volunteer and to make the outcome of this year’s blood drive exceed previous years. 

“We’ve been able to reach out to a lot of people to spread the word,” junior Will Lingle said. “We got Blue Jay Journal to add a segment about it… and handed out slips of paper that had QR codes on them so students could scan them and access the sign-up sheet.” 

By finding creative ways to inform people of the event, it helps get more people involved and interested in donating. It also helps inform people of the changes to this year’s blood drive due to COVID-19. 

“This year it’s different because we will not be able to hold it at school, so participants will have to go to the mercy building to donate,” junior Ingrid Figas said. “We will also be asking everyone to wear their masks and have tables set up to practice social distancing. We also have to limit the number of donors per time slot to be able to maintain social distancing.”

Although there are many changes, for the students organizing the event, their job stays relatively the same. 

“The first thing we do when planning the drive is talk to Cheryl Barkhurst, who runs all the blood drive[s] in our area, about all of the details,” Lingle said. “We then make posters and brainstorm any ways to communicate the event to the people in our community to ensure a good outcome of volunteers.” 

A lot goes into putting on a blood drive, from the little details to spreading the word of the drive. For the leadership class, their main priority is to communicate the information of the drive to citizens of our community. 

“Our main job in planning is advertising and spreading the word to possible donors. We also organized the sign-up sheet for the people that are interested,” Figas said. 

Although it takes a lot of work to plan this event, at the end of the day it is worth it to those who help out. 

“For me, putting in all the hard work is at least I can do,” Figas said. “It is important to help out the community and help those who are in need.”