Mumbai office had 13 volunteers from different walks of life attend the workshop on 28th October 2017. One of them was a social worker while one of them was an anaesthetist from South Africa doing his internship in one of the leading hospitals in Mumbai. Others were all independent working persons who also wished to volunteer for the cause of organ donation, thereby contributing their bit towards working for the cause.
The full day workshop had the following sessions –
Mrs. Jaya Jairam introduced the broad framework of the workshop, including setting the expectations, a Pre training survey and Registration.
Mr. Amit Shenoy and Mrs.Jaya Jairam introduced the group to a mind mapping group activity which aimed at helping the participants to begin thinking about different aspects of organ donation.
This was followed by a detailed session on functions of vital organs, organ failure, organ donation and transplantation, types of organ donors, brain death and its causes and the need for organ donation, conducted by Mr.Amit Shenoy. He also explained to them the process of organ donation, state wise initiatives, various government bodies and other relevant facts.
Thereafter, Mrs. Jaya Jairam touched upon the barriers to organ donation in India and the myths and facts to do with organ donation were also discussed in depth.
Dr.Ravi Mohanka, the Chief Surgeon and Head of Department of Liver Transplant and Hepato-Biliary surgery from Global Hospital was the invited expert who had a round of interaction with the participants. He patiently answered a number of queries raised by the volunteers. Some of the questions raised by the volunteers included why brain death identifications aren’t happening in government hospitals in Maharashtra.
The next activity required the participants to write a thank you letter to a donor family which enabled them to put themselves in the shoes of a recipient and how grateful the recipients are to the donor family after getting a second lease of life. Some of the letters written by the volunteers were quite emotional and conveyed a recipient’s true gratitude to the donor and his/her family.
Mrs.Neha Bobade, the braveheart who donated her nineteen year old son’s organs after he was brain dead in an accident, was invited to speak about her decision and her story. Thereafter Mrs.Jaya Jairam shared her own story from a recipient’s point of view. All the participants were emotionally moved and were in awe of both the donor family and the recipient for having gone through the difficult situations.
The volunteers were then given handouts which contained four different stories of organ donors and they were asked to choose one of the stories that they were most inspired by and what was the thought process when they did that. Each one of them had a beautiful explanation to share as to why they chose a particular story.
All the participants were then invited to make a short presentation on organ donation and how they plan to volunteer for this cause, in their own areas of life, work and expertise. All of them shared how each one of them would contribute and it was wonderful to hear some very creative ideas.
All the volunteers signed up and took the Pledge to be organ donors themselves.
Some of the feedback that were shared by the volunteers, were as follows -
“The workshop was not conducted just for the sake of conducting but with real passion and feeling.”
“The workshop took me on a journey through every aspect of giving the gift of hope to others.”
“An in-depth understanding of the concept was possible considering the short time available.”
The session was concluded with a pledge taken by all the volunteers to spend a few hours every month, to spread awareness about this cause of Organ Donation.
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