The Day 2 of the Angels of Change/Ambassador Training was held virtually for the members of Akhil Bharatiya Marwari Mahila Sammellan (ABMMS), via Zoom on 21^st December, 2021. 22 members who had completed the Module 1 of the training the previous day, participated in this training.

Dr. Hemal Kanvinde Q&A Officer, MOHAN Foundation started with a welcome address and played a donor appreciation video. The next session was Interactions with Experts.

The experts invited were:

Dr. Giriraj Bora - Liver Transplant Surgeon, Artemis Hospital, Gurgaon,

Dr Amit Joshi - Officer on Special Duty, Bombay Hospital, Indore,

Ms. Jaya Jairam – Project Director, MOHAN Foundation, Mumbai and

Dr. Muneet Kaur Sahi - Program Officer, MOHAN Foundation, Delhi- NCR.  

Dr. Muneet Kaur guided the participants to interact with the experts and get their doubts cleared. The discussion was around the outcomes of transplants, quality of life after transplant, pre-transplant tests for recipient and donor, criteria to decide which recipient on the waiting list would receive an organ, blood group matching in a transplant, do poor patients get the benefit of a transplant, does donor family get any benefit?  All these points were discussed with the experts and satisfactory answers were provided. 

The next session was a Gratitude and Communication workshop conducted by Dr. Muneet. She explained how of a letter of gratitude would help a donor family overcome grief. A letter may also help recipients express their gratitude and believe in their second chance. All the participants were asked to put themselves in the shoes of a recipient and write a thank you letter to a donor family. Dr. Muneet gave tips on what points to cover. After a writing time of 10 minutes, many of the participants read out the letters. It was gratifying to see that all of them understood the joy of getting a life back after transplant as well as the altruism of the donor family.

After this emotional session, Dr. Hemal gave insights on the modes of creating awareness. She gave examples of pre-pandemic ways of creating awareness via talks, road shows, stalls and other creative ideas and how during the pandemic times, online platforms are being used to create awareness. She also highlighted the use of social media to create awareness.

Following this session there was a discussion on what the participants can do. They all needed some form of support in terms of preparing presentation or inviting speakers for their programs.

The training ended with Mrs. Sandhya Agarwal, National Lead on Organ Donation, ABMMS giving a vote of thanks.