I recently volunteered at the American Red Cross Blood Drive for the fall semester, which took place on September 17-18, 2014 from 10-3 pm in Big Blue. I signed up ahead of time to volunteer on the 18th from 2-3 pm. Two other volunteers and I arrived punctually at 2 and were told to relieve the volunteers from the previous time slot at the recovery table.
At first, all we were told to do was make sure those who donated blood sat for at least 10 minutes after donating, drank some water, and ate some food. This seemed like a simple enough job, so as people started coming over to the recovery table, I made sure to ask them to sit and have something to drink and eat.
The part that caught me off guard was the fainting. The volunteers we replaced left before they could pass on the warning that, “yes, people tend to faint after donating and you should probably watch out for that.” Sitting at the table, one of the donors fainted and slid right off his chair onto the floor – this definitely flustered me. Quickly, a Red Cross member came over and handled the situation, helping the man over to a bed to lie down.
Once that happened, someone from the Red Cross kindly explained to us what signs to look for when the donors come over to the table: the color of their faces, the color of their lips, beads of sweat on the forehead. From then on, we made it clear to the donors that they should let us know how they are feeling and if they start to feel faint or nauseous. Ironically, after we learned what to look for, no one else fainted.
As 2:45 came around, the registration desk stopped accepting donors. Volunteering during the last time slot, I knew no one was coming to replace us and that there were going to be more people needing recovery after 3. The other volunteers and I chose to stay until all of the donors finished donating, even though that required staying almost another hour after our time slot ended. We all agreed that it was the right thing to do, since no one from the Red Cross could watch the recovery table while working.
The decision to stay and volunteer longer, to me, embodied service-learning extremely well. I learn about the process of giving blood medically, but that was only half of the story. I also gave a special amount of meaning to my service because the other volunteers and I went above and beyond to serve others, not because we had to, but because we wanted to.