Way back on September 15, 2015, I participated in my first tabling event. Tabling is essentially setting up a table in a popular location and grabbing people’s attention. The purpose of this event was to recruit blood donors for a blood drive that occurred over the course of the next two days. Two other honors students and great friends of mine, Jake G. and Anthony G., accompanied me in this event which proved to be both more fun and more successful than we had pictured it to be.
Our goal with tabling was to promote the blood drive and encourage people to sign up and donate. Dr. Kosick, who ran the tabling, hopped to have 95 donors on each of the two days the drive took place. People on campus are busy, and no one will willingly come to ask about our cause. In order to gain donors we had to work on our public speaking skills and talk students and faculty into at least checking out our table. If they were willing to donate, which many were, we explained to them the height and weight requirements needed to donate and other information about time and locations. Another successful tactic for promoting the blood drive was to walk around all of the cafeteria tables asking people to sign up and donate. If the tables were vacant we left a flyer on it for the next person(s) to use the table to see. We didn’t end up quite reaching our goal of 95 per day, but we gathered almost a full list for one day and about half for the next day.
This experience benefitted us as volunteers while helping the blood drive. We practiced and gained experience with public speaking. Approaching people isn’t always easy, especially when you’re trying to get something out of them. It take a skillful rhetoric to persuade someone who is undecided to make them sign up. However, it was all for a good cause. Donating blood can help many people with various need and conditions. One surprising fact is that donating blood is actually beneficial to the health of the donor. By giving blood the risk of heart disease. They are far less likely to experience a heart attack and the risk of any other type of cardiovascular problem is decreased by about a third. The theory, according to studies by researchers of the American Journal of Epidemiology, is “that iron has a significant impact on atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries. When you give blood you are removing 225 to 250 milligrams of iron from your system, thus cutting your risk of heart disease.” There are also the more obvious benefits of helping those in need of donated blood.