Wow! We’re delighted to announce that 100 people signed up for the DKMS stem cell register on Saturday at our match against Stonewall FC.
The DKMS Football vs Blood Cancer drive had an amazing response with more than 15% of the total attendance of 618 registering. That’s substantially more than expected by the charity.
That is even more stunning when you realise that many of us had already signed up since members voted to launch our ‘A Match For Everyone’ campaign towards the end of last year.
Among those registering were the Hackney Mayor, Phil Glanville, plus the Sporting Bengal captain, after they’d played on the adjoining pitch.
As we signed up 100, that means statistically we’ve found four matches. That’s four people who will be able to have a blood stem cell transplant and four families whose lives will be transformed.
That’s amazing and all due to the altruism of the Tons.
What the numbers conceal is that the swab and sign-up session nearly didn’t happen. Our rep from DKMS became very ill on Friday night and couldn’t run the event.
Hastily a Plan B and C was arranged with one Clapton CFC member driving to Chelmsford to collect the swab kits and another running through a phone and video tutorial.
In the end it went better than we dared to expect.
What next?
We have now formally launched our campaign and we plan to run sessions at home games and also take it into the wider community. But its success depends on the intelligence and commitment of the membership.
Can you run a sign-up and swab campaign at your workplace, club, pub, union or other organisation? Can you volunteer to help at a home match? Do you have other ideas? Please do email us at info@claptoncfc.co.uk
Remember if you’re in the UK, you can sign up to the register through the DKMS website any time. You’ll be posted a kit. Take a quick swab of the inside of your cheeks, send it back, and you’re done.
But this isn’t a UK based campaign as there are stem cell registries in over 61 countries. Here’s a link to the registries in Canada | France | Germany | Italy | Mexico | Spain | US | All countries