Family Event: Touch A Truck for Kids, Bone Marrow Drive for Adults

Rhode Island Blood Center’s Be The Match marrow donor program invites you to Touch A Truck! Come climb, explore, and sit in the driver’s seat of your favorite vehicles and bring your camera! This event will take place Sunday, October 19th, from 10am-1pm, at North Kingstown High School, 150 Fairway Drive. The parking lot will be filled with 20 vehicles including a police car, a fire truck (11-1pm), a plumbing truck, a milk truck, a street sweeper, the blood mobile, a 20 person limousine, two 18 wheelers, a school bus, two ambulances, q mail truck, animal control van, and construction vehicles!

Admission is a suggested donation of $5 per family.

The goal of Touch A Truck is to raise awareness for Be The Match and its mission: to save lives through bone marrow transplantation. Be The Match is a non-profit organization that manages the largest and most diverse bone marrow registry in the world. Each year, thousands of patients with blood cancers and related diseases discover they need a bone marrow transplant. Only 30% of these people have a matching donor in their family. Be The Match helps patients that need a marrow transplant from an unrelated donor. Not enough diverse, committed donors have joined the registry. We can change that.

By holding a fun event for the whole family, we are hoping our marrow drive of people ages 18-44 will be a success! Our goal is 100 new potential donors. All that is needed to register is paperwork and a cheek swab. If you match a patient in need, most donations can now be made through an automated blood donation!

For more information, please contact:
Nicole Pineault: 401-265-5818, NicolePineault@ribc.org or
Jamie Orsi 401-294-2802, Jamie.orsi@gmail.com