There's a scene that plays out in blood centers all over Brazil: a person newly diagnosed with leukemia, treatment already underway, and the search for a marrow donor who still hasn't turned up. The family was tested first. It came back negative. Now the whole hope rests on a national list of people who one day rolled up a sleeve and said "call me if you need me."
That list has a name: REDOME, the National Registry of Voluntary Bone Marrow Donors. Joining it is simpler than most people imagine, and that's exactly where your Club can make a real difference. A well-run campaign brings dozens of adults to the blood center, talks with the church and the neighborhood, and dissolves the fear that still keeps a lot of good people away from registering.
This guide explains what marrow is, who can donate, how the collection works and, above all, how your Unit and your Club can become a bridge between patients who are waiting and donors who don't yet know they'll be someone's answer.
What bone marrow is and why it saves lives
Bone marrow is that spongy tissue inside the bones, mainly in the flat bones like the pelvis. It's where the body makes blood: red cells that carry oxygen, white cells that defend against infection, and platelets that make blood clot. A factory that works all day, for a whole lifetime.
In diseases like leukemia, that factory starts producing defective cells. Treatment often needs to wipe out the sick marrow and replace it with healthy cells from another person. That's the bone marrow transplant. Beyond leukemia, it's used for lymphomas, marrow aplasia, and some types of severe anemia.
The crucial detail: for the transplant to work, the donor's cells and the patient's cells need to be compatible in a set of genes called HLA. And that's where the difficulty lies. Compatibility here goes far beyond blood type A, B, or O. It's something much more specific, which is why finding the right donor among strangers is rare.
Why every registration counts so much
Between siblings, the chance of compatibility is about 25%. It sounds low, and that's precisely why most patients don't find a donor at home. When the family doesn't match, the search moves to REDOME, and there the statistic is daunting: between unrelated people, the chance of two being compatible hovers around 1 in 100,000.
Read that number again. One in a hundred thousand. It's like searching for one specific person in a mid-sized state capital. The math works out only one way: the more people registered, the higher the probability that the patient finds their needle in the haystack. Every new donor on the registry genuinely raises the chance that someone survives.
Brazil has one of the largest donor banks in the world, with millions of registrations. Even so, patients keep waiting, because the country's genetic diversity is enormous and certain profiles are hard to match. That's why the campaign has a rallying cry: multiply registrations. Ordinary people, in great numbers, are what fill the registry. Every rolled-up sleeve at the blood center is one more ticket in the raffle that saves a life.
Who can register and how the collection works
To join REDOME you need to be between 18 and 35 years old, present an official photo ID, and be in good general health. People with cancer, blood diseases, or immune system disorders are excluded. The registration stays valid until age 60, so those who join young remain available for decades.
The part that surprises most people: the registration itself is just a blood draw. A small sample, 5 to 10 ml, taken from the arm like any routine test. From that little bit of blood the lab reads your HLA type and stores it in the national registry. Done. You've become a potential donor, and nothing more happens unless, one day, a patient compatible with you shows up.
Here a table helps to separate the two stages that many people confuse:
| Stage | What it is | How it works |
|---|---|---|
| Registration (now) | Joining REDOME | Quick 5 to 10 ml blood draw |
| Donation (only if there's a match) | Donating the cells for the transplant | Larger procedure, scheduled and voluntary |
Months, years, or a whole lifetime can pass between one and the other with no call. If the call does come, the blood center gets in touch, redoes the tests, and explains everything. And you remain free to decide.
Read alsoToy Drive: the Club bringing joy on Children's DayUndoing the fear of the procedure
The fear almost always comes from the same image: a huge needle in the spine. That image is wrong and it drives away donors who would save lives. It's worth explaining properly, because good information beats rumor.
If one day you're called to actually donate, there are two paths. In the most common one, you take a medication for a few days that moves the cells from the marrow into the blood, and then they're drawn out by a machine that filters the blood from your arm, similar to a platelet donation. No spine, no general anesthesia. In the other path, less frequent, the cells are drawn from the back of the pelvis, under anesthesia, in a surgical center, and the donor goes home shortly after. It's never from the spinal column.
The donor's marrow recovers in a few weeks. It's a tissue the body replenishes naturally, like the blood you donate and remake. The discomfort is usually comparable to that of a hard workout. Against what's at stake on the other side, the trade is generous: a passing discomfort in exchange for someone's chance to live again.
How the Club mobilizes the church and the neighborhood
Here's the point that might surprise you: a Pathfinder aged 10 to 15 can't register, because the minimum age is 18. So what's the Club's role in a marrow campaign? To be the engine of mobilization. You don't donate now, you get hundreds of adults to donate.
Think of the network a Club reaches in a single Saturday: parents, aunts and uncles, Sabbath School teachers, young people from the church, neighbors, local shopkeepers. A Unit that gets organized becomes a communication team. You can prepare a simple, honest poster, make a personal invitation as people leave the service, put up a display board explaining the collection, record a short one-minute video explaining that it's only blood. The Pathfinder who tells the story in their own words convinces more than any leaflet.
One idea that works is the 'rolled-up sleeve day': the Club arranges a date with the blood center, organizes transport or a caravan, and brings a group of adults along. Teenagers don't donate, but they can welcome those who arrive, organize the line, hand out water, explain the steps with a smile. It's community service in the best sense, and it counts as living practice for several Honors and Classes tied to health and citizenship. If your Club already has experience with community service projects, this campaign fits right into the same structure.
The partnership with the local blood center
No improvised campaign. The first practical step is to call or visit the nearest blood center, which is usually a state blood center or a blood bank at a reference hospital. Tell them the Club wants to organize a registration drive and ask how they prefer to receive the group: day, time, how many people at a time, what documents to bring.
The blood center sets the rules, and that's great, because it takes the technical burden off the Club. They provide the up-to-date requirements, advise on fasting or not, and run the entire collection. Your job is to fill their schedule with willing people. Some blood centers will even send a professional to give a quick talk at the church before the event, which warms up the campaign and knocks down the last fears.
Arrange blood donation on the same day too. Many people going to donate blood can, in the same visit, register for marrow. The two causes go hand in hand and one reinforces the other. Before announcing any date, confirm everything in writing with the blood center and advise families to check the current requirements on the official REDOME website, because details of age and health may be updated.
The Christian meaning of donating for a stranger
There's something deeply Christian about putting yourself on a list to save someone you'll never meet. Jesus was direct: 'Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends' (John 15:13, NIV). In a marrow transplant, a person gives a piece of themselves, literally, for a stranger who becomes a friend precisely because of that act.
In the great judgment described by Jesus, the criterion is concrete care for one's neighbor: 'I was sick and you looked after me' (Matthew 25:36, NIV). Registering to donate marrow is a modern and powerful way of visiting the sick, even before knowing who they are. And John's letter seals the idea for the Club's youngsters: 'Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth' (1 John 3:18, NIV).
For Adventists, caring for the body and the life of one's neighbor is part of the faith, not an extra. A marrow campaign turns a beautiful speech about love into a line at the blood center, a rolled-up sleeve, and a name on the registry. That's the difference between talking about love and practicing it. And it's exactly the kind of mark a Club leaves on a town: people who learned early that serving has a cost and is worth it.