I had the wonderful opportunity to host our quarterly Volunteer Training Dinner a few weeks ago.  What a fantastic evening!  I truly enjoyed meeting several new volunteers and visiting with a few IDS “veterans”.  We had folks attend from all over the valley to learn about how to best communicate our message of the importance of donation.  We were even blessed with five visitors from Logan– I felt special!  We talked about what IDS is doing in the social marketing arena (Facebook, Twitter, etc. ) and went over several details relating to organ and tissue donation.

However, it wasn’t just the volunteers that were educated that night!  I even learned a thing or two, such as what is an appropriate beverage to serve to transplant recipients!   After several volunteers arrived, I excitedly told them I had brought my new favorite holiday drink to share with them, Pomegranate 7-UP.  Imagine my chagrin when several of them kindly told me that they can’t eat or drink pomegranate!  It interferes with their anti-rejection meds, as does grapefruit and a few other foods.  They were very lovely about it but it was a bit of a “Doh!” moment for me.  So, to any of you planning your holiday party menus, keep in mind the special dietary requirements of your transplant recipient friends!

If you are interested in volunteering with us, you don’t have to wait for our quarterly training to get started!  Click on the “Volunteers” tab on our homepage at www.yesutah.org and we’ll get you going!

Tags: organ donation, organ donor, transplant, Volunteers, yes utah

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Events, Volunteers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.