That’s the news a group of Superior High School DECA students is sending to the community. At basketball games and Rotary Club meetings, seniors Shaun Mattson, Monika Sziron ad Cody Kitch are passing on the word: With a simple signature, you can save or enhance more than 50 lives.
“Give Life” is their slogan. Awareness of organ donation is their goal.
“We want to really clear up myths about it,” Kitch said.
Before they ordered T-shirts and designed hand-outs, the teens researched organ donation, hitting websites and talking to members of the medical community.
“It’s been an eye-opening experience,” Mattson said. “It’s something most people don’t think about.”
But there is a huge need for organ donors, Sziron said. Nationwide, the number of people waiting for a transplant is 109,000. In the upper Midwest alone, there are 3,000 people waiting for a transplant. Steve Kirk, assistant director of campus recreation and Wessman Arena for the University of Wisconsin-Superior, is one of them. The Superior man didn’t think much about organ donation until two years ago, when he suffered a stroke caused by a kidney disease called Berger’s Disease. To beat the disease, Kirk learned, he needed a kidney transplant.
“It kind of hit home,” he said. “This could really save someone’s life.”
As he waits for a kidney, he is much more aware of organ donation.
“You see how it really affects people,” Kirk said. “The need is so great.”
Myths debunked
One of the first things the SHS teens learned is that they weren’t organ donors. Mattson and Kitch each had an orange donor sticker on their driver’s license, but that didn’t count. To be a donor, you have to sign the back of the license and check the box. Sziron had a similar issue.
“Mine wasn’t signed,” she said. “I didn’t even have a sticker.”
They quickly remedied that.
During a basketball game last week, the teens encouraged friends and teachers to sign the backs of their licenses. Teacher Paul Zollver, the advisor for DECA – an association of marketing students — did. So did science teacher Mike Weinandt.
“I just think it’s the right thing to do, as simple as that,” he said.
Sophomore Kali O’Neil, who doesn’t have a driver’s license, took a donor card to sign.
“To save another person’s life,” she said.
One donor can provide organs, tissue, bone, veins and even corneas for up to 60 people.
“You can pretty much donate any part of your body,” Sziron said. “Any little thing can help somebody.”
You can give a burn victim skin or provide sight to the blind, Zollver said. “How amazing that would be.”
The odds of someone donating are low, Sziron said, because the right combination of factors that allow for donation are rare.
“Chances are slim to none,” that a person willing to donate will get the chance to, she said.
“That’s why we need a lot of people to be organ donors,” Mattson said, to increase the pool of possible donors.
All the major religions support organ donation, Kitch said. And donating the gift of life does not preclude an open-casket funeral. There is no age limit; you can donate even if you have cancer, diabetes or many other diseases. Doctors will work just as hard to save the life of a donor as they would for a non-donor, the teens said.
Donation can also give the family peace. When Zollver’s brother passed away seven years ago, many of his organs were donated.
“It helped the family make a positive out of something that was not very pleasant at the time,” he said.
The advisor introduced the idea to the students, who in recent years have focused on “Life or Meth” as their public service campaign.
“No matter what the topic is, the students have to be into it,” Zollver said. “Otherwise it’s not going to work.”
The students have invested in the topic. They’ve signed their cards, and now they are encouraging others to do the same.
The teens manned a booth at sporting events last week and have presentations planned for local service organizations.
They hope to bring their message to classmates at both SHS and Superior Middle School.
Organ donation isn’t something most kids think about, Sziron said, but it could save a life, no matter what the season.
For more information on organ donation, look it up online at www.life-source.org. The group also has a Facebook site “Give Life.”
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