In September, the month of WMDA’s World Marrow Donor Day, the TxMiller Foundation spotlighted the critical importance of Stem Cell Donation.

In honor of the ‘Week van de Stamceldonor’ (Stichting Matchis) and the World Marrow Donor Day (WMDA), the TxMiller Foundation intensified its efforts to highlight on the importance of more people joining the stem cell donor registry. The TxMiller Foundation team is deeply committed to inspiring many young, healthy individuals to join the stem cell donor registry, because every donor could be someone’s life-saving match!

We kicked off an online campaign through LinkedIn and our network in Utrecht (e.g. the local theatre and the sports center at Utrecht Science Park).

We would like to highlight two videos that we established in collaboration with Diede Van Oorschot, a talented short track athlete and part of TeamNL, and one Jaap Schenk, a talented rowing athlete who won the Varsity (a KNSRB boat race) in 2023.

Various activities followed the online campaign. Most of those activities were organized in collaboration with local student sports associations. Those activities ranged from on-site recruitment activities to a ‘STAMkroeg’ event including a presentation and a pub quiz on stem cell donation. By collaborating with key figures in the student sports associations’ communities, we aimed at providing information and lowering the registration threshold.

The pinnacle event was our annual Stem Cell Donor Recruitment Day, traditionally organized on the Thursday before World Marrow Donor Day. This event, which took place on September 19th, consisted of an on-site recruitment activity at two Hogeschool Utrecht locations and a live webinar, bringing together the perspectives of a donor, a former patient and Matchis.

We would like to express a huge thank you to everyone involved:

• Stichting Matchis (Bert Elbertse, Anita van der Velden)
• GenDx (Maarten Penning, Hanneke Merkens-Hoelen, Fridolin van der Lecq, Veerle Van Meervelt, Bo Rood, Lara van der Klugt, Catarina Severo)
• Webinar panellists (Ferdi Stofmeel, Leonie Dix, Wouter Klein Tuente, Bert Elbertse)
• Student associations (U.S.R. “Triton”, A.U.S.R. Orca, U.S. Histos, de Domrenner, USWV, U.S.S.V. Softijs, SPIN Boardsports Utrecht)
• And many more: Uranymus, Mebiose, UBV, InSilico, Sportcentrum Olympos, Stadsschouwburg Utrecht, LSI, PD-value, QVQ, Hogeschool Utrecht, Utrecht Science Park.