Yesterday was Donor Day

I had a fantastic day yesterday :D

During the day I ran a Donor Desk in my village library. It's quite a small library, but I did speak to the majority of adults who came in yesterday. No-one was opposed to organ donation and a few were already signed up or carried a donor card. I answered lots of questions, such as reassuring people that they weren't too old to join the organ donor register or that they could still be an organ donor despite having diabetes. Two people signed up there and then (one online and one filled out a form and then went off to post it) and I gave out around 15 leaflets to people who were going to go away and think about it or talk to their families. I told some people my transplant story, which I think really inspired them to think seriously about organ donation. I feel my Donor Desk was quite a success despite only being held in a small village library :)

Yesterday evening I attended a drinks reception in a very posh members only club in London to celebrate Donor Day. It was great :) I went with my mum and at first I felt very uncomfortable as I'm not really a social person and I felt a bit out of my depth, especially as I didn't know many people. But as the evening went on I felt more comfortable and found people to chat to. It was great to meet so many people who were also passionate about organ donation for various different reasons - some had received transplants, some were waiting for transplants, some were from donor families... I spoke to some new people and some that I'd met on Monday at the photocall. And I also met Sarah for the first time, which was lovely. However, the camera crew were present, so cameras were rolling for most of the evening, which made it a bit uncomfortable, especially as I was trying my best to avoid the cameras! So we're going to try to arrange to meet up sometime soon for a meal, where we'll be able to chat a bit more without the cameras :)

Yesterday there was quite a lot of publicity for Donor Day. In the morning Holly was on GMTV and she was brilliant. GMTV have put an article on their website which you can read here. Holly was also on Sky News yesterday evening and The Guardian online published an article which you can see here. The Metro changed it's masthead in support of Donor Day (see here) and published an article in it's paper and also online, which you can read here. The photos in The Guardian online and in The Metro were from our photoshoot, but I've been cropped out of both of them! The Mirror also interviewed Holly yesterday, but I don't yet know when they'll use it. On Twitter a message about Donor Day was the second most popular retweet yesterday, and Bill Bailey and Alan Davies gave us their support. And the most exciting news was that Gordon Brown gave Holly his support - visit his website here and it's the first link under latest news - and has invited Holly for tea with him at Number 10! Wow!

Last night we discovered we wouldn't hear the sign-up figures for Donor Day til today, but there were some interesting statistics. This month so far (so from April 1st til April 6th), not including Donor Day, the average number of people signing up to the organ donor register had tripled from around 200 per day to over 670 per day! And that's before Donor Day itself!

The number for yesterday's online sign-ups has just come through. Yesterday 3222 people (15 times the daily average) signed up to the organ donor register online! That's just online! I think that statistic shows just how influential Donor Day was :D

Well done Holly and everyone else involved - we made a difference!