FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Hannah Ehrlich
November 18, 2015 Tel: 212-779-4400 X. 29
Local Groups Come Together for Bone Marrow Donor Drive at Harlem Bookstore
Local businesses, organizations, and community members are sponsoring a bone marrow donor registry drive on Saturday, November 21, 2015 from 2 to 4 pm at La Casa Azul Bookstore in East Harlem, New York (143 E. 103rd St.). The sponsors are children’s book publisher Lee & Low Books, multiracial advocacy organization Project RACE, the authors of Being Biracial: Where Our Secret Worlds Collide, and comic and writer Alex Barnett, who will host the drive along with bone marrow registry organization Be the Match.
The drive will highlight an important issue within the multiracial community: the lack of bone marrow donor matches. For patients diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma and other life-threatening diseases, a bone marrow transplant may be their only hope for a cure. Yet 70% of patients who need a transplant don’t have a matched donor in their family. For multiracial people, finding a match can be especially hard.
“As a member of a multiracial family and father to a biracial son, I am so committed to helping those who may otherwise have had difficulty finding a bone marrow donor,” said Mr. Barnett. “The other sponsors and I are proud and honored to work on such an important cause.”
The first 50 donors will receive a multiracial crayon pack in appreciation for their support!
The Sponsors of the Bone Marrow Drive are:
Be the Match (https://bethematch.org/) has a registry of nearly 12.5 million volunteers ready to be life-saving bone marrow donors. Because there are patients who can’t find a match, Be the Match encourages more people to join the registry and to be there when they are called as a match.
Project RACE (http://www.ProjectRACE.com/) advocates for multiracial children, multiracial adults, and their families primarily through education and community awareness. It supports policies that make a positive impact on people of multiracial heritage at local, state, and national levels. Project RACE is active in the effort to find bone marrow donors for multiracial people and sponsors countless donor registry drives throughout the United States.
La Casa Azul Bookstore (http://www.lacasaazulbookstore.com/) is an independent community bookstore located in East Harlem that seeks to raise community awareness and political consciousness on issues affecting East Harlem residents.
Lee & Low Books (https://www.leeandlow.com/) is the largest multicultural children’s book publisher in the country. It is also one of the few minority-owned publishing companies in the United States.
Alex Barnett (http://www.alexbarnettcomic.com/) is a comic and writer from New York City. He also is the host of the podcast Multiracial Family Man (http://multiracialfamilyman.libsyn.com/) that explores issues of concern to multiracial people and families.
Being Biracial: Where Our Secret Worlds Collide (http://beingbiracial.com) authors, Sarah Ratliff writes about gender and race advocacy and is Biracial, and Bryony Sutherland is a ten-time published author and the mother of three Biracial sons.
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