On Wednesday, November 1st, 2023, The Pasco High National Honor Society is partnering with Red Cross to put on a blood drive for all students and teachers here at PHS.  The blood drive will be running from 9am until 2pm in the library.  

For those looking to donate you must be at least 16 years old and students 16 to 17 must have a parent permission slip filled out which can be found in the PHS main office or in room 153. You must bring a form of identification when you donate in order to verify your age. To sign up for the upcoming blood drive use this link below. After following the link, you are brought to the American Red Cross site. If you have not donated previously, create an account by tapping sign in on the top right and then click create an account. Once you have created your account then follow the link once more to bring you back to the first page you then should see a ‘See Times’ option under November 1, 2023. Click see times then choose donating Power Red which collects the red cells but returns most of the plasma and platelets to the donor. However, these donors must meet specific eligibility requirements and have type A Neg, B Neg, or O blood. You can also select a Blood donation which donates approximately a pint of ‘whole blood’. Then once you have tapped either Power Red or Blood at the specific time you want then click confirm appointment. 

https://www.redcrossblood.org/give.html/drive-results?zipSponsor=pascohs 

A couple of fast facts about high school blood drives – of all the people in the US eligible to donate blood, only 3% donate. 2% of those donors come from high school blood drives. Without high school blood drives, we would not have the blood supply we need. One unit of blood can save up to 3 lives. About 90% of people will need blood or know someone who needed a blood transfusion at some point in their life. [Statistics taken from the Red Cross]  

The NHS President, Kimberly Joya Manzanarez, who has been helping run the blood drives since her sophomore year said, “The blood drive used to be a very small thing for us, and it has grown exponentially over the past two years.” Kimberly’s favorite part of blood dives is being a bed buddy one of the three jobs NHS students can take on while helping with the blood drive. Kimberly said “I personally have been a bed buddy since my sophomore year. Bed buddy is typically the job people stray away from because we see the needle going in and must be very quick and attentive if the person we are looking over has a reaction. However, I quite enjoy this job. I like socializing with people, and you do get to know a person while you’re helping them forget blood is getting drawn out of them. I feel that now after being a bed buddy for three blood drives, I feel more experienced with what to do and how to handle it.”