Startups need blood, sweat and tears. This time though, we only want the blood! That’s right, this is our way of calling all those who can to join in our latest blood donation drive and donate their blood to help save lives.
Blood donation
It’s all happening on Tuesday, June 4, at Epignosis HQ in Athens on the 3rd floor of our shared building at Lykourgou 1 Str. As always, this is an open blood drive. So it’s not just for Epignosis or the Starttech Ventures companies. But to anyone in the Greek entrepreneurial ecosystem (and their friends) who wishes to come and donate.
Why we give blood (Blood drive)
At Starttech Ventures we’re a registered society within the National Blood Donor Registry (www.ekea.gr). This “pool” enables all of us, as members within the society, to access our communal registry should one of us, or one of our family members, ever require units of blood in the future.
Aside from that, as we always like to point out:
Donating blood is a brief, selfless act of giving that genuinely helps to save lives.
And that’s why we stay strongly committed to hosting volunteer donation blood drives twice per year. Our last one was back at the turn of the year.
Also, each one of us that volunteers is also eligible to request an individualized blood donor card. This operates a bit like an “ATM card” for units of blood, i.e. whenever a volunteer donates a unit of blood, the card records it and guarantees the individual access to a unit of blood if needed in the future at maximum-priority (top of the list).
Ongoing initiative growing
Everything started back in 2017, when we held our very first blood drive on January 16 of that year, and we’ve never looked back since. Our pool of donors just keeps on growing, and it’s something we are all very proud of. Together Starttech and Epignosis count almost 100 people, with the majority taking part in our blood donations – not an insignificant number of people to organize such an event. And we hope everyone will do it all again for the sixth time next week.
As our stakeholders have experienced in the five blood drives held so far:
The process of donating blood is only a matter of around 15 minutes. It’s also practically painless, and extremely important!
To understand how important, let me explain.
Under normal circumstances, blood bags last for up to 40 days, However, blood is always in short supply nowadays. In fact, according to information from our partner hospital, the need is so high that donated blood is used up, in its entirety, on average within just three days! For medium to serious surgery a patient needs on average around 5 units. But that number can go up to 16 for a series of multiple procedures.
Join us!
There you are, there’s no excuses now. Whether you are a regular blood donation volunteer, or are thinking about doing it for the first time, we welcome you to join us at our 6th blood drive. See you on June 4th!
