By Katherine Haines ’21, ’22

Arcadia’s student-run Public Relations agency, 1853 Communications, won second place in the Students Save Lives College Challenge, organized by the Gift of Life Donor Program. 1853 Communications is run through a practicum course in the Department of Media and Communications, which Assistant Professor of Media and Communication Dr. Christine Mullin serves as adviser. 

Communications majors Meaghan Airey ’24 (co-founder), Yasmeen Johnson ’21, Beth Mackey ’22, Kristen Morratti ’22 (co-founder), Julia Neff ’22, Isabella O’Hare ’22, Gigi Scott ’22, and Psychology major Linda Ingabire ’22, put together and ran the award-garnering campaign. The organization held three donor registration drives for the Gift of Life Donor Program that reached more than 800 people through an Instagram campaign, earning a $500 prize and a recognition certificate. Seven Pennsylvania colleges participated in the challenge, which registered 138 new people as organ and tissue donors. 

“Finding a way to do multiple forms of donor drives that people would actually want to attend socially distanced was a challenge,” said Neff. “But despite the circumstances, our team stayed optimistic and pulled through with ideas that were not only creative, but successful!”

The annual Gift of Life competition invites universities and colleges across the Philadelphia region to help increase organ donor awareness and register students, faculty, and staff on campus to be organ donors. The Gift of Life Donor Program is the federally designated organ procurement organization and has coordinated the most organ donors in the United States for the past 13 years.