Community · Public Service
Give Summer. Give Life.
Across the Delmarva peninsula, summer is the season when the shelves run thin. An hour in a chair here becomes a lifetime somewhere else.
There is a rhythm to summer along the peninsula. Schools empty. Beach houses fill. Families travel. And, quietly, the blood supply that keeps our hospitals running begins to thin.
The Blood Bank of Delmarva is the sole provider of blood products to every hospital in Delaware and to community hospitals across the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia. To meet daily patient need, it relies on roughly 350 donors walking through its doors every day. In June, July and August, that pace becomes difficult to hold.
A single donation, an hour of quiet attention in a comfortable chair, separates into components that can support up to three patients. A cancer patient in Newark. A newborn in Salisbury. A surgical patient in Rehoboth. The line between an ordinary summer afternoon and someone else's second chance is remarkably short.
Who is eligible
Most healthy adults age sixteen and older who weigh at least 110 pounds can donate. Bring a photo ID. Eat a full meal, drink water. The visit, registration, mini-physical, donation and a short rest, takes about an hour. Sixteen and seventeen year olds need signed parental consent, available on the Blood Bank of Delmarva website.
Where to give this summer
Donor centers operate year-round in Christiana, Dover and the surrounding region, and mobile drives move through beach towns, houses of worship and workplaces from May through Labor Day. The full schedule of locations, hours and mobile drives lives at delmarvablood.org.
The most generous thing most of us will do this summer will take one hour and cost nothing but a little of our time.
City to Coast is proud to stand alongside the Blood Bank of Delmarva this season. If you are able, please consider giving. And if you have given before, please consider inviting someone with you. Summer shortages are solved one chair, and one neighbor, at a time.