Surprise (to me)! I was Part of an OpenIDEO Challenge

When I created this illustration that shows how almost 80% of bone marrow donations are now given I hoped patients, their families and friends would find it useful to use on their own websites and at donor drives.

Yesterday I was on a phone conference call with friend, stem cell transplant recipient and now marrow donation advocate Jonathan Haupt. Jonathan and his team are in the process of creating a new non-profit called 30k Friends Foundation that will help patients, their families and friends as they struggle with the diagnosis when someone they love has been told they will need a bone marrow or (adult) stem cell transplant to survive.

During the conversation Jonathan asked how I became involved with a group called Open Ideo. I told him I wasn't. He said he spotted one of my illustrations on their website. Some sleuthing and I discovered he was right. Cool!

My thanks to OpenIDEO member Katie for sharing information from my Marrow Drives website with the OpenIDEO community. It was great to learn that people are finding the information presented there helpful.

To learn more about OpenIDEO I visited the About Us page on their website. The site works this way:

A challenge is determined. It then goes through 4 basic phases: Inspiration, conceptualizing, evaluation and at the end top concepts are selected. Hopefully they will progress to fruition through the continued collective energy, ideas and support from the OpenIDEO community.

"OpenIdeo is a place where people design better, together for social good. It's an online platform for creative thinkers: the veteran designer and the new guy who just signed on, the critic and the MBA, the active participant and the curious lurker. Together, this makes up the creative guts of OpenIDEO.

To become a place where good ideas gain momentum, OpenIDEO depends on participation — your inspirations, his comments, her concepts, our design process. It's these efforts, these big and small moments of sharing and collaboration, that make this platform a dynamic resource for tackling significant global challenges.

CLICK HERE for all of the details.

Basically you can participate a little or a lot and in essence the site creates a diverse, online, brainstorming and talent pool.

I was thrilled that the folks over at OpenIDEO found the information helpful in educating people about how simple the stem cell donation process can be.

As you can see the illustration was pretty much used on every page related to the Marrow Donor Challenge about how to create more registered donors in the National Bone Marrow Registry.

If you haven't joined the marrow registry but would like to you can attend a live registration drive or order a test kit online and it will be mailed to you. All it takes is filling out a form and swabbing the inside of your cheeks with cotton swabs. That's it. Registering is pain free and takes about 10 minutes. It's the first step in being able to help save someone's life.

I joined the registry back in 1995 and am hoping to someday be contacted and told I'm a perfect match for a patient in need.

To learn about the donation process from someone who has donated just CLICK HERE to read the post about Scott, the stranger who donated to m cousin Tami and saving her life.

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The current challenge on OpenIDEO is titled: How might we better connect food production and consumption? Click on the title if you want to check it out and jump in and become part of the OpenIDEO community.