Dare 2 Care – Donate Blood, Save Lives is a volunteering project within Accenture in Romania, started in 2017 by employees, some of whom had needed blood for their relatives. Seeing first-hand how important it is to make sure blood banks can support the community, they enlisted other organizing volunteers and turned the project into a long-term one for Accenture.
We organize blood drives three times a year, the biggest one in Bucharest, with over 130 employee donors each time. The project has been extended to other Accenture locations as well and, so far, we had similar initiatives in Iasi, Brasov and Cluj-Napoca.
Part of our CSR strategy is related to employee-driven initiatives; under the Dare 2 Care umbrella, we encourage our colleagues not only to get involved in already-established company programs, but we rely on them to come up with ideas and then to implement them with our support. This is one such example, which has become a long-term project in the meantime.
One instance when we could experience firsthand the difference we made through our initiative was during a blood drive, when we got a call from the hospital that works with the mobile blood transfusion unit we collaborate with. That call was about a patient going into emergency surgery and needing the rarest blood type in the ABO group, i.e. AB negative. We asked the scheduled donors who had that type and we also went around the office to ask other colleagues as well; we managed to find 1 person in over 130 who had this blood type and met the eligibility criteria. She donated blood that instant, and the unit was immediately taken to hospital. Our colleague was excited beyond words; she started crying with happiness and she couldn’t believe the made such a strong impact on the spot.
Our plan is not only to continue implementing this initiative, but also to grow it: we aim for 500 donors annually by 2020, spanning all 6 cities in which we have offices in Romania. Simply because we can really make a difference together!