700,000 Americans have end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) and need either dialysis or a kidney transplant to live. Currently, there are nearly 100,000 people waiting for a transplant and not enough donated kidneys available to meet the need.
One way to help more people get transplants is to increase the number of people who generously donate one kidney while they are alive to a friend or a family member. Nationally, we must reach out, locate, and inspire more generous people to consider donating one kidney while they are alive.
Unfortunately, few people have ever met a living donor or someone who has benefited from a kidney transplant. We need a better way to reach potential living donors.
There is nothing more powerful than hearing the real-life stories of people who have donated and received kidneys from their friends and family members to help start the living donation conversation.
The Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation is excited to launch The Living Donation Storytelling Project , an innovative digital platform and library capturing real-life living donation stories on video that can be shared on all social media platforms.
These stories are honest, heartfelt, emotional, and wise. We want to amplify the power of these stories by capturing more of them and disseminating their message globally.
You can help us by spreading the word about the project, sharing your own story in the library, or contributing a monetary donation, if you are able to. Financial support for the Living Donation Storytelling Project will go towards:
- Adding 500 more living donor and kidney recipient stories to the library
- Helping more people in need of a transplant use this digital platform to ask their friends and family to consider being living donors
- Building the most diverse library possible a true representation of all people facing these challenges.
- Expanding the library into multiple languages.
- Sharing the best video content within this library nationally through targeted social media campaigns to help more people learn about living donation.
- Tracking which messages are the most motivating to the public.
$25 Thank you for your support! A gift at this level will help develop a new patient or donors story to be shared to the library.
$50 You are a true transplant advocate! This gift will allow us to coach someone in how to best prepare a video asking his or her community to consider being a living donor.
$100 Help us educate! This gift will help us prepare short videos on common questions people ask about living donation that can be shared on social media.
$250 Be a living donation ambassador! Gifts at this level will help us improve our website to make the library an even more useful resource for patients, donors, and care providers.
$500 Thank you for partnering with the Terasaki Institute! Your gift will help us to build a new Spanish language digital platform on living donation.
$1,000 Your generosity saves lives! This gift will allow us to launch a targeted social media campaign to share the best of these stories on social media.
My recipient wasn't not able to ski anymore, he loved to cross country ski, he had to give it up. He got my kidney and he can do it again. It is the most amazing part, watching this person get their life back" - Amanda, Kidney Donor
Learn more about the Living Donation Storytelling Project
The Transplant Research and Education Center (TREC) at the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation (TIBI) is an interdisciplinary research and education center. The Terasaki Institute is an organization dedicated to personalizing the patient experience through innovative genomics, proteomics, metabolomics and other biological sciences. Its mission is to tailor solutions that account for individual variability in a persons genetic makeup, environment, and lifestyle. At TREC, we focus on patient-centered education and conduct research and educational interventions about kidney disease, transplant, and living donation.
* Charities pay a small fee for our service. Find out how much it is and what we do for it.
