Holy Cross Student Group Holds Bone Marrow Banquet to Help Worcester Community

WORCESTER, Mass. – A student group, Multiethnic Identity Xploration (MIX), at the College of the Holy Cross is hosting the annual MIX Bone Marrow Banquet and Drive on Sunday, April 6 from 6-8 p.m. in the Hogan Campus Center Ballroom. Students, faculty, staff, and residents of the Worcester community are invited to help people in need by finding out if they are a match for different types of transplants. Tickets to the banquet are $7 for the Holy Cross Community, $8 for Worcester Consortium members, and $10 for the general public. Tickets are available March 31 – April 4 from 3:30-6:30 p.m. on the first floor of the Hogan Campus Center; tickets can also be purchased at the door. Please bring insurance card for verification. Proceeds will benefit the Caitlin Raymond International Registry of Worcester (CRIR) and the MAVIN Foundation.

“This year’s theme is superheros,” says Melandy Catalino ‘10, co-chair of MIX and organizer of the event. “We picked superheroes to let people know they can save lives by coming to our banquet to learn about this procedure.”

Jeanette Colón, a donor services recruitment specialist at CRIR will be the keynote speaker at the event. Volunteers will enjoy a buffet-style dinner and a live concert by Fools on the Hill, a Holy Cross a cappella group. In order to find out if a volunteer’s bone marrow is a match, trained professionals will take a cotton swab test from the inside of the cheek.

Representatives from CRIR, who help find matches for various kinds of transplants, will be on hand to educate people about the bone marrow transplant process. Bone marrow transplants are one of the few based on ethnicity, people from multi-ethnic backgrounds have more difficulty finding matches.

"This is because racial minorities and mixed race donors are under-represented on the National Marrow Donor Program's registry,” says Catalino. “Because people are most likely to find a marrow match with someone of the same racial or ethnic background, it is extremely important to diversify the registry.”

Multiethnic Identity Xploration (MIX) is a Holy Cross student organization whose mission is to provide resources for students and members of the Worcester Community who deal with bi/multi-ethnic issues.  Through events, programs and speakers, MIX is dedicated to helping people of multi-ethnic backgrounds appreciate their entire heritage.

CRIR, a non profit organization of the UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, is a pioneer in the establishment of procedures and practices for donor searches, and is the oldest coordinating center for bone marrow in the U.S.

The MAVIN Foundation promotes healthy communities that celebrate and empower mixed heritage people and families. Their MatchMaker program is dedicated to mixed-race bone marrow donor recruitment, and to educating the public about the transplant procedure and the critical need for minority donors.