The
mission of the event organizers is to help our community: to Give
Back and to Pay It
Forward. Through a vigorous campaign of awareness directed at the hockey community and beyond,
chief among our goals are to
enhance donor awareness and the need to give life to others, and
to help innocents in need.
As first conceived by founder Mary Quayle in 2007, the event would
include a blood drive to pay back the blood donations given to her
late grandfather who passed away after battling a rare form of
cancer, and to pay it forward by helping the innocent children
under the care of Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC).
Soon after forming, Mary and company learned of young Evan
Cousineau's fight for his life against ALD and added Evan to the
community cause.
The inaugural GBPH event took place September
21-23, 2007. Mary and her
volunteer organizers successfully achieved donations totaling 107
pints of life-giving blood, $25,000 in proceeds contributed to
CHOC and $1000 for the Goals for Evan campaign. Everyone was
ecstatic over the accomplishments and pledged even more in 2008.
As for young Evan, he received a bone marrow transplant in June
2007 at the University of Minnesota's Children's Hospital; a procedure that doctors hoped would save his life. Despite a good fight, Evan lost
his battle with ALD on November 2nd, days before his 10th birthday
and one that his twin sister Alaina and family would celebrate
without him.
Steadfast to its mission, the GBPH organizers stayed the course
with their support of it goals for donating life and helping the
kids of CHOC. In 2008, organizers added the new charity of BAHBAD
- Be A Hero, Become A Donor program started by Gina
Cousineau - Evan's mom.
The 2nd annual GBPH event took place October
3-5, 2008. Again, Mary and her volunteer organizers met and
exceeded their goals. Blood donations up over the prior year and
totaled 138 pints. Proceeds through team registrations, private
gifts and corporate sponsors resulted in contributions of another
$25,000 to CHOC kids; plus
$5200 toward donor registrations through BAHBAD and the The National Marrow Donor Program.
For 2009, Mary and her band of volunteers have again stayed the
course, but this year raising the bar for their pledges. With the
steady increase in popularity and attendance at the event, donor
participations and proceeds alike are forecast to increase.
Give Blood
Our goal for the 2009 blood drive is to achieve donations exceeding 200 pints for the Orange County Blood
Bank. As an incentive to teams, a $25 discount off
the registration fee is offered to any teams registering with at least two blood donors.
And donating blood is safe and simple. The entire process takes about 45 to 60 minutes.
In 2008, GBPH event attendees contributed 138 pints of blood in three short days - a 30% increase over 2007. We continue to strive for over 200+ pints in one weekend and have secured resources to help accommodate this life-giving objective.
Bloodmobiles will be at the event
all weekend beginning on Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday so attendees can give a very special donation; their blood.
 CHOC
For 2009, we are pleased to announce that GBPH organizers have pledged
$100,000 to CHOC to build an Oncology Patient Care Room in the new wing of the hospital. Scheduled to open in 2013, the Oncology wing at CHOC will be a state of the art facility that will treat children from all over the
world [Read
More]. For this reason, we need your help more than ever! 2008 GBPH fundraising efforts contributed over $25,000 toward this five year goal.
If
you, your team, your Company or someone you know
would like to make a donation to this event, please download and
return the Donation form included below. Remember,
No
Donation is Too Big or Too Small to Help!
| Download the Donation form in MS Word |
Download the Donation form as PDF |
 BE A HERO, BECOME A DONOR!
We continue to strive to achieve awareness and participation in this invaluable
Be The Match
Registry - the new name for the registry operated by the National Marrow Donor Program® (NMDP).
In 2008, the GBPH event contributed $5,200 to the registry and helped to sign up over 50-marrow and organ donors in the name of
Evan Cousineau and the BAHBAD
organization. We invite you to share the journey with OC mother Gina Cousineau and her daughter
Mary in the Cox Communications produced video about this family's
courage to keep on giving [view
at YouTube].
We also offer a $25 discount off the team registration fee to any teams registering with at least two
donors in the National Registry. The registration consists of a painless oral swab test and a small processing fee of
$100. If you can't pay, we will help! If you can pay, great! Maybe you can help pay for others, too? And if you are of a minority race, your fee may be waived entirely! Please see the
Be The Match / BAHBAD booth for more details.
Learn more about how you can help by Giving
Life
New to GBPH in 2009 is the "Charity: Water Club" of Mater Dei High
School representing this int'l non-profit organization in an
on-going effort to raise awareness about the 1.1 billion people in the world
who don't have access to clean, safe drinking water, a necessity we take advantage of every single day.
The Charity Water Club will be collecting recyclables throughout
the event to raise money for this great cause. Please deposit your recyclables
at their booth and read more about how you can contribute in this cause [click
to read].
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