Up The Farway Tree

Freshers Festival

I didn't get a chance last weekend to write about the freshers festival, so before I write about the wedding I was at this weekend I thought I should share my write up (which is for the LLTGL blog)

Freshers Festival is an event run by Scotcampus in the centre of Glasgow. It is open to all students in Glasgow over a 2 day period, making it one of the biggest student events in the UK. The event is held under a massive marquee, with stalls ranging from local clubs, pubs and food places to the post office, charities and phone companies – all jostling to get the students attention and give away the best ‘freebies’. It is getting people to stop and talk to us, especially when we are asking them to give us something, not really giving them something! However we did learn from last year that students seem to love the little logo bugs, so we had these by the bucketful, as well as LLTGL rail card holders and pens to entice them over – students seem to just like anything that is free! Once we had attracted them we could then have a chat about organ donation. We did also resort to just loudly asking everyone who passed the stall “are you an organ donor?” forcing them to at least stop for a chat! Not to miss any opportunities, we also went round all the other stall vendors to make sure they didn’t miss the chance to sign up. What we also learned from last year is that standing shouting about organ donation for 2 days is exhausting, so we needed to enrol some extra help this time! Gerard, our fellow Scottish advocate, joined us on both afternoons. On the second day, the lovely Louise Davidson, who had a double lung transplant this year, and our friend Gregg Mooney, came along and helped to spread the word. We had been surprised last year about how many students were already signed up to the organ donor register, but the numbers seemed even higher this year – which was brilliant! Also amusing was the look of horror some people gave their friends when admitting they weren’t signed up – there seemed to be a shift in the social acceptance about being on the register and a sense of being proud that they were signed up already. By far the two most common reasons for being signed up seemed to be via their provisional driving licence and also on registering with a new GP at uni. Less often, but still common, was via the Boots card and passport forms. This would be in line with March 2012 statistics that Scottish sign up rates are at an all-time high of 39% of the population, with highest registration in the 21-30 age group, and 2nd highest in 16-20 year olds. Of those who were not on the register we signed up another 100 people over the 2 days. In addition, other peope did stop, chat and take some information leaflets home to think about. This is great – we don’t want people to sign up without getting the information and thinking about it. We need people to give it thought and to talk about that decision, especially with their loved ones. Very few people were against organ donation, and in some of those few cases, I think we did at least give some food for thought. One of the most powerful facts in these conversations is that you are more likely to need an organ than to ever donate so if you would take, would you give? I think that does help people to face the reality of organ donation and how important it actually is.

Photos courtesy of Victoria (e.g stolen from her facebook :-))

Victoria and Gerard