Kansas City, Mo. — Community Blood Center (CBC) is partnering with Harvesters—The Community Food Network for their Save 1, Feed 1 campaign so that presenting blood, plasma, and platelet donors throughout March will potentially save three lives and will also feed families in need. For the month of March, CBC will be donating meals to Harvesters on behalf of presenting donors.
In Harvesters’ 26-county service area, approximately 1 in 8 people are at risk of hunger and rely on the charity food system. That’s 12.4% of our region’s population. Unfortunately, an additional 1 in 6 kids are also at risk of hunger, amounting to 16% of our region’s child population. Before the COVID-19 pandemic began, food insecurity was at the lowest point seen since before the Great Recession of 2008.  During the pandemic, the demand for food assistance increased 30 to 40 percent, and while that number is improving, it has not returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Most food banks estimate that a donation of $1 can help provide between three and four meals, as food banks are able to buy food by the truckload as opposed to at retail price. Therefore, each blood donation throughout the duration of this campaign has the ability to both save up to three lives and provide between three and four meals to those facing food insecurity in our region.
“The Community Blood Center provides an essential service to our community and we are grateful for their partnership,” said Valerie Nicholson-Watson, President and CEO of Harvesters. “We know that every time we ask for help from the Kansas City community, the community responds to help the hungry children, families and seniors in our area. We are confident the community will respond to this call to help save lives through the Save 1, Feed 1 campaign.”
“We are thrilled to be partnering with Harvesters for this campaign, as there are so many similarities in the life saving work that both of our organizations do every day,” said Patsy Shipley, Executive Director of Community Blood Center. “Since the start of the pandemic, there has been a chronic shortage of blood, as well as a dramatic increase in the need for food bank services. We hope that this partnership is able to help both of our organizations to provide essential services to our region.”
Donors can register online at www.savealifenow.org/save1feed1 to double their impact and have CBC donate to Harvesters on their behalf. 
Donating blood is safe and only takes one hour. CBC is taking extra precautions to help prevent the person-to-person spread of COVID-19. All CBC staff are vaccinated. As always, people are not eligible to donate if they’re experiencing a cold, sore throat, respiratory infection or flu-like symptoms. People can donate blood regardless of vaccination status. Additional information on donor eligibility and COVID-19 precautions is available here.