Written by Nicole Nidea, Program Director, and Zoe Engels, Blog Contributor
As 2023 kicks off, we’re thinking back to 2022 and our chapters’ exciting accomplishments.
Our 250+ student leaders worked hard to save lives through organ donation advocacy on their campuses. Their hard work is definitely paying off—SODA’s student leaders educated 53,742 people about organ, eye, and tissue donation and registered 4,796 people as organ donors throughout the calendar year.
Here are some other highlights from 2022:
SODA hosted our first State of the Union to share our mission with new and continued supporters.
We celebrated our rockstar chapters through our first-ever SODA Awards.
We recognized Sara Miller, SODA’s President and Founder, at the American Transplant Congress as the American Society of Transplantation 2022 Transplant Advocacy Award winner.
With Hearts for Russ and Second Chance Fundraising, SODA awarded scholarships to eleven students through the HBCU Organ and Tissue Donation Advocacy Scholarships, the Student Advocacy Scholarships, and the Laurie Smith Memorial Scholarship. The winners are making differences by hosting organ, eye, and tissue donation advocacy events in their communities.
The SODA National Team expanded to include two full-time and two part-time staff members to support the growing network of student leaders.
We surpassed our 50-chapter milestone, ending the year with 56 chapters on high school and college campuses nationwide.
Nicole, SODA’s Program Director, and Sophia, SODA’s Student Engagement Coordinator, attended the 2022 Donate Life America Annual Conference where they learned more about the latest in donation and strengthened our community partnerships.
We couldn’t have done it all without your support, so we’d like to start off 2023 by saying: Thank you!
The new year is already off to an incredible start filled with organ, eye, and tissue donation advocacy and education efforts. To begin 2023, thanks to your generosity, SODA Board Member Autumn Toelle-Jackson shared her daughter’s life-saving story and represented SODA at the Rose Bowl Parade. We already know this event will make it into our top 2023 moments, and there’s so much more that the year has in store. We can’t wait for this exciting year ahead, to see all that our chapter leaders accomplish this semester, and to share it all with you.
Follow us on social media (@sodanational) to stay up to date on SODA’s growth and our chapters’ accomplishments in 2023.