Earlier this month, the brothers of Lambda Phi Epsilon jointly partnered with alpha Kappa Delta Phi, the Asian Student Commission, and the Puget Sound Blood Center to organize our annual “Be The Match” campaign on campus. In a week-long sprint, our volunteers aimed to register as many committed donors to the National Marrow Donor Program. From the 4th through the 8th, our members worked, both through rain and shine, to educate peers about the importance of being registered as a bone marrow donor.
The story behind our national philanthropy is both meaningful and tragic. In 1995, our brother from Stanford University, Evan Chen, was diagnosed with leukemia. In an effort to save his life, the fraternity chapter at Stanford quickly organized a joint effort to hold multiple bone marrow drives on a national scale. What resulted was the largest bone marrow typing drive in the history of the National Marrow Donor Program and Asian American Donor Program. In a matter of days, over 2,000 people were typed into the registry. While a match was eventually found for Evan, the disease had unfortunately taken its toll on him, and he passed away in 1996. Evan’s unfailingly positive attitude through hardship taught us much about the true meaning of brotherhood and sacrifice, and his memories live on with us today.
This year, we registered over 60 new people dedicated to saving a life, thanks to the significant help from our sister sorority, alpha Kappa Delta Phi. We would also like to thank the Asian Student Commission for helping for providing us the facilities to host both a training workshop for our volunteers and an open forum social with other Asian interest organizations on campus.
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