THE weekend before Mother’s Day, Lower Mainland residents can learn how to give life as blood, stem cell and organ and tissue donors from three community-minded health advocates leading this year’s Thanks Mom: Give Life awareness and recruitment event at Guildford Town Centre, Centre Court.

Manjot Kahlon, 2018 chair of Thanks Mom: Give Life, Joban Bal, founder of One Blood For Life Foundation, and Manpreet Johal, co-founder of Jivana Organ Donation Society, from Surrey each have their own reasons for working tirelessly to engage more youth to become donors.

While the three twenty-somethings are united in their goal to raise awareness of the need for more donors from multi-ethnic communities, each is focused on highlighting a specific type of donation: whole blood, stem cells, and organs and tissues.

To support the fifth Thanks Mom event, these three will share their passion and energy to inspire others to respond to the critical need for donors. They will invite people to get swabbed and register as potential stem cell donors; explain how expectant mothers can donate life-saving umbilical cord blood when they deliver their babies; encourage passersby to register their decision for organ donation with BC Transplant; and help folks book an appointment to donate blood.

WHEN: Saturday, May 5 at 12 p.m.; event runs Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday, May 6 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

WHERE: Guildford Town Centre, Centre Court, 10355 152nd Street, Surrey