Seniors Nancymarie Eseed and Maria Geroulis have chosen to partner with Be The Match, a nonprofit organization committed to spreading awareness on bone marrow cancer, for their community awareness DECA project. Eseed and Geroulis have spent several weeks raising money and awareness for bone marrow cancer victims while also working on adding numerous potential donors to the Be The Match registry.

Eseed gave more insight into the importance and potential impact of her and Geroulis’s project, as well as their motivation for partnering with Be The Match.

“We knew we wanted to choose an organization that was both striving to make a change in the world and meaningful and personal to us. As we did more research we found Be The Match, which is an organization focused on raising awareness for and providing aid for those suffering from bone marrow cancer. This project is very important because not many people know but when someone is suffering from bone marrow cancer, they need someone to donate their bone marrow. This donation is a one-on-one process and can be compared to donating blood. However, a huge downfall to bone marrow transplants is the difficulty it takes to find a proper bone marrow match. There is only a 33% chance that you can match with someone in your family, so getting more people to sign up for the registry will be profoundly helpful to those in need,” Eseed said.

Along with Eseed, Geroulis spoke about the simplicity of the transplant process.

“We wanted to bring attention to bone marrow cancer and the Be The Match organization because bone marrow cancer is currently one of the rarest types of cancers in the country, but it has the easiest transplant process out of every cancer. Anyone, as long as they are above the age of eighteen, could be a match to donate. It’s not even a surgery transplant; it’s actually a lot similar to donating blood. So, since it’s so simple and extremely effective, we think that if more people knew about it, then more people would be willing to join the registry because it doesn’t really affect the donor at all after the procedure, but can really save the recipient’s life,” Geroulis said.

Geroulis also shared how the donating process actually occurs.

“Essentially, all the process entails is swabbing the inside of your mouth and sending that swab to Be The Match. From that point on, your data and name is put into the system and onto the registry. In order to match with someone, the patient in need will have their bone marrow tested and compared with those on the registry to see who they best match with. If you get notified that you match with someone and you choose to participate in the bone marrow transplant, you will essentially participate in a plasma-like donating situation, but instead, you’re really giving your bone marrow to someone who needs it,” Geroulis said.

Tricia Brown, DECA sponsor and Strategies and Entrepreneurship teacher, vocalized the behind-the-scenes of Eseed and Geroulis’s project.

“Every year DECA completes a Project Management Community Awareness Project where the student group picks a topic that is close to them for some reason. Maybe they’re passionate about it or maybe it’s something they’ve learned about in school. This year Nancymarie and Maria chose the topic of bone marrow cancer because they have been impacted by it, with a friend who actually had bone marrow cancer. The main goal of their project is to increase the number of people that are enrolled in the Be The Match bone marrow registry,” Brown said.

Brown also shared about a very successful event Eseed and Geroulis hosted, as well as future milestones Eseed and Geroulis hope to accomplish in regard to this project.

“Nancymarie and Maria hosted an event at Northwestern University to increase the number of people in the registry. They had successfully gained around 30 new donors for the registry at their event, where students from Northwestern and other adults swabbed and joined the registry on site. They’re also communicating their project with all the faculty at Niles West. If faculty scans the QR code placed in their mailbox they will be able to have a swab kit delivered to them and they can join the registry in that manner. They also raised awareness by collecting gifts for cancer patients at Lurie Children’s Hospital in the city, collecting over 60 gifts. They’ve also collaborated with Decalicious, another DECA project, and are donating $400 along with over 60 presents to the Children’s Hospital,” Brown said.

Eseed and Geroulis will complete their DECA project in a couple of weeks and hope to do so with many more people aware of bone marrow cancer and what they can do to help those affected by it.