Written by Nicole Nidea, Program Director
This school year marks an important milestone for SODA: Student Organ Donation Advocates—we’re celebrating our 10th birthday!
Ten years ago, Sara Royf (née Miller) founded the first-ever SODA chapter at Washington University in St. Louis in memory of her sister Laura, who passed away suddenly and saved the life of Trish, a now-retired special education teacher from New York, through organ donation. Sara shared Laura and Trish’s story and saw people’s minds change. After hearing about the power of organ donation, people wanted to be organ donors, too.
Sara hoped to continue Laura’s legacy by encouraging people to become organ, eye, and tissue donors when she started college, but there was no seamless path to advocate on campus. With a few friends, Sara created a club to help students educate their peers about organ, eye, and tissue donation and register people as organ, eye, and tissue donors. Then, SODA began expanding to more campuses, helping other students save lives.
Today, nearly 90 SODA chapters are on high school, college, and graduate school campuses nationwide, led by students who are saving lives in honor of their “Laura” and “Trish”—students like Lola from SODA at Brookfield East High School in Wisconsin, also a donor sister, and Maddie from SODA at George Mason University in Virginia,
a transplant recipient.
SODA’s chapter network has also expanded to include students who want to be leaders in their communities by saving lives, like Ryan from SODA at Stevenson High School in Illinois, and future donation and transplantation professionals, like Skotti from SODA at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine. These passionate students have educated 150,084 people about the importance of donation and registered 9,466 people as donors.
We are looking forward to continuing to expand our chapter network and save more lives as we celebrate our 10th birthday and get closer to achieving our 100-chapter goal by providing best-in-class student support and building deeply rooted community partnerships. With just over 10 chapters until we reach our goal, I have a feeling that we will have lots to celebrate this school year.
None of this would be possible without our incredible student leaders, supportive community partners, and strong national team. Thank you for saving lives, supporting our students, and being on this journey with us.
Here’s to 10 years of life-saving years and many more to come!
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