American Red Cross hosts blood drive at Sparta Civic Center

American Red Cross recently hosted another of their regularly scheduled blood drives for the Sparta community.

On Dec. 11, at Sparta Civic Center, nearly 30 residents stopped by during the day to give to a good cause. As always, Red Cross wants to encourage more to come down and sign up for future blood drives, and there are certainly incentives to do so.

Several businesses lent their support to the blood drive this month, offering gift cards or other small prizes and rewards to those that wanted to give back in a big way. Purple Lotus, Mad Raven, and Frank’s, to name a few, were offering gift cards. Calfkiller Brewing had some awesome metal signs, and Jongee’s even had a bird feeder.

If someone chooses to be a doner, there are a few options. After donating, Red Cross says there is a 56-day wait before you can donate again, so you cannot just jump from donation to donation. That would be dangerous for a donor. That 56-day period coincides roughly with the gap between visits to White County from the Red Cross, too. There is also an option for a longer process that gives two pints of blood. With this option, however, the donor must wait 112 days before they can donate again.

Most of the donors at these events tend to be regulars, but there were a few new faces who signed up for their first time at the event. Red Cross hopes, with each new Blood Drive, to encourage more and more to participate.

The next Blood Drive will be around March or April. Red Cross usually tries to schedule them on the first or second Thursday of the month, and they have used Sparta Civic Center as the facility for these drives for some time. The civic center hosts numerous other events as well, which are listed on the city’s website at spartatn.gov/parks-events-venues.