The Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA), the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) and Project Life will partner to save lives one swab at a time during the 2015 CIAA Basketball Tournament in Charlotte, N.C.  Project Life Movement booths will be assessable at the CIAA Fan Fest presented by Toyota in the Charlotte Convention Center Halls A & B and at the Time Warner Cable Arena Concourse.

The CIAA 12-member institutions have conducted drives on their campuses as part of a conference-wide challenge, “Road to the Tourney, Saving Lives One Swab at a Time.” To solicit additional support, giveaways and prizes will be awarded to donors who register at the Project Life Movement booths.  Also, there will be a competition among CIAA alumni with a championship bracket to display rankings.

Established through the #CIAASupports initiative, the hope of the drive is to educate, empower and equip the CIAA community in becoming life-saving bone marrow donors.  The CIAA was the first athletics conference to partner with Project Life and host conference-wide bone marrow drives. Last year, CIAA-SAAC and Project Life volunteers registered a total of 1,640 donors and this year’s goal is to double the number of registrants.

The registration and swabbing processes are very simple and painless and take less than 10 minutes to complete. Common swabs are used to collect tissue cells from inside each of the donor’s cheeks at 10 seconds per side. Currently, only 7% of donors listed on the registry are African-American. Since patients are more likely to match someone who shares their ancestry, more African-American donors can increase the likelihood that all patients will find a life-saving match.