Construction Time!

Good evening!

My last post was all about discovering what up-and-coming topics to cover for my next trending story. Specifically, I also mentioned that I wanted to conduct a story on something that is not as popular or widely talked about in the media or even in everyday life.

One thing that I noticed while going through my daily routines is that I do not hear much about people helping other people in the community. It was always about how someone's day was or how much work there is to be done and how much stress had accumulated as a result. Among  most people, Mondays have a bad rep on being known as the one of the worst days of the week.

With that being said, I tried to look at the bigger picture. Who are the people fighting for their lives currently? People at war, people with cancer...and people who need blood.

Many people in Delmarva need blood replacements from great losses such as car accidents, people with diseases, etc. It is shocking that more people don't give blood, because it can easily save lives with just a tiny contribution. At that moment, I decided I wanted to conduct a trend story on the Blood Bank of Delmarva and their efforts to attract more donors.

The big problem with this area is the need for blood. According to the website, almost 80,000 blood donations are needed for nearly 20,000 patients in the Delmarva region. The blood donated gets sent to one of 16 different hospital across the peninsula and just one pint can save up to 3 lives.

Recently, the Blood Bank of Delmarva celebrated their 60th anniversary of service. In light of the recent healthcare changes (i.e. improving preventitive health coverage), BBD has updated their membership plan to not only reflect those changes, but to keep younger donors. Most of the donors are indeed older, but a new way to incentivise the youth is via a rewards system. This system includes an online store (coming soon), health-related benefits and more. More information on the plan can be found here.

One of my main struggles putting this piece together is the choice of B-roll for the package. In my last post I discussed how that was an issue I had in my first story as the B-roll was not relevant to the narration I made. This may require me to go out into the field and record minutes or even hours of additional footage just to put more emphasis on the imporance of the need to donate. The more precise I can be with my visuals, the better the impact of the story.

Here is a brief clip on the Blood Bank of Delmarva and how they work together to save lives.





Hopefully with my story I can adequately gather enough information to show that there is a problem at stake that an organization is trying resolve with their new changes. Each day, just one person can make a difference.

I will update you all on the finished video next week. Happy Wednesday!

~Jade