This past week, Duncan Hall organized their annual Kary Project, a four-day swab drive partnered with the National Marrow Donor Program's BeTheMatch for bone marrow donor registrations. BeTheMatch is a nonprofit organization operating a registry for bone marrow and blood stem cell transplants.
When Duncan Hall’s benefactor, Karyanne Duncan, started bone marrow cancer treatment in 2021, the drive was started by Duncan Hall to rally support for her. This year, the drive was organized by Duncan Hall’s Kary Project commissioners, junior Christian Gabriel El Azar and sophomore Riley Mahoney.
For Mahoney, his first spark of inspiration to join the Kary Project was a special shirt.
“Our rector always wears a ‘Keep Calm and Kary On’ shirt,” Mahoney said. “He was always a big fan of it, and he talked about how [Duncan] loved this project. I wanted to be a part of that.”
In addition to Mahoney, Duncan Hall had about 20 different volunteers for the drive, and some Duncan Hall residents even took multiple shifts over the course of three days in LaFortune as well as Duncan Student Center. Mahoney noted the well-balanced distribution of grade levels amongst the volunteers, and he hopes that Duncan Hall can someday formalize collaborations with other dorms to increase volunteer numbers.
One of the volunteers, sophomore Chaz Frizzell shared about his own inspiration for registering as a donor.
“I joined because it's a big Duncan event every year, but I followed through with the donation because it's a really powerful experience to get to save somebody's life,” he said.
Alongside the Kary Project’s goal to increase volunteer numbers, El Azar also shared Duncan Hall's hopes to steadily increase donor entries. Starting from 70 entries in 2021, the drive registrations have since expanded to 150 entries and reached a peak of 300 entries in 2023. El Azar expressed his hope to maintain that goal of 300 entries this year and to continually increase the number of registrations.
“Because of what happened with [Duncan], we decided to contribute to the lack of the National Registry by making sure that we can expand it,” El Azar stated. “That's [the] essential goal of the Kary Project, because we want to tap into populations that haven't been tapped into and just show our ‘thank you’ and our gratitude for how the Duncan family has given us such a good and beautiful place to live in.”
El Azar and his team have worked hard to spread more awareness over the swab drive while also eradicating stigma surrounding donations. In addition to registering donors, El Azar and the volunteers also help answer common questions about donation policies.
“[The stigma] is essentially that people think that if they sign up, then that means they're one hundred percent going to get matched, and then they're one hundred percent going to have to donate,” El Azar explained. “But both of those facts are just wrong. It's not a one hundred percent chance that you're going to get matched. The chances are on the lower end, and even [if you get matched], you still have the complete right to say no.”
Since the inception of the Kary Project, three donors have matched and undergone the next stage of testing to become a bone marrow donor. One of those three individuals is junior Patrick Dolan, a Duncan Hall resident who was initially surprised to receive the BeTheMatch email that prompted a match. Although Dolan was unfamiliar with the donation procedure at first, he emphasized the strong support he received from his family and the Duncan Hall community.
“The real critical heroes in the story are the people who actually run this event, the people who go to the hall councils, the people who stand there in Duncan Student Center and this stand in LaFortune,” Dolan said. “When people say, ‘oh, you're saving a life,’ it's not necessarily just me. It's a culmination of those efforts to put it in that big picture.”
After completing a few more blood tests, Dolan flew out to Seattle on Nov. 7, 2023 to take part in the donation. Upon returning to Notre Dame, Dolan was welcomed and celebrated by the Duncan Hall community who had also provided support throughout the entire process.
“It's such a beautiful thing that Duncan Hall has been able to put [on the Kary Project] and save lives,” Dolan said. “I think just looking back on it in my personal life, it's a beautiful feeling [knowing that] my stem cells, something I just was born with, has the power to cure this person's disease.”
