Hello, I am the Fort Bliss Bone Marrow Guy. Originally just a single specialist quietly running Bone marrow donor registry drives across Fort Bliss. Now I am but one bone marrow person among a cult of bone marrow people.

Through the r/Army and r/Militarystories this effort has grown larger than anyone could have ever predicted, and so ridiculously fast. Soldiers from reddit across the Army are stepping up and learning how they can make a difference at their unit, and we ARE making a difference collectively.

We call our campaign Operation Ring The Bell, a soldier-lead volunteer initiative to save American lives.

And we have one very specific goal

•••••••••••••OPERATION RING THE BELL••••••••••

Who what why how?

Salute to life is the DoD Marrow Donor Program. All military personnel who register to the national database must pass through the middle man that is Salute to Life. For our spit is property for we are property to the great American government.

Salute to life has existed since the 90s and has registered around 1 million DoD personnel across all branches. They have 85 employees and only one of those employees is actually responsible for getting new donor registration across all of those big branches, Mr. Chad "big balla" Ballance. Since he does not have any clones currently, he can only do this by getting military personnel to reach out and take up the torch of executing registry drives at their unit.

Previously there was never any collaborative effort between volunteers. No resources and techniques, teamwork, communication, or continuity between any of these amazing volunteers. That results in every single volunteer who reaches out, having to learn how to do this from basically scratch, relying fully on Chad Ballance to guide them to the start.

And when they stopped, their entire installation's registry efforts stop right there with them. And Salute to Life has to wait until someone else comes along and volunteers again before any efforts happen at that installation again. That empty space has been over a decade at many bases in the army.

That's what we aim to fix. Our efforts are closely linked with each other, we keep in constant contact, have regular meetings, design and create new products, collect data from several bases. We are streamlining the entire process for a volunteer to step up and begin proficiently executing events. When I started it usually took people 4+ months to get their first event scheduled. They often would not get a good number of registration for the effort and would often quit. Now we have brand new volunteers reaching out and starting in a matter of weeks. Executing efficient events with much larger groups of soldiers educated and registered.

But even with that state, we are just putting make up on the flaws of the current system. If we all quit, the DoD's efforts in live saving donations goes right back where it started three decades ago. So we ask the question, in the voice of the angry bald man who runs a lot.

"WHO GON' CARRY THE BOAT"

The fuckin' Army, that's who.

Despite my team's hard work, dedication, pure shammery we have severe limitations in the difference we could make on our post. We have to balance this with work, when a field starts the registry efforts ends. Any challenge in life or interruption halts our installation's registry effort. We are the sole point of failure. We also can't be at every unit at the exact perfect time to maximize exposure and participation based on their OPTEMPO. We can only get to these units when we finally walk our happy feet right into the battalion office and schedule them as soon as possible.

I'm sorry but the Army can do it way better. The unit itself could do the event much better. A division level registry effort would blow all us out of the water with their eyes curled and their toes closed.

All of our efforts are all building to proving the concept at each of our units footprint. Building data, tools, CONOPs, resources, and CLOUT. So that each of my team can eventually walk into the division CSMs office and slap the product for a division wide yearly program right on the table and convince them to them sign it. Signing the OPORD we have already made is Literally the only effort required for these units to begin registering thousands of soldiers every single year in perpetuity.

We want division leadership to hear about the work at other bases, want a piece of the pie and think "If these other bases are having so much success with this, why isn't it being done here?"

We want enough divisions to establish this program to catch the attention of the big army leadership, where they'll want a piece of the pie think "If all these divisions are already doing this on their own, and having so much success and creating all this good PR, why aren't we telling everyone to do it?"

we want the leaders of the Army to get uncomfortable with the amount of impact a bunch of wierdo soldiers are making across multiple installations, worry that they aren't getting any of the credit. To pull us in to listen to what we have to say so they can take over. And we will have done all the work, made ALL the tools, data, and resources to do it perfectly already made to hand right to them.

We want to army to recognize it's incredibly unique position of potential in directly saving American lives right here in our country.

The Armys entire age demographic is literally exactly within the ideal age range for the safest bone marrow donor sources.

The diversity of the Army will directly aid in drastically increasing the chances for specific ethnic groups that have less than a 50% chance of finding a donor.)

Also the the simplest fact of life in the Army is the greatest tool. The Army has an advantage that BeTheMatch or literally any other donor registry organization in the world doesn't:

The Army can force 600 people to stand in one small place and pay attention to some dude(tte) yelling at them about their misconceptions about donating bone marrow. It's hard enough getting 6 people together for a routine DnD session.

No-one will register every single soldier at an event. It doesn't happen. We set 30% of any size group as the bottom line goal. But that's not the entire goal and benefit of doing these drives and stepping out in front of 500 soldiers. We may not convince more than 100 to register, but we just educated 500 soldiers on bone marrow donation. Directly corrected the completely ingrained cultural misconceptions that caused the available pool of donors to be so lethally low.

500 soldiers now know that spinal taps don't happen, that 90% of all donations are PBSC, done through their blood very similar to donating plasma and platelets. 500 now know that there's only a 1-in-430 chance anyone would get a call because the only time they'd be asked to donate is if there's someone in need who could only safely receive that donation from them specifically. They know that being on the registry could save their life, or their loved ones life, because they no longer need to race the ticking clock and wait the months it takes to get processed and added to the database. Ending the chance of passing before ever knowing if you could have been the one to save them.

They now know only 30% come from your family. The rest must rely on enough people being registered in the country that they might find that statistical anomaly that billyjoebob in wisconsklahoma just so happen to be a near genetic twin to them and could safely donate and save their life. Who also happened to be one of the 6.4% on the registry. (somehow not thinking the cotton swab you register with will inject a 5G microchip into their remaining tooth)

Every time we do an event, regardless of the outcome, we've left a full battalion of soldiers who no longer fear this procedure. Who may register some day. Who will maybe someday correct someone else on their misunderstanding "Ummm acktually". Who may inspire that person to go ahead and register and "umm acktualy" someone else.

Imagine the impact if every single unit ensured every single soldier in their ranks were educated, and offered the chance to register. For the extreme variety of things an army uniform represents to each individual person, positive or negative. At the absolute very least a consistent (and wildly mundane) tagline across every person could someday be "Knows the life saving importance of donation and being on the registry and understands the actual reality of how easy it is to donate."

Someone who currently is fighting for their life while waiting to find a donor match would see that uniform, and see their chance at life.

+++++++++++++

Fort Bliss saw their potential to save lives and took it as a responsibility and established the first sustainable yearly base wide registry program in the Army.

Why hasn't yours?

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OPERATION RING THE BELL SITREP

We are networking, negotiating, plotting, planning and doing tons of meetings. We have grown immensely in the last couple of months. We are making HUGE strides in this effort at a breakneck pace.

Right now we have 5 installations primed and ready to begin establishing this program. We are just waiting for the leaders to pull the trigger. A member of our team is at the national guard bureau and is working on making huge strides to bring this to the national guard.

We have teamed up with the AUSA Young Professionals program, to show young soldiers what they can do if they step out of their comfort zone and put themselves out there.

We are networking our own media coverage for our efforts, spreading awareness until army leaders know the name "Operation Ring The Bell" before we ever step into their office.

5 of us were sponsored by AUSA and will be attending the Army National Conference in October, to begin directly targeting and networking with Key Army Big Brass to pitch this initiative.

Current draft of the shirts our team will be wearing there(trying to stick the landing on moving the design to a darker color shirts

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Also Our entire team is planning to do an AMA very soon with both r/MilitaryStories and r/army**.**

We will have team members answers any and all questions about their specific work at their bases, the program at large, and anything else. All with the very clunky (base)BoneMarrow(gender) named accounts. it'll be a couple weeks long

We also will be doing something kind of goofy, on a set schedule we will regularly do a google meet group call with the link in the post open to join. So people can ask questions or troll us face to face once or twice a week.