Four students at Quinnipiac are really making a difference. Laurie Sica, Michelle Moore, Steven Forti and Angela Christoforou are student nurses and are working to fulfill their service learning project for class by ensuring that people will live as long as humanly and medically possible.

The four nursing students are raising organ donor awareness. The students have set up a table with a great deal of information on organ donations. “All we are asking for is consideration,” said Forti.

George, a patient who was one of the first to receive a revolutionary devise that acts as a bridge until he receives a new heart, inspired the students by saying, “If you are willing to receive an organ donation to save your life, shouldn’t you be willing to give it?”

All of the members of the group are organ donors and are not asking anyone to do what they are not. Forti said it “is not a matter of signing a card and then carrying it around” but rather the intent of a person to donate his or her organs to a person who needs them. He said this is why he is not asking anyone to sign a donor card on the spot, he said, students must really want to be an organ donor and discuss it with their family first.

The greatest myth regarding organ donors, according to the group, is that one’s care will be compromised when sick. Forti adamantly said that there is a mechanism in place to prevent such a thing.

April is “Donate Life Month” making the timing of this project even more relevant to the students of this campus. In the future, Christoforou hopes that a similar project is carried out.