Support SAMI to find Life-Saving Stem Cell Donors

On March 26th, 2020, Liyna Anwar passed away from acute myeloid leukemia. Linya was a sister, a daughter, and a journalist. She was only 30 years old.

Linya’s story is not uncommon. Every day, over 157 people in the United States die from blood cancer. Fortunately, blood cancer patients can be matched with a bone marrow donor to receive a bone marrow donation to save their life. But for South Asian patients, it's extremely difficult to find a donor match.

South Asians make up only 3% of the donor registry. As a result, a South Asian patient has less than a 40% chance of finding a stem cell match. Many more South Asians are dying.

SAMI (South Asian Marrow Initiative) is a new non-profit aimed at spreading awareness and registering more South Asians into the national registry to help searching and future patients find a live-saving match. SAMI actively recruits donors through our drives and events to increase South Asian representation in the registry. With more possible donors, more patients will find matches, helping to save more lives.

SAMI has already made an impact, enrolling 500+ donors, but your donation will help SAMI expand. In 2024, we plan to launch 20 new chapters nationwide, host an additional 480 events, and add 24,000 more donors to the registry.

Your donation will go a long way in helping us find more individuals to join the registry.

Our fundraising goal will help us expand and launch new chapters. This is how we plan to use donated funds.

See our full story & growth plans here.

Blood cancers can impact any of us, our family, or our friends. Helping SAMI's mission is an investment in your community. Let's build up the registry of potential donor matches to fight these cancers.

We are actively hosting drives across the country. Here are 3 of the thousands of patients that we are trying to help

We also support patient specific fundraisers to raise money for social media marketing campaigns to find specific ethnic subgroups to join the registry, and host drives within those ethnic subgroups. Here are some of the patients that are actively looking for a life-saving match that we are supporting.

NIHARIKA

Niharika lives in Seattle, she is a pediatric allergist, and newlywed of just a few months. After running a fever for a few days, she was diagnosed with Leukemia. Instead of moving into her home and starting her family, she will be battling this unexpected chapter. A stem cell or bone marrow transplant from a matching donor may be her only cure. She is from the State of Odisha in India, and is an only child. So we need the community's help to swab and help her find a match.

SHOBHA

GURSANJH

EVA