Span Plan Urges Students to Donate Blood as Part of Their Second Annual ‘Give a Little Love’ Service Event
Last updated: January 31, 2022
This Valentine’s Day, the students of Span Plan are skipping the flowers and chocolates and are ‘Giving a Little Blood’ to the greater Lafayette community.
Malissa Ayala, director of Span Plan, started the ‘Give a Little Love’ event last year to engage her students and give back to the community. “We’re hoping that this starts a new tradition for us,” Ayala said. “We look at February as our opportunity to give a little love back to the community and pick a service project each year that our students are invested in.”
Ayala knows that the members of Span Plan have passions outside of school, and when it comes time to select the act of service each year, Ayala looks to her students for help. For last year’s event, Span Plan chose to donate succulent plants to the Indiana Veterans Home in honor of a student coach who had served in the military. This year, another Span Plan student inspired the program to hold a blood drive.
Mary Keller, Purdue student and Span Plan student coach, is an active blood donor. Keller has been donating blood for 16 years and understands its impact on the community. “One donation (around 1 pint of whole blood) can be used to help up to three other people,” Keller said. “Donating blood is an easy way to make a big difference! It literally saves lives.”
Mary Keller of Purdue Span Plan poses with the Boilermaker Xtra Special
Keller urges anyone who can donate to sign up for Span Plan’s blood drive. It will take place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 17, in the first-floor lobby of the Krach Leadership Center. All the blood will be donated to Versiti Blood Center of Indiana. To sign up for a time slot, please visit Versiti’s website. All students who participate will receive a $10 Amazon e-card as a thank you for donating.
The benefits of Span Plan’s service projects are two-fold. Not only do they give back to the community, but they also raise awareness for the Span Plan program and all the great things nontraditional students do to help the Purdue community.
“Oftentimes, our students can be limited in the interactions they’re able to participate in or feel comfortable participating in, so having the opportunities that we create that can bring other students together and the campus community together is a really great affirmation and a great example of how at the end of the day, we’re all a community,” Ayala said.
Span Plan recognizes that not every student is the same. Employees like Ayala and Keller focus on providing resources for over 700 nontraditional undergraduate students at Purdue. Whether students are financially independent, married or have children, Span Plan wants to support them during their time as a Boilermaker.
One of the many ways Span Plan supports its students is by employing student coaches. These coaches act as a point of contact for all nontraditional students who have questions, want to find more resources or need help resolving a problem. The student coaching program gives Span Plan members a way to connect with another Purdue student who may have faced similar obstacles during their time as an undergraduate student. Among this group of coaches is Mary Keller.
Keller has been a student coach for Span Plan since August of 2020 and has taken on a peer mentoring role.
“For me, the most rewarding part of being a Student Coach is in being able to help another student resolve a problem they’ve encountered here at Purdue,” Keller said. “That can be something as simple as letting a classmate know that they’re not the only nontraditional student in the room, or as involved as trying to create ways to put nontraditional students on an equal footing with their more traditional peers.
“I’ve seen our office truly help students who felt like they were alone and struggling in a system not designed for them.”
You can find more information on the rest of the Span Plan website for anyone interested in learning more about nontraditional student resources, events, or student coaching.
Writer: Molly Gilbride, Communications Assistant for Student Success Programs
Contacts: Malissa Ayala, Director of Span Plan - ayala15@purdue.edu