Community Corner

Mahwah Volunteers Help Ring NY Stock Exchange Bell

Members of the NJ Sharing Network had a busy National Donate Life Month that started off on the Stock Exchange Platform

The NJ Sharing Network just wrapped a month-long campaign aimed at getting residents across the state more aware of, and informed about, organ donation.

Mahwah members of the group say they got an opportunity to put a cause they care about on one of the most well known platforms in the world.

Throughout April, members of the NJ Sharing Network promoted organ donation through various events around the state. The group kicked off National Donate Life Month by ringing the closing bell for the New York Stock Exchange on April 1.

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“It was definitely one of the top ten coolest things I’ve done in my life,” Pam Drozd, a Mahwah resident who volunteers with the NJ Sharing Network, said.

Drozd was one of 20 group members who stood on the podium as the organization’s CEO, chairman and another member of the NJ Sharing Network rang the NYSE closing bell.

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“We got to represent this organization on a world stage,” she said. “That’s amazing in itself.”

The Network is a non-profit organization that works to cultivate organ donation among New Jersey residents. Members of the New Jersey Sharing Network work both as a support system for one another, and an advocacy and awareness organization that promotes donation. The Mahwah members in the group joined either because they had a loved one who has donated organs, are signed up to be donors themselves, or have been the recipients of donated organs.

When the group got the go ahead to ring the closing bell, it recruited members of its Donor Family Council to take a trip to NYC for the ringing.

“We were only there for a short time, but everything about it was really special,” Mahwah resident Jackie Lue Raia, a manager at the Sharing Network, said. “It was a lot of fun.”

Drozd agreed, saying that ringing the bell was a good demonstration of “the fact that not everything we do is sad. This day gave us time to be us. And, of course, we reflected on our loved ones who brought us there, but really it was just a good day.”

Drozd joined the NJ Sharing Network after her late husband Mike became an organ donor when he was killed in a 2008 car accident.

Raia, too, was inspired by a loved one. She applied for a job with the Sharing Network after she and her four siblings decided to donate her mother’s organs after she died three years ago.

Since then, the two have joined others throughout the state working to spread awareness, through events like the bell ringing and a slate of other events that followed throughout April, and money. They are now preparing for the NJ Sharing Network’s annual 5K, happening in New Providence on June 9. Both women have already put together teams to raise money and walk in the 5K.

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