Under the auspices of the Sant Nirankari Charitable Foundation,the Sant Nirankari Mission will organized 69 blood donation camps across the country on a single day on April 24, 2014. The day is observed as ManavEktaDiwas (Human Unity Day) to commemorate the supreme sacrifice of its former Spiritual Head, Baba Gurbachan Singh Ji and to remember hundreds of devotees who laid down their lives for the noble cause of truth, love, peace and unity. The series of the Blood Donation Camps will start with the main camp in Delhi to be inaugurated by His Holiness Baba Hardev Singh JiMaharaj. More than 1500 devotees are likely to donate their blood in this camp.The camp will be preceded by a Motor Vehicle Rally to create awareness among the citizens of the Capital towards this noble service to humanity.
Besides Delhi, the other camps scheduled to be held on April 24 this year include 10 in Uttar Pradesh, 9 in Maharashtra and 5 each in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab will organize 4 camps each, while West Bengal and Jharkhand will hold 3 camps each. Similarly, Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar and Uttarakhand will organize 2 camps each, while Chandigarh, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Andaman and Assam will hold 1 camp each.In this way, the Mission expects to donate more than 20,000 units of blood on this single day.The Mission today is one of the leading blood donating voluntary organizations in the country. Even though the first blood donation camp was organized on the eve of the Annual Nirankari Sant Samagam in Delhi in November, 1986, these camps have been organized every year since 1987as a part of ManavEktaDiwasSamagam.
Initially, a number of camps were organized across the country only on April 24, i.e. ManavEktaDiwas. From 1997, these camps were staggered to be organized throughout the summer months i.e., from April to September, when the blood banks normally face acute shortage of blood. Since 2009, these camps are organized round the year starting from Manav Ekta Diwas on April 24, of course.In 2009-10 the Mission organized 306 blood donation camps at different centres in the country. This was followed by 371 camps in 2010-11 and 394 in 2011-12. In 2012-13, the Mission organized 429 camps and in 2013-14, it was a record number of 446.So far, the Mission has organized 3627 blood donation camps in the country where 6,39,785 units of blood were donated by devotees of the Mission.