Give Your Heart with DARE This Valentine's

This Valentine’s Day, Heart Transplant UK is collaborating with DARE and Stacie Pridden – a 24 year old awaiting a heart transplant – for the Give Your Heart This Valentine’s Day campaign.

With a dedicated Give Your Heart website at the core encouraging the British public to sign up as heart donors, the work seeks to potentially help the 265 people currently awaiting heart transplants. The campaign allows friends and lovers to ‘give’ their heart on an ‘e-card’ which will then register them on to the donor list as soon as their ‘heart’ is sent.

The focus of the web film leading the drive is Stacie Pridden: a twin, a student and the 22nd child in the UK to be diagnosed with Pulmonary Hypertension. When Pridden was added to the donor list she was informed she had three years left to live. She has now been waiting two years and nine months, meaning she may only have three months left to receive a successful heart transplant. An avid blogger, Pridden has been writing about her journey since 2012 on her website, Life is Worth the Fight.

Vital statistics

Transplants are vital operations and their success depends entirely on the generosity of donors and their families who make this life-saving gift. “I would like to think this campaign will get people to sign up to the organ donor register – or at least talk to their family members about it,” states Pridden. “That is a lot of what holds organ donation back, is that families just don’t know what their relatives would have wanted.”

Last year 145 heart transplants took place in the UK, meaning, sadly only eight out of 10 people receive the heart transplant they required. The campaign is aimed at highlighting the shortage of donors in the UK – which follows the ‘opt in’ to organ donation, rather than ‘opt out’ system.

Lust for life

Like any other 24 year old, Pridden has aspirations to travel the world and live her life to the full, but without the help of a donor, the sad fact is that it might not be possible.

“I have so many plans to travel; I would love to go to Rome, Paris, just everywhere. My biggest motivation is my friends and family, because they have been with me though all of it and I would love to still be here for the special occasions; my sister having her third baby and my twin getting married next year,” she adds. “I won’t ever stop fighting, I will always carry on and I will try my hardest to still be here for everything.”

Digital agency DARE created the campaign with the help of Finish post, Wave Studio, Dark Energy Films and 7th chamber.

“Around 1,000 people die every year – that’s three people every day - waiting for an organ donation,” concludes John Fisher from Heart Transplant UK. “The campaign has been launched to help sign people on to the donor register. Nine out of 10 people support organ donation, but only three out of 10 sign up. Giving your heart this Valentine’s Day takes a whole new meaning when you could be giving someone life”.

Find out more about the campaign and sign up for the register via Give Your Heart for Valentine's Day.