Bowl for Life Inc, a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization, benefits the National Marrow Donor Program's Be The Match Registry™. Bowl for Life organizes bowling events to raise funds and awareness for bone marrow transplants. We welcome all donors, but our main focus is attracting and educating minority donors, which constitute less than 30% of all donors on the Be The Match Registry™. The National Marrow Donor Program has called it a crisis!
With the help of the New York Blood Center, we've added over 200 potentially life-saving donors to the Be The Match Registry™.
Brianna Haley, the then 6-year-old daughter of former Dallas Cowboy football player Charles Haley, suffered from Leukemia and was in desperate need of a transplant, thus inspiring Bowl for Life. Brianna, now a young adult, is 100% cancer free because she received a cord blood transplant thanks to her baby brother.
"There are a lot of people out there who are not as fortunate as Brianna who suffer from blood cancers, and who are still in desperate need of a transplant," said Bowl For Life’s Founder Jacqueline N. Parke. "I don't think people realize the absolute urgency for donors from racial miniorities on a whole."
The NMDP registry has approximately 8 million potential bone marrow donors and 160,000 cord blood donors for people with blood cancers. Out of the 8 million potential bone marrow and cord blood donors, racial minorities represent less than 30%. The NMDP states there is an urgent call for racial minority donors.
“Like many people of color, I had no idea that this problem even existed,” stated Parke. “After hearing Charles Haley talk about his daughter Brianna’s heart-wrenching ordeal with tears in his eyes, I wanted to make a difference.” She continues, “Right before our first annual Bowl for Life event, we learned about another child, Adam Zachary Hart, a 5-year-old Yonkers boy who died because of the lack of minority donors on the registry…It just broke my heart.”
In 2005, Bowl for Life added the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance (NCCRA), a charitable organization co-founded by news anchor Katie Couric. Gloria H. Parke, mother of Bowl for Life's founder, Jacqueline Parke, passed away on August 1, 2005 from a nearly six-year battle against metastasized colon cancer. On behalf of the Gloria H. Parke Foundation, Bowl for Life will donate money to NCCRA.
