(upbeat music) - Welcome back folks.

We have an important conversation with a terrific leader in the world of organ and tissue donation.

Kelly Bonventre is Assistant Director of Community Services at the New Jersey Sharing Network, our partners in the initiative to create greater public awareness around organ and tissue donation.

Kelly, how you doing today?

- I'm doing great, Steve.

Thank you so, so much for having me here today.

You are such a huge friend of donation, and we're so thankful for your support and our relationship.

- Well, we all are trying to do the best we can to create, as I said, greater public awareness.

It's about ten years that you've been with the Sharing Network.

Describe your role, A and B, why you got into this and you're so passionate about it?

- I would be happy to.

So, yes, I am approaching my ten-year anniversary, and this is my third role with the Sharing Network.

I served on our foundation for a few years, and then I actually served as a hospital services manager on the front lines of donation so I could learn more about the clinical process, be involved in the actual donation approaches with our donor families, supporting our clinical team, supporting our donor families.

So I could really, it was a huge learning opportunity for me and I could really bring that knowledge back and then serve in the role that I am now serving in as the Assistant Director of Community Services, in which I oversee our public education team and our communications team.

And that really speaks to my heart, because I know and value how important that piece is to the donation process.

If we don't educate our public, and if people don't know about the Sharing Network and we don't dispel the myth and misconceptions about organ and tissue donation, we're not gonna be able to do the work that we do and save more lives.

So that really feeds my soul, and I became involved in organ and tissue donation because I read a poem when I was 19 years old called "To Remember Me."

- I got it in front of me.

- Yes.

- "To Remember Me"?

- Yeah.

- Robert N. Test wrote this.

You were 19 years of age?

- Yes I was.

- What was it about this poem that triggered for you to make an important decision in your life?

- It just touched my heart in such a deep place that it moved me to go to the Motor Vehicle the very next day and register to be an organ donor.

And it made me want to do this work.

To me, it showcased what donation makes possible, and it put donation in such a beautiful light that I had never even thought about or considered.

And once I read those words on the page, it's got me to where I am today.

I still use that poem in my programs.

It sits on my dresser at home in a frame.

It was just something that, to me, captured the essence of what donation makes possible.

- Do you mind if I just read a section?

there's so many sections of this poem that got my attention.

Robert Test writes in this poem "To Remember Me," "Give my blood to a teenager who has been pulled from the wreckage of his car so he might live to see his grandchildren play.

Give my kidneys to one who depends on a machine to exist from week to week.

Give my bones, every muscle, every fiber, every nerve in my body, and find a way to make crippled children walk."

Why does that still get to you?

- It still does, and I think it always will because we can do something to help those people.

I just feel that this was my calling, this was my passion, and I am blessed to do this work every day knowing the difference that it makes in other people's lives.

Not just the recipients, but also to the donor families.

Donation is a gift to our donor families as well as it is to our recipients.

And instead of having this horrible loss to mourn because they have lost a loved one, they now have these beautiful lives to celebrate that their loved one made possible.

So it really is such a win-win on both sides, and it is what beats my soul every day to be able to do this work.

- Yeah our website's coming up right now steveadubato.org Check out the interviews that my colleague Jacqui Tricarico has done at the Sharing Network the 5K.

It's a great event.

Everyone comes together to participate, not just in that competition.

It's not a competition, it's an event to raise money for organ tissue donation.

Check out those interviews that we've done.

Hey, Kelly, tell us what Give Back Beyond the Yes is.

What is that program?

- So we really want to establish our presence in our communities, and we're always asking for something, right?

We're asking people to listen to us, to be educated about donation.

At the bedside, we are asking people to say yes to donation.

So we want to give back to the community that we're asking so much from.

So we give back in a multitude of ways.

Our public education programs are really a big focus of what we do in the public, and hoping to give back in a way that if people are educated about donation, they are more apt to say yes when asked the question.

And then we do three Live Healthy & Move events that are planned for August.

We have one in Paterson, we have one in Plainfield, and we have one in Newark.

And those events are designed to reach our communities of color to give back to them, to help them understand the importance of living healthy lives, to hopefully get them up and moving, like live.

So we have the Zumba team that comes, we have a double Dutch team that comes, showing that exercise can be fun.

We do a hospital screenings at those sites.

We have our hospital partners there, screening for blood pressure.

We have the National Kidney Foundation there with us.

A lot of our partners are there to give back to that community.

We have a community garden there that gives out fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as our team there with our information.

And one of the highlights of those events is we do over the summer at the Sharing Network headquarters with our staff a school supply drive, where we are collecting school supplies from kindergarten through- - It's terrific.

- 12th grade.

And we give out those supplies at those events.

- All right, before I let you go, one to ten, your passion for the work you do at the New Jersey Sharing Network is a what?

- A ten plus plus plus.

- That'll work.

And Kelly, keep doing what you're doing with your colleagues at the New Jersey Sharing Network.

Kelly, I want to thank you so much for joining us.

We appreciate it.

April is, in fact, Donate Life Month.

I'm Steve Adubato, thank you so much for joining us.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by RWJBarnabas Health.

Let’s be healthy together.

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

Johnson & Johnson.

PSE&G.

The North Ward Center.

New Jersey’s Clean Energy program.

The Russell Berrie Foundation.

The Adler Aphasia Center.

And by EJI, Excellence in Medicine Awards.

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