The Very Special Arts Festival is an organization that creates learning opportunities through the arts for people with disabilities, especially children and youth. Founded in 1974 by Jean Kennedy Smith as an affiliate of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the organization offers programs in creative writing, dance, drama, music and the visual arts. On April 10, the Very Special Arts Festival will be held on the Shenandoah University campus in Winchester, Virginia. The focus of this project is to try and increase minority entries into the National Marrow Donor Program Registry, a national database of potential bone marrow donors available to patients in need of a transplant. This grant will allow them to create a new minority outreach effort to increase participation in their Bone Marrow Drive that will occur this year on April 8.
Minorities are severely underrepresented in the registry.
Considering the urgent need for minority entries into the National Marrow Donor Registry, the Alan Bukzin Memorial Bone Marrow Drive is intensifying efforts to increase minority participation.