Scott Schonfeld: Saving Lives, Cheek to Cheek

Reprinted from BabagaNewz magazine with permission from The AVI CHAI Foundation and Jewish Family & Life! Visit us online at www.babaganewz.com or call us at 800-434-3934.

When Scott Schonfeld was 15 years old, he was inspired by a story he read about Jay Feinberg, a man whose life was saved through a bone-marrow transplant. Feinberg went on to found the Gift of Life Jewish bone-marrow registry.

When someone gets sick with a blood disease like leukemia and needs a bone-marrow transplant, Gift of Life organizes large drives to find a matching donor. Unless someone has an identical twin, there is no 100 percent match with any other person. The best bet is to find someone of similar ethnicity. For many Ashkenazi Jews – those of Eastern European descent – it can be hard to find a donor because the Holocaust ended their bloodlines.

Scott got an idea. Since the donor compatibility test takes less than a minute and involves simply swabbing the inside of a person’s cheek, why not offer the tests to healthy people when they go to the doctor for a checkup? That would put a lot more people into the registry and increase the chances of finding a matching donor for sick patients.

Scott got in touch with Feinberg and told him his idea. Feinberg loved it, but emphasized that to make it a reality, it would take funding because it costs about $70 to analyze each cheek swab test. Scott sprung into action, raising several thousand dollars in contributions for what he named “Project Chai.” He also contacted doctors throughout his county and they agreed to make the tests available in their offices.

Scott is now a freshman at Dartmouth College. Click below to hear him talk about his inspiration for undertaking the ambitious and life-saving Project Chai.

Introduction	Obstacles
Project Chai	Rewarding
My inspiration	My advice
The project