Over 30 students wow crowd at The Cathay with flash mob dance for charity

More than 30 young dance students wowed crowds on July 29, by forming a flash mob-style dance, to raise awareness in support of The Bone Marrow Donor Programme (BMDP).

Donning BMDP branded T-shirts and performing a specially curated dance outside of The Cathay Cineplex near Dhoby Ghaut, the students, who are from School of the Arts Singapore (SOTA), Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) and Hwa Chong International School (HCIS), wowed audiences in order to highlight the need for more people to come forward as bone marrow donors in Singapore.

"Dance is a powerful art form which can bring people together and make them stop and take notice," said one of the event organisers and SOTA student, Alison Ng, 17.

"In Singapore, more young people need to know about bone marrow donation and what’s involved, so they have the opportunity to make an informed decision to give back to society and save lives."

The BMDP manages Singapore’s only register of volunteer bone marrow donors and is on a three-year mission to increase the size of the register by another 50,000 new donors by 2018.

Every day in Singapore, six people are diagnosed with a blood disease such as leukaemia and lymphoma, and a bone marrow transplant is often their only hope of survival.

With the odds of finding a matching bone marrow donor one in 20,000, it is crucial that more people are encouraged to join the register, particularly Singaporeans from the Malay and Indian communities where representation is currently low.

The flash mob was organised as part of Citi-YMCA Youth For Causes (YFC), a community initiative which provides Singapore youths aged 15 – 25, with seed funding, training and volunteer mentorship for executing self-initiated projects to raise public awareness, funds and mobilise volunteers for the Voluntary Welfare Organisations (VWOs) of their choice.