PUBLIC DONATION We recommend that anyone having a mixed heritage child should bank their cord blood privately if they can afford to do so. And while people often think of mixed heritage in terms of only race, it also often covers people that are of the same race but from different geographic locals or ethnic groups. For instance, a person with Russian, German and Jewish ancestry or a person of Swedish and Greek ancestry or a person with one parent from Northern China and another parent from a remote village in Southern China may genetically differ from the population he or she is usually identified as being part of. The more research we do, the more we realize that your heritage (who has what DNA) and how it is expressed is very complex. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT FAMILY STORAGE Become My Hero is a donor locator service that recruits expectant mothers to donate their cord blood to a specific person-in-need. We follow the guidelines and procedures dictated by the NMDP except that we have modified such things as the date at which the expectant mother can sign up to be a donor and are not locked into only taking cord blood donations in the United States. The donor enrolls in the program and her cord blood is collected and HLA typed after her baby is born. The cord blood is then made available to that specific person for his or her transplant. This is an absolutely free service and doesn't cost you anything to donate your cord blood. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT BECOME MY HERO Donors whose cord blood is determined not to match the person-in-need are given two choices: We can provide our Hero's Discount for their kindness and they can privately bank their cord blood at a discounted price. They can donate their cord blood to our public bank and we will list it in the global registry for others who may someday need it for a stem cell transplant or research. As seen in the accompanying video, cord blood offers some great advantages over bone marrow that are important for anyone needing a stem cell transplant, including: It doesn’t have to be as perfectly matched to be used in a transplant. It demonstrates a much less active graft versus host response and much fewer transplant related deaths. At least 1 out of every 3 people born in many major U.S. and Canadian cities are from hard-to-match groups - babies that will more likely match those in imminent danger of dying because they can't find a bone marrow donor. Most umbilical cords are discarded with the medical waste after the birth of a baby and most women would rather donate their baby's cord blood to us than have it thrown away. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD OUR PUBLIC DONATION BROCHURE   Thank you so very much for taking the time to learn how cord blood donations save lives. We implore all expectant mother visiting this site who are having mixed heritage or minority babies to please donate your cord blood if you have decided not to save it for your own family's use. Simply put, people, like your baby, die very cruel and unnecessary deaths because they can't find stem cell donors. Your cord blood donation could save one of them. The donation of your cord blood to our public bank is completely free. CLICK HERE TO VIEW OUR CORD BLOOD DONATION ENROLLMENT PROCESS CLICK HERE TO MAKE A FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTION TO SUPPORT PUBLIC CORD BLOOD DONATION