Meet Valencia Randa, the woman who started one of Indonesia’s longest running social media campaigns

She doesn’t remember exactly how she got started, but Valencia Mieke Randa has been a blogger since 2007. Under the name “sillystupidlife” she wrote about just that: often funny and sometimes awkward everyday life situations that many readers could relate to and found touching. She also had a Twitter account with a few thousand followers; at that time this was considered a lot.

But life hasn’t always been fun and silly for Randa. In 2009, her mother fell ill, and Randa found herself spending a lot of time at the hospital. Randa’s mother desperately needed blood transfusions, and Randa recalls that it could sometimes take up to three days to find a donor.

Randa learned a lot about the blood donation system. For example, she learned that 4.5 million bags were needed in Indonesia per year, but only about one million bags worth were being donated.

“At that time few people were willing to donate blood,” Randa says. “Those seeking blood would do anything to help their family in need, including paying for the blood.”

Randa refused to accept this situation. “There are millions of people who wish they could do good, but they don’t know how. At the hospital, they cry for help but don’t know who to turn to.”

That’s when Valencia started using her social media networks to campaign for blood donation and to find voluntary blood donors.

“I was in a mailing list for bloggers, consisting of 44 people. I talked about this idea there. And the bloggers, who had no previous experience with blood donation got involved, just out of interest.”

Putting the idea to the test

Soon they had a reason to put their idea into action. In Tangerang, a city south of Jakarta, a dam broke at night, flooding a densely populated area, killing close to a hundred people.

“We went there. That was our first time gathering support by calling for blood donations over our social media channels,” says Randa.

Another incident that Randa remembers from the early days of the campaign is about a girl with cancer who needed blood type AB. “Only 7 percent of people have that blood type in Indonesia,” says Randa. “The family heard about us and asked me to find a donor. We spread the news and at last 20 people donated. Even more came, not all ended up donating. But they were grateful to find out that they could help a person, and that they as AB blood group could help each other in the future. They ended up exchanging phone numbers. That’s so amazing.”

Recognition from Google

Seeing the concept work and wanting to push it further, Randa created the Twitter account Blood4LifeID, which today has more than 80,000 followers. But despite her successes, it was not easy to turn the idea into a movement