CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) — A local organ procurement organization is pushing for more organ and tissue donations at the start of National Donate Life Month in April.

We Are Sharing Hope SC is South Carolina’s nonprofit, federally designated organ and tissue recovery service and says while numbers have gone up in recent years, they could still be higher. In 2025, the organization saved 702 lives and worked with 332 organ donors and 400 tissue donors, enhancing a total of 30,000 lives through tissue donation.

The organization also says 1,026 individuals said ‘yes’ to organ and tissue donation last year, but they say that number can still rise. They honored National Donate Life Month with a flag raising ceremony on Friday.

“It’s really a day about bringing awareness, bringing education, and also honoring those legacies and the individuals that said yes to donation and making that selfless decision,” Krystal Cau, director of communications for We Are Sharing Hope SC, says.

Nonprofit organization Donate Life South Carolina is responsible for maintaining the South Carolina Donor Registry. Donate Life says being an organ donor could potentially save up to eight lives, and tissue could heal up to 75.

“Through organ donation, you can donate kidneys, heart, liver, lungs, so there’s really not one person that will receive all of the organs which are viable,” Cau said. “So a heart could go to one individual, your kidney could go to another, and so on. So it really is a ripple effect and the impact is pretty tremendous.”

The total amount of registrants throughout the Palmetto state is currently 2,812,442 people, with 77.61% of people in Charleston County registered.

We Are Sharing Hope SC also honors donor legacies and facilitates life-saving donations at hospitals across the state through education, advocacy and care.

At the flag raising ceremony, they featured several speakers who have both donated and received organs.

Mattie Porter, a Miss South Carolina Teen Volunteer, was at the event and often advocates for organ donation and wellness education because of her own personal story. Porter’s mother has polycystic kidney disease and received a transplant just this past November.

“My whole life, we’ve known it’s going to happen one day and I’ve always been fearful, nervous,” Porter said. “It’s a time of uncertainty, waiting for the day that your mom’s function hits 20%, and she’s put on the list for a life-saving kidney, but we were always hopeful in knowing that we were in good hands.”

Her mother shared that she was diagnosed at 8-years-old and knew that the diagnosis came with a lifetime of waiting.

“I realized that I was one of over 100,000 people that were waiting for a kidney transplant and over 100,000 are actually on the waiting list waiting for any kind of organ,” Porter’s mother said. “We have, along the way, got to meet several recipients of heart transplants, lung transplants, liver transplants and several kidney transplant recipients like myself.”

We Are Sharing Hope SC says its goal is to get more people to sign up to be organ donors through advocacy and education.

“A lot of the work that we do is educating our community, dispelling a lot of the myths and misconceptions that are associated with donation and encouraging people to learn more about what that process looks like and the impact that can have on so many people,” Cau said.

See the full story at live5news.com.