LifeSouth is teaming up with students and parents at Jemison Middle School on Oct. 24 to collect blood for local hospitals.

Joshua Manis, the event’s coordinator, will speak to JMS health classes about blood donation in a presentation called “Donation Generation.”

A Bloodmobile will be parked outside the school, and any children whose parents donate blood from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Oct. 24 will receive an ice cream party.

“We like to help them (parents) realize the importance by coming out and donating themselves,” Manis said, adding that any relative, neighbor or friend of the students and parents is invited to donate as well.

The LifeSouth presentation will teach students five ways to save lives through the “Five Points of Life,” which are blood, apheresis, bone marrow, umbilical cord blood and organ and tissue donation.

“We’re so excited about it,” Manis said. “Maybe (it will) create some awareness of the need for blood.”

LifeSouth Community Blood Centers is a program that supplies blood for local hospitals in Alabama, Florida and Georgia.

According to Manis, UAB had to cancel at least five or six surgeries last week because the blood sources were so low.

“We provide only for our local hospitals,” Manis said. “The blood that LifeSouth collects doesn’t leave Alabama.”

For more information about LifeSouth and donation, visit LifeSouth.org.