Donor Support Foundation

Travis Langlois, Assistant Manager of Toyota of Scranton’s very own Parts Department, built a charitable foundation from the ground up to help save lives. The Donor Support Foundation assists organ donors and potential organ donors through financial assistance, education, and advocacy. Travis hopes to create awareness about the importance of organ donation, an act which can save thousands of lives every year. As an employee of Toyota of Scranton, the dealership has provided a helping hand to Travis’s cause.

Organ donation is the process of removing an organ from a participating organ donor and placing it into a patient in need. Transplanting an organ has been a huge advance in medicine, and has been ongoing since the first ever kidney transplant in 1954. Hundreds of thousands of people every year are in need of organ donation due to organ failure or injury, and each year many of those in need of an organ donation sadly pass away while waiting. Nearly all organs are eligible for donation, including major organs such as the liver, heart, kidneys, lungs, and pancreas. Smaller organs are also essential, including heart valves, skin, bone marrow, and muscle tissue.

The Donor Support Foundation created by Travis Langlois helps living support living donors before and after their journey of organ donation. The DSF aims to provide a number of factors that are usually the main obstacles between people and their ability to donate. The foundation hopes to provide donors with housing during hospital visits or when recovering from a surgery. They also aim to provide major financial assistance to alleviate cost for potential donors, including covering travel, lodging, lost wages, and post-surgery care. Travis also hopes to create an environment in which potential donors can easily access information in order to educate them on the donation process and current living donor statistics.

Any person of any age is potentially eligible for organ donation. Easily join a donor registry, which is merely an expression of interest in donation, and can update your status as a consenting organ donor while updating your drivers license, or informing your family healthcare provider or legal counsel.