[video width="426" height="240" mp4="http://sunypoly.edu/apps/blogs/news/files/2016/10/WUTR_10-25-2016-Poly-bone-marrow-match.mp4"][/video]  

It's much easier to donate bone marrow than it used to be. But finding a match is a completely different story. Students at SUNY Poly were trying to solve that problem, and save a life. Eyewitness News reporter Grace Fernandez shows us how. Many who came out to register today say it was for personal reasons. For Shelby Kostal, it was because of her cousin who was diagnosed with leukemia 10 years ago. her close knit family made sure all hands were on deck. "We all tried to see if we were a match and only 1 of us ended up being a match. So it was kind of rough at the time knowing you couldn't really help out but luckily he did have someone who was a match and now he's doing great."

The volunteers behind 'Be the Match' marrow registry drive say some students believe the process is more difficult then it is. But Rita Briggs helped put them at ease while she shared her personal experience of when she needed  a marrow transplant herself. "By swabbing today you could get called in 20 years, 5 years, 40 years...so you never know but it stays in the bank and it's great for people that need a stem cell transplant to survive." Briggs was diagnosed with leukemia but didn't have the luck of finding a donor within her family... "I had 7 of my siblings tested and none of them were a match." For her it was much of a waiting game. It's possible your match could be your sibling or your next door neighbor but in her case it was a man who lived in Germany. A year later she began a pen pal friendship with the man she believes is the reason she's alive today. "He thought he was donating for his friend so it got put in the bank and lo and behold I was his perfect match..." Grace Fernandez Eyewitness News.