In a monastery, in the summer heat, a dozen people lay down on red chairs and rolled up a sleeve. The result: 66 units of blood, collected at the summer blood-donation drive at the Bigorski Monastery. Sixty-six chances for someone who will lie on an operating table tomorrow and need exactly that blood.

The drive was held under the motto "Donate blood - save a life!", organised by the Municipal Red Cross of Gostivar together with the monastery, the Institute for Transfusion Medicine and the Red Cross of Debar. The blessing was given by Bishop Partenij. Among the donors were people of different ethnic and religious communities - a detail that our everyday political rhetoric easily forgets, but which, in a monastery hall, turns out to be the most ordinary thing in the world.

This is the quiet side of the news that rarely reaches the front pages. No scandal, no accusations, no press conference. Just 66 people who in half an hour gave something neither machines nor budgets can give - blood for someone they will never meet.

That is exactly why it is worth mentioning. In a country where transfusion stocks are often at a minimum, and where appeals for blood become routine in the summer months, every unit collected this way is concrete help, not declarative. Sixty-six times someone said "yes" - and that is all it takes.