Our organisation

The Matchis Caribbean Foundation is a non-profit organization that was established on Aruba in 2025. The core business of Matchis Caribbean is informing, recruiting and registering stem cell donors between the ages of 18 and 50 in the Caribbean. 

The information and recruitment efforts will begin in 2026 on Aruba and be expanded to the Caribbean region of the Kingdom in the years to come. To realize this, Matchis Caribbean is collaborating closely with the Matchis Foundation in the Netherlands.

Matchis Caribbean board of directors

Matchis Caribbean's board of directors consists of one executive director and three non-executive board members.

Executive director:

Ayoni Guda

Non-executive board members:

Sonja Kersten
Kaylen Guda
Tai Foo Lee

The establishment of Matchis Caribbean

Family members of Aruban Mayrin, mother of board members Ayoni and Kaylen, reached out to the Matchis Foundation in 2023. At that time, they were searching for a suitable stem cell donor for Mayrin. To increase the chance of finding a match, family members worked together with Matchis to explore the possibility of registering stem cell donors on Aruba, for which there was no infrastructure in place at that time.

In the years since, this initiative has grown into a larger project dedicated to the structural registration of stem cell donors in the Caribbean region of the Kingdom in order to increase the chance of finding a suitable match for patients with Caribbean roots.

To offer patients from diverse backgrounds a fair chance at a better life, it is essential that the stem cell donor database accurately reflects the diversity of society. Heritage is an important factor when trying to find a suitable match between a patient and a donor. That is why the Matchis Caribbean Foundation was established: to inform people in the Caribbean about stem cell donation and give them the opportunity to register as a stem cell donor.

Partnership between Matchis Caribbean and the Matchis Foundation

The Matchis Foundation supports Matchis Caribbean with its resources, expertise and experience, made possible in part by financial support from the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport.

Concretely, this partnership means that stem cell donors from the Caribbean are included in Matchis’ Dutch registry of stem cell donors. With that, these donors are also added (anonymously) to the global stem cell donor database. When a donor matches with a patient, the actual stem cell donation process is organized and carried out by Matchis in the Netherlands.

Goal

The goal of this project is to register at least 5,000 stem cell donors in the Caribbean region of the Kingdom over the coming years. By doing so, we aim to increase the chance of finding a suitable stem cell donor for patients in the Caribbean. For the first year, the focus is on the recruitment and registration of stem cell donors on Aruba. The initiative will then be expanded to the other islands in phases.