Emergency (Page 5)

For over three years, Cheryl Horgan has been volunteering as an emergency management responder with the Canadian Red Cross in New Brunswick. She spent some her time volunteering with our Friendly Calls program in Atlantic Canada.

Sepideh Alvandi and Vahid Zolfagharimoheb are married physicians from Iran who arrived in July 2021 to make Canada their new home.
The couple wasted no time applying their professional skills and humanitarian drive to help others in need in their new country.

It’s one thing to plan and prepare teams to support children aged 5 to 11 years old for the COVID-19 vaccination, it is an entirely different experience to support your own children through this experience. Robyn Emde, mental health and psychosocial support lead at Canadian Red Cross shares her own experience with this.

Human beings are social creatures, so when someone feels disconnected from that, it can really take a toll on their mental wellbeing. This is where the Canadian Red Cross Friendly Calls Program comes in. It helps people to feel that connection and reminds us that we are all in this together.

On November 14, Barb Gagnon saw flood waters come very close to her house just outside of Princeton, British Columbia. She was evacuated to a friend’s house with her dog, Daisy, and it wasn't long before she decided to roll up her sleeves “in order to keep my sanity and keep busy,” she says.

Brian Boyes is in Kamloops, British Columbia with the Canadian Red Cross as part of the logistics team at the Reception Centre for people evacuated from their homes. He knows what they are going through because he and his wife Angela were two of some 80,000 people who had to flee the wildfire that descended on Fort McMurray in 2016. 

The longest stretch that Fran Carter has spent at home in Falher, Alberta this year is ten days. That’s because she has been going from disaster response to disaster response with the Canadian Red Cross – and wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s been called the “shadow pandemic.” As millions of people around the world continue to deal with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, including lockdowns and changes to regular services, incidents of sexual- and gender-based violence (SGBV) have increased worldwide.