Volunteers (Page 15)

Whether ensuring people are getting the equipment they need, or washing and maintaining returned equipment, the Red Cross Health Equipment Loan Program (HELP) relies on its volunteers.

While Red Cross volunteers are known for their resourcefulness and dedication, there’s one team that really goes a step above and beyond: the Supporting Evacuation and Repatriation Team (SERT) team.

Omar Abdullahi, a social worker who lives in Winnipeg, volunteers with the safety and wellbeing team of the Canadian Red Cross. He is working with evacuees from the northern Manitoba wildfires.
Before coming to Canada, Omar and his family were refugees from the Somalian civil war. When he was about 10 years old, his family, including his six sisters and two brothers, fled Mogadishu for the Kenyan border.

At first glance, it’s hard to understand what Pat Alphonse Cox does for the Canadian Red Cross. Volunteering at the Winnipeg reception centre for wildfire evacuees, Pat chats for a few minutes with a large, boisterous family from Pauingassi First Nation; corrals a small, energetic child closer to her mom; and then sits quietly with a slouching teenager. It all seems a little random, but on closer examination, Pat’s role becomes clear and her work crucial. Pat is a Safety and Wellbeing responder with the Canadian Red Cross.

Left Fort McMurray today after an exhausting but incredibly satisfying experience. The emotion of what you do, see and hear each day during a disaster is not easily described. I saw the devastation and felt the void of an evacuated city but I was also moved by hundreds of remarkable people!

Two members of the Simon Fraser University (SFU) Red Cross Club are showing other young people how to turn their passion into action. Students Jessilyn Wong and Daniel Jin volunteer with the Canadian Red Cross Disaster Management logistics team, arranging vehicles, supplying technology, and taking inventory of supplies that helped the Red Cross assist thousands of people forced from their homes by last summer’s B.C. wildfires. 

Even before he left Iran, 22-year-old Mohammad H. Asadi Lari knew he wanted to volunteer with the Red Cross. Now the B.C. volunteer works with the Youth Advisory Committee to engage youth and young adults with international humanitarian work done by both the Red Cross and Canada as a whole.

A note to new or aspiring volunteers: “I know this volunteer position will be one of the most rewarding thing you’ve ever done. To help a fellow citizen in a time of disaster will make you feel unbelievably great.”