International Aid Work (Page 2)

The Canadian Red Cross is working to enhance the capacity of the Mali Red Cross in developing and implementing programs to help communities become stronger, healthier, and more resilient. This led the Canadian Red Cross team in Mali, in partnership with the Mali Red Cross and the MHSD, to launch a component of a project for people with disabilities.

“I just remember night after night for what seemed like weeks this was always a news item, this war in Biafra. The fighting, the starving children, the displaced people,” Pat Laberge says. “I also remember the Red Cross and that the Red Cross was helping.”
It wasn’t long before she pointed at the television and blurted out that this was what she wanted to do with her life. She was going to be a humanitarian. She was going to join the Red Cross. And she did.

Jules Zanré, a Montrealer originally from Burkina Faso, has spent the last 10 years improving access to health care for mothers, newborns, and children in many rural communities of Mali.

Lucia Lasso is one of two full-time Head of Emergency Operations with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), which means she’s almost always thinking about disasters. But even when she’s not actively engaged in an operation, she spends her time thinking about how the Red Cross can respond to emergencies more effectively. This includes encouraging other women to aspire to positions of leadership.

One of the first things I noticed about Joe Higgins is that he gets excited about everything. That unbridled enthusiasm has served him well throughout his 35 years of coaching wheelchair basketball. It was his enthusiasm that convinced me to join a virtual training session he was running with a few athletes from Cambodia.

Can you think about the last time you started a new job? How everything was new for you, processes were confusing. Now, imagine that this new job is responding to the resurgence of Ebola in a neighbouring country during a pandemic. This is the tough job Jimmy Zaka Mansongele had to face when he was sent to the Republic of Congo as an Operations Manager for the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC).

“Learning sewing came to me as a blessing for myself and the community,” Minara Begum, a resident in Camp 5 said fondly. Minara lives in the camp, with her parents. They had been living on aid provided from different agencies for people who fled from violence in the Rakhine state of Myanmar.

Ten years ago, on the afternoon of March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake triggered a tsunami along Japan’s Pacific coast. Villages, towns and cities along a 70-kilometre stretch of coastline were damaged or destroyed. More than 15,000 people lost their lives. Canadian Red Cross humanitarian worker Kathy Mueller went to Japan to support the Japanese Red Cross in its immediate response to the tsunami. This is her story.