Rapid Response Project

Disasters can strike anytime and anywhere and when they do communities can not wait for help; their needs are urgent. Rapid response is essential in minimizing the toll of disasters and providing support to families in need.

The Rapid Response Project (RRP) is a collaborative effort between the Canadian Red Cross and the Canadian International Development Agency. The project enables a 24-hour level of readiness through the procurement, warehousing and deployment of over a million dollars in emergency relief supplies such as tents, blankets and health kits for natural disasters and humanitarian crises.

The RRP also supports the highest levels of emergency preparedness by maintaining a roster of highly trained disaster specialists who are ready to respond at a moment’s notice. Whether it is deploying relief items or helping communities prepare for and respond to large scale emergencies, Red Cross disaster response personnel play a vital role in disaster risk reduction, relief and recovery operations.

“My experience in Haiti reinforced how I feel about what I do in Canada,” commented Marilou Poirier, a Red Cross logistics officer who works on RRP and was deployed to Haiti in September, 2008. “I saw relief supplies that I worked to procure and store in Canada go from our warehouse directly into the hands of families in Haiti. All the hard work we do in Canada to ensure that we are ready to respond when we are needed is worth it.”

With the support of the Canadian Red Cross, the Government of Canada has generously helped thousands of disaster affected communities around the world, including the deployment of 2,000 family kits to hurricane ravaged Haiti, 2,000 shelter kits to Myanmar in the wake of a devastating cyclone and 700 tents to earthquake survivors in China.

Updated january 4, 2010