Volunteers 21

Brenna Brown is a Disaster Management volunteer with the Canadian Red Cross. She was most recently involved in the Alberta Fires response, setting up emergency reception centres and shelters in Calgary and Edmonton to provide services for the thousands of evacuees from Fort McMurray and the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo.

It’s hard to believe, but many parts of the developing world that are most vulnerable to humanitarian crises, like natural disasters, disease outbreaks, epidemics or conflict, are still not mapped digitally or on paper.  Without comprehensive maps, response times can drastically increase during natural disasters or disease outbreaks making it harder to reach people who need help.

After graduating from the nursing program at Queens University, Nicole Edwards made some surprising discoveries about community health. Nicole had just returned to her hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and was seeking ways to occupy her free time while she looked for a job.  She applied to volunteer with the Canadian Red Cross, and was assigned the role of Community Health Transportation volunteer with the Instrumental Activities of Daily Living program.

Mohammed Sunba shares his experiences of volunteering with the Red Cross: he started nearly two years ago to support people who have been impacted by personal disasters, such as house fires and floods. The Alberta fire response is the largest disaster Mohammed has been a part of as a Red Cross volunteer.

At the Wood Buffalo Regional Library, Librarian Nicole Greville meets with a group of Fort McMurray residents to practice English conversation over coffee and snacks.
 
It’s been more than two months since the ESL group last met and the room is abuzz with conversation. After all, there’s a lot to catch up on.

Red Cross volunteer Nicole Beauchamp, her husband Robert, and their family have long served their community and country. Beauchamp has been with Red Cross for 20 years and spent part of her summer assisting Alberta fire evacuees, first in Edmonton in May and then again in Calgary in June and July. 

Aileen Park, an Alberta fires evacuee, is an artist. Over the last five years, she has made thousands of tiny blown-glass hearts that she gives to strangers in the hopes that they will bring a smile to someone’s face. These small Pocket Hearts are a symbol of human connection and are meant to be shared and passed along. More recently the hearts have been given to people facing hardships or as a thank you for the generosity from others around her. Her little tokens of hope and solidarity are now spread across every continent.

​There is an unlikely friendship -  Alzinia Pailin is an American Red Cross volunteer from California and Marie Bernatchez is a French speaking Canadian Red Cross volunteer from Quebec. But after being paired together on a three-week deployment in the small town of Lac La Biche, south of Fort McMurray, as part of the Alberta fire response, the two women found much common ground including their work as Red Cross volunteers and quickly became friends.