Red Cross Blogs

Our volunteers – Caroline Sanderson

By Mark Cox
July 13, 2009 at 5:55 pm

What will you be up to this weekend? For Caroline Sanderson, no two Saturdays are ever the same. As a first aid volunteer, she regularly visits all kinds of concerts, festivals and sports events.

And as a peer educator, she also visits schools to speak to pupils about the Red Cross’ work, helping to build her confidence – and boost her CV!

Our volunteers – Caroline Sanderson

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Mark: What will you get up to this weekend? For Caroline Sanderson, no two Saturdays are ever the same. As a first aid volunteer, she regularly visits all kinds of concerts, festivals and sports events. And as a peer educator, she also goes to schools to speak to people about the Red Cross’ work, helping to build her confidence and boost her CV.

Caroline: Hello my name is Caroline Sanderson. I’m eighteen years old and I’m a peer educator from Yorkshire. I first got involved in the Red Cross through my work experience. My parents recommended that I choose the Red Cross to do my work experience in to take me out of my little world and introduce me to the wider world. I found it a fantastic experience and its given me real insight into different cultures and various other things such as humanitarian education, first aid and its given me a lot of confidence which I’ve been able to channel in my peer education.

Volunteering bought me many opportunities, I don’t think there’s a typical day of a volunteer. It can be from working in the office preparing resources to some of the more exciting things such as the highlight of the summer which is the First Aid Road Show, where we visit various theme parks and different places to teach children first aid; there’s always a chance to go on rides at the end. Also in schools, in the peer education programs we can teach about a variety of subjects such as humanitarian education, HIV Aids or first aid.

If anyone’s thinking of getting involved in the Red Cross I’d say definitely do it. It will bring you many opportunities and there’s a variety of services you can choose and find your own, where it can be peer education like me or you can do first aid at events so you can go and visit concerts or work in the Red Cross Shop, there’s a chance you might something from the vintage years and you might really like it. One of the best things is being able to make friends and the friends are probably not going to be the usual friends because everyone comes from different backgrounds, different places, different cultures and you can learn so much from being friends with them.

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Tags: emergency response, First aid, peer education, volunteers

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