Red Cross Blogs

Why do it?

By Chris Jefferies
July 12, 2009 at 9:53 am

Things have now returned to normal after the fun, glamour and excitement of the European first aid competition in Germany last week. Its time to return to the real world!

Yesterday I was running a basic first aid course for a local church group. We covered a range of life-threatening conditions such as dealing with an unconscious person, doing cardio pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and treating someone who is bleeding badly (if your interested…read more about first aid).

I had one of our peer educators helping me with the course. These are young volunteers who make me coffee assist trainers. They also go out into the community and teach first aid or raise awareness of topics such as HIV/AIDS and sexual health.

At the end of the course, one of the participants asked us: “So how much do you get paid to do this on Saturdays?” I can’t quite describe the look on her face when we told her it was all volunteer work. It was certainly memorable. Then she asked:

“So why do you do it?”

What would you say? Why do you volunteer?

Image © Dominic Cocozza/British Red Cross

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Tags: First aid, first aid course, peer education, Volunteering, young people

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 12th, 2009 at 9:53 am and is filed under First aid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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