Red Cross Blogs

Working for free is officially cool.  So cool in fact, some people will shell out thousands to secure unpaid positions for their children, according to a recent Times article .

I’m not sure about the ethics of this but it’s what happened at a recent charity auction, organised by Pilotlight, where unpaid work experience at Harvey Nichols went for an eye-popping £2,500 and at Condé Nast, for £3,000. Other opportunities proved similarly popular..and expensive.

Whatever your view, it’s evidence that people recognise how valuable these kinds of opportunities are. If you are prepared to work for free you can gain experience, skills and contacts, and give yourself an edge in this increasingly brutal job market.

The good news is the many internships and volunteering opportunities available at the Red Cross won’t cost you a dime, just a bit of your time and energy.

And judging by a recent event where I met a group of happy Red Cross interns, who were brimming with enthusiasm and positivity about the whole experience, it’s an investment you’ll enjoy making.

Here’s what some of them said about their time at the Red Cross:

“I was working closely with the media relations officer for the North, as well as the wider communications team. With Refugee Week looming, I was thrown in the deep end, tailoring and issuing press releases to the whole of the North.

Although a challenge to begin with, I am so glad I was given such a high level of responsibility. I have also made some great new friends; interns and colleagues. I was so sad to leave! Overall, I’d say the whole experience has been more valuable than my degree, and I would recommend it highly to anyone.”

Catherine Bates
Media relations

“I feel my main achievements have been gaining an understanding of the real lives of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK before and after they arrive. I also am proud of managing my own trust portfolio independently. I have been allowed a lot of freedom in my internship which has given me great confidence in my own communication skills and work.

The skills I have learned and experience I have gained at the Red Cross have directly led to my position within Oxfam as supporter relations assistant.”

Beth Knowles
Trust fundraising for refugee services

“The market research project I have been working on has been focused on the retail arm of the Red Cross (charity shops). Through field research including undertaking interviews in several locations the aims were to understand the Red Cross customer experience and to assess the awareness of local Red Cross services by both Red Cross customers and non-customers.

My internship has reinforced my desire to work in the charity sector.”

Tolu Williams
Market research

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Tags: internships, volunteering, volunteers, work experience
Posted in First aid, Fundraising and events, Health and social care

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Back in February 2009 I decided to take some positive action in my life.

I was tired of the rut that I had fallen into and I had become heavily dependent on vegging out on my sofa. Then one day, for no apparent reason, I put on my running shoes and huffed and puffed my way around the block. Normally at this stage I would have given up after my first outing but something spurred me to keep on running.

One night, after playing a particularly energetic gig in a local London club, I got chatting to a friend at the after party and we started talking about our mutual, new found love of running. She told me that she was training for the London Marathon and that I should join her. Filled with the post-gig adrenalin I said ‘yes, where do I sign up’ – possibly a little bit too enthusiastic and hadn’t really thought it through properly but that was it, I had made a firm decision to take on the challenge of my life.

Undertaking a marathon is a huge challenge; aside from the 26.2 miles that you must cover on the day there are the months of dedicated training, sweat, tears, strains, spares and dreaded shin splints. But I have decided to do all of this in order to raise money for the British Red Cross. I wanted to run for BRC because their work is vital and far reaching, they provide humanitarian relief, education and promote peace amongst the people that they help.

I applied for a place on the British Red Cross marathon team because I wanted to use this opportunity to achieve my lifelong ambition to help raise some much needed money for the people affected by the disasters Haiti, Chile and Darfur. Knowing that every penny I raise will help alleviate some human suffering makes the pain of pounding the pavements everyday worthwhile.

My fundraising so far has involved approaching my friends, colleagues and extended family, who have all been very generous, but now I feel I need to step it up a gear. I am organising a fundraising gig which will take place in Kingston-upon-Thames on 13^th March. I have asked six of the finest DIY rock bands in London to come and play my show and all of them have kindly donated their time and musical talents. It’s going to be loud, sweaty, noisy affair and it promises to be a whole lot of fun – all of the money I raise will go towards my fundraising target. As well as the music, my friends have very kindly offered to run a cake stall, the will selling some fine sweet treats whilst dressed in their prettiest 1940s style tea dresses. We’re going to rock for the relief efforts.

My training has been going really well, I’m up to 15 miles on my long runs at the weekend and I’ve been forcing myself to do as much dreaded interval training as possible. Last week my schedule was interrupted as I was touring Europe with my band, but despite being on the road for over a week I managed to get in a couple of runs. Normally when on tour you drive to a gig, sound check, play the gig, get back in the van and drive to the next gig, you rarely get an opportunity to see the beautiful cities that you play in, so this time it was nice to take some time out to go for a run and see some of the sites.

I will update you in a couple of weeks with my running progress – I’m hoping to do 17 miles this weekend and my all of my fundraising efforts. I should have some pictures of the gig to post online by that stage too. Right, I better get back to the training and promoting this gig!

You can sponsor Kerrie on her JustGiving page.

Got your own place at the London Marathon? Sign up to run for the British Red Cross now.

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Tags: london marathon
Posted in Fundraising and events

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If someone gashed their arm, I’m guessing you probably wouldn’t stuff jam into the wound. And yet every year, lots of people apply butter – yes, that yellow creamy stuff you put on bread – onto burn injuries.

In terms of bonkers first aid behaviour, it’s right up there with blood-letting and ducking someone to see if they’re infected by evil spirits. And yet, incredibly, it’s still quite a popular first aid myth.

You know when you lavish the Lurpak on a toasted crumpet and all the butter bubbles and melts and starts seeping in? Well, that’s exactly what happens when you do the same to someone’s skin. It can be really damaging – and excruciating to get off again (especially if they’re also trying to spoon out all that jam from your gashed arm).

Office worker Michael Brown recently helped a workmate who had scalded her arm with piping hot tea. Thanks to his Red Cross training at work, he knew exactly what to do: run her arm under cold running water then cover the affected area to prevent infection. However, he was slightly taken aback by how helpless – even clueless – most people around him seemed.

He recalled: “It was alarming that most of my colleagues, who were understandably distressed, wanted to soak her arm in warm water [which would not cool the injury as required] and didn’t want the burn to be covered.”

When the woman was later treated for a second degree burn at hospital, the doctors said Michael’s speedy first aid actions had really helped, but without him things could easily have gone the other way.

As he put it: “This is another classic example of people thinking they should do the opposite of what should actually be done.”

Incidentally, while researching this blog I came across a website about medieval first aid. It makes for scary reading, as the following extract shows: “Some cures – such as one that involved bathing in water in which blind puppies had been boiled to death – defy modern explanation.” Ouch.

Unsurprisingly, it concludes: “Medieval medicine had a low success rate.”

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Tags: burns, emergency response, First aid, first aid tips, first aid training, red cross, volunteer, volunteering
Posted in First aid

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Dashing out the door this morning I grabbed my copy of the latest issue of New Internationalist and flicking through it on the train I came across some striking photos of women at work.

Today marks the centenary year of International Women’s Day and the New Internationalist feature also caught my eye with these statistics:

•    66 per cent of the world’s work is performed by women
•    50 per cent of the world’s food is produced by women
•    10 per cent of the world’s income is earned by women
•    1 per cent of the world’s property is owned by women

Although we’ve come a long way with women’s rights and gender equality, clearly there’s still a long way to go.

In places of crippling poverty it is usually the women who are hit hardest – girls are often the first to miss out on an education, their prospects become limited, they may be forced into prostitution or subjected to domestic violence.

But there are also stories of survival and hope. In Kyrgyzstan, the Kyrgyz Red Crescent is working with vulnerable women tackling a number of issues such as bride kidnappings, domestic abuse and an outdated system which makes it difficult for many to access even basic health services.

On International Women’s Day, find out about some women who have experienced great trauma and hardship but are now setting new goals, learning new skills and hoping for a better future – read their stories on our website or on the BBC website.

And on the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ website you can read about how the Rwanda Red Cross is breaking with tradition to ensure women are being included in its decision-making bodies.

Image © Claudia Janke/BRC

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Tags: bride kidnappings, International Women's Day, Kyrgyz, Kyrgyzstan, poverty
Posted in Health and social care

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Woohoooooo would have believed it? Red Cross volunteers were recently put on standby at the Liverpool Playhouse Theatre when it was feared a super-scary show might cause people to take a funny turn.

Ghost Stories, which ‘contains moments of extreme shock and tension’, had them screaming in the aisles so much the Red Cross was brought in as a precaution. Suddenly, punters expecting to encounter things that go bump in the night instead found themselves bumping into volunteers carrying first aid kits and wearing bright yellow, hi-vis vests – in itself not altogether a calming sight.

Hilariously, having all those first aiders stomping around actually spooked some theatregoers even more. Ruth Brooke told the Liverpool Echo: “I asked the lady beside me what she was doing in uniform. She told me she’d been placed in the audience in case anybody needed medical treatment as the show was quite frightening.

“Her saying that actually made me feel more nervous and apprehensive.” Er, quite.

Still, having the volunteers there did mean quick help would be at hand if anyone needed resuscitation, shock or heart attack treatment.

The theatre’s spokesman happily stirred up the paranoia even further, saying: “We strongly advised those of a nervous disposition to think very seriously before attending this show, and felt it appropriate to enlist the aid of the Red Cross during the first few performances.”

Whether he also thought it had been a great wheeze to drum up some free publicity for the show, he didn’t say.

But it all shows that Red Cross volunteers are undaunted by any request. Wherever they think there may be a reasonable chance of people facing danger, they’ll step in. Come rain, snow, crowds, floods – and even, it now turns out, ghosts – you can always count on them.

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Tags: emergency response, First aid, first aid tips, first aid training, volunteer, volunteering, volunteers
Posted in First aid

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On Wednesday, I read an article in the Guardian in praise of educational games, and I couldn’t agree more. In fact, last week I discovered one of the best ones yet when I, along with 92 secondary students, took a trip to the fictional world of Paxium to debate its rules of war.

You can read the news story for a bit more on the background about why it all took place, but here’s what happened. Secondary students from across the country went to the offices of law firm Allen and Overy in London to role-play the negotiations for the rules of a civil war.

When I arrived, they’d been split into groups of about 20 and were designing a flag and coat of arms for Paxium. Then, suddenly, a screen dropped down in each room and a ‘live’ broadcast announced that fierce fighting had broken out in the country – the groups were divided in two and students found themselves as either a member of President Solon’s government or General Granesta’s rebel army.

I stayed in a room with the government side. Each student was given a piece of paper detailing their new ‘identity’ such as president, medical officer or weapons manufacturer.  The paper told them who they were, what they believed, whom they needed to get on their side, and what their hidden agenda was.

As the activity unfolded, the students were encouraged to stay in character and debate the rules of war. President Solon made a series of speeches with ‘news’ from the field introducing discussion about things like the treatment of civilians and prisoners, and the use of child soldiers and landmines.

It was fantastic to watch. At first the students were a little unsure of themselves but quickly got into character and entered a heated debate. “Kill them all”, shouted the army commander, “two wrongs do not make a right”, cried the supreme court judge, “you can take the moral high ground but we won’t win the war”, warned the president’s chief of staff. There was a clear divide between those who favoured violence and those who were more humane. It looked so fun I had to stop myself from joining in!

In the end, diplomacy won and the rules were decided by vote, with the non-violent side coming out tops.

Next step – the negotaiation room. Both the government and rebel side entered in hyped-up  for an argument, but quickly found they had similar ideas – torture would be prohibited, NGOs allowed access, child soldiers not allowed (but treated as adults if they were), and prisoners made to work if fit to do so, and so on. It became clear that the news stories they’d received had fed false information – something neither side had thought to consider.

Finally there was a de-brief, which is the part I found most fascinating. The amount the students got out of the activity was fantastic. I heard people say: “It showed how it’s not just one side against another – there are also lot of conflicts within that side.” “It was so hard to find a solution that didn’t conflict with moral values.” “Both sides thought they were the good guys. We didn’t think about the news being false.” “It would be even more complicated if the war was between religious or ethnic groups.” “More people should definitely be taught this kind of thing.”

This kind of discussion and learning is invaluable. There are so many of us who don’t spare a thought for such issues and I was so impressed to see these things taught in such an interactive and fun way, and even more impressed by the students’ reaction to it. So yes, I agree wholeheartedly with Naomi Alderman in the Guardian – educational games are most definitely brilliant!

Find out more about the British Red Cross partnership with Allen and Overy and download the new educational resource.

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Posted in Fundraising and events

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I was at a dinner party in Copenhagen when I heard about the earthquake in Chile. After my initial disbelief and shock that another huge disaster was happening so soon after Haiti I  immediately wanted to jump on a computer and do my job, which involves writing all the copy for our website when we launch an appeal.

But I was on holiday and it would have been a bit rude to abandon my friend’s party and despite my itching fingers I knew my colleagues would have the appeal covered.

Instead, I stayed and enjoyed my dinner and fielded a whole host of questions from my friends about how the Red Cross works. One of them had donated to the Red Cross after the Haiti quake and she wanted to find out what I knew about the situation and how effective I thought the Red Cross was in responding to disasters.

So – and feel free to accuse me of having fallen for the party line pretty much hook, line and sinker here – I set about explaining that what makes the Red Cross really unique when it comes to responding to disasters is that it is the biggest humanitarian organisation in the world with a Red Cross National Society in 186 countries. And since there are 196 countries in the world it means there’s rarely going to be a disaster where the Red Cross is not already present and able to respond. Call me a Red Cross geek, but I’m pretty impressed by that.

So it’s not surprising that, in Haiti, it was stunned local Red Cross workers who were some of the first to get the message out.

When I got to the office the morning after the quake, I already had emails with reports from Red Cross people in Port-au-Prince. And throughout the day the picture began to unfold. They said that amid crying and wailing, people were spending the night outside, frightened of further aftershocks. But even as they comforted people in the streets and treated the injured, it was clear they knew surviving the quake would be just the beginning of the ordeal. Their message was clear: we need help, send everything you’ve got.

We’ve all seen the extensive media coverage of this catastrophic disaster – a city completely decimated and millions of lives devastated. International assistance has poured into Port-au-Prince, but a few reports have implied that the response is chaotic with aid agencies being competitive and uncoordinated.

And it’s true that it is a crazy chaotic situation. But there are two sides to every story.

What I want to explain is that amidst the chaos there is in fact a systematic approach to provide the most effective and timely help possible.

There are more than 700 aid agencies currently working in Haiti, and to ensure the operation is as effective as possible, the United Nations is co-ordinating the response through its ‘cluster system’.

This works by bringing agencies into a ‘cluster’ according to the sector in which they specialise. For example, the World Health Organisation co-ordinates agencies specialising in health and the World Food Programme leads on logistics. The only cluster not co-ordinated by a UN organisation is shelter, which is led by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Each cluster of agencies works to ensure efforts are not being duplicated and gaps are being filled. Unicef – who leads on water, sanitation and hygiene – has brought together the main agencies working in this field and divided up Port-au-Prince. Each district is assigned an aid agency lead, who co-ordinates the response in that area.

I know there are some frustrations that aid isn’t getting out to everyone fast enough and that’s understandable, but disasters on this scale can’t be sorted out within a few weeks. What’s important initially is search and rescue, providing medical aid then basic food and water – in that order.

And as I explained at the dinner party last weekend, I think search and rescue teams did a good job and it’s only after this that the pressing needs of helping people restart household living can be started, so people can cook their own food and have a tarpaulin to rig up shelter. It’s all important but it comes next.

Right now, we are focusing on sanitation and shelter. We need to innovate to meet the huge needs. Water and sanitation teams are currently doing a phenomenal job and the Red Cross is now distributing clean drinking water to 320,000 people a day. We have also distributed shelter materials to thousands of people.

The rainy season has already started and the hurricane season is due in a couple of months. Sanitation conditions are a high concern. With rain and poor sanitation there’s a very real risk of cholera, diarrhoea and malarial increase.

Having blurted all this out over dinner, I eventually shut up realising I may have ‘over-shared’.

But then one of my friends piped up with another question, ‘But what about Chile? If there are all these needs in Haiti what will happen to the people in Chile?’

It’s true that there is a massive response in Haiti with more than 600 Red Cross workers. But as a global organisation we still have many more resources to draw on to help people in Chile.

Whenever a natural disaster happens, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies co-ordinates the emergency response of all 186 Red Cross National Societies from around the world.

I know that many of the Red Cross National Societies in Latin America have already offered assistance and the Spanish Red Cross has deployed its basic health care unit. You can find out more on the Federation’s website.

You can also donate to our appeal for Chile on our website.

Images © Claudia Janke/BRC

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Tags: aid, Chile, clusters, co-ordination, disaster, earthquake, emergency aid, Haiti, shelter, UN, water and sanitation
Posted in Emergencies

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Ever feel that there are never enough hours in the day? Whenever a major disaster happens, like the Chile earthquake, it certainly heightens that feeling for me and I imagine even more so for those responding on the ground, working round the clock, carrying out search and rescue and providing first aid.

But I was really surprised when a colleague told me that earthquakes literally do shorten the day. The New Scientist explains how big earthquakes can shift the earth’s axis and as a result shave microseconds off the day – it looks like Chile’s quake will have had an effect of 1.26 microseconds and the Indian Ocean tsunami is said to have taken 6.8 microseconds off each day.

On Wednesday, I wrote about how the impact of the earthquake in Chile, which measured 8.8 on the Richter scale, differed from the 7.3 magnitude quake which hit Haiti last month. And after reading another article by the New Scientist I found out why the tsunami resulting from Chile’s devastating quake didn’t have as far reaching and catastrophic an impact as the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 which killed more than 230,000 people. This was to do with it being a comparatively small section (350 km) of the fault which ruptured during Chile’s quake as opposed to a much longer section (1,600 km) during the earthquake which resulted in the Boxing Day tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

However, this is not to say Chile’s quake was not devastating. On Tuesday, an aerial assessment conducted by the Red Cross showed massive damage, in particular to small to medium-sized towns with a large proportion of adobe/mud buildings. For example, the city of Talca, which has a population of 250,000, is almost completely destroyed.

The death toll in Chile is currently around 800 people, about 500 are injured and thousands have been made homeless – in Concepcion alone (Chile’s second largest city) it’s reported 500,000 are homeless. We are appealing for funds to support the Chilean Red Cross which is assessing the damage and needs, distributing emergency relief non-food items, providing first aid and psycho-social support and restoring family links.

Aftershocks are still being felt, and many people are sleeping outdoors or constructing temporary shelters due to fears of buildings collapsing. There is significant damage to roads, bridges and other infrastructure, which is hampering efforts to get aid to some regions.

Communications and access to affected areas remains difficult. Food, water and fuel are scarce, however supplies are beginning to arrive.

Please support our appeal which will help fund the Red Cross work in Chile for the next six months. This includes helping 75,000 people with distributions of emergency relief items, providing shelter and supporting emergency health, water, sanitation and hygiene promotion.

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Tags: Chile, earthquake, Emergency Appeal
Posted in Emergencies

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