Category: Appeals

Find out how the Red Cross helps in crises, wherever and whenever we are needed. From earthquakes to conflicts, the Red Cross helps you share the power of kindness.

“We are a family again”: Syrian refugees start a new life in Glasgow

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Syrian refugees now living in Glasgow, Mohamed, Amina and their five children stand together and smile at the camera.

Mohamed, Amina and their children © Emma Levy/British Red Cross

“We are a family again.”

Amina smiled as she described how it felt to be reunited with her husband Mohamed after years of being apart.

“The children were always asking about their dad.

“I sometimes didn’t know how to explain our situation to them. It was very difficult. I felt I wasn’t living – I was just existing.”

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Cash grants after the hurricanes: food, clothes and hope for a mother and daughter

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Clair, who received a Red Cross cash grant after Hurricanes Irma and Maria, sits in a chair and smiles

Claire got a Red Cross cash grant after Hurricanes Irma and Maria damaged her mother’s home, ©British Red Cross

“My mum is 83 and has Alzheimer’s. And she’s not mobile. When the hurricane came she hid behind the fridge and we didn’t get to her until morning.”

Claire and her mum live in the beautiful British Virgin Islands.

Normally a Caribbean tourist destination, the islands were hit by three crises in 2017.

First there was major flooding in August.

Then Hurricane Irma, one of the strong hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, hit in September.

Hurricane Maria followed just 12 days later.

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Yemen: five days inside the world’s largest humanitarian crisis

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Yemen Red Crescent volunteer Majed arrives home in the evening. He hugs his children Amjad, 9, Shahd, 5 as hisYemen Red Crescent volunter Majed stands outside his home hugging son Amjad, 9, and daughter Shahd, 5

© Yahya Arhab/Yemen Red Crescent Society

A staggering 70 per cent of people in war-torn Yemen depend on humanitarian aid. Yet a blockade recently stopped the flow of emergency supplies into the country.

In this series of vlogs, Tre from the British Red Cross reflects on what life is like for Yemen’s people and what we are doing to help.

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Myanmar crisis: “Why are we here? We don’t know”

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child hold a baby in a camp in Bangladesh

On the steep hillsides near the Myanmar-Bangladesh border, a ramshackle collection of camps and settlements have sprung up.

Conditions here are extremely harsh – almost everyone is sheltering under plastic sheeting – with heavy rain and mud spreading sewage and washing homes away.

Over half a million people have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh since August 2017, the majority of them women and young girls.

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Fleeing Myanmar: portraits of lives overturned

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After fleeing their home in Myanmar, Shovika Mia holds her newborn daughter in a makeshift tent in Bangladesh

© photo by AF Ghani/IFRC

In a makeshift camp in Bangladesh, 25-year-old Shovika Mia holds her newborn daughter.

Shovika gave birth to baby Nur Halima in the hills while fleeing her home in Myanmar.

She and her husband, Shona, are among the more than 436,000 people who have fled a sudden increase in violence in Rakhine State.

Back home, the young couple had a house and four cows that provided a stable income.

But their house was burned in the violence. And as they fled, their cows were shot.

Now, they live in an informal camp for new arrivals to Bangladesh.

Shona, 27, has found work as a day labourer for around £2.70 a day. And although Shovika feels weak herself, her main worry is for her baby’s future.

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