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Emergency Services Newsletter - Southeastern PA |
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Join
Red Cross for National Volunteer Week
By
Tom Foley, CEO of the American Red Cross, SEPA Chapter, National Volunteer Week is April 17-23, 2006, when we
take time to honor the 4,152 certified volunteers ¾ and over 3,000 special event volunteers ¾ who staff the Red Cross in our community by
recognizing their lifesaving mission. By any reckoning, it has been a busy, challenging
year for American Red Cross volunteers from Southeastern Pennsylvania.
The 2005
hurricane season was the biggest ever, with Hurricane Katrina the worst
natural disaster ever to hit the U.S.
Three hundred of our volunteers went to the Gulf Coast, joining
235,000 Red Cross volunteers and staff working all over the country to
get food, shelter and relief to millions devastated by terrible storms
across an area twice the size of Pennsylvania. Here in Southeastern Pennsylvania, we hosted an
emergency national call center in Philadelphia, where 309 local
volunteers took over 28,000 calls from hurricane victims stranded on
rooftops in Louisiana and looking for loved ones evacuated from the Gulf
Coast.
Red
Cross volunteers also provided financial assistance, care and support
for 885 evacuee families who came here from the hurricane zone, joining
many sister charities and government agencies to ease their transition
or help them return home. Citizens, foundations and corporations from the
five-county SEPA area joined the effort, contributing $39,315,374 to
help hurricane victims, nearly half of all money donated from the state
of Pennsylvania.
While our
volunteers were engaged in helping Katrina victims, local disasters –
fires, floods and building collapses – continued to happen here at
home. The Red Cross SEPA
Chapter has responded to 550 local emergencies from Katrina’s landfall
last Aug. 29 through the end of March 2006, providing shelter, food,
counseling and other services to local families in their moment of need.
The local chapter serves Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and
Philadelphia counties.
In
addition to responding to disaster in our neighborhoods and across the
nation, our local Red Cross volunteers last year trained 109,151 people
in the skills they need to prepare for and respond to emergencies in
their homes, schools, workplaces and communities ¾
skills such as first aid, CPR, babysitting, care-giving, emergency
preparedness and more.
Thousands
of volunteers supported local blood drives, collecting 92,587 pints of
life-giving blood last year. And
Red Cross volunteers helped the families of 2,091 U.S. service members
stay connected to loved ones who have suffered disasters at home while
they were on military duty. In America, with its mobile society and changing
neighborhoods, volunteers from organizations like the American Red Cross
now fill many of the emergency needs of people who have been struck by
terrible disasters like fire and flood.
They do that because they understand, as the poet says, that “a
community is like a ship; everyone needs to take the helm.”
Martin
Luther King Jr. said, “You don’t have to have a college degree to
serve. You don’t even have to make your subject and your verb agree to
serve. You only need a
heart full of grace. A soul
generated by love.” Volunteers bring people back from the brink of
disaster, of danger, of life. We
are grateful today, and every day, for all the organizations they serve,
and for the lives they change.
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