Red Cross Talks (Page 97)

It’s easy to see that red is Joy Geizer’s favourite colour. Her winter coat is red. Her car is red. All her Christmas ornaments are red. A disaster management volunteer for seven years, Joy stopped by the Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Red Cross office to talk about her passion for helping others while balancing her life as a full-time working mom in the health industry.  

Did you know you can find lots of gift ideas online through Shop Red Cross? Instead of buying your brother yet another ugly Christmas sweater, why not give him an emergency preparedness kit with essential items in case of a disaster.

Think of it as a way of showing how much you care about him and his family. It’s also reassuring to know they will be ready in an emergency.

A pilot project that would see the installation of underwater cameras in three Edmonton pools is expected to get underway by 2017. Participants at the 7^th annual Alberta Red Cross Water Safety Conference in Edmonton in October learned about the initiative. “We are always striving to improve water safety in Canada,” says Sarah Jackson, Red Cross Water Safety Representative for northern Alberta and NWT. “Conferences like this are a great opportunity to learn from each other.”

It takes a long time to grow an old friend.
 
You could call it the unofficial motto of the Dilke Red Cross Society, with close-knit friendships being one of the reasons why the organization has lasted the test of time.
 
The group from the small Saskatchewan community of Dilke is celebrating 100 years this year.

It’s humbling to speak with someone who refers to the Second World War as simply “the war,” as a real experience not out of a history textbook. For Red Cross volunteer Joan Chapella, this reality is simply a chapter in an exciting life that has taken her across the globe.

In the spring of 2016, Leonie Bree says she was happily in the process of starting her own business, and she and her husband had recently bought a home in the neighbourhood of Abasand. Her daughters, Vanessa and Katrena, who were starting their own families, had also just bought homes in Beacon Hill and Waterways. However, that all changed after wildfires swept through the city in May, forcing the family to evacuate. Unfortunately, all three homes were lost to the flames.

The Canadian Red Cross team is continuing to visit villages and remote regions of Haiti affected by Hurricane Matthew to provide medical care through the mobile health clinic. Last week, the mobile clinic visited four communities including Cap à Fou which had been previously inaccessible to aid workers due to severely damaged roads. 

The Round-up offers a weekly sample of what our sister Red Cross Societies are working on around the world. Here is an update on Red Cross response to flooding in Dominican Republic, earthquakes in New Zealand and conflict in Iraq.