The giggles of excited children could be heard over everything else. A couple of the observant kids outside one of the Canadian Red Cross mobile clinics in Kutupalong camp, spotted team leader Patrice Gordon sorting through a bag with toys. It didn’t take long after she stepped out into the bright sun, for a small swarm of these little, dusty bodies to flock around her.
Emergency 22
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Haibur Rahman sits on a chair in front of hundreds of people in Burma Para camp in Bangladesh. He pauses for a moment. Someone hands him a megaphone. He takes a deep and begins to sing. He doesn’t have formal training, but the audience is moved. Some hold their heads in their hands, others wipe away tears. Haibur is singing a song of his people and their experiences leaving their home while fleeing violence in Myanmar.
When a disaster strikes, the Canadian Red Cross quickly mobilizes to meet people’s basic needs: shelter, food, clothing, registration and so on. But there’s another aspect of the Red Cross response that’s perhaps not as well-known, but is equally important to the people impacted by the disaster: our work to support psychosocial wellbeing in times of crisis and through the long recovery phase after disasters.
As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. In the humanitarian sector, particularly in emergencies, innovations often come about in response to a specific challenge that forces organizations like the Canadian Red Cross to adapt and change processes.
On December 31, Geneviève Gauvin was curling her six-year-old daughter’s hair for New Year’s Eve when she heard someone knock on the door, shouting for her to get out. The building was on fire!
Tropical Storm Tembin made landfall in Mindanao, in southern Philippines, last weekend, causing flashfloods and landslides and impacting up to 23 provinces and leaving thousands displaced. The storm caused damage to homes, as well as critical infrastructure such as roads, bridges and power lines. Casualties and injuries, as well as missing people, have also been reported.
“The stress and anguish (people) go through, especially right after a disaster, and the emotional toll it takes to recover or deal with the situation – it affects everyone,” says Angelo Leo. The Canadian Red Cross humanitarian from Vancouver has helped people impacted by disasters and emergencies as far away as Nepal, Bangladesh, and the Philippines. But this summer, he volunteered to help much closer to home. Leo is part of the Red Cross Safety and Well-being team and he went to Williams Lake to help people work through the trauma left behind by the massive wildfires that swept across much of British Columbia.
Inside the isolation tents at the Red Cross Red Crescent field hospital in Bangladesh, the air is still. Six kids fight measles, although at some points over the past weeks nearly all 20 beds have been filled at once. Little lungs work to fill as respiratory tract infections are the hallmark of this disease.