We AmeriCorps in the office are preparing for our statewide Member Celebration next week, and we needed a way to show other AmeriCorps members from around Michigan what it is we do here at the American Red Cross of Greater Grand Rapids.

So I decided to chronicle in photos what an AmeriCorps member here might do in an “average” day.  Here are some of the pictures we took.  Thanks to Ben for being the Average AmeriCorps Guy!

Ben the Average AmeriCorps Guy sits down to check his morning email. It seems it will be an uneventful day.

Ben then makes a trip to a local elementary school to teach about fire safety. He brings along his trusty sidekick, Freddie the Fire Truck.

Returning to the office, the Average AmeriCorps Guy meets with fellow AmeriCorps to discuss community partnerships.

During his lunch break, Ben the Average AmeriCorps Guy helps to build the recycled bottle Christmas Tree.

Ben and Kirsten (the Average AmeriCorps Girl) lead a volunteer orientation.

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(Afterward, they have a marker war.)

The American Red Cross receives a fire call.

Ben the Average AmeriCorps Guy goes to provide assistance in the way of shelter and comfort items.

All in a day’s work…

Welcome to the Weekly Worldwide Wrap-Up, in which we consolidate the international Red Cross and Red Crescent news into one list of bite-sized links for you. It’s a non-comprehensive sampling of the larger and/or more intriguing aspects of our global work…

[The place names link to maps so that you can get a quick idea of the region.]

SOMALIA: Heavy rains are severely affecting thousands of families displaced by the hostilities in Mogadishu. The ICRC has distributed 7,000 tarpaulins as emergency shelter.

PAKISTAN: The ICRC and the Pakistan Red Crescent Society have launched the first stage of an extensive economic assistance program for families affected by violence in Malakand Division.

EL SALVADOR: The Salvadorean Red Cross has been searching for and rescuing survivors ofsevere flooding brought on by Hurricane Ida.

UKRAINE: The Ukrainian Red Cross Society is responding to the H1N1 pandemic through preparedness outreach and visiting nurse programs.

CAPE VERDE: The Red Cross responds to the country’s first ever dengue fever outbreak.

KENYA: The IFRC is distributing food, water, and seeds for thousands of people in the midst of a crippling drought and food crisis. The American Red Cross has also contributed $100,000 to these efforts.

AFGHANISTAN: Landmine and accident victims take their message of hope to the sky with a kite-flying competition for wheelchair-bound patients at its rehabilitation centre in the Afghan capital of Kabul.

UNITED STATES: Veterans Day kicked off the Holiday Mail for Heroes campaign. Make holiday cards for service members and the American Red Cross will deliver them overseas.
GLOSSARY:
ICRC = International Committee of the Red Cross
IFRC = International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent

[Original post by Robin Parker]

Okay, okay, so not really royalty, but CEO and President Gail McGovern is as close as you get. (Unless Clara Barton suddenly appears, à la “A Christmas Carol” fashion of the ghost of Red Cross Past.)

Two of our AmeriCorps Together We Prepare members, Ben and Liberty, had the privilege to attend a conference of leaders in the public and private nonprofit sectors in Detroit last week. One of the members of the panel was the Red Cross’ own Gail McGovern. Others on the veritable “who’s who” list included the head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Jim Wallis of Sojourners, the president of the WalMart Foundation, and more.

After a rousing panel discussion, Ben and Liberty, along with Jordan, our AmeriCorps director and Ryan, the emergency services director from the East Shoreline chapter in Bay City, got to chat with Gail and proclaimed her down-to-earth, funny, inspiring, and kind.

There’s some true Red Cross kinship! Isn’t it a beautiful thing?

After several months of intense planning, designing, writing, and not a little blood, sweat and tears, our new website is finally HERE!

We’ve shaved down to the memorable moniker of www.redcrossggr.org and are excited for you to see all the new things we offer! We appreciate your unending patience as we work out all the inevitable kinks and glitches within our new site, and would love to hear your feedback! Go to Contact Us and let loose your thoughts, ideas, and opinions!

Bookmark us at www.redcrossggr.org and we hope you’ll visit often! (We’ll leave the light on for you.)

A few months back, we wrote about how our office received a surprise visitor in the person of Diet Eman, a local WWII concentration camp survivor and former member of the Dutch Resistance. Diet stopped by again yesterday for a Lifesavers Tour, and we thought that you might all enjoy hearing more of her story.

This story was published in fall 2009 newsletter, but here it is, in full, just for you to read! (You know that phrase, “Read it and weep?” Yeah, that might just be true for this…Diet has an incredible story!)

“If we don’t meet each other on Earth again, we will meet in Heaven. We will never be sorry for what we did.”

This farewell note, written to Kentwood resident Diet Eman and carefully inscribed on toilet paper from a Red Cross package, was folded inside of a piece of brown paper, and thrown off a train in the Netherlands by her fiancée, Hein Sietsma, on the way to his death at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany in 1944. Miraculously, though this small note should have been destroyed by the heavy October rains, it made it to Diet months later, and today, at 89 years old, she still carries a copy of it around in her wallet.

Portraits of Diet Eman and Hein Sietsma.

Diet was born just outside of the Hague, in the Netherlands, in 1920 and two weeks before she turned 20, World War II broke out. For the next five years, she was a dedicated member of the Dutch Resistance, helping secure ration cards for Jews, rescuing shot-down Allied soldiers, and risking her life again and again in Nazi-occupied territory.

On May 8, 1944, Diet was arrested under a false name and sent to the Scheveningen prison, which was called “the Orange Hotel” by the Germans, for its high concentration of Dutch resistance fighters whose royal family’s color was orange. Her only reminder of a world not ravaged by war was the Red Cross package she received once a month.

“It was precious,” Diet says. “All we had to keep clean in the camp was a pipe with cold water. The Red Cross would send us toilet paper and a sandwich. It was wonderful. I never complain because everything now is better than it was there.”

She was soon moved to Vught, a nearby concentration camp. Living in a place where she fell asleep to machine gun fire at night and heard children taken from their parents to be lead away to gas chambers, Diet would secretly needlepoint on her handkerchief under her blankets at night as a way of escape, using a needle that had been smuggled in inside a woman’s sock.

Today, she points out the symbolism of each date, letter, and picture on the needlepoint, and finally, points to a line of Dutch and a red cross.

A Dutch Red Cross bag that says "Help Us Help" and a copy of the needlepoint Diet made in the Vught concentration camp.

“This says ‘Long live the Red Cross,’” says Diet with a smile.

In August 1944, Diet was released from Vught and alongside her continued efforts with the Dutch Resistance, she began volunteering with the Dutch Red Cross. Fluent in seven languages and holding a degree in nursing, Diet was sent all over the world with Red Cross to help after disasters.

“It was really hard to see people who often had lost everything,” she recounts. “We began the day with a psychiatrist. 3 weeks is all most people can take. I learned how to take distance, working as a nurse, but it was still so hard to see.”

While working at a hospital in Venezuela, she met and married an American. They moved to the States in 1969, and Diet ended up in Grand Rapids, wanting to be close to a cousin who worked for Zondervan. She became involved with what was then the Kent County Red Cross, taking every class she could, and volunteering to go on disasters during her vacations.

After she retired, she continued to travel both with Red Cross and other organizations well into her 70s and 80s to places all over South and Central America, Mexico, and Puetro Rico.

“You would sleep on the floor, wake up, and have to shake scorpions out of your shoes,” she says, with a glint in her eyes, laughing. “I loved it.”

She mischievously recounts her last Red Cross assignment in Mexico, following a hurricane. She traveled around as a Spanish interpreter with a fellow Red Cross volunteer, and was invited to sit down at one of the houses owned by a young couple. When she got up from their couch, which had recently been under flood water, she says she could feel that her entire backside was wet.

“I was so embarrassed, but we still had other houses to visit, so I just stood with my back to the wall,” she laughs, clapping her hands. “Oh, it was funny!”

When asked in high school what she wanted out of life, Diet’s answer was this: “I don’t care if I will be rich or poor, if only my life won’t be dull.”

And 75 years later, it never has been.

Okay, it CAN be too early to really deck the halls — you know, with snowmen, Santa, glitter and all those festive trimmings. However, checking things off of the eternally long “Holidays To Do” list can be a wonderful thing, especially when it’s ahead of the holiday curve. In fact, just today, one of my coworkers informed me she had most of her Christmas gifts wrapped and stored already. Talk about being on top of the game!

Well, while we can’t personally come over to your house and wrap your gifts for you (while pounding the Trans-Siberian Orchestra in the background and drinking eggnog, of course), we can take one big thing off your mind. The centerpiece, the cornerstone, of any holiday celebration — the tree.

Order now through November 25 online at Dutchman Tree Farms, where you can pick from a variety of fresh trees and wreaths, and then, the best part is this — they get shipped right to your door! No more standing in a Christmas tree lot, shivering, and trying to pick from 800 trees that all look the same, and somehow, always ending up with one where all the needles fall off the second you get it home. (We can all relate to Charlie Brown on this one, can’t we?)

It gets even better! Order online now through November 25, use the code RCGRMI, and a portion of your purchase will be donated to your local Red Cross!

So we say fa-la-la-la-la and deck those halls with a Christmas tree from Dutchman Tree Farms — you gotta love seeing a little Red (Cross) mixed in with that piney green!

If you haven’t had the flu, chances are someone in your house or office has. We had a nasty case passing around the past few weeks here, and we know how miserable it can be.

While we can’t personally hand you a tissue as you sniffle and sneeze, make you a cup of chicken noodle soup, or find you the TV remote (one can only watch so much “The Price is Right” when a couch invalid…), but we care so much that we want to share what we can: these videos. This is just for you, all ye flu sufferers (okay, and everyone else too):

Want more resources? Try redcross.org, flu.gov, and our local resource here in Kent County, stickittotheflu.com.

As I’m sifting through great stories, deciding which ones to share with you, I am noticing a theme.  People.  It’s all about human connection.  The power of the American Red Cross is the way it allows people in vulnerable situations to reach out to each other.

Here’s a story from Michelle Barbaresso, an AmeriCorps member in Washtenaw County:

After my first interview for the “Together We Prepare” position at the American Red Cross, I was told this position would challenge me every day in one way or another. Only after my first training with Service to Armed Forces (SAF), did I realize what “challenge” meant.

My first SAF exposure was definitely what I would consider an emotional test of strength, along with a few other experiences I have had since starting at the American Red Cross of Washtenaw County. Our trainer, Amy Jo, taught us that SAF casework is relatively structured as far as paperwork, but the caseworker must be flexible when faced with each individual situation. There was an interesting case on this first day of SAF training, one that Amy Jo hadn’t even dealt with before in her many years working with the Red Cross—a face-to-face interaction with a SAF client.

This individual came to our chapter with the desire to send a message to his son overseas. When he walked in, we could see his emotional distress from the start. He told us his father (the serviceman’s grandfather) was in hospice care and did not have much time left. Amy Jo did not have all the information necessary to send the message, so the individual called the hospice nurse to verify. As he was on the phone, he found out his father had actually passed away since he had last been with his father. Amy Jo changed the nature of the message and continued to send it to the serviceman, but the emotional intensity of that moment I will never forget. His face as he found out and the way he held back tears—that’s the individual I’m going to picture every time a SAF call comes through for me.

This is not an upbeat story by any means; in fact, I’m still tearing up weeks later because this moment was so emotional. But it taught me a valuable lesson about the American Red Cross and how much these messages really mean to the servicemen and women and their families. We must remember the responsibilities that come along with our positions, volunteer or otherwise, are constantly having an impact on people—whether it’s a SAF case or helping as a DAT team member at a house fire or teaching someone CPR and first aid—and how much what we do actually means to our community.

As I am due to be a first-time aunt any day now, I definitely have babies on the brain. Here at your local Red Cross, we are also in the midst of picking out photos for our holiday cards this year. As I am looking through the Red Cross photo library, I am getting utterly doused with photos of adorable tots that Red Cross has assisted over the years. (This is not helping, as my niece is not due for another week, and I am NOT a patient person.)

So, today, in my overly-excited, auntie-to-be state, I give you “Cute Kids of the Red Cross.” (And cue the “awwwww…”s.)

This little cutie stayed at a Red Cross shelter during the June 2008 flooding in Indiana.

Who else just wants to (gently) squeeze this little one's cheeks?

There is a general consensus in the office that this little guy, staying at a Louisiana shelter, looks like me as a toddler. (I don't know what to think of that since this is a boy...and I am not. Hmmmm.)

Want to “oooh” and “ahhh” at more pictures? Check out the Red Cross Flickr account (both the National organization’s and ours).

Have little ones that you want to protect? Have you taken Child/Infant CPR? Or is your “little one” all grown up now and eligible for Babysitter Training or youth volunteering? Lots of options to choose from!