The Red Cross is a blessing for this family

Gilda Brisbon and her family know what it’s like to be homeless, but when they moved into their home in the King Charles Road neighborhood in Raleigh, North Carolina three years ago they thought that those days were behind them.  However, on Saturday, April 16, everything changed when their home was destroyed by a class EF1  tornado and they lost everything but the clothes on their backs.

“My daughter Brittany was home alone when it hit,” said Brisbon.  “I had heard the warning sirens and was hurrying to get home.  I looked at my watch and it was 3:31pm when I saw the black funnel cloud coming right at me.”  She took refuge in a nearby friend’s house with her grandson Anthony, struggling to keep the door closed against the storm.

Daughter Brittany saw the lights flicker on and off, felt the house shake and heard the sounds of the storm and a large tree in their yard being uprooted.  She took refuge in the laundry room, fortunately suffering only minor cuts and bruises as the tornado demolished all but the kitchen and the laundry room.  “It rained very hard for about five or ten minutes, and then everything got quiet,” she said.  “I ran from the house to find my mother, and had to climb under and over many trees that were knocked down.”  She added “the houses on either side of ours were untouched, but ours was destroyed!  That’s just not fair!”

Tornado damage at Creekside Mobile Home Park in North Carolina

Tornado damage in Raleigh, NC

American Red Cross Emergency Response Vehicles are stocked with supplies.

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The Brisbon’s stayed Saturday night and Sunday at the nearby house of their friend, Latesha Winston and her two children.  The power was out in the entire neighborhood, however, so when they heard that there was an American Red Cross shelter open at the Garner United Methodist Church in Garner, NC, they all took refuge there.

Red Cross Shelter Manager Judy Cox said that many of the families staying at the shelter have similar stories.  They have lost power, some have had their homes destroyed, and all are extremely grateful for the Red Cross help in their time of trial.

“This is the first time that we have ever stayed at a Red Cross shelter, but we know about homeless shelters from the 93 days we were without a place to call home,” Brisbon said.  “Your shelter here is so much nicer than that other place where we stayed, and all of your people are so kind to us and treat us wonderfully.  The Red Cross is really a blessing, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.”

Brisbon and her family are not sure what they will do next.  Their home has been condemned and they must now find a new place to live, but they have been through tough times before and are positive that they will make it through this challenge that life has thrown at them.


Story by Allen Crabtree, an American Red Cross volunteer in Raleigh, North Carolina

Lemonade For a Good Cause

When 7-year-old Sarah Budnick watched the “60 Minutes” special on the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in mid-March, she knew she had to help and knew what to do.  The Coral Park Elementary first grader decided to set up a lemonade stand.

This isn’t the first time Sarah has showed her knack for capitalism and compassion. Last year she set up her lemonade stand to help the Haitians affected by the January 12, 2010 earthquake and donated to Doctors Without Borders. This time she wanted to help the Japanese devastated by the earthquake and tsunami last March and decided to raise funds for the Red Cross.

Sarah promoted her lemonade stand with signs and set up shop on March 20 along Riverside Drive in Coral Springs. Sarah raised $164 for the Red Cross.

On April 6, Michelle Tuggle, major gifts officer for American Red Cross South Florida Region went to Sarah’s school and presented her with a certificate of recognition in front of her classmates and school’s principal.

On behalf of the American Red Cross, thank you, Sarah, for all that you do!

So it's the NextGen...what's in it for me?

So, the Red Cross has been promoting it’s “Next Generation of Red Cross Training” over the last few weeks.  All of you have seen numerous posts from the Red Cross and from me on Twitter, Facebook, email and others about joining the Next Generation, but for you - our customer - to really understand the benfits requires a little more than a simple website story or a Twitter feed.  Wtih that in mind, I am here to educate everyone on some of the benefits for our customer in the new Red Cross training program.  So let’s get started.

Choices, Choices and More Choices

The single greatest thing about the new program is that you now have choices - and lots of them.  In the past, the Red Cross mandated that you purchase books, DVDs, skill cards and other teaching material for EVERY student in your classroom.  Those days are long gone, and now you have the power to decide exactly which materials - if any - you are going to purchase for your company, organization and participants.

The real question for a lot of our instructors boils down to what they can access digitally and what is available only for purchase.  Well, everything is available for download or purchase.  As a Red Cross instructor, you have access to everything you need to teach a class on http://www.instructorscorner.org.  The new version of Instructor’s Corner gives you access to everything digitally - from the DVD to the instructor manual to the participant material.  I don’t know about you, but I like have choices.  I like knowing that I can decide what is better in a printed format when purchased from the Red Cross or what I prefer to use in a digital format.  Now that truly is next generation!

Translating the Value:  Digital or Print?

Even at the Red Cross, I am using the free digital materials more than anything else.  Just like, we want to keep our costs down to a minimum.  As a result, we print the ready reference cards for the exact number of students in a class.  To provide a strong learning experience, I have given a set of 10 published sets of the Adult Ready Reference and the Pediatric Ready Reference to my instructors.  The benefit for the instructor is that they have a resource they can use as a teaching tool.  The student is able to use the laminate version of the Ready Reference in the classroom while also receiving a digital copy of the material via email.  It is a great way to provide our students with a great learning experience while keeping our costs down to a minimum.

Just like you, the participants in our community classes have a choice.  They can decide to use the digital version of the material received via email, or they can purchase the laminate version of the Ready Reference card.  Some of our customers choose to purchase and others choose to use the free material.  Bottom line is that it doesn’t matter which one they choose.  Each person is learning a great skill from the Red Cross and getting the informaiton they need in our classes.

You can also use the digital material in the same fashion.  Need to provide durable teaching aids to your instructors?  Purchase a classroom set of material that meets the need of your business.  Need to provide students access to the reference material easily?  Send the link to the participant material found at http://www.redcross.org/training.  As I said in the beginning, it is all about choices and flexibility.

I encourage all of you to spend some time getting to know the new Instructor’s Corner and exploring the many different choices available from the Red Cross.  Need help making a decision for your organization?  Call us at 305-644-1200 or 954-797-3800. You can also e-mail us at SouthFloridaPrepares@usa.redcross.org.

Hunter Ruffin
Sr. Director, Preparedness, Health & Safety
American Red Cross South Florida Region

You can follow Hunter Ruffin @CHRuffin and read his blog, RuffinIt, at http://ruffinit.tumblr.com/

The Red Cross Is Part of Life in the McNally Family

When Marie Lina McNally, her sons Wilfrid and Georges, and her brother Pierre Louise Pierre-Toussaint, immigrated to the United States four years ago they knew about the global Red Cross network.


In their hometown of Port-Au-Prince, they had seen the Haitian Red Cross in action many times—setting up shelters after a disaster, collecting blood, providing ambulance service, teaching personal hygiene to school children, and more.

Now in the United States, Marie Lina heard about American Red Cross services and programs. She listened intently when people talked about the Red Cross, because she is passionate about helping others. “Mom has always been honored to help people,” says her son Wilfrid.

Volunteering through AmeriCorps

Initially, Marie Lina, followed by Pierre, Georges and Wilfrid, volunteered at the Miami Red Cross chapter as part of the AmeriCorps State and National program. Under the program, nonprofit organizations such as the Red Cross receive grants to recruit, train and place AmeriCorps members in positions that meet critical community needs.

For a year, the four worked as members of the American Red Cross South Florida Region disaster action team, bringing food, shelter, comfort and hope to dozens of Miami residents day or night. They also taught community first aid classes, and participated in the recruitment and training of chapter volunteers.

Staying on as Red Cross Volunteers

As the year 2010 approached, Pierre signed up for a second season with AmeriCorps. Wilfrid, Georges and Marie Lina left the AmeriCorps program but continued with the Red Cross as active volunteers.

Then, on January 12, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake brought disaster to millions of Haitians. The quake deeply impacted the city of Miami, a city in which the first language of more than five percent of its population is Creole.

The American Red Cross South Florida Region sprang into action. Red Cross Call Centers were activated to help people locate family and friends. Red Cross teams welcomed Haitian evacuees at Miami’s airports, providing food, toothbrushes, diapers and hugs to people who had lost everything except the clothes on their backs.

It took a lot of volunteers to help the thousands of people who called the Miami chapter of the Red Cross after the earthquake, and many volunteers to assist the stream of Haitian evacuees arriving in the United States through Miami’s airports.
Among those volunteers were Pierre, Marie Lina, Georges and Wilfrid—answering telephones, acting as translators and receiving deplaning Haitians. The Red Cross opened around-the-clock shelters for incoming Haitians, locations at which Marie Lina spent several nights as a shelter volunteer.

Service on the USNS Comfort

During one of his college classes, Wilfrid received a text message from the Miami Red Cross saying that the chapter needed to talk to him because something big had happened in his home town in Haiti.
“They told me about the magnitude of the earthquake, the enormity of the damages and asked if we could provide assistance,” he remembers. “The Red Cross didn’t even have to ask—me and my family were ready to help.”

The Red Cross assigned Wilfrid as a translator on the USNS Comfort, a Navy hospital ship. He was trained and was on the Comfort headed for Haiti less than a week after the earthquake. For the next three weeks he served not only as a translator, but also provided moral support and helped patients with their daily routines during the humanitarian relief effort that brought medical treatment to more than 1,000 Haitians.

Wilfrid talks about a young Haitian whose face had been mutilated and who had lost both arms and a leg. The young man cried constantly, calling for a father who was not there. Wilfrid put the patient on a cart and asked permission to take him to the top deck.

Asking the patient for his dad’s phone number, Wilfrid dialed. “I have your son with me,” he said to the voice that answered his call. “What, my son is alive?” came a shout. After much crying, Wilfrid was able to get the dad to the closest port, where a Navy helicopter airlifted him to the Comfort to visit his son.

“It was a great reunion,” the Red Cross volunteer comments.

Wilfrid laughs about using his cell phone as a mobile call center. Many of the ship’s patients wanted to talk to members of their families, so Wilfrid activated his phone’s roaming services to connect families. Then the bill came, for close to $2,000.

But he doesn’t laugh about feeling the quakes’ after-shocks from the ship. Or about the 12-14 hour days and not being able to have a peaceful night’s sleep throughout the deployment.

In Wilfrid’s words, the time came when his three-week rotation was ended and he “had to leave.” When he came home he again joined his mother, brother and uncle, providing support as a Red Cross volunteer.

“The Red Cross has become a part of our lives,” he says, “It’s our way of helping people, of giving back to our community.”