If
volunteering is to be viewed as a sacrifice for one’s community, volunteering
with the Red Cross may be spoiling me. I have been volunteering with the Red
Cross for just over a month now, and the relationships and opportunities I have
found here have made it more of a pleasure to volunteer than a sacrifice.
Growing
up in Lubbock, it has always been a little difficult to feel connected with the
outside world. As the 2015 Smithsonian Magazine article, “When Texas Was at the
Bottom of the Sea” shows, Lubbock used to be an ocean bed of a vast and
expansive ocean. Today it is still easy to look out over the grand vistas of
farms and prairies and be overtaken by the same feeling of vastness as if looking
out over the sea. After all, we are hundreds of miles away from Texas’ large
cities (sorry Amarillo!) and thousands of miles away from the countries that are
in desperate need of humanitarian aid. Growing up on the edge of Lubbock, it
has always been easy to feel far away from the rest of the world.
I
have only been with the Red Cross for a month now, but the opportunities and the
world-wide actions the Red Cross provides has been incredibly inspiring. For
example, the International Committee of the Red Cross is currently sheltering
20,000 refugees from Aleppo, Syria (http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/latest-strengthening-humanitarian-presence-aleppo-43898108).
In Senegal, Senegalese Red Cross volunteers just finished another distribution
of food vouchers to communities afflicted by low rainfall rates. (http://www.ifrc.org/en/news-and-media/news-stories/africa/senegal/senegal-red-cross-and-echo-bring-a-smile-back-to-thousands-of-families-affected-by-food-insecurity-73729/).
To be apart of such an organization, even if I am thousands of miles away, is
an honor in itself.
Not only is it an honor to be apart
of an organization that is capable of extending such humanitarian aid, but the
American Red Cross also provides opportunities to learn and grow as a
volunteer. It was to my complete surprise that the Red Cross has an extensive
online education program, capable of training me to become more skilled in
plenty of different skill sets, including logistics, disaster services, finances
and communications. This has been a huge help for me – as a college senior, the
only things I feel truly skilled at doing are studying and power-napping,
neither of which are particularly useful in the world of disaster response and
aid. In these days of expensive higher education, the importance of free
training for curious volunteers cannot be overstated. In my time volunteering
in Lubbock there have been few opportunities to grow while serving a community,
and I am exciting to have the opportunity.
It is obvious I still have a long
way to go before I can help the villages of Senegal or aid refugees in Syria.
My foreign language studies have a long way to go, (Je voudrai visiter le Sénégal bientôt, mais les
francophones parlent très rapidement. Mais, j’essaie.),
my Disaster Response training is just shy of being completed and my graduation
in May I will be faced with paying off college debt.
Yet though I am far away, the Red
Cross is allowing me to serve my community while continuing to grow. This is
what brings me back each week, and why I considered myself spoiled. Even if the
only way I can help currently is making phone calls to ask for donations and
cleaning supply closets, I feel much closer to the outside world than before.
Guest Blogger Jerrod Miller
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