Red Cross Youth

It’s that time of the year. It’s the time we set aside to enjoy our family and friends, relax, give thanks, and share in the joy of the holiday season. With the holidays right around the corner, all the stores and malls are starting to close but that doesn’t mean the giving has to. Celebrate the holidays to their fullest this year with a unique giving opportunity through the American Red Cross. Give a gift that saves the day.

The American Red Cross is proud to launch their Holiday Gift Catalog full of ways you can help those in communities across the country and the world. Help save a life and name your gift in honor of a loved one or friend. Don’t know what to get a friend or family member? How about giving them a way they can help shelter a family after a fire or connect military families during the birth of their new child? Give a gift that keeps on giving this holiday season with the 2009 Holiday Gift Catalog.

Share this idea with your family and friends as you visit with them through the holidays. Encourage them to also Give the gift that saves and visit redcross.org to learn more.

Happy holidays and happy gift buying!

The following message is from Pam Farr, National Chair of Volunteers:

November is very special at the American Red Cross. It is National Youth Involvement Month, a time to celebrate an important cadre of the Red Cross volunteer force, our youth volunteers.

Young Volunteers Met the Month’s Challenges

This year the National Youth Council set up a series of tasks, one for each week of November:

*Sign up four people for the American Red Cross Youth Wire.
* Register your school club.
*Learn what Red Cross youth are doing internationally.
*Find out how other non-profits can help your school club or youth group.

As always, American Red Cross youth were up for the challenge and met every request.

Our young volunteers proved how seriously they take their Red Cross service. In fact, youth volunteers created so much activity that the Youth Blog had a record-breaking number of hits — more than 800 visitors in one day.

Take a moment to reflect on the contributions made by youth and young adults. Disaster action team members, health and safety instructors, blood donors and recruiters — that’s the kind of service youth provide at the Red Cross—working shoulder-to-shoulder with older volunteers.

Support Youth Involvement Twelve Months a Year
We celebrate National Youth Involvement Month for a few short weeks, but young volunteers are fundraising and delivering Red Cross services 12 months a year. It makes strategic sense that chapter, Blood Services region and station leaders encourage adult volunteers, employees and peers to support and cheer on our youth throughout the entire year.

So, I offer the final challenge for National Youth Involvement Month. The challenge is to all of us who are too old to be youth volunteers: Work to strengthen youth involvement during the next 11 months.

Resources to build youth involvement are provided on www.redcrossyouth.org. The site includes the Youth Involvement Toolkit that will help you start, revitalize or strengthen your existing youth group. When National Youth Involvement Month rolls around again, we’ll have taken youth volunteerism and engagement to the next level.

Let’s give Red Cross youth the support they have so richly earned — not just in November — but all year long.

The scores have been tabulated and the results are in! The winners of NYIM 2009’s photo contest are as follows:

Get Connected Week 1: El Monte High School American Red Cross Club

Getting Connected!

Build your Red Cross Club Week 2: El Monte High School American Red Cross Club

Building Red Cross Club!

Get up and Act Week 3: Homeschool American Red Cross Club, Greater Palm Beach Area Chapter

Get up and act!

Thanks to all who participated! We had a great amount of youth volunteers who made a difference in their community by taking part in NYIM 2009. Congratulations to everyone!

This week, world leaders are gathering to discuss climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen, Denmark. Did you know that the Red Cross will be involved?

Climate change disrupts traditional weather patterns, complicating disaster preparedness and response in poor communities around the world. Below is a wrap-up of Red Cross work around the world in this area. Also, learn more about the work of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Center by listening to an interview with its director Madaleen Helmer in the latest Cross The Globe podcast. Read more »

Although National Youth Involvement month may have ended there is still time to celebrate and recognize what you have done as an American Red Cross youth volunteer. Applications for the Navin Narayan College Scholarship are now available. If you are a high school senior with a strong academic record and a current Red Cross volunteer planning to continue your service to the Red Cross in college you could be eligible for a $2500 college scholarship.

The Navin Narayan Scholarship was named in honor of a past chair to the National Youth Council who embodied what it means to be a youth of the American Red Cross. The winner of this prestigious scholarship can also be proud that they are being associated with someone who was such an amazing advocate for youth involvement in the American Red Cross. Read Navin’s story and find all the official instructions for applying along with the online application forms on the Navin Narayan Scholarship Page .

All parts of the application are due January 26th at 11:59 PM EST.

Good luck!

It can be hard to get funding for your service projects in this era of budget cuts. But it’s not as hard as it may seem at first sight. Despite more than $100 million in budget cuts at Harvard, the Harvard Friends of the American Red Cross managed get a grant from the student government to train about 100 students in CPR or First Aid for free! Don’t be discouraged by the general atmosphere, but rather use your energy and passion for youth involvement to find funding to make your projects possible. After doing your Black Friday shopping, shop for grants for which your projects can fulfill the requirements! To begin, try your school, local organizations, and the Internet. Good luck shopping!

Seungjun
Boston, MA

Happy Thanksgiving to everybody and we hope you have a wonderful time with your family, friends, and relatives!

Since you are now all linked to Youth Wire from Week 1’s NYIM Challenge, you should have gotten the message this past Monday that the NYIM photo contest has been extended until December 4th. So for those of you who thought there was no chance that you would be able to get your youth group together to complete some of the challenges and participate in the contest, you still have 10 days left!!

If you still don’t think you are going to be able to get your youth group together, then gather up your siblings and cousins after your Thanksgiving meal and sign them up for Youth Wire or plan a small fundraiser and get all your family members to be the first to donate to your American Red Cross cause. Remind them that whatever they commit to giving (whether it’s time, blood or money), it will all be to benefit saving someone’s life and helping somebody who has been the victim of a disaster. Eat your turkey, watch your football game, and complete a NYIM challenge with your family tomorrow.

Once again, have a great Thanksgiving!

Frannie, North Carolina

It’s hard to believe that it’s already the last week of NYIM. It’s been an amazing month and the youth of the American Red Cross have definitely stepped up (often surpassing) each challenge every week. Now that you all have completed the first three weeks worth of tasks it’s time to show off all you have accomplished! Celebrate all that you have done in just this one short month and Share it with the World! by competing in the first ever NYIM Photo Contest.

For official rules and how to submit your photos go to the NYIM page. We can’t wait for all the awesome photos that our coming everyone’s way. Be sure to check out what your fellow youth from across the country have been doing as well as you post up your own group’s photos!

Keeping your high school or college Red Cross Club up, running, and consistent has a lot to do with the activities and events you hold. This week’s NYIM theme is to run a service project or fundraiser in your community that will end up benefiting the Red Cross in some way. My Red Cross Club is holding a fundraiser at a local restaurant to raise money for the local disaster relief fund. We have created fliers to hand out to people that attend the restaurant that night and 20% of the proceeds of a customer’s dinner will go to the Red Cross! All week, we will be encouraging people to attend via announcements at school and even through the local newspaper. How cool is that?

Getting involved starts in the simplest of ways and fundraisers can be as easy as handing out fliers and having fun with friends. It can’t get any better than that!

Anjuli, California