Community

The Red Cross Interview

By Aniela Montserrat Arzate Castelán, Samantha Hernández Gorrión, and Gladys Tena Ley.

This month’s featured organization is the Zihuatanejo Red Cross. ADiP’s community news desk is being manned this season by student reporters.

The Zihuatanejo Red Cross was founded in 1975, The Red Cross received an ambulance, donated by the Mexican State Government. We decided to go to where the Red Cross has been located for the last 20 years on Las Huertas Avenue # 116 (just past Telmex) and learn more about this institution by asking Red Cross Chairman Debbie Mione some questions:

What is your job at the Red Cross?
It’s not a job. It’s a non-paid position. I’m part of the board of directors. I am the president, or chairman of this board. There is also a vice-president, a treasurer and a secretary. Our most important job is to decide how to raise money and the best way to spend it. We are not involved in the day to day activities, that is a paid position.

How do you get the money?
I ask for it, of everyone from the governor to small businesses, hotels and restaurants. When it is time for the annual fund raising drive we get spare change from everyone. We host breakfast and dinner events, fund raising dances and sales. There is a program called Donativo Huesped in Ixtapa hotels, where every guest in the hotel is asked if they want to donate five, ten, or fifteen pesos. We have proven that we have a respectable institution, a clean institution, an honest institution and that’s why people give us money. Without the money we couldn’t exist, because we are not dependant on government funds.

Does the Red Cross have Volunteers programs?
Everyone can be a volunteer in the Red Cross. All you have to do is go in and say, “I want to help.”

How can I be a volunteer in the Red Cross?
People who are interested take a three month training course, on weekends. You buy your own uniform and if the Red Cross gets an emergency call you assist them, but only in First Aid, until the patient is taken to a hospital or a clinic, wherever they ask to be taken. If you are under 18 years of age and you want to help out at the Red Cross there’s a kids club for 8 to 12 year olds and a teenagers club for 13 to 17 year olds and its nationwide. There’s a national and international network and they organize summer camps and activities to prepare you to be a socorrista and they teach you what to do in case of an accident. That’s the first step and there are groups for every age … if you are older, you can join the veterans, and if you are a women but don’t want to do first aid or disaster response training, you can join the women Volunteers, they are a volunteer club and they do fund raising.

Does the Red Cross have a website?
The Red Cross has a web page but it needs to be updated…
http://www.cruzroja-ixtapazihuatanejo.com. They need someone to do it, any volunteers?? The Red Cross helps everyone. Who helps the Red Cross?

What’s going on in November?
National Convention… It’s at the end of November in Veracruz. At the convention they give away ambulances, we are hoping to get one… (TV Azteca raised 93 millon pesos and they bought 40 ambulances and they will be raffling them off to different chapters) We have 4 ambulances and they don’t have the newest equipment, if we get one, that will be a huge help but everything happens little by little.

Thanks. Now we understand better the job that the Red Cross does and all the things that they must do to offer a good service to the Zihuatanejo community.

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