The American National Red Cross

Since 2015, the memories made in this organization only keeps growing. Starting from a high school club to a young professional on his chapter's board of directors.

The American Red Cross is a wonderful organization to have been associated with for this long! I joined the Red Cross as the first Vice President of Pacifica High School's Red Cross club. As the club was created, as a board, we had high ambitions to bring Red Cross to our school. We contributed to many school blood drives and presented on disaster preparedness topics. However, this was short-lived as the club would eventually disband the following year due to a lack of interest and commitment. This, however, did not stop me from getting involved!

In 2017, Hurricanes Harvey & Irma devastated the eastern coast. A disaster relief operation soon occurred. During this time, donations were needed to help fund and support those operations. As a response, I personally led a fundraising effort with Pacifica's ASB body. We distributed donation cans in each classroom for the teachers to gather donations. At the end of a month-long donation timeframe, we have raised $2,000+ for the disaster relief efforts. During that same year, the Thomas Fire enraged Ventura County, forcing almost all the schools in the county to close, I went straight to work in a shelter. I assisted my school as a liaison for our office to guide them with donations and disaster relief efforts.

Once enrolled at CSUCI, my involvement with the Red Cross only grew as I started volunteering my time in Disaster Cycle Services and Biomedical Services. As I was already familiar with blood drive, I signed up to become a Blood Donor Ambassador. This position allowed me to sign up to volunteer at various blood drives in the county to assist with check-in, hospitality, and set-up and closing procedures. CSUCI held regular blood drives throughout the year. This led me to become the dedicated Ambassador as some drives may be closed to the public and only available to the campus community. This furthered my involvement as I would have internal contacts to assist with the blood drive planning and recruitment processes.

Disaster in Ventura County is, though not many, very prevalent and is something the county prepares for crucially. Seeing the effects of the Thomas fire (2017) and the Woolsey and Hill fires (2018), I decided to put my foot in the door for Disaster Relief positions. From there, I trained to become a shelter worker to assist those displaced and in need of a place to stay, food to eat, and services to tend to. This led me to have an interest in the Disaster Action Team, a dedicated group of individuals who are second responders to local disasters. To this day, I continue to train and balance my schedule as this is a critical and time-consuming position to have.