SSF Blurb

The Summer Service Fellowship gave me the pleasure of working for Tennessee’s Mid-South Chapter of the American Red Cross in their Volunteer Services department. As a pre-med student here at Rhodes, I aspire to help improve others health by minimizing sickness and pain everyday, and one day as a profession. When I was first introduced to the Red Cross, their mission statement described exactly how I desire to serve others and immerse myself in this community: “The American Red Cross prevents and alleviates human suffering in the face of emergencies by mobilizing the power of volunteers.” Their goals for this community are realized through responding to disasters, supporting members and families of the Armed Forces, ensuring that everyone has access to blood products, and preparing others in this community to cope with the unexpected – everything from tornadoes to heart attacks.

            My role at the Red Cross was mainly helping to recruit, on-board, and educate new volunteers. This meant going in to the community and promoting the Red Cross, brainstorming ideas to increase the influx of volunteers, facilitating the online application process for volunteers, and establishing relationships with volunteers by educating them about the Red Cross’s role in the community and where they could fit in to our team. Some of my most rewarding experiences this summer were training high school students to be Red Cross volunteers and learning why other members of this community had the desire to serve others through the Red Cross. Reasons for serving the community through the Red Cross ranged from a mother wanting to give back to the organization that had helped comfort her while her two sons were deployed, to a man that thought the Red Cross was the best way to "see the good in other people" in the midst of people's hardest times. Although most of my work revolved around the Volunteer Services department, I also received CPR, AED, and adult choking certifications, participated in drills that mimic disasters to help Emergency Responders practice for times of crisis, and interacted with underprivileged Memphis families seeking help because disasters had affected their homes. In the future, I hope to continue promoting the Red Cross by helping to coordinate a blood drive at Rhodes, and by encouraging my peers to participate in “Holiday Cards for Heroes,” a campaign to provide cards and comfort to soldiers and their families in Memphis affected during the holiday season.

            For me, Rhodes and the Memphis community truly is a “home away from home,” and the Summer Service Fellowship allowed me to give back to these places in a meaningful way. Working in the Volunteer Services department gave me a new perspective on why we serve, what good service does, and how necessary service is in the Memphis community. We serve for all different reasons; it is a personal choice that usually stems from a desire to help others with the skills that we can provide. Often times it is deeper: we feel like an organization or a community has invested so much in us personally, and we want to reciprocate that relationship. Service at the Red Cross - an organization where more than 90% of humanitarian work is done by volunteers - means helping others find their niche where they love helping their community, feeling prepared if the man next to you in a restaurant starts choking, providing food, water, and comfort to a family whose roof caved in during a heavy summer rainstorm, and putting a smile on a kid's face when you enthusiastically demonstrate how to "stop, drop, and roll."  Memphis especially needs service because of the great inequalities in income, accessibility, transportation, education, and health care that we explored over the course of this fellowship. At the Red Cross, I was able to focus on not only the great need Memphis has for service, but also the great number of volunteers that work to satisfy this need every day. Without the other obligations that I have during the school year, I was able to dive wholeheartedly into the Memphis non-profit world and the social problems those organizations strive to improve. I have a greater appreciation for the hard work, patience, and strength in numbers it takes to operate a successful non-profit. While Memphis’s – like any other community – problems can’t change overnight, they can and will only change by the selfless actions of individuals that come together for a united cause.