Your local Red Cross unit could have just the opportunity – from training to be and ready to respond to disasters to supporting a blood drive from delivering messages to our US service personnel to connecting families displaced by disasters or conflict.

The American Red Cross is one of several community organizations working together to respond to disasters. The Red Cross involves annually matching knowledge, skills, interests and experience of individual's with opportunities to serve their community.

We Depend on Volunteers

Volunteers constitute 96 percent of our total work force to carry on our humanitarian work:

* Every year the Red Cross responds to more than 70,000 disasters—including approximately 150 home fires every day.
* About 11 million Americans turn to us to learn first aid, CPR, swimming, and other health and safety skills. Last year, more than 158,000 people volunteered to teach those courses.
* Half the nation's blood supply— six million pints annually—is collected by more than 155,000 Red Cross volunteers .
* Among our emergency services for the men and women of the armed forces is the delivery of urgent family messages—around the clock and around the globe.
* More than 30,900 volunteers serve as chairs, members of boards of directors, or on advisory boards for local Red Cross units - chapters, Blood Services regions, and military stations.
* As part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, Red Cross reconnects more than 8,000 families separated by conflicts and disasters around the world through international tracking services and Red Cross messages.