The Red Cross is often thought of as a place you go to have needles jammed into your arm and have blood taken out.
What many people do not know is that The Red Cross is all about saving lives, and teaching others to do the same.
Paulina Fisher, student here at City College, is the club founder. The planning for the club started in the summer of 2014, and then officially started in the following fall semester.
“The main goal of the club is to learn how to relieve suffering by learning how to prepare people for disasters, emergencies, and personal emergencies,” Fisher said. “[We] learn how to relieve suffering by running shelters during disasters and supporting our troops. We help anyone who needs help.”
One of the major events The Red Cross Club attended this semester was a shelter drill put on by The Red Cross Association that was held at UCSB. A shelter drill is similar to a fire or earthquake drill.
“We each got to play a client and a staff member at the drill. Clients were given characters to act out and staff set up the shelter and helped the clients,” said Fisher.
Last semester, the club also sent greeting cards to the troops that were written by the students of City College.
Fisher says that she hopes to expand the club and get more people involved.
“I think it would be great to have people on campus who are trained in this area incase there actually is a real disaster,” Fisher said.
The goal is to prepare as many people as possible for emergencies both big and small. Although the club is still small, the club members are certainly enjoying the experience.
“While it may be a newer club, I feel it’s well on it’s way to helping people both feel and be more prepared in a disaster or even just life emergencies,” Club member Luke Barnette said. “I myself joined out of desire to learn first-aid basics and stuff like CPR.”
Fisher would like to become more hands-on with this new club and really start planning to put on major events here on-campus.
She would also like to do a joint even with the UCSB Red Cross Club. As for the meetings, she plans to make them more as a learning experience by having guest speakers come in and teach about CPR, first aid, and disaster relief.
The Red Cross club meets at 1 p.m. every Thursday in Campus Center Room 216.
