Red Cross to launch Disaster Response Emergency Fund

The World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day will be celebrated on May 8 worldwide to commemorate the birthday of the movement's founding father Henry Dunant, a media release from the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society said.

The Sri Lanka Red Cross Society will celebrate this event by conducting a number of volunteer activities in helping the community. Thousands of volunteers from all 26 branches throughout the country will participate.

The main event at each branch would be to clean and paint a hospital ward in the district. Under the theme 'together for humanity' various other activities will also be carried out which include volunteer blood donor recruitment camps, mobile medical clinics, distribution of relief and first aid boxes to schools, dissemination of the principles of Red Cross, street dramas, shramadana campaigns and fund-raising events.

In addition children's art competitions and cultural pageants will be held at branches to mark the occasion.

The Sri Lanka Red Cross Society since it inception in 1936 has been active in providing relief and first aid to victims of various disasters. Volunteers trained in first aid help at every major event and disaster faced by the most vulnerable in the country.

In support of this relief activity, the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society will launch the Disaster Response Emergency Fund on World Red Cross Day May 8.

This fund will enable the Society to better respond to future emergencies more quickly thus alleviating the suffering of those affected.

The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is the largest International Humanitarian Organisation in the world. Founded in 1863, by Henry Dunant, a Swiss national and five others in Switzerland, today it has over 97 million members and volunteers and provides assistance to over five million every year.