In this age of ram­pant crime, ma­te­ri­al­ism and un­apolo­getic self-in­ter­est dri­ven by greed, there is a bea­con of hope shin­ing bright­ly among us in T&T and the world. This is the In­ter­na­tion­al Red Cross and Red Cres­cent Move­ment, of which the Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Cross So­ci­ety (TTRCS) is a mem­ber.

It is a vi­brant body made up of men, women and youth from all walks of life, who have ded­i­cat­ed them­selves to the no­ble task of sav­ing oth­ers, and sac­ri­fic­ing their time, en­er­gy and re­sources to do so.

The alarm­ing fre­quen­cy of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, and civ­il and oth­er wars tak­ing place around the world, most re­cent­ly in Japan, the Mid­dle-East and the Ivory Coast, have made such per­sons im­por­tant pil­lars for the preser­va­tion of hu­man civil­i­sa­tion.

The move­ment's mis­sion was birthed on a bloody bat­tle­field in North­ern Italy dur­ing the lit­tle re­mem­bered Bat­tle of Solferi­no in 1859. Stung to the core of his heart by the wide­spread suf­fer­ing that took place dur­ing this bat­tle as men on both sides were left to lit­er­al­ly rot and die with lit­tle or no med­ical as­sis­tance, a Swiss busi­ness­man, Hen­ri Dunant, de­cid­ed to in­ter­vene. Through his ef­forts to help the vic­tims of war, the In­ter­na­tion­al Red Cross was born in 1863. Dunant pro­posed that coun­tries should adopt an in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ment, which would recog­nise the sta­tus of med­ical ser­vices and the wound­ed on the bat­tle­field giv­ing them vi­tal pro­tec­tion.

This body, now called the In­ter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee of the Red Cross, was orig­i­nal­ly called the In­ter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee for Re­lief to the Wound­ed. The ICRC, through the con­ven­tions, fer­vent­ly seeks to reg­u­late the con­duct of armed con­flict by pre­vent­ing atroc­i­ties such as the slaugh­ter of the wound­ed on the bat­tle­field. The lo­cal TTRCS is com­prised of a splen­did core of 6,000 in­di­vid­u­als who share Dunant's vi­sion of be­ing their broth­ers' keep­ers. The TTRCS is made up of 1,000 mem­bers and vol­un­teers and 5,000 youth link mem­bers. It is di­vid­ed in­to three branch­es: the north­ern branch in Port-of-Spain, the south­ern branch in San Fer­nan­do, and the To­ba­go branch at Sig­nal Hill in To­ba­go.

The TTRCS qui­et­ly pre­pares it­self and its com­mu­ni­ties to go in­to ac­tion should dis­as­ter strike our beau­ti­ful twin-is­land re­pub­lic of oil, mu­sic and beau­ti­ful peo­ple.

These un­her­ald­ed vol­un­teers are al­ways seek­ing to en­able healthy and safe liv­ing in T&T by pro­vid­ing good health and life style ini­tia­tives, such as im­prov­ing HIV aware­ness and even car­ry­ing out re­for­esta­tion projects to pre­vent flood­ing and pre­serve the en­vi­ron­ment. Com­pa­nies with a sense of cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty can al­so be­come cor­po­rate vol­un­teers by pro­vid­ing pro-bono ser­vices and ex­per­tise to the TTRCS. Work­ers can be en­cour­aged to sup­port the TTRCS in their free time. Rep­sol is one such com­pa­ny that makes a mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion to the TTRCS along with the Eu­ro­pean Com­mu­ni­ty. There is a sim­ple but very pro­found lo­cal say­ing, "When yuh neigh­bour house on fire, wet yuh own." Let us now join with the TTRCS to pre­pare this coun­try for dis­as­ters, which can hap­pen at any time and with very lit­tle or no warn­ing at all.

FITZROY OTH­EL­LO JR