Emergency Services Partnerships

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Partnership Brochure

Community Partner

Spotlight

Church
of the Ascension
Virginia Beach

It is with great pleasure that we announce the tenth anniversary partnership between the American Red Cross Southeastern Virginia Chapter and Church of the Ascension in Virginia Beach, VA.

Church of the Ascension has been instrumental in providing support to our local Red Cross chapter through several disaster events over the years, including Hurricane Isabel and Tropical Storm Hannah.

The Church has generously donated the use of a large multi-purpose room to the Red Cross to use as an emergency operation site from which the Red Cross can effectively manage delivery of vital services such as feeding, sheltering and bulk distribution of comfort and cleanup supplies to those who have been affected by the disaster.

The congregation also delivered much appreciated tender loving care by providing food to our Red Cross disaster relief volunteers who were using the facility.

Thank you Church of the Ascension! We look forward to another ten years of collaborative effort in providing disaster relief to our Hampton Roads community.

Emergency Services
Corporate Partners

American Red Cross Southeastern Virginia is proud to announce a new partner venture with our local business community called Ready When The Times Comes. Click here to learn more.

Community Partners

In time of disaster, many organizations want to help provide emergency assistance. We know that it takes an entire community working together to provide the most effective recovery assistance.

Recent history has shown that cooperation and sharing of resources has proven to be the best way to reach the most people with the most resources to rebuild an even stronger community.

For many years we have depended on local government to provide shelters and staff for large numbers of people affected by a disaster. This usually works for the large numbers of people giving them some time (2-4 days) to make other arrangements for lodging. Unfortunately there are smaller numbers of people (often less than 100) that have no other immediate options and need a little longer to work out a plan. Even more often we are faced with finding shelter for smaller numbers of people since their disaster was smaller (an apartment building fire or a small tornado). When the smaller disasters happen, local governments cannot mobilize to open schools for shelters. This is when the community looks to agencies like ours for help.

In the southeastern Virginia area we are trying to identify organizations and agencies that have resources for emergency assistance during these smaller disasters. This assistance may include sheltering and feeding but also other assistance may be needed as well. When the resources are identified before the disaster, assistance can be provided more quickly. This makes recovery a little easier for those involved. One organization or group may have a facility, another organization may have the staff, and yet another group may have the resources to prepare and serve meals. If your organization can help with any of these needs, we would like to work with you to plan for the next disaster.

If you have a facility suitable for interviewing disaster clients, training disaster volunteers, warehousing supplies, sheltering, feeding, and/or cooking, please let us know.

If you have people willing to help, please let us know. Perhaps people in your organization are instructors, presenters, or hold licenses for health services or mental health services. Perhaps they would be willing to be trained to provide disaster relief. This could be providing casework to disaster clients or responding to local fires to provide immediate needs to people who have been burnt out of their home. We can work out a plan for training and communication.

To learn more about becoming a community partner, please contact:

Louise McCarthy
Disaster Services Coordinator for Partner Services
American Red Cross of Southeastern Virginia
611 West Brambleton Avenue
Norfolk, VA 23510

757- 446- 7760
mccarthyl@seva-redcross.org