Charity of the Year

Picture of local resident outside new village clinic

© International Federation of the Red Cross
Local resident Chen Lunjie at the new village clinic built with help from the Shanghai Red Cross following the Sichuan earthquake.

Johnson Matthey’s Charity of the Year for 2008/09 is the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, the world’s largest humanitarian organisation. The Red Cross not only provides immediate relief to those affected by disasters and individual emergencies across the world, they also help people prepare for and recover from them. Their network of 186 National Societies play a vital role in carrying out care, prevention and preparedness programmes – from visiting chronically ill HIV patients in Africa to organising early warning drills in hurricane-prone areas of the Americas.

Since the devastating earthquake in Sichuan, south west China in May 2008, the Red Cross has worked to restore the health infrastructure with dozens of new clinics. In Jiulong – a township almost completely levelled by the earthquake – and two neighbouring townships, the Red Cross is working on detailed plans to help reconstruct more than 17,000 village houses, with associated water and sanitation projects.

In South Africa, the Red Cross runs eight home based care programmes for people living with HIV; the British Red Cross supports two of these in KwaZulu Natal. The programmes provide simple healthcare and help people help each other. Skhumbuzo, for example, who was diagnosed with HIV four years ago, has been helped by a Red Cross facilitator to come to terms with his status, start living positively and eat more healthily. “No one can help us without us helping ourselves first,” he concluded. Support is also given to children who have lost a parent to AIDS, including providing school materials and even paying school fees.

At the level of domestic disaster, the Red Cross in the UK runs a fire and emergency support service. The service provides practical help and emotional support to vulnerable victims of a domestic fire or flood. As one victim said: “I don’t know how I would have coped without the Red Cross support … I can’t say how valuable the Red Cross volunteers were”.

Johnson Matthey’s partnership with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent began in August 2008. Fund raising activities have taken place around the world including raffles, an e-card instead of a hard copy Christmas card with the savings going to the charity, recycling initiatives, marathon and running events and an employee challenge at a company summer picnic.

Charity of the Year

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