The American Red Cross is an organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief and education within the U.S., as well as globally with its international ties.
Many schools and college campuses across the country have formed their own Red Cross club to show support for the organization. This semester, students of Queens College decided to bring the organization to the QC campus.
The idea of starting a Red Cross club on Queens College started with Miriam Kaplan and Limore Nissanian, the president and vice president of Red Cross QC respectively.
“I came up with the idea of starting the club at QC when I volunteered at a blood drive this summer in New York City,” Miriam said. “I was volunteering with Limore, and we were both so excited that we were finally active members of the Red Cross. However, we wanted to volunteer at more blood drives but it was hard for us to volunteer because most events were in the city.”
A lot of students express dissatisfaction when they want to join an organization but cannot because the organization’s events are too far from where they live, and hard to commute to.
“We decided to bring Red Cross to QC to make it easier for ourselves and others to take part in Red Cross activities. We didn’t want people to wait until their senior year to join the Red Cross just because it was so inconvenient for them,” Miriam said.
Red Cross QC has made itself known from the beginning of the school year. From Welcome Day until now, Red Cross QC has been collaborating with the Student Association to host bake sales and drives to raise money for breast cancer awareness and research.
In order to raise money for all the recent natural disasters that have been happening, Red Cross QC collaborated with fraternity Alpha Epsilon Phi and hosted a photo-shoot to help countless hurricane victims. They raised over $500.
Their biggest event was the MidKnight Run, where Red Cross QC collaborated with the Veterans Club and were able to provide food, blankets and personal care items to the homeless in the streets of NYC.
“It was an amazing experience. Seeing some homeless people in their situation, and still being hopeful and optimistic, is just incredible, rare and inspiring. I’m happy I got to meet and help those people. Truly an awesome night, legendary,” Alexandra Kaziyeva, sophomore of QC and a member of Red Cross QC, said.
Although a new club, Red Cross QC have already hosted many events on and off campus, allowing students to experience many community service opportunities.
Currently, Red Cross QC is collecting water bottles for hurricane relief. At the QTips office in the Student Union, members of Red Cross QC take turns volunteering and informing students about their water bottle collection efforts, where they collect fresh water bottles and send it to victims of the many natural disasters that have recently occurred.
All of the E-board members of Red Cross QC have been constantly coming up with ideas to make sure that the club is involved on campus, as well as making sure students are informed about the club.
Miriam stated, “We are currently planning a joint event with the Veterans Club to have a relay race fundraiser to get as many clubs as possible involved on campus. The money will go towards making care packages to send to our troops. We are also working with the philanthropy committee to collect food for City Harvest for Thanksgiving.”
American Red Cross has been involved and in touch with the new club at QC.
“We are closely in touch with our supervisors from the American Red Cross Greater NY Region. Even though they themselves have been very involved in the disaster relief efforts, they are great about being in touch with us and have been instrumental in the formation of our club,” Miriam said.
Anyone interested joining the Red Cross QC should email redcrossqc@gmail.com.
For more updates, follow the Red Cross QC Facebook page.
