The number of asylum seekers coming to Finland has grown to reach a new record. The number of underage asylum seekers requiring special protection has also increased significantly. The Finnish Red Cross will open new reception centres in collaboration with the Finnish Immigration Service.
Despite the radical cuts to development cooperation, the Finnish Red Cross will continue to help those who are the most vulnerable there where the need for aid is the greatest. The organisation asks the government not to further weaken the chain of aid by decreasing humanitarian aid.
July is often the busiest time for Voluntary Rescue Service, i.e. Vapepa, to search for missing persons, as the number of those who get lost or go missing increases during summertime. This summer, Vapepa is using a new search method which helps setting search missions in motion more quickly than before.
Late May Finnish Red Cross opened an Emergency Response Teddy Clinic in connection with the annual World Village Festival, celebrating multiculturalism in downtown Helsinki.
The need for help is still great in Nepal, particularly in the remote areas. The mobile clinics of the Finnish Red Cross will be located in the badly damaged Dolakha district that lost half of its healthcare clinics in the earthquakes.
European governments are wrong if they think they can cut off the flood of refugees crossing the Mediterranean by sending fleets to destroy the vessels of human smugglers, said the Vice-President of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the Kenyan doctor Abbas Gullet.
The Finnish Red Cross has received numerous questions about how best to help the afflicted people in Nepal. At the moment, the most efficient way to get help to those in need is via the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. The collected funds are used for emergency relief and acquisition of materials for people who have lost their homes.
Finnish Red Cross sent an emergency response unit, specialized in logistics, to Kathmandu airport, Nepal. This single international airport in the country is, and will be for the foreseeable future, a hub for incoming aid. There are only a couple of land routes into the country, and the roads are difficult to negotiate.
Everyone has the right to get help. A person might need help at home or in the street, and the need for help is almost always sudden. During the Red Cross Week between 4th and 10th of May, the Red Cross emphasises the first aid skills of young people, in particular.
The ski slope volunteer is both a skier and a helper, who is quickly on the spot when accidents happen. Eija Häkämies from Kouvola is on duty while spending time with her family.
The schoolyard of the International School in Espoo is filled with a sea of red collector vests. Over 170 middle school students have gathered wearing Red Cross attire to participate in the Hunger Day Walk.
The disaster drill brought together the organization’s volunteers, ”evacuees” and retirement home staff, among others. The Midwinter event was a rehearsal of action in the middle of a winter storm.
The Finnish Red Cross launches an emergency appeal for funds on March 14. The Finnish Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund needs donations to prepare for helping victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
Over a two-week period, Finns have donated some EUR 2,5 million to the Finnish Red Cross Haiti Collection. Until now, funded by the Finnish Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund, the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and ECHO, the FRC has sent to Haiti a mobile clinic, a field hospital operating theatre, a hospital ward with 100 beds, aid supplies, and 34 aid workers
The Finnish Red Cross continues its efforts in Jokela. The Red Cross stand-by team of psychologists provides support for students and teachers at the Jokela School Centre to help them carry on with their daily lives.
Each morning around six o’clock, Finnish Red Cross aid worker Pauli Immonen wakes up in his tent at the Port-au-Prince airport. Having had breakfast, he is off to the logisticians’ meeting at the nerve centre of the International Red Cross, the main camp, from which the Haiti operation is coordinated.
The International Red Cross is preparing to help quake victims in Haiti over at least a three-year period. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies estimate that some 60,000 families, or some 300,000 people, are in need of aid. The IFRC now estimates that providing them with aid over three years will cost a total of EUR 73 million.
A second batch of relief supplies leaves the Finnish Red Cross logistics centre in Tampere today, en route to Haiti. The supplies, including 240 family tents big enough to house a family of six, are first transported to Berlin by lorry. Also bound for Germany are 600 tarpaulins which can be used to build temporary shelters. In Berlin the Finnish supplies will join a German Red Cross field hospital and be flown to Port-au-Prince.
On Friday, 15 January 2010, the Finnish Red Cross has sent a mobile clinic to the earthquake zone in Haiti. A total of twelve aid workers have also been sent to Haiti to get the clinic up and running, and will then work in it. Eight of the aid workers are from Finland, two from Sweden and two from France.
