Hundreds of thousands of new volunteers around the world have joined their National Red Cross and Red Crescent Society last year, providing life support to their local communities amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Widespread increases were reported by the American Red Cross (78,000 new enrollments), by the Italian Red Cross (nearly 60,000 new enrollments as part of its initiative “Time of Kindness”), the Dutch Red Cross (48,000 new members to their Ready2Help Citizen Aid Network) and the Kenyan Red Cross (35,000 new members). New and long-time volunteers have dedicated their time to wide-ranging COVID-19 response activities, such as supplying essential food and medical items, transport of patients to health facilities, support with test and contact tracing, providing psycho-social support to vulnerable and quarantined people, distribution of personal protective equipment (PPE), and disseminating reliable and accurate health information to their communities.

Source: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies