Kilts, paper planes and my fundraising challenge

Every March, for the last 70 years or so, we’ve held Red Cross Calling. It’s our biggest annual community fundraiser and brings tens of thousands of people from across the country together to connect, have fun and raise vital funds for our work. 

Some of my Red Cross colleagues are staging personal fundraising challenges through off-the-wall activities like wearing kilts for a month or having paper plane competitions. Last year I wore skirts for all of March, and you my friends and colleagues donated an amazing $7,000, but this time around I’ve decided on a different tack.

I will be hosting weekly conversations on social media. Each week of March I will highlight some of our work from my perspective and why it is important.

Then afterwards it’s up to you to decide whether you want to donate to my fundraising efforts to support Red Cross’ important work.

I’m kicking off week one with the theme of social connection, something most of us take for granted. This article by Huge Mackay ‘The State of the Nation Starts in Your Street’ sets the scene.

Why social connection is important

My partner, Pete, and I have been a bit sick lately with a flu, which I brought back from Europe. So it was a lovely surprise when a bowl of ratatouille turned up on our doorstep followed by a delicious chicken turmeric noodle soup.

We have great neighbours. Pete has always been fantastic at being a part of our local scene and it feels much better to be able to have a chat over the fence, check in if something is amiss and just to be there for your neighbours.

At Red Cross, tens of thousands of our volunteers catch up with tens of thousands of people who are on their own more than they should be.

We know that having strong local connections can be a major factor in helping people recover from disasters, rebuild their lives after tough times, in preventing loneliness and providing a social glue to stop people falling through the cracks.

Hugh Mackay rightly points to the growing challenge of loneliness, being deeply excluded, mental health and our increasingly isolated and polarised lives. 

Antidotes and ideas

David Brooks talks of one antidote in this article, ‘A Nation of Weavers - The social renaissance is happening from the ground up’. 

Red Cross people are also providing antidotes through the work they do in their communities every day.

Building on this work, Australian Red Cross has an aspiration that we, with others, build a humanitarian nation of millions of Australians.

We know the majority of us, young and old, want to do more. In fact, we know from our research that nine million Australians want to do more in their communities.

At Red Cross right now we’re working on a bunch of ways to help people to do this. Those ideas include:

• a single verified identity for volunteers to use no matter which community organisation they support
• a marketplace for people to post and find opportunities
• our Get Prepared app which is all about helping you and your community be prepared for disasters
• and being launched next month, My Team an app for people living with mental health concerns (which we are testing with the help of beyondblue, Black Dog Institute and Lifeline).

Along with this, we are also doing research with Swinburne University so we can better understand, with the science to back it up, what it takes to build healthy social connections.

Unintended magic

One thing we love about our social connection work is the unintended magic. I remember hearing the story of a volunteer who had always wanted to paint and an elderly successful painter who was living on her own and slowly losing her eyesight.

They met and got to know each other through our Community Visitors Scheme. One day the volunteer turned up to find paints and painting materials laid out in the lounge room and so began a wonderful relationship and painting lessons.

I have also chosen a song to match my theme for the week – ‘What About Us’ by Pink. The lyrics go: “We are searchlights, we can see in the dark. We are rockets pointed up at the stars. We are billions of beautiful hearts….” 

If you would like to donate to my Red Cross Calling efforts – you can find my page here.

Next week’s theme – reconciliation.

Judy Slatyer