American Red Cross Internship Paper

Introduction My internship started on May 27th, 2015 at the American Red Cross (ARC) Eastern PA, with the Services to the Armed Forces (SAF) division. I joined ARC in October 2013 as a Disaster Action Team responder, but due to previous obligations I was unable to respond to an emergency, it was during this time that I quickly joined SAF as a caseworker/representative. For my internship I became the regional coordinator for the SAF division of the American Red Cross Eastern PA region which consists of 17 counties (See Appendix E). My duties consisted of performing SAF casework, attending veteran events representing the Red Cross, accompanying my supervisor to meetings and putting together a team of case workers, training them and setting

I transferred to the Philadelphia chapter in 2014 as a SAF case worker and after completing my remaining WCU course work asked SAF manager Andre McCoy to complete my internship under him. During my internship I was able to complete X cases (See Appendix CC) while helping create a team of Red Cross volunteers interested in SAF casework. While creating my team of caseworkers I performed hands on training with them, explaining how to perform an effective interview with the client obtaining the greatest amount of information to create a concise report for the case that is reviewed by national. I also created SAF directions (See Appendix D) explaining the different functions of the SAF Agent Lite program, how to perform a client interview/survey and how to write the appropriate phone logs/notes to the

My first event was a Veteran fair (See Appendix VF) which took place in Lansdowne, PA hosted by State Representative Margo L. Davidson and was attended by numerous vendors (See Appendix VF1) offering financial assistance, housing and job opportunities. This was a perfect chance to reach out to veterans and explain to them what the Red Cross SAF can do for them and also meet with the vendors and coordinate with them to help out our veterans better. The other big event that I had the opportunity to participate in was a Yellow Ribbon event for Navy Reservists (See Appendix YR) that have recently returned home from deployment. This was a returning warrior workshop for the reintegration phase of the reservist’s deployment. The Red Cross was asked to attend this event and set up a table with the other vendor offering information on our emergency communications, emergency financial assistance and our reconnection workshops that offer classes in babysitting, stress and anger management. I was able to get two other volunteers to attend the event with me and we were the last vendors to leave offering assistance and information to service members.

Disaster Action Team (DAT)

The mission of DAT is to alleviate human suffering caused my man-made and natural disaster from small scale (house fires, minor flooding) to large scale (Hurricanes, major flooding,