By Sid Kaparthi, American Red Cross

During the summer before our junior year in high school, a few of my friends and I became interested in the idea of making an impact within our school community. Naturally, our first idea was to start a club. But what type of club? We were all interested in entering the medical field so a medical-based club sounded like a good idea but there was one problem- our school already had several ‘medical’ clubs. After many hours of researching, exchanging ideas, and discussing with one another, we created, or discovered, the idea for a Red Cross Club.

A Red Cross Club sounded perfect. It would provide the opportunity to raise funds for those in need, offer service to the armed forces, and teach life-saving skills to our peers. Since I had almost zero experience with the Red Cross, it was great opportunity to learn more. We approached the activities director of our high school in August of 2023 with the Red Cross Club idea, and he shared our enthusiasm. We got approval to begin the club soon after and quickly began brainstorming ideas for our first project. We arrived at the idea of starting a CPR/AED training campaign to raise awareness about the importance of learning CPR and how to perform it if needed. We held weekly CPR training sessions during September and October and encouraged members to create Red Cross Volunteer Connections Accounts, allowing them to access online free CPR training courses and acquire the necessary prior knowledge. We concluded our CPR training campaign by holding a test day in which members performed CPR on a manikin and used an AED while being watched by our sponsor who was CPR-certified. Ultimately, we ended up with 15 CPR-trained members, which to us was the same as 15 lives saved.

After our CPR project, we became interested in making an impact beyond our school. We discussed and decided to host a ‘Vaccinate-a-Village’ Fundraiser within our school. The goal was to raise money to vaccinate children against measles in developing countries. We acquired pins from the Red Cross to sell in our cafeteria for $2 and offered other amenities like Red Cross drawstring bags. We set up a stand in our cafeteria and sold pins for an entire week in December and ended up raising almost $300, which equated to almost 150 lives saved. To this day, this is one of our proudest projects.

As of now, we are still planning projects and ideas to do before the school year ends, but our eyes are set on a big project that will take place next year, a Red Cross Blood Drive.