| Red
Cross to have festival April 21 as part of chapter's 'reinvention'
By Miriah Griffith
April 13, 2007 | CACHE COUNTY -- The Cache County
Red Cross is having its first Red Cross Festival April
21 at the Celebration Centre.
“It’s important for our community to know that we
are not funded by the government or by national Red
Cross,” said Executive Director Susan Shaw. “The generosity
and goodness of our community supports our chapter.”
The Festival is part of the “reinvention” of the chapter,
which started last October when Shaw came on as executive
director.
“For the past two years our chapter hasn’t broken
even,” Shaw said. “People are very generous when there’s
a disaster, but we haven’t had any large-scale disasters
lately.”
Instead of having small fund-raisers throughout the
year that don’t yield much revenue, they’ve decided
to have one annual fund-raiser, Shaw said.
“Do it once, and do it with a bang,” she said.
One goal of reinventing the chapter is informing the
community of all the services they have to offer and
get away from being “disaster-driven,” Shaw said.
The Red Cross offers emergency preparedness classes,
first-aid kits, blankets, 72-hour kits, and more. “People
just don’t know we carry these things,” Shaw said. “And
at really low prices!”
As part of the reinvention, the Red Cross changed
locations. It is now at 230 S. Main St.
“Wasatch Property has been great helping us get a
location right off Main Street,” Shaw said.
Shaw came on as executive director in October 2006
and will be stepping down in May.
“This has been a very good experience, but it’s not
something I ever wanted to do long term,” she said.
As an entrepreneur for more than 20 years, Shaw said
her experience and passion is in “fixing up” struggling
businesses and moving on to the next.
She said she will stay on as a volunteer after May.
She tearfully recalled a time her house burned down
several years ago.
“Red Cross was there,” she said. “That’s what we’re
about. We’re all about people helping people and you
don’t understand that until you witness a disaster or
it happens to you.”
Shaw said volunteers constitute 98 percent of the
Cache County Red Cross workers.
“This is a good organization,” Shaw said. “And I know
whoever takes on Executive Director after me will do
a good job.”
MS
PB
|
