First of all, thank you for the opportunity to share experiences. My experience is very particular, because I am creating a youth group in the midst of this confusion related to this pandemic.

In fact, the experience is being positive, after some attempts to gather a young group of volunteers, contrary to what I thought, I was more easily able to gather a good group of volunteers who joined for this purpose.

I learned that this virus brought people together much more than it separated them, and united them for a cause, for a common purpose. That makes me very satisfied and proud. Volunteering in this situation made me feel truly useful as I had never felt in any previous volunteering. In the region where I am, the red cross was getting erased, and despite the whole situation, we are managing to reactivate the volunteering of the local red cross, with this return to the origins, where we gathered the community to help in times of war.

We are achieving with our work aimed at the elderly and vulnerable to transmit hope and confidence to overcome this phase. We continue to try daily to provide support in all needs so that people can feel supported.

The main challenge to deal with is fear, ours and that of the people we support, however we must continue to transmit security

Helena P. Pereira
Portuguese Red Cross
April 6, 2020