Red Cross seeks volunteers for military family support

Published 3:30 pm Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Some might not know that Red Cross founder, Clara Barton, initially created the organization with the military in mind.

That’s what Sharon Woodville hopes to remind people when she asks for their assistance in the coming months.

“We try to see what our armed forces need and see if we can find ways to assist them,” Woodville said. “We work with a wide variety of organizations to try to meet their needs.”

Woodville, a Services to the Armed Forces Specialist for the Red Cross, acts as a liaison between service members and their families, helps organize air shows, starts veteran garden clubs and more across the state.

Woodville’s favorite effort might include a Family Fun Day with the Air National Guard, helping distribute and find prizes, passing out cotton candy and organizing a craft for children to make cards for the State Veterans Home in Kosciusko.

“We’re always looking for new things,” Woodville, who primarily serves the north half of the state from her office at the Naval Air Station in Meridian, said.

Specifically, Woodville follows up on communications between families and their deployed members, whether it’s a son, daughter, parent or spouse.

Woodville helps verify that the message, called an emergency communication message, is an emergency as classified by the Department of Defense. Then she passes it along the right chain of communication so a commander can decide whether to grant leave.

Each message must have three follow-up calls, giving Woodville 18 to 25 cases each day. With future deployments anticipated in the upcoming months, this number would grow.

“The more there are deployed the more communication messages that we get,” Woodville said. “We want to get the word out there and try to get caseworkers.”

Woodville works as the primary caseworker for the moment, splitting her duties with two others in the state, one on the coast and one in Jackson. Each state location, however, is hoping to recruit several volunteers to help as caseworkers and follow-up on calls.

“Anybody with a cell phone and access to a computer with the Internet can do it,” Woodville said. “It could be as little as a few hours a week.”

Even then, Woodville said volunteers could come to local Red Cross offices if they didn’t have access to those things. Secondly, Woodville said that volunteering had no set hours and could be as flexible as needed.

“We’re really, really in need of caseworkers,” Woodville said. “ASAP.”

Woodville said she and her two counterparts would each teach a separate class – in Tupelo, Flowood and Gulfport – all on March 9 from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Woodville encouraged those interested in volunteering to go online and sign up. Woodville said the organization could use volunteers of all sorts, not just caseworkers.

“I’ve been around the military my whole life. I think it’s a great program,” Woodville said. “I want to do what I can to help the brave men and women who leave their lives and families behind to serve. Anything to help make that transition easier.”

To learn more about the Red Cross or sign up to volunteer, visit the Red Cross website at redcross.org.