Denver, Colorado, June 20th, 2019 – With the support from incredible donors like Western Union and the Western Union Foundation, the American Red Cross is able to partner together and join the global community to draw attention to the needs of refugees and the ways people can help shoulder their burden.
The American Red Cross Restoring Family Links program helps reunite families torn apart by war, separated during natural disasters and through separation caused by conflict. In Colorado and Wyoming Carol Murphy, a longtime Red Cross volunteer helps work with these families to help bring them back together.
“My team is in the business of reconnecting families who have become separated from their loved ones due to war, migration, natural disaster, political upheaval, or other family-shattering disasters. Our area is commonly referred to as Restoring Family Links, or RFL. We reach out to various ethnic communities and tell them what we do and how we might help them,” says Murphy.
But it isn’t just about meeting them, volunteers with the Red Cross also help them start over.
“When they are taken to their new apartment from the airport, waiting for them at the front door is a welcome basket from the Red Cross,” Murphy explains. “It contains some basic necessities for setting up housekeeping and includes— dishes, silverware, pots and pans, bedding, etc. There is also a packet of information telling what the Red Cross does and how to contact us.”
According to Murphy, the work that goes into finding a loved one is extremely lengthy and requires a bit of patience. Which is why the work of the Red Cross becomes such a great partnership.
“When a client comes to the American Red Cross with a request to find a loved one, they are interviewed, often with an interpreter, and then fill out a lengthy form and send it to Red Cross National headquarters in Washington D.C. The information in the form is reviewed and then sent to the country where the missing person was last seen. Once the information is received by that country’s Red Cross, they send it to the nearest Red Cross chapter in the closest city to the missing person’s last address. Then the search begins. When they have news, the information is returned through the same chain: local chapter to national organization, to our national organization to our chapter where we meet again with the client,” explains Murphy.
“My team spends a lot of time searching online, calling people who might know people, asking at churches, mosques, restaurants, recreation centers. Wherever someone from the missing person’s ethnic group might gather,” said Murphy.
For volunteers like Carol Murphy, the best part of being with Restoring Family Links is calling or visiting a client with the good news that the missing family member has finally been found.
“It is very hard to sit and listen as they quietly (and it is always “quietly”) tell how they became separated from their family. The pain of seeing friends and family killed, the horror of watching torture and death, the fear as they ran, or hid, or entered a camp full of strangers, the loneliness of being here in the United States and not knowing anyone. The isolation they feel in this strange place—so very, very different from their homeland—is palpable, and I want so much to somehow reach out and “make it better.”
Murphy goes on, “I love what I do—it isn’t much, but perhaps it is something to someone. When I was in the eighth grade—sixty years ago—I cut out a poem from Emily Dickinson, framed it and hung it in my room. The words from that poem rather encapsulate my reason for volunteering with the Red Cross:
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
It is Red Cross volunteers, like Carol Murphy who work tirelessly to help someone they have never met before. This year, Western Union and the Western Union Foundation are pledging to continue to help this work go on. Thanks to their generous, $100,000 gift, volunteers like Carol Murphy can reach out and help makes things better for so many.