Emergency 3

Monsoon rainfall in Pakistan is causing catastrophic landslides and flash flooding across the country. The record-breaking rains are nearly three times higher than the past 30-year average and have impacted an estimated 33 million people – for scale, the population of Canada is just over 38.6 million. 

On a November morning last year, as Travis looked inside his newly renovated shop, he could see the water slowly creeping higher. He was in disbelief. He had never imagined the flooding of the Nooksack River would have such a devastating impact on his property in Abbotsford.

The Princeton Family Services Society building in B.C. was damaged in the flooding and the cost of repairing their building has been a stressor. After hearing about the Canadian Red Cross’ Support to Small Businesses and Not-for-Profits Program, Jenny decided to apply for the financial assistance.
“The loss of building and then rebuilding is a huge cost to us,” emphasizes Jenny. “Help from Red Cross has really helped."

At the height of the COVID-19 outbreak in Nova Scotia, hundreds of free rapid antigen test kits arrived at Homebridge Youth Society, enabling the youth residential care provider to implement twice-weekly testing that helped keep the home in operation through the worst of the pandemic.

In East Africa, tens of millions of people are in dire need of food as a series of disasters from climate change, conflict, the COVID-19 pandemic, a locust invasion, and longstanding vulnerabilities have converged into a humanitarian crisis. Time is running out to avert starvation. Unless urgent action is taken, the continued drought in East Africa could come to resemble the one in 2011, which killed about 260,000 people in Somalia.

For many people who have left Ukraine since the end of February, helping others is a priority, both those who have also fled and those in their new communities. These are the stories of some women from Ukraine who are now supporting the work of the Romanian Red Cross.

Millions of people are being impacted by the conflict in Ukraine - these impacts are also being felt by people thousands of kilometres away. For some countries already facing food insecurity, the interruption to the food supply chain will be devastating.

The Gara de Nord train station in Bucharest is a busy place; it’s Romania’s main rail connection point with the rest of Europe. Since the escalation of the crisis in Ukraine, thousands of people fleeing the conflict have passed through this station. The Romanian Red Cross with its partners runs a quiet refuge in the midst of the bustle, a place for women and children to wait for connecting trains or other travel onward.