10

Farmers from western Kenya could not hide the joy on their faces last summer as they filled a large truck with watermelon they had grown themselves. Abdi Khalim was one of the only farmers to experiment with a horticultural crop within the first planting season using the irrigation scheme established by Kenya Red Cross in the Kerio Valley.

As darkness began to settle in Nepal Tuesday night after the second earthquake hit, a newborn baby’s cry restored the spirits of a team of nine Canadian Red Cross aid workers in Khukondole.

National Lifejacket Day – did you even know there was such a thing?  Just before the May long weekend every year, the Canadian Red Cross works to raise awareness about the importance of wearing lifejackets. Each year, my colleagues and I wear lifejackets to work for the day to prompt conversations about drowning prevention. But being wide and busty, the ones I used to wear sat too high and barely closed.
Until recently, the truth is I hated lifejackets.  

In celebration of March Is Red Cross Month, we’re honouring Helena Hardwick, who left her remote prairie ranch to volunteer overseas as an ambulance driver during the Second World War.

To combat stigma, particularly against those who have survived the Ebola virus, the Red Cross is using music and television to spread messages of anti-discrimination.

Five years ago, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti impacting millions of lives, and leading to the largest single-country emergency response in Red Cross history. Today, the work continues through long-term projects to support communities on their path to recovery.

Recently, Canadian Red Cross volunteer and photographer Johan Hallberg-Campbell travelled to Haiti to document that progress. His work, Haiti five years on: An Fòm!, is a stunning collection of images of some of the people and places that tell the story of Haiti’s recovery. 

It's hard to believe that 2014 has very nearly come to a close. Nostalgia has officially kicked in and we’ve started to reminisce over all the notable events that occurred in the last twelve months. While many top 10 lists focus on the newsworthy stories from pop culture, sports and science, we thought we’d also take a minute to look back at the year in Red Cross Talks posts. So, without further ado, here are our ten favourite posts of 2014 in no particular order. 

Nawaf was three years into a challenging five-year bachelor’s degree in computer and information engineering in Damascus when the ongoing Syrian conflict forced him to put his dreams on pause. His family had already fled the country some 18 months before, but Nawaf, 24, and the oldest of seven siblings, stayed behind.