‘Volunteers anchor Red Cross’
Larona Makhaiza | Monday June 13, 2022 06:00
Speaking at a media briefing on Tuesday, he revealed that the past two years have seen the organisation being able to assist over 1.8 million people who were in dire need of assistance from the Red Cross.
“The organisation managed to sign the memorandum of agreement and have since then been able to strike partnership deals with many partners such as the UNICEF, UNDP, International Organisation for Migration (IOM), government, Embassies, European Union (EU), International Federation of Red Cross and Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Mastercard Foundation, and many others,” Mukokomani revealed.
The organisation, just like any other charitable ones out there in the world, needs donors for it to be able carry out its mandate and be able to be of assistance to the less privileged people when they need help.
Over the years, Red Cross has realised that the donor funding has dwindled. Equally, donors are not keen on donating as there are many people out there who ask for donations and later on go and misuse the funds and not use them for the intended purposes.
“So, the Red Cross has taken that into consideration and came up with solutions to avert such issues as they have since revised their internal policies and systems to improve its operational and financial management, by introducing the human resource & legal sub committee and the finance & audit sub committee, so that they will be able to retain the trusts of their donors,” added Mukokomani.
He indicated that the BRCS has now become proactive as it has now been active with auditing for the past three years. They have even called out an outsider to come and audit their audit books and everything was up to date, he revealed.
Mukokomani said Red Cross has since secured an African CDC/Mastercard project called Saving Livelihood Project, and pointed out that this project aims to create demand for COVID-19 vaccines. The said project will take place in Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
The Red Cross has running projects, which include the fully equipped community farming in Gweta, physiotherapy clinic in Tlokweng, and many others. Mukokomani said their society forms part of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the largest humanitarian network operating in over 192 countries.
The Red Cross and Red Crescent movement are aided by their own principles that they use to make them be able to work well with different stakeholders. These are humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, universality, and unity.
The BCRS has since grown over the years as it now has a huge number of volunteers who are always eager to land a helping hand to this very organisation that assists people with the struggles that they are facing in their lives and the number of volunteers stands at 10, 000 with 46 branches across eight districts in the country.