Letter from Mid-West Tennessee Executive Director, David Hicks - January 2019

Happy New Year, Mid-West Tennessee volunteers! I hope that each of you is enjoying the new year so far and are appreciative of all the blessings you experienced during 2018. Let’s begin now to make every effort to ensure that 2019 is the most successful year in the history of our chapter!

Our chapter has already been fortunate to host an outstanding volunteer recruitment event earlier this month on Saturday morning, January 5th, at the Hospital North in Jackson. 32 people from four different counties in our chapter coverage area participated in a Red Cross Open House to hear about our service opportunities and to meet our staff and several of our veteran volunteers. By all accounts, it as the most successful chapter recruiting event that anyone could ever remember having! 17 of the 32 first time visitors that morning registered to be a Red Cross volunteer before leaving. We feel confident that the remaining attendees will also register. These new volunteer additions will help us shore up and strengthen different service areas within our chapter such as disaster action team (DAT) representation, case work, and Services to the Armed Forces.

I want to give a special thanks to all of our media partners for their part in helping our volunteer recruiting event be such a big success! WBBJ-TV (through the News Director Stan Sanders and reporter Stephanie Fernandez) and the Jackson Sun (through the community events reporter Cassandra) did an amazing job of promoting our event throughout all of their coverage counties. When we questioned the attendees the day of the event on how they became aware of our recruiting outreach the great majority attested it to the local news and newspaper. We’ll continue to utilize our strong partnerships with our local media throughout 2019.

Let’s continue to serve our communities with even greater passion and commitment under the banner of the Red Cross!