craigconnects teamed up with the American Red Cross on the #perfectgift campaign this past December. The idea of the campaign was for people to tell me, and the American Red Cross, what their #perfectgift would be. This gift could be for themselves or someone else, and for each mention across the web, until December 31, 2011, I donated up to $10k to the American Red Cross. The money was used to support the purchase of military comfort kits for our troops.

The American Red Cross shared that, “We think a perfect gift would be the opportunity to show all of you the very real impact that your donations have on the people helped by Red Cross every year!” I explained that, “my #perfectgift is when I’m able to give to those who do such good stuff.”

Eileen Unger posted on my Facebook page, that her #perfectgift would be:

To take advantage of every opportunity to ‘make a difference’ and to have the voice and ability to encourage others to do the same.

Kathleen Dean wrote on the Red Cross’ Facebook page to share her story:

Many years ago, my husband asked, ‘So what do you want for Christmas?’ My reply, ‘That you donate blood on a regular basis next year.’ Adding, ‘It is the gift of life that keeps on giving.’ He did that too.

We also reached out to the community to ask who made a charitable donation on someone’s behalf as a gift this year? We received a large variety of answers.
On Twitter…

@annekbradley said,

This year , I donated to Aid to Victims of Domestic Violence, my dad’s favoriote charity, in his honor. #perfectgift

@benmangan

donated to #PolarisProject, which fights modern day slavery, in memory of [his] grandmother, Florence Mangan.

People shared photos of their #perfectgift, too.

@LaurenJJohnson shared a picture of her giving blood:

the gift that saves the day through @RedCross!

@jerryjamesstone even tweeted at Craig,

Hey @craignewmark I’d like to match your @redcross donation as the #perfectgift for the first 100 tweeps who respond to you.

Jason Wilhoite told the Red Cross that

The perfect gift would be to see 10,000 donated even if you don’t get 10,000 comments. Now that would be a great gift.

I’m happy to announce that I was able to give the full $10k.

I hope folks will keep giving now that the holidays are over. As the American Red Cross tweeted recently,

…join us in 2012 and give hope to people who need it year-round.

What on earth is this thing!?!  At first glance, it looks like some kind of mini space-craft from an alien planet that’s about to take some kind of useful information about earth to a mother ship…

Maybe it’s a new tool that your doctor’s office is using for…

Perhaps it’s a handheld heating device?

How about this year’s hottest child’s toy (step aside, Tickle Me Elmo…)

ACTUALLY, it’s The American Red Cross Road Torq – a tiny device (fits comfortably in your car’s glove box) that serves as a hands free  flashlight and red flashing safety beacon.  Crank this little thing for only two minutes and you’ll get a full 15 minutes of light to change that flat tire in the middle of the night or dig through your trunk to find that missing shoe.

What else can this sweet little device be used for?  Perhaps you’d like to put it in your camping or backpacking gear…  Maybe it would be helpful as you’re digging through your attic for a box that you “swore” was right over there…Maybe the kids would get a kick out of it for slumber parties?

Now we’re always promoting preparedness here, so why not have something COOL looking to help prepare your car too?  Besides, you can always make your passengers try to figure out what it is on long road trips.  So many uses…

There’s a lot of space weather because the sun burps [NASA]

Old letters are fun to see [Roberthuffstutter on Flickr]

A Red Cross pin board [Liz Le Dorze Pinterest]

Things I would do during a zombie apocalypse [Graph Jam, hat tip to Michael Windle]

Volunteer Emily is headed to South Africa [Carolina Piedmont Red Cross blog]

This Worldwide Wednesday Wrap-Up is courtesy of Scott Waggoner, from Cross Blog: Award-winning Red Cross news and views from Oregon and beyond

Welcome to the Worldwide Wednesday Wrap-Up, in which we consolidate the international Red Cross and Red Crescent news into one list of bite-sized links for you. It’s a non-comprehensive sampling of the larger and/or more intriguing aspects of our global work…

SYRIA: Violence in Syria continues with one of the latest casualties being the secretary-general of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, Dr. Abd-al-Razzaq Jbeiro. Dr. Jbeiro was shot in a vehicle clearly marked with the red crescent emblem after attending meetings at Syrian Arab Red Crescent headquarters in Damascus. The Syrian Arab Red Crescent, IFRC, and ICRC are renewing calls for an end to violence, while volunteers continue to administer life-saving first aid to the injured.

IVORY COAST: Following the second round of presidential elections in late 2010 where both candidates claimed victory, tension and violence grew into a full-fledged armed conflict in Ivory Coast. In the chaos, hundreds of children lost contact with their families. The ICRC and the Liberian Red Cross have registered around 600 children separated from their parents and are working to bring the children back their families.

PHILIPPINES: As tens of thousands of survivors in Mindanao, Philippines enter their second month of uncertainty, the Red Cross is announcing plans to drastically increase its support to communities affected by December’s Typhoon Washi. The revised operation will see the Red Cross provide 2,000 families with cash or other livelihoods support as well as reaching 15,000 families – an estimated 75,000 people – with food, water storage containers and hygiene kits. In all, the Red Cross now intends to reach 100,000 people through these various interventions.

SUDAN: For Darfur’s pastoral communities, livestock is essential for their sustenance and constitutes the backbone of the local economy. The lack of rain, desertification and prevailing insecurity has stressed herding communities into animal overcrowding at the few options remaining, leading to increased risk of disease. The ICRC has been extending its support by training animal health workers and through large-scale vaccination campaigns in remote areas of Darfur, and in response herders are reporting a dramatic decrease in the number of animals they are losing to disease.

GLOSSARY:

ICRC = International Committee of the Red Cross
IFRC = International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

Reading about the deep snowfalls and bitterly cold temperatures in my hometown (it didn’t, nor will it, snow where I live now) reminded me that my winter emergency preparedness kits – especially the preparedness kit I keep in my car – are in desperate need of updating.  You know how it goes…one child needs a granola bar to survive soccer practice, another needs an extra water bottle after soccer practice, and a third needs a Band-Aid and an ice pack after an on-field collision.  It only took a few soccer practices to completely wipe out my car preparedness kit.

Is your car stocked and ready for winter?  If not, read on and then commit an hour of your time to making sure you and your family will remain safe in your car in the event of a weather-related emergency.

The contents of your vehicle winter preparedness kit will likely differ from the contents in your home winter preparedness kit and depend on where in the United States you live (if you live in central Texas, like me and where it never snows, you won’t need the same supplies as someone who lives in the Midwest or the Northeast, where Mother Nature can dump feet of snow in a matter of hours).  When pulling together your car kit, start with the basics and then consider the weather conditions in your region of the country, the storage space available in your car, and your travel habits/plans to determine which additional items will serve you best in an emergency.

Basics

• Bottled water
• High-calorie, nonperishable food
• First aid kit
• Flashlight and extra batteries
• Cell phone charger
• Blanket or sleeping bag
• Tow company telephone number

Tools

• Jumper cables
• Road flares
• Multi-purpose tool
• Collapsible shovel
• Jack and lug wrench
• Tire gauge
• Fix-a-flat spray

Other

• Poncho or rain gear
• Windshield scraper
• Battery-powered or hand-crank radio
• Bag of kitty litter
• Tire chains or tow chain
• Waterproof matches
• Duct tape
• Antifreeze
• Oil

If you’re not able to pull together all of these items on your own, consider getting the ball rolling with an American Red Cross Emergency Preparedness Kit and then adding to it as needed.  Click here to visit the American Red Cross store, and here and here for my favorite kits.

Dorothy thought tornado season was over!

It seems so easy to break our lives into seasons: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall.  As it gets colder, we start to put away our summer clothes, pull out the extra blankets, and hunker down for winter.   Sadly, we have also fallen into a similar routine for preparedness.  Once a “season” is over, many believe they’re in the clear.

Here are the main “Seasons” I’m referring to:

Hurricane Season: June 1 – November 30

Tornado Season: March – May (or June depending on where you live)

Fire Season: June – November

However, there has been a lot of “not in season” weather over the years.  Yesterday’s tornado in Alabama being just one example.  In 2011, Texas was experiencing some of its largest wildfires in April, and did you know that a significant (Cat 3)  hurricane formed as early as May 15 (back in 1951)?

Preparedness is truly a year-round effort, because you never know what that next storm front will bring.

To see if your preparedness kit is up to snuff, pull it out and compare it against our recommended preparedness kit contents.

Follow #ARwx and #ALwx for general tweets about the storms.

Open Shelters

#Washoe

#ORFlood

#ORwx

#Reno

#wildfire