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American Red Cross urges community partnerships to expand disaster response capacity
Summary
The Red Cross representative told the commission its future strategy emphasizes local partnerships and training community members to increase preparedness and scale responses without over‑relying on outside resources.
An American Red Cross official briefed the Mountlake Terrace DEI Commission on a shift toward “community mobilization” to strengthen local disaster preparedness and response.
“Community mobilization… means that instead of acting upon the community and, you know, rushing in to do all of this, that we are developing those partnerships within the community to help us deliver this,” the presenter said, describing plans to enlist community organizations and bilingual partners to extend preparedness training and disaster response capacity.
The Red Cross speaker said the organization responds at every scale — from single-family fires to large wildfires and hurricanes — and highlighted two program priorities: training local volunteers and partners so they can respond from inside their communities, and widening partnerships with local health and volunteer networks such as medical reserve corps. The presenter said the Red Cross also supplies blood products nationally and urged local collaboration to maintain equitable blood supplies for patients with specific needs.
Commissioners discussed working with multilingual community groups to broaden outreach. The Red Cross official offered to leave contact information and said the local chapter seeks to build trust with Spanish- and Ukrainian-speaking organizations and other community partners.
No commission funding or formal agreement was proposed at the meeting. The Red Cross representative said the work the organization described is an ongoing program of local outreach and volunteer training.
