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Volunteer's Company Delivers Hot Meals to Disaster Victims
By Elizabeth Long, Special to RedCross.org
Tuesday, May 01, 2007 — Red Cross volunteer Jim Corrigan has had tragedy hit close to home. “I lost a lot of friends on 9/11 and I wanted to do something to help,” he explained. “A friend suggested I contact the American Red Cross.”
Red Cross volunteer Jim Corrigan is a manager for Culinary Response Team, a division of Merri-Makers catering and special events company. The company served tens of thousands of meals to persons affected by flooding in north and central New Jersey.
Photo credit: Elizabeth Long
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Jim became a volunteer at the Jersey Coast Chapter in Tinton Falls, N.J. and works with the Chapter’s youth group. He also trained to be a distribution site manager. That training and Jim’s job as manager at a catering and special events company served the Red Cross well when he deployed to Louisiana. He works for the Culinary Response Team division of Merri-Makers in Edison, N.J.
Merri-Makers has a Memorandum of Understanding to provide mass care feeding during local, regional or national disasters. During the Red Cross response to the Nor’easter storms that caused flooding in New Jersey, Culinary Response Team hit the ground running and prepared tens of thousands of meals for disaster victims in north and central New Jersey in ten days’ time.
Culinary Response Team is positioned to assist the Red Cross on larger scale disasters. The company has refrigerated semi trucks that can deliver meals to locations throughout the continental United States.
In the meantime, Jim will continue to support his Chapter by guiding its youth group in activities that include organizing blood drives and promoting the Measles Initiative. His involvement with the Red Cross is turning into a family affair. “My son and daughter got the Red Cross bug and they’ve been helping out as well,” he said.
The American Red Cross helps people prevent, prepare for and respond to emergencies. Last year, almost a million volunteers and 35,000 employees helped victims of almost 75,000 disasters; taught lifesaving skills to millions; and helped U.S. service members separated from their families stay connected. Almost 4 million people gave blood through the Red Cross, the largest supplier of blood and blood products in the United States. The American Red Cross is part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. An average of 91 cents of every dollar the Red Cross spends is invested in humanitarian services and programs. The Red Cross is not a government agency; it relies on donations of time, money, and blood to do its work.
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