Through an energetic combination of enthusiasm, innovation and dedication, Belgrade’s Daneena Scholl used some nontraditional methods to advance her education and land her ideal volunteer role as the regional community preparedness lead for the Red Cross of Idaho and Montana.

This 40-year-old Montana-raised wife and mother of two toddler boys, who is expecting a third child with her husband in May, made this possible by breaking away from the ordinary lines of higher education.

Daneena began this journey by entering the Kinesiology and Exercise Science program at Montana State University-Bozeman in 2015. But looking for a better educational fit, she relocated with her family to Forest Grove, Ore., where she completed a bachelor’s degree in public health, with specialties in epidemiology and health care management.

Through a Pacific University partnership program that uses online distance learning, she earned her Master of Public Health from the Benedictine University, located in Illinois.

Again, not sticking with the norms, Daneena had to find an internship within her field of study while living and raising a family in Montana. That was essential because her husband works in mental health care in the Bozeman area.

Finding a Montana internship was difficult, she admitted.

“This all happened during COVID 19, when there was a big hiring freeze, communities were preparing for the worst and so were education programs,” she said.

Her break came after she reached out to the American Red Cross of Idaho and Montana, which was excited to work with another health and safety professional while they fine-tuned their online disaster preparedness programs.

“I can’t think anyone thought of it happening the way it did,” Daneena said of completing her internship.

She took ownership of a fairly new program aimed at the lesser-served regional populations. “Be Red Cross Ready” is a standardized national preparedness curriculum that helps people understand, prepare for and respond appropriately to disasters. Daneena helped develop the virtual preparedness presentations, which she then taught to community groups such as churches, civic clubs and workplaces -- all via Zoom.

“We tried a lot of different things working with at-risk communities in this Red Cross region to provide presentations for residents in low-population areas,” she said. “Through these online presentations we teach some basics like, ‘this is what you can do to prepare yourself in case something bad happens like a regional emergency or one in the home.’”

In January 2021, her internship ended, and she is grateful for the opportunity.

“There were a lot of great things we managed to do,” she said. “No, we didn’t meet the benchmarks (because of the challenges of COVID), but we developed a great online platform for signing up people for the ‘Be Red Cross Ready’ programs. In the future, when we start teaching again, we will have lists of people that contain contact information for people in those at-risk regional communities.

Though some people were hesitant to embrace the virtual format, Daneena said it did offer some advantages.

“When you are teaching online, you don’t have to worry about geography,” she said. “People who want to learn in eastern Montana can dial in and learn from somebody who is, for instance, in northwest Montana.”

Daneena is now playing a lead role in the region’s Sound the Alarm program, which works to make families safer from home fires by teaching them about fire safety and installing free smoke alarms in their homes. She is serving as the main point of contact between the national Red Cross Sound the Alarm leadership and the regional teams.

Regardless of her role, Daneena is enthusiastic about volunteering for the Red Cross and serving Montana and Idaho communities.

“I think on some level volunteers want to do good in the world and this is now the place to make that happen,” she said.

To learn more about volunteer opportunities in our region, visit redcross.org/volunteer.