Janice Winston, a volunteer at the Southeastern Pennsylvania Region of the American Red Cross, was awarded the Bob Hassmiller Excellence in Disaster Services Award for the year 2020. Official ceremonies to present the award were held this year (2022) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This award recognizes an outstanding volunteer who has made an impact on the Red Cross and the communities and people we serve.
Janice has been giving her time to the Red Cross for over 19 years, making her the perfect person to receive this award based on her consistent volunteer work . Janice finds volunteering to be a very rewarding experience, while touching the hearts and lives of so many people in the process. Some positions and activities she has taken part in includes shelter supervisor, feeding mission worker, disaster responder, canteening for soldiers at the Philadelphia International Airport and international tracing to restore family links. Presently she serves as a government liaison, leadership development lead, and veterans’ affairs representative. With all these various positions and activities under her belt, Janice has many memories to share with me. Every position she has held has a special connected memory.
Janice got on the path towards becoming a volunteer by way of past contact with the Services to the Armed Forces (SAF) division within the organization. Service to the Armed Forces provides emergency messaging, care and comfort to active-duty members of the United States Armed Forces and their families, as well as to veterans. Her son was serving in the U.S. Marines on a Navy ship at the time his grandfather died, so Janice reached out to the SAF so her son could be notified as soon as possible. Her family was assigned a wonderful case worker who showed compassion, understanding, patience, caring and empathy during their time of loss. His kindness had a lasting effect on Janice. She always remembered his kindness and found temporary opportunities to volunteer with the organization before becoming a permanent volunteer in 2003.
Janice gets her motivation to keep doing volunteer work within the Red Cross from her desire to help people when they are in their darkest hours of life. One memory that stands out includes a time when Janice was on a feeding assignment in New Orleans around February 2006 after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in August of 2005. A resident thanked her for coming to help and said, “the Red Cross is here so we know the nation has not forgotten us.” She has never forgotten his words. It is what drives her passion to volunteer.
Another motivation is her desire to make sure that people affected by a disaster, volunteers and paid staff, partners, the public and donors have good experiences with the organization. Janice says she is grateful and gets the feeling that she made a difference in people’s lives when she reads thank you notes, along with drawings from children and adults to whom she provided a service to over the years. These displays of appreciation assure Janice that her efforts are making a positive impact on the lives of the people and the communities she has served over the years. It also lets her know that she has been doing her part in fulfilling the mission of the Red Cross, which means so much to her.
A few more memories over the 19 years that shape her present commitment include a Hurricane Ian disaster response, reading letters to connect refugees internationally separated from families, assisting with repatriating families from Lebanon escaping dire circumstances, giving comfort to veterans in hospitals and long-term care facilities and educating families on preparedness. She thinks about the devastated man who was the only survivor in his family after tornadoes touched down in Mississippi; the children she cared for in the shelter in West Virginia; being in the safety of a shelter with residents and hearing the winds howling as a storm passed over Florida; Baby Antionio who came to the Emergency Response Vehicle (ERV) every day with his grandfather for lunch in Louisiana; and listening to disaster responders while assigned to a wildfire relief operation in California. She said these memories and more have one common thread: the Red Cross mission that she supports so deeply was fulfilled.
I was grateful to have spoken to Janice about getting this award and learning more about her as the awesome woman she is. Janice herself wanted to express to everyone at the Red Cross that it was an overwhelming honor to have been chosen from thousands of other awesome volunteers who work every day to give back in various ways within the Red Cross organization. She expresses great appreciation to be able to work beside these other great volunteers in the region and across the country who could have been chosen to receive the same award presented to her. She is also grateful for the opportunity to forge lasting friendships with volunteers and paid staff in various regions. She also mentioned her special six-year relationship as volunteer partner to Emily Fortman, Red Cross division disaster executive, supporting her in different positions she has held within the organization.
PHOTO: American Red Cross Southeastern Pennsylvania volunteer Janice Winston (center) received the Bob Hasmiller Excellence in Disaster Services Award Wednesday evening at a ceremony on Aug. 3, 2022 in Washington, DC. Pictured, from left to right: Scott Graham, retired American Red Cross Division Disaster Executive, Emily Fortman, American Red Cross Division Disaster Executive, Janice Winston, Trevor Riggen, Vice President of American Red Cross Humanitarian Services, and Guy Triano, Regional CEO for the American Red Cross Southeastern Pennsylvania.
Written by By Sadiyyah Young