By Nirmal Adhikari
14 March 2008

“Red Cross volunteers including youths affiliated to Red Cross Action Team should behave as ideal Red Cross workers because Red Cross volunteers focus their humanitarian services to the needy people being neutral and impartial,” said Sudarshan Prasad Nepal, Deputy Secretary General of Nepal Red Cross Society in a meeting called to form RCAT teams at Rupandehi District Chapter.

A joint team of the NRCS and the ICRC facilitated in the formation and orientation of Red Cross Action Team (RCAT) in Parasi of Nawalparasi district, Bhairahawa of Rupandehi district and Krishnagar of Kapilvastu district. The district chapters have assured the newly formed teams that they will be provided trainings and equipments to enhance their capacity for working in the emergency.

Similarly, a separate team helped form RCAT teams in six districts: Chitwan, Makawanpur, Bara, Parsa, Rautahat and Sarlahi.

Both teams had oriented the RCAT volunteers on Red Cross knowledge, importance and need of the Red Cross services and public response shown in the emergency.

Mr. Pushpa Raj Paudel, Krishna Hari Koirala, Deepak Pokhrel and Nirmal Adhikari from Nepal Red Cross Society, and Binod Koiral and Dhananjaya Jayshwal from the ICRC provided support in the RCAT formation and orientation in nine districts.

ICRC is providing technical and financial support to the NRCS in the formulation of RCAT guidelines, formation of and orientation to RCAT volunteers and trainings.

Recently, Nepal has witnessed frequent events of violence and NRCS has been more expected for emergency services. In order to make focused response, RCAT has been developed for institutional capacity building to make emergency response more effective with regard to dissemination, first aid, blood, disaster, mine risk education and others.

Accordingly, Red Cross Action Teams are being formed and oriented in the 23 district chapters in 2008. Youths of 18 to 35 years and living within the walking distance of the strategically sensitive area are registered in the teams on volunteer basis to work in the field as action team of the concerned districts.

Operation Cell of the NRCS headquarters in general and operation cells of concerned districts in particular manage the teams in formation, training, deployment and reporting.