Home Fires Destroy Memories Every 80 Seconds

The American Red Cross responds to fires more than any other disaster. More than hurricanes. Earthquakes. Tornadoes. Fires occur in the United States every 80 seconds.

In Chicago, disaster volunteers are called to home fires about three to four times a day on a normal day. They arrive on scene oftentimes while firefighters are still there, and they provide families with food, shelter, infant formula, teddy bears for the kids, access to medication… whatever the family needs to survive.

This relief is almost entirely delivered by volunteers and funded by donors.

When we arrive, more often than not, we encounter families who are grateful. Though they may have lost everything, they say “thank goodness” that their loved ones survived.

“Everything else can be replaced,” they say.

When a family survives a fire without deaths or injuries, they usually first think of their pictures – the memories that can’t be replaced. One of my most striking memories as a disaster volunteer was helping this family wipe away smoke damage from baby photos that we were relieved to find intact.

With a single click, you can capture a memory with your camera and keep it forever, but only, if your home is not one of the 70,000 that will burn this year.

Today, in a single click and in a matter of moments, you can join a movement on Facebook to honor those who aren’t so lucky.

Visit http://every80seconds.com/and get a glimpse of what it’s like to lose your most precious memories. At the end of your visit, all of your photos will be fully recovered.

At some point in your life, though, someone close you will lose their photos forever to a real fire and will not be able to recover them. Be a part of their relief, before they need it.

Share the every80seconds.com experience with the people you love most.

Pledge a donation for every photo you can’t imagine life without.

Feel grateful.

Here's how your donation will help if you take the extra step to help a family that has been devestated by fire:

- $3 provides a comfort kit with hygiene items that preserves a client's diginity
- $6 provides a wool blanket to keep them warm if they are displaced
- $10 provides one meal
- $20 provides two meals
- $25 provides breakfast, lunch and dinner to a shelter resident who lost their home in a fire
- $50 provides five blankets for a family
- $75 provides food and shelter for a cleint for one day in a shelter
- $100 provides ten hot meals
- $150 provides supplies, such as soy formula, wipes, diapers, etc, to shelter one infant
- $200 provides one month's worth of emergency supplies for two families
- $1,000 saves the day - covers a day's worth of disaster response in the Greater Chicago region.

The every80seconds.com experience requires a high speed browser and internet connection, as well as Facebook connect permissions.

Tweet, Blog and Follow the American Red Cross of Greater Chicago’s Annual Meeting

As an avid Facebook user throughout most of college, I did not look at Facebook as much more than a way to procrastinate when doing homework or planning a party. Shortly into my discovery of Facebook, it became something more than that. It became a way for me to talk to friends, and to share inside jokes. It became a way for me to contact my brother in Iraq when he was overseas. It helped me contact family members I had not seen in years, and for us to become reunited. It became a way to identify myself, a way to show who I am, but more importantly it became a way for me to become part of something bigger.

As a new member to Twitter, I have recently begun to realize how these social mediums have shaped our recent culture. Social media has helped interconnect to people across the globe. It helps bring a divided world together, through the sharing of information, ideas and thoughts. It unites people across the world.

For instance, working at the American Red Cross of Greater Chicago, I have the opportunity to Tweet about lifesaving efforts of volunteers and let people know that there are people out there making a difference in their community. I am personally able to help connect with the local community and unite the Greater Chicago Red Cross with the people around the Chicagoland area.

Tomorrow the American Red Cross of Greater Chicago will be hosting their Annual Meeting, and will host a live tweeting of the discussion. We want you to join us in this discussion. You can join American Red Cross and those in attendance in a Live Tweet that will discuss the events of the evening.

The Annual Meeting will include a rundown of what the American Red Cross has done over the past year, how the Red Cross has helped local communities, and a look at how social media campaigns will help change the way non-profit organizations communicate with supporters in the future. Thomas Gensemer, Managing Partner at Blue State Digital, and President Obama’s “secret weapon” in the digital media campaign, will lead the social media discussion.

The Annual Meeting will be held Wednesday (tomorrow) June 17, 2009 at 6 p.m. We are inviting you to join in to our discussion on twitter.com by searching #annualmtg, or to post to our discussion on our American Red Cross of Greater Chicago Twitter page.
This is a great way for you to unite with your local community and the Greater Chicago Red Cross. So come online Tweet, Blog and Follow the American Red Cross of Greater Chicago’s Annual Meeting.

~Megan Wallace~
Marketing and Communication Intern with American Red Cross of Greater Chicago

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Given the conception of our newest Facebook page for the Mission Red event, I’d like to dedicate today’s blog entry to the social media phenomenon.

On my first HAPPY FRIDAY blog, I alluded to the prevalence of social media, and the fact that everybody’s involved. In fact, Facebook currently has more than 200 million active users worldwide, followed by MySpace at 106 million users, with Twitter quickly gaining ground as the fastest growing social media site with 55 million users.

And you’d be surprised who’s plugged in. The fastest growing U.S. demographic segment on Facebook is women age 55 and over. On a side note, Oprah is now Tweeting. In her opening tweet, she inadvertently insulted Twitterers everywhere by writing in all-caps and calling us “TWITTERS.” But she’s forgiven – she’s Oprah! And her gaffe is a sign that she’s actually writing the tweets herself, which may have changed since her initial slip-up. But I digress.

This phenomenon has really taken off, and it’s not exactly a new thing. What is new is that it’s not just us youngsters dominating this space anymore. Mommy bloggers talk about everything from diaper rash creams to tips about how to schedule a weekend quickie with the hubby. Clearly this social media thing has turned into a utilitarian tool for everyone. What used to be a venue for IT geeks and gamers trading tips and tricks about their esoteric world has turned into a true marketplace of ideas, where you can subscribe to whomever you’d like (and their theories or outlook, or whatever) and follow their every move as they posit and prose about what they think stuff means, and interpret the world from their point of view.

Meanwhile, those of you not interested in following some lame, self-absorbed raconteur can use this same social media platform to (re)connect with old friends whom you actually want to chat with, and catch up. Given the regional mobility of the US population, most of us are not living in the same place where we grew. And for those of you who are, most of your old friends probably aren’t. In that case, you can see what they’re up to and how fat, or skinny, or hot, or successful (or not) they’ve become. You can Google people and find their “social footprint” online, and even find out what other people think about them.

It’s a mixed bag, this social media thing. I personally love it, but some may find it too intrusive. A classmate did a presentation on how college football and NFL recruiters make fake Facebook pages to friend possible recruits to get the real story about them before committing. And a funny thing about this guy, someone made a fake Facebook page about him! And he’s not even a college football or NFL candidate.

And then you have people who ruin it for the rest of us, by posting stuff like the Domino’s Pizza video, or Ashton Kutcher and his ridiculous attempt at beating the biggest presence on Twitter, CNN, by advertizing to try to get more followers, which he did. This kind or blasphemy flies in the face of what it means to have a social network. If a powerful media personality or a news source uses their resources to penetrate into the social media sphere, it ceases to be genuine and it will lose its best quality – being user-generated.

The point is this social media thing is a moving target. We’re making the rules as we go, and it’s a fun ride. The best thing is that there’s something for everyone. We all have our space online, and we’re making the most of it.

One last thing – before you log off from your computer, come follow us on Facebook. It’s a bare bones page right now, but we’re working on it. We welcome any suggestions, and please, no fake profiles. There’s no dirt here pal!