The UHS Red Cross Club provides unique opportunities for students to connect with the American Red Cross organization and learn essential skills, such as bandaging and CPR. Though the club is relatively new—it was founded at the beginning of the 2024-25 school year—its lunch meetings and volunteer events have already made an impact on many UHS students.
Each week, the club presents a different disaster or injury-related topic, such as triage tags or food storage. Students can view upcoming topics on the club’s Instagram (@redcrossuhs) and decide whether to attend the club meeting at lunch.
“Red Cross initiatives teach us life skills which are good to have in case of any type of emergency, such as when we learned how to provide first aid regarding different injuries,” freshman Mishka Rangi said.
To engage students, the club often gamifies its activities and provides rewards for proper execution of the skill taught.
“A typical club meeting consists of a brief informative slideshow,” Red Club Publicist and sophomore Roz Cyrus said. “The students learn facts and skills about what to do if there is a natural disaster, how to donate materials . . . or any urgent/dangerous situation which is usually not common.”
Another important aspect of the club is volunteering. One of the club’s first volunteer events was dog toy-making, a collaboration with UHS Key Club. Since then, the club has hosted opportunities to support first aid learning and disaster awareness. Most recently, the club hosted a bake sale supporting Red Cross Disaster Relief.
The Red Cross emphasizes hosting events outside UHS, whether independently or with support from its parent organization, the American Red Cross, which offers potential for collaboration with other Red Cross Clubs across the county.
In support of the American Red Cross, the club views blood drives as among its most important events. Nearly 29,000 units of red blood cells are needed each day, and someone in the US needs blood every two seconds. Hence, UHS hosts biannual blood drives open to students ages 16 and up. Since its inception, the Red Cross Club has been involved with these events through various mediums.
“[Last year,] our club helped both before and after getting donors’ blood drawn, setting up posters and other notices to both when and where the blood drive was, and promoting it to the student body through presentations and notices,” Red Cross Club Vice President and junior Kobe Nguyen said.
These efforts achieved significant success by ensuring students felt informed before donating and rewarded after the event.
“This outreach consistently increased awareness and helped boost donor registration,” Cyrus said. “We also worked on educating our peers, explaining to students why blood donations matter, how many people a single donation can help, and addressing common fears or rumors about donating blood. This helped increase the number of first-time donors and encouraged more people to return.”
Recently, the club submitted proposals to expand on these efforts for UHS’s fall blood drive, which took place on Oct. 27. Board members sent several ideas to the Associated Student Body for approval.
“We proposed new ideas like offering incentives, prizes and raffle entries to encourage more students to donate and make the event more engaging,” Red Cross Club Vice President and junior Natalia Anania said. “We also wanted to help with advertising and volunteer coordination to support ASB and strengthen overall turnout.”
However, the club was disappointed when ASB did not include it in planning and promotional activities. Despite repeated efforts from the Red Cross Club’s leadership, they were not allowed to help set up or create goodie bags for donors, initiatives that had been a great success for previous events.
“ASB unfortunately didn’t allow for much intervention this year with the blood drive and had it strictly run by adults,” Anania said. “In response, we respectfully explained the benefits of our ideas and tried to collaborate, even though our contributions were largely limited.”
In the end, the club still made an effort to support the blood drive by making posters. However, the impact this year was highly limited, especially considering empirical success with Red Cross collaboration. Hence, the club remains open to future collaboration.
“I hope ASB allows the Red Cross Club to play a larger role akin to what we did last year, as I believe our support both changed people’s view on it and helped with maintaining the inner workings of the drive,” Nguyen said.
By expanding its network of students and organizations, the Red Cross hopes to deepen its impact among current members and other students alike.
“I hope the club becomes a place where students feel connected to each other and to the community, and where volunteering becomes something exciting and meaningful,” Cyrus said. “With more participation and more student thought ideas, Red Cross Club can keep making a real difference.”
Throughout the rest of the school year, the Red Cross Club will continue to promote the national organization’s message through its lessons and volunteering opportunities. Club members hope that with renewed participation in the spring blood drive, the club can both increase its immediate impact and create an upward trend of success for the future.
