Helping the homeless, supporting foreigners, planting trees: Volunteering at 17 and 63

They had to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary far from home. A couple living in Italy had travelled to Pavlodar before the pandemic began. Their daughter asked them not to return as coronavirus was spreading rapidly in Italy. Their visit stretched on, and they marked fifty years of marriage in Kazakhstan.

Danna brought them groceries. The local administration passed volunteers the addresses of older people who had called a hotline for help. The volunteers walked across the city, buying essentials and delivering them to those afraid to go out even for bread.

When Danna learned about the couple’s anniversary, she decided to visit them with congratulations on behalf of the Red Crescent.

“To lift their spirits, I bought a cake and some sweets,” she recalls.

Danna is 63. This year marks her 20th anniversary as a volunteer. Her introduction to the Red Crescent came long before she put on a red vest herself. When she was a child, her family had a small wooden cabinet with a glass door. Her mother kept medicines inside and carefully touched up the Red Cross and Red Crescent emblem on it every year.

When representatives of the Pavlodar branch visited the school where Danna worked as a teacher in autumn 2006, she needed little convincing.

Soon, Red Crescent activities filled her time after lessons, on weekends and during school holidays. Later, Danna set up a school volunteer group. Pupils took part in activities alongside adults, and many continued volunteering after moving on to colleges and universities. The group celebrated its tenth anniversary in September.

“It is wonderful to see young people, with fresh energy, new knowledge and enthusiasm, carrying on the work we began many years ago,” Danna says.

The pandemic became her toughest test. Alongside older people waiting for help at home were those who had neither permanent housing nor a safe place to wait out the restrictions.

“We noticed that people with no fixed abode had been left behind. They were surviving however they could,” she says.

Volunteers found people in summer cottages, beside highways, in basements and in underground utility chambers. They brought clothing and food and offered to take them to temporary shelters.

“They are people just like us, and they were getting sick too,” Danna explains.

The team had no specialist protective equipment. They wore gloves and ordinary masks and sewed their own red masks. They went out in their volunteer vests.

“My red vest is my bulletproof vest,” she says.

Danna recalls trying to provide whatever help they could to everyone they found. Looking back on those visits, she acknowledges how difficult that period was for both the volunteers and the people they supported.

Over the years, Danna has learned first aid and now teaches others. In training sessions with schoolchildren, she covers situations they might encounter in everyday life, paying particular attention to the safety of the person providing help.

For Venera from Kyrgyzstan, that training still lies ahead. She readily admits that she has only a few first aid skills so far and is waiting for training sessions. She is 17 and has been volunteering for almost 3 years.

It all began with an ordinary community cleanup. Venera saw people in red vests and became curious about who they were and why they were doing it.

“I was really surprised, so I started learning more. That was when I realized I wanted to be part of this organization,” she says.

Her first volunteering experience was a joint exercise with the Ministry of Emergency Situations. Venera remembers how unexpected it all felt. She had to respond to a situation that was still unfamiliar to her.

But her most memorable experience was planting trees in Talas. The participants worked across a large area. By her estimate, they planted around a hundred trees, perhaps more.

She describes the task simply: they did something useful for the environment. Of all her experiences in almost 3 years with the organization, this is the one she singles out.

Asked about the challenges, she pauses to think. She begins talking about working with people, stops, asks for a moment and then identifies something that proves difficult in practice - finding a time that works for everyone.

“The hardest thing for me, I think, is time. Coordinating everything so it suits everyone,” she explains.

Before an activity, the team needs to come together and agree on what to do. According to Venera, they try to plan as much as possible in advance. When something unexpected happens, their close teamwork helps them cope.

“We volunteers are all very close-knit, and we resolve these issues quite quickly,” she says.

Over time, she has become more confident in unfamiliar situations. She says she now adapts and responds more quickly to what is happening around her. Her parents have noticed the changes too.

At first, they watched their daughter’s new interest with curiosity and surprise. Then they saw her become more outgoing and were pleased with the effect volunteering had on her.

For Venera, joining the movement has also been an opportunity to hear from people she might otherwise never have met. One story at Action Forum particularly stayed with her. Asked about a story that had changed her perspective on volunteering, she named Danna.

At the forum, Danna told a story about a young man whom no one took seriously. Yet he turned out to be the most proactive member of the group. When he saw an elderly woman who had fallen, he carried her home in his arms.

“It turned out that he had a huge, kind heart,” she says.

In her interview, Danna speaks at length about passing experience on: how pupils grow up and continue helping, and how new people join. Venera, answering questions separately, recalls the very story she heard from her.

Danna once watched her mother touch up the emblem on the family medicine cabinet. Years later, she was showing schoolchildren what volunteers could do. Now, a seventeen-year-old forum participant from another country remembers her story.

Earlier, Qazinform News Agency reported that Action Forum 2026 had opened in Astana, bringing together representatives of Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies to discuss volunteering, emergency preparedness and regional cooperation.