Comparison of two Red Cross Societies: Austria and America

As some of you might have read in this blog article, I am a paramedic at the Austrian Red Cross. Since I have read and heard a lot lately about American culture, people and geography, I became curious about the American Red Cross Society. So I asked myself the question: What does the American Red Cross do compared to the Austrian Society?

What they have in common:

1. Blood Donation: Both the American and the Austrian Red Cross Society provides a Blood Donating Program.
2. Training Services: The Austrian Red Cross provides First Aid courses as well as Babysitting courses. The American Society, however, goes even further: they offer Family Caregiving, Child Care, Pet First Aid, Water Safety Education, Swimming Lessons and many many more.
3. Disaster Relief: Both National Societies provide food, shelter and health care in case of a natural or man-made disaster. Even beyond their state borders they're helping out. The Austrian Red Cross, for example, provided victims of the Tsunami "Ketsana" in the Philippines in November 2013 with food and water - see pictures here.

What the American Red Cross does additionally:

1. Supporting America's Military Families: Military members and their families are supported by the American Red Cross. They help them to prepare for their military service or take care of wounded persons.

 image source: http://newsroom.unl.edu/announce/files/file4567.jpg

What the Austrian Red Cross does additionally:

1. Ambulance Services: When somebody calls the ambulance because they're hurt, a Red Cross ambulance car will soon arrive to help out and bring the patient to the hospital.
2. Health & Community: Numerous people are not able to carry out everyday actions anymore (e.g. to prepare breakfast). The Red Cross sends some kind of "nurses" to the person's home.
3. Tracing Services: The Red Cross supports people who lost someone during a war, a natural disaster or because of migration.
4. Development Cooperation: After a war, the Red Cross doesn't only want to give the victims first aid, but provide them with water (drinking-water purification) and all the other goods so as to make the victims independent again (so that they're not depending on another country or organization).
5. Youth Red Cross: Kids should be aware of dangers as early as possible. For this reason, the Red Cross teaches First Aid to kindergarten kids and primary school kids.

image source: http://www.climatecentre.org/images/images_training/austrianredcross.jpg

 

What I found interesting...

...is the motto or slogan of the two societies:

American Red Cross: Together, we can save a life

Austrian Red Cross: Out of Love (german: Aus Liebe zum Menschen)


...is the number of full-time employees:

American Red Cross: 35,000

Austrian Red Cross: 7,200


...is the number of volunteers:

American Red Cross: 1,000,000

Austrian Red Cross: 59,000

Here's a nice advertisement of the American RC. Check it out!

For further information, have a look at the website of the American Red Cross Society here (that's where I got the information from).