American Red Cross Community Adaptation in Action

By Nathaniel Millard, Community Disaster Risk Reduction Program Manager

There is an African proverb that says if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. The American Red Cross Butte County Community Adaptation Program added that if you want to go fast together, you do that by building relationships. 

The Red Cross’ Community Adaptation Program (CAP) is a new program aimed at building community resilience and empowering the community to mobilize during disaster. 

The mission of the Red Cross is to prevent and alleviate human suffering in the face of emergencies by mobilizing the power of volunteers and the generosity of donors. 

The Butte County CAP team has spent the last two years in the community identifying needs for community organizations to help build their capacity, capability, and continuity to operate during blue skies, but also to mobilize during response and recovery.

Most of this work has been about building relationships, healing, building trust, and listening.  

To help aid food security, the community identified the need to grow more food. The Butte County Local Food Network is an organization that helps build community gardens and helps individuals install garden beds in their backyard. The Butte County Local Food Network, to increase their capacity to serve more gardens, needed a new truck and trailer. The Red Cross stepped in and purchased these things. 

For all this work, all the Red Cross asks is to have these organization help during a disaster, and help is exactly what they did. During the Park Fire, when Raley’s donated food to the shelter, Butte County Local Food network stepped up and used their truck to go get the food and deliver to the shelter. When there wasn’t enough storage for food at the shelter, one of the food pantries, the South Chico Community Assistance Center, stepped in and let the Red Cross store food in their fridge for the shelter.

One of the needs identified surrounds building food security throughout Butte County. One of the ways to do this is through food pantries. When the Community Action Agency of Butte County, in partnership with 530 Food Rescue Coalition, identified the need to increase cold storage capacity, the American Red Cross stepped in and purchased over 30 new fridges and freezers around the county, including for seven new food pantry locations.  

When the shelter needed freezer space for ice and frozen goods, Bethel AME Church let the American Red Cross move their freezer over to the Neighborhood Church to use it. And when there was left over food at the shelter after one of their meals, 530 Food Rescue came to the shelter, picked up the food and delivered the food to the Jesus Center for the unhoused.

These are just a few examples of the ways that the Red Cross is investing into communities and the communities are mobilizing to help disaster response and recovery, and we are doing this faster and together through the power of relationships. 

“The Red Cross CAP team has been instrumental in assessing community needs and filling the identified gaps. They’ve been intentionally inclusive and equitable which has led to an unprecedented level of collaboration across Butte’s social service landscape,” said Timothy Hawkins, CEO of the Community Action Agency of Butte County.

“When we started 530 Food Rescue, we had a theory that an active food rescue network would be an asset to the community after a disaster, to make sure food resources are reaching those in need and not going to waste.”

“The recent fires in Butte County and especially the Park Fire have proven that theory to be true. The 530 Food Rescue team is honored to be of service directing surplus food resources to evacuation sites when appropriate and helping distribute the surplus food to area nonprofits as the shelter sites close,” said Sheila McQuaid, Project Director of the 530 Food Rescue Coalition.

“The American Red Cross shelter teams have so much going on, and yet it is clear that they hate to see good food going to waste. We are happy to take that worry off their plate!”

The Butte County CAP team helped to create the Butte Resilience Collaborative. If you want to participate, join the collaborative here. If you want to volunteer, join the Butte-Glenn VOAD. To donate to the Red Cross, visit redcross.org/donate.