Most of the 60,000 emergencies that the Red Cross responds to each year are local, personal disasters like home fires. They may not make the news, but we know they are just as devastating (破坏性) to the families affected. So join us to answer the call when your neighbors need help.

Trained and available, Disaster Action Team volunteers are ready to respond to these emergencies, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. From offering a shoulder to cry on to meeting any immediate needs for shelter or supplies, to connecting people with long term recovery services, our volunteers ensure that families don’t have to face tough times alone.

Disaster action team volunteers share these qualities, life experiences and skills:

• Team spirits

• Tender hearts

• Disaster response experience

• A command of two languages

• Calmness and patience during stressful situations

• Availability and flexibility for at least 4-6 hours per week

Disaster Action Team volunteers help local families cope with emergencies.

Home fires and other disasters can occur any time, any place. As a Disaster Action Team volunteer, you’ll provide emotional support, financial assistance, and information to help families begin the process of recovery. After your initial training, your shifts will include responding to emergencies within 2 hours, night or day, rain or shine, either on the scene or acting remotely to provide immediate care. With experience and further training you can take on leadership to have a wider impact.

Note: the volunteer positions available to you will vary depending on your location and the needs of your local community.

My dad is a car mechanic, which involves lots of heavy lifting, tightening, shaking, and banging. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would bake great bread, but he is and he does. The shop where Dad works is not equipped with enough workers, so there’s lots of pressure on Dad.

I’ve been feeling kind of stressed out myself since I found out I didn’t qualify for the swim team. Now I’ll have to wait a whole year to try out again; that might as well be a million years. Dad knew I was feeling pressure. Last Saturday he said it was time for me to help in the kitchen. I couldn’t imagine what help I could offer. Still, I followed right behind him.

Dad gave me an apron, got out his enormous stainless-steel mixing bowl, and told me to stir while he added the ingredients. When I had stirred the flour and milk mixture into a thick lump (块), Dad had me turn it over onto the countertop. Then he showed me how to knead (揉) the dough (生面团), which took ten minutes and a surprising amount of energy.

Next came the most difficult and surprising part — doing nothing. We waited for more than an hour for the dough to slowly swell up and double in size. After that, we punched the risen dough down to let the air out, divided it in two and waited for another hour. “It’s hard to resist putting the dough directly into the oven, but if you do, the bread will be tough. The most important lesson of all is learning to be patient,” Dad explained.

While we waited, we sat and talked. Silence is a blank space that begs to be filled. It’s like the dough — it swells up and fills a room with emptiness unless you punch it down with words. It felt good to be still and listen to each other. As the flour dust in the kitchen quietly settled, time seemed to slow down. The dough was going to rise at its own pace. As I accepted that, I stopped watching the clock and drumming my fingers on the tabletop. I started enjoying the quiet time with Dad. My father taught me how to bake bread, but I think I learned something more.

Despite the bad reputation of sharks, they are crucial to the health of the marine ecosystem and can even help fight climate change.

In the shallows of Shark Bay, Western Australia, seagrass is food for the sea cows, which can weigh as much as 500 kg and eat roughly 40 kg of seagrass a day. Sea cows are a rich source of food for tiger sharks. By keeping the sea cow population controlled, tiger sharks here help the seagrass grow sustainably. A booming seagrass meadow stores twice as much CO₂ per square mile as forests typically do on land.

But tiger shark numbers are declining. Off Australia’s northeast coast of Queensland, tiger sharks are estimated to have fallen by at least 71 percent, largely due to overfishing. A reduction in tiger sharks means more seagrass consumed by herbivores (食草动物) and less carbon stored in sea vegetation. This raised the question: What if they were absent from the Shark Bay — would the seagrass-dominated ecosystem survive?

To find out, researchers led by Rob Nowicki of Florida International University, spent time in Eastern Australia, where shark numbers were lower and sea cows ate seagrass largely undisturbed. “When uncontrolled, sea cows can rapidly destroy wide areas of seagrass.” said Nowicki.

Those findings emphasized that tiger sharks were playing an important role in preventing the reduction of seagrass in Shark Bay. If their populations continue to decline, the resilience of carbon-rich ocean ecosystems will likely decrease.

When it comes to stimulating shark numbers, there have been movements toward more sustainable fishing, but a large percentage of the industry have not changed their methods, which is a reason why the population of many marine top predators (捕食者) continues to decline.

Aside from supporting sustainable fishing, Nowicki said the only way to truly protect marine life is to reduce our global greenhouse gas emissions. “Ultimately, if we are going to protect our ecosystems in the centuries to come, we are going to need to solve climate change while undertaking species protection at the same time.”