Document type: Web story

Last year, Marietta Laneslao celebrated 20 years as a Philippine Red Cross volunteer. Along the way she has also recruited plenty of people starting with her own family: her husband, children, nieces, nephews… altogether she has organized new volunteers for 18 barangays or communities.

There was a unique category this year as the Trinidad and Tobago Red Cross Society sought to use culture to disseminate information.

For the past several weeks, the Philippine Red Cross emergency healthcare unit in the Philippines have been tending to the youngest of patients, children and babies coughing with fever, and whose bodies and faces are covered in red rashes. In early February, the local authorities declared a measles outbreak and since then 355 people have died, most of them children under 5 years of age.

It’s a saying in in the Kweyol language that is spoken in St. Lucia that literally means take in front before in front takes you. In other words, get prepared to face a situation before you are forced to face the consequences.

Since she wakes up until she goes to bed, Jane Pacheco focuses all her energy and resources on stimulating and taking care of little Milagros, her two-year old daughter.