{"id":286335,"date":"2018-10-10T06:00:46","date_gmt":"2018-10-09T20:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=286335"},"modified":"2018-10-10T06:00:46","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T20:00:46","slug":"arc-nmi-chapter-celebrates-40th-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/arc-nmi-chapter-celebrates-40th-anniversary\/","title":{"rendered":"ARC-NMI Chapter celebrates 40th anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_286337\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-286337\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Red-Cross-pix.jpg\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-286337\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">American Red Cross-NMI Chapter executive director John Hirsh shares a few words to the Rotary Club of Saipan yesterday. (Erwin Encinares)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The American Red Cross-NMI Chapter turned 40 yesterday as executive director John Hirsh announced yesterday during the Rotary Club of Saipan meeting.<\/p>\n<p>According to Hirsh, the organization, which was formed in the CNMI 1978, was started after the NMI gained its commonwealth status in the mid-1970s after some members of the Guam chapter of the organization reached out.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat a 40 years it has been,\u201d said Hirsh, who has been reportedly involved with the organization for 30 years\u201420 of which as a \u201cpaid staff member.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur mission is still alive and well here in the Commonwealth,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<p>Hirsh noted that among many other programs, the organization provided emergency assistance for typhoons and storms, taught thousands of children to swim, and saved lives through cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, and first aid training or assisted NMI U.S. Military families connect with their service members.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u2026Whether it\u2019s doing bulk distribution, damage assessments, or even going out. We have a whole [lot of] volunteers who go out and provide emergency relief around the nation,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<p>According to Hirsh, the NMI chapter currently has 15 \u201chighly trained\u201d volunteers that assisted in disasters such as 2012\u2019s Hurricane Sandy, the Sept. 11 attacks, and the California wildfires, among others, to provide assistance if needed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are deploying our volunteers there to help out in those particular countries,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<p>Noting that there isn\u2019t a particular criterion for helping those in need, Hirsh said in an interview that the organization seeks to assist everybody in the CNMI.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u2026There are folks that are ineligible: they might come from a foreign country, they might come from different parts of Micronesia, or they might not be able to get federal assistance, but for Red Cross particularly, we service everyone in the community,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The American Red Cross-NMI Chapter turned 40 yesterday as executive director John Hirsh announced yesterday&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":286337,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,6406,1756,261],"class_list":["post-286335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-hurricane-sandy","tag-john-hirsh","tag-rotary-club"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}