The Central Florida region has been selected as a pilot for the new Community Presence Initiative launched nationally by the American Red Cross. The Central Florida Chapter will be joined by Florida’s Coast to Coast, Space Coast and Polk County American Red Cross Chapters to form a Regional Chapter consisting of 13 counties: Brevard, Citrus, Flagler, Hernando, Highlands, Lake, Marion, Orange, Osceola, Polk, Seminole, Sumter and Volusia.

Joel W. Hass, CEO of the American Red Cross of Central Florida and a member of myregion.org’s Board of Directors agrees that Regional Collaboration is crucial in community initiative. He points to the work being done by myregion.org and other regional entities in Central Florida as a key reason why our area was chosen for this great honor.

The Community Presence initiative seeks to create more points of service to better accommodate the needs of the public. The initiative calls for a reorganization of chapter structures, creating Regional Chapters and Community Chapters that will allow the organization to provide services where they are not currently or effectively provided.  One of the fundamental ideas behind Community Presence is to free more of the resources in Community Chapters toward direct client services.

“It is an honor for our region to be chosen as one of only eight pilot chapters across the nation to implement this new Red Cross Initiative and for me to be selected as the Regional Chapter CEO,” said Hass, “Our four Red Cross Chapters have collaborated on numerous occasions in recent years—during the 2004 and 2005 hurricanes, as well as some smaller disasters that affected multiple families across county lines—and we look forward to consistent regional collaboration, planning and teamwork.”

The Community Presence Initiative is part of an integrated internal change program launched recently by the American Red Cross: ARC-One, which stands for “Achieving Revolutionary Change through One Red Cross”. Currently, there are 775 Red Cross chapters across the country and many of them have different operating systems for standard functions such as accounting, human resources and data management.  The ARC-One Program will transform the Red Cross by increasing points of service within communities and consolidating or centralizing back-office functions as needed to improve service delivery.

“Experience has taught us that disasters don’t care about county lines,” stated Hass. “Our constituents will also benefit from our regional focus considering the mobility of our community. Today, one person may donate time or money to the chapter that serves the county they work in, while they may find themselves in need of emergency assistance from the chapter that serves the county where they live.”