Today is World Red Cross Day and this year the Irish Red Cross celebrates its 70th anniversary. Its work, both at home and abroad, is now more wide-ranging than ever, reports FIONA MCCANN.

‘HE WAS ALL grown up,” recalls Ahmed Kedir Simea of the moment when he saw his son again after three years apart. Ahmed was forced to flee Ethiopia after the disputed 2005 elections that led to violent repression by the police. In doing so, he left behind his wife, daughter, teenage brother and a two-year-old son who had so few memories of his father when he arrived in Dublin airport last month that he walked right past Ahmed.

“I wept a little,” admits Ahmed, but his sadness at the years lost came second to his joy at being reunited with his family again after so long apart. For Ahmed, who had to wait to be granted refugee status in Ireland before he could even think of sending for his loved ones, the reunion was a long time coming.

“I never imagined that it would happen in my lifetime,” he says, struggling to find the English words to express the happiness he feels. “I’m delighted. Everything now is looking like a new baby.”

For the opportunity to be a father whose son now runs to him when he enters a room, Ahmed thanks the Irish Red Cross, who helped him fly his family here as part of its family reunification service. He’s not the only one to receive such help.

“We’ve helped people again and again to find their families and reunite with them,” says John Roycroft, secretary general of the Irish Red Cross, which celebrates its 70th anniversary this year.

Not only does the organisation help people find relatives abroad, often in war-torn countries, but it can also provide assistance in bringing them back.

“It’s an area that a lot of people wouldn’t know about,” admits Roycroft. “But when you see the difference it makes to people’s lives, it really is quite beautiful.”

This is not the only way the Irish Red Cross makes a difference, however. The organisation, though only officially established by an Act of the Oireachtas in 1939, has been operating at least as far back as 1916 (when rescue and relief efforts kicked in after the Rising) and is best known for its ambulances and first-aid services, visible at concerts, sporting events and St Patrick’s Day parades. But that’s only the start. The Irish Red Cross also provides a host of services, including first-aid training, defibrillator training, a skin-camouflage service for people with disfigurements or scarring, and a therapeutic hand-care service for the elderly, whereby volunteers provide hand massages and manicures for people in residential care or in their own homes.

“This is all about touch,” explains Roycroft. “It’s about making people feel comfortable and relaxed. We train volunteers and they then go into the community, into people’s homes.”

The volunteers are all- important, with 4,500 of them spread throughout the Irish Red Cross’s 140 branches in 26 counties. “They provide their services for free and they train to very high levels in their own time,” says Roycroft.

They may be called upon for more than a manicure, however. Irish Red Cross volunteers are often asked to help in searches for missing people, given that the organisation boasts two mountain-rescue teams and a lake-rescue team on 24-hour call. It is also involved in several youth programmes, including HIV/Aids awareness courses and leadership training – and that’s only at home.

ABROAD, THE Irish Red Cross is behind projects in Niger, Malawi, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, as well as a host of other international initiatives. After the tsunami, the Irish Red Cross was quick to step in, putting in drains for flooded houses and setting up a radio programme helping people in need to get in touch with the aid organisations who were able to help with their specific problems.

Roycroft himself is just back from a trip to Niger, where the organisation has been working with poor communities trying to raise families while war wages around them. Using Irish funds, the Red Cross helped set up irrigation gardens to grow vegetables and created enclosed fires so as to reduce the hours that local women spent gathering wood. All of this was done in consultation with the local people, with the aim of addressing their most urgent difficulties.

“It becomes a cliche when you say it, but these people have such experience,” says Roycroft. “They know what works for them. They’re so hard-working. They want the same things for their children that we want for ours, and when you see the difference when you work with them, it’s absolutely extraordinary. It really, really makes you feel humble.”

It’s the kind of work that deserves to be celebrated, and no better time than today, World Red Cross day, the anniversary of the birth of its founder, Henry Dunant. And not only does this year mark the 70th anniversary of the Irish Red Cross, but it’s also the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Solferino in Italy, which led to the foundation of the Red Cross. To mark all these occasions, the Irish Red Cross is planning treks to Kilimanjaro, fashion shows and a countrywide quiz to help raise much-needed funds. Meanwhile, those helped by the organisation have their own reasons to celebrate.

“It would not have happened if it were not for the help of the Irish Red Cross,” says Ahmed, as he attempts to transmit the depths of joy he and his family feel since being brought back together. “We are too much happy!”

For more information on the Irish Red Cross, see www.redcross.ie