A reorganization of the American Red Cross has moved the leadership of the Southwest Colorado Chapter to Grand Junction.
“They did a nationwide restructuring, looked at chapter jurisdictions and made quite a few changes,” said Eric Myers, who has been the executive director of the Western Chapter and now will include southwestern Colorado under his directorship. “They looked at population and geography as well as how Red Cross offices have historically been staffed and determined that a geographical area needed to have a population of 340,000 to have a its own office. Of course, in western Colorado, we don’t have that many people in an area, and that’s the way we like it.”
The change went into effect at the beginning of November. The local Red Cross office in the 1900 block of Main Avenue will remain open, staffed primarily by an AmeriCorps (Volunteers in Service to America) participant, one of several AmeriCorps VISTA participants who will be working with the Colorado Red Cross as part of the restructuring. Two local volunteers, who each put in about 30 hours a week, also have workstations in the office.
How will local disasters and emergency military notifications work under this new organization?
“We’re working with our technology folks and our statewide internal dispatching system, so we can get volunteers wherever we need to respond,” Myers said. “I’ll be scheduling some regular office time working out of the Durango office in your community, and I should be notified whenever an emergency call comes in for your area.”
Colleen Johnson, who became the executive director of the Southwest Colorado Chapter about a year ago, was offered a position elsewhere within the Red Cross but declined it to stay in Durango, he said.
“This change had very little to do with budgets and more with design principles for the nationwide American Red Cross,” Myers said. “Over the last decade, there have been a lot of moving pieces as the organization restructures.”
abutler@durangoherald.com
