Members of Rwanda Red Cross, in collaboration with the International Committee for Red Cross (ICRC), yesterday launched a series of activities ahead of their world-wide 150th anniversary celebrations.

The campaign which has been called ‘Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement Global 2009 Solferino’ under the theme "Our world, your move” is aimed at raising awareness on the humanitarian challenges that should be dealt with to save lives.

The 24th of June this year will correspond to the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Solferino, a place in Italy where Henry Dunant, the founder of Red Cross, started humanitarian activities in 1859.

His legacy has so far reached more than 180 countries worldwide, and his partisans think it is still possible to save people’s lives even when starting from almost nothing.

"The power of the individual’s actions is unlimited, simple gestures can produce large impact,” said Valery Mbaoh Nana, Communication officer in ICRC Kigali.

Nana told journalists gathered at the Rwanda Red Cross headquarters, that their involvement is needed to make this campaign a success, by highlighting today’s most pressing humanitarian challenges and raising awareness of needs, vulnerabilities and expectations of beneficiaries.

Dr. Bernard Nzigiye, the president of Rwanda Red Cross, said that the country, suffers from its own present-day Solferino and that people need to work together to overcome them.

"Our Solferino today is poverty and all its related problems, various kinds of diseases and the aftermath of Genocide,” he said, adding that Rwanda Red Cross has always been working in collaboration with the Rwandan government to intervene and find appropriate solutions.

Citing the lack of enough equipment and material to intervene in different humanitarian crisis as one of the big challenges, the secretary general of Rwanda Red Cross, Apollinaire Karamaga, was optimistic about the possible achievements when people are committed.

"We must act to change the lives of vulnerable people and give them hope for tomorrow,” Karamaga said, stressing that the input of journalists should always be to highlight the humanitarian challenges ordinary people face in their daily life.

Rwanda Red Cross started operating in 1962, and has so far more than thirty thousand active members countrywide.

The launched Solferino campaign will include activities of sensitization about Red Cross and its activities and interventions in humanitarian crisis situations, conferences and the launching of the Solferino website campaign in mid March.

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