ROCK, Trelawny –

Managing director of Silversands Estate Limited, Colonel Delroy Ornsby, is urging the society to emulate the Trelawny branch of the Jamaica Red Cross Society’s spirit of voluntarism.

“It is wonderful to see what people and the entire Red Cross organisation is doing in terms of giving of their time to help other people,” he noted at the society’s ceremony to induct 34 members, on Sunday.

“So many people today sit on their verandahs, they talk in the rum bars, wherever they congregate and they criticise and criticise. They can tell you everything that is going wrong and they can give you an epistle how to do it right but if you say to them come let us put our hands together and try and put something right, they say, “Boy I have another engagement or I have made arrangement to do something else’ and also they don’t turn up”.

Comparing the Red Cross Society to the Good Samaritan of biblical fame he said: “Somebody came and walked on the other side and was not concerned but the Good Samaritan came along. “I want to say to inductees, you have volunteered to serve your fellow man. I want to say that it is a great decision you have made to work assiduously at your Red Cross duties and I am sure you will get a good sense of satisfaction.”

The Red Cross movement was initiated by Swiss businessman Henry Dunant in the aftermath of the June 1859 Battle of Solferino which was fought outside the village of Solferino in Northern Italy. After the fight, more than 30,000 soldiers had lost their lives and thousands more had been wounded and maimed. A young Dunant happened to witness the battle, the suffering and lack of medical treatment. This made a profound and lasting impression which prompted him to mobilise the local people into action, setting up crude infirmaries in churches, monasteries and makeshift tents.

Since then the movement has mushroomed worldwide.

Ornsby said on Sunday that the global recession was to be blamed in part for the selfishness currently on display in the society.

” Today we live in a very selfish world. People give mortgages to people for fancy houses knowing that they can’t pay. But when he grants the mortgage he gets a commission and he doesn’t care about the rest. Then one thing leads to another and another and another and we end up in chaos,” he said.