Volunteer of the Month, August 2016 Tim Majcen

 

Congratulations Tim Majcen, the August 2016 Volunteer of the Month!

New to the Red Cross in 2015, Tim Majcen began his Red Cross career in Disaster Services as a Disaster Action Team Responder in the North Central Wisconsin chapter. He’s usually called in as the first Red Cross representative at the scene of a fire or other local disaster. Tim’s role is to assess the family’s immediate needs and start them on the process of accessing available Red Cross services.

In the past year, Tim has invested his time in training and opportunities to greatly expand his service through the Red Cross; assisting with client casework, disaster assessment, learning about Mass Care sheltering and becoming an instructor. He is also active in the Fire Preparedness Campaign, helping with smoke alarm installations and fire prevention education. “Tim has shown great enthusiasm and dedication in being trained and integrated into Disaster responses in Oconto, Marinette and Brown Counties,” says Disaster Program Manager Brian Cockerham, who nominated Tim for the award. “He has been a tremendous asset in our northern counties.” The DAT Responder role is crucial in bringing Red Cross services to where they’re most needed, Cockerham says. In addition to helping locally in northern Wisconsin, Tim hopes to participate in national disaster responses as needed.

He also volunteers with two groups, SCORE and the Wisconsin Women’s Business Initiative Corporation (WWBIC), to provide coaching and assistance to small businesses and start-ups in the Green Bay area. As a former banker, Tim says volunteering is a way to keep busy since he retired. “This whole retired thing—I’m just doing something else in life,” Tim says. He always thought of retirement as a time for “golf, rocking chairs and fishing,” but found out he needs more activity. “I don’t enjoy doing a lot of that stuff for any length of time,” he says. Volunteering gives him an opportunity to use his skills and learn new ones—which the Red Cross is eager to teach him. “I never realized how much training Red Cross volunteer needs to have,” Tim says. “When I signed up I thought hey, I’m healthy, I’m ready to go, give me a call. It’s been a long process to get prepared for a national call-up.”

Though Cockerham calls him a “great example of what a community based approach to volunteering can look like,” Tim is quick to point out that his work as a DAT responder is only one small role in the much larger need at the scene of a disaster. “There’s nothing glamorous about what I’ve done,” he says. “I’m not pulling people out of burning buildings or anything like that, but I enjoy doing it, and I’m doing something good for the world, and that’s pretty cool.”

Thank you, Tim for proudly representing the Red Cross in your community and for giving back to others in so many remarkable ways!

If you would like to join Tim as a Disaster Services volunteer, visit www.redcross.org/volunteer or contact the Office of Volunteer Resources at volunteerwisconsin@redcross.org. The American Red Cross has many volunteer opportunities, including disaster response, supporting military troops, helping with blood donation drives and more. Red Cross volunteers are united by their service and the feeling that in changing others’ lives, their lives are also changed.