Permian Basin Red Cross holding open house

Mar. 2—March is Red Cross Month but the Red Cross of the Permian Basin will have more than that to celebrate this weekend. This Saturday, the Red Cross of the Permian Basin has an open house to celebrate the reopening of its redesigned chapter office. The chapter open house will take place from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at its location at 9601 Wright Drive.

While the Red Cross of the Permian Basin has remained busy carrying out its mission, the chapter office had been partially closed to the public during the pandemic. The time spent working remotely with volunteers allowed the American Red Cross of the Permian Basin Executive Director Tracy Austin to decide how to repurpose the office. One of the changes to the office included adding more work areas for volunteers and to make them feel at home.

"We've all been thinking about space needs and what we really need," Austin said. "We do need space for people to meet and classes. How are we efficiently using that space? That really wasn't something we looked at before, not here in the Permian Basin."

She said she thought they could use the space in a much more efficient way if volunteers had designated desks where they can go to help with projects or write letters. "Whatever they need to do. They can have a special place to go so now they have a volunteer office where there are several desks set up and they can make that their home for the day and get some work done while they're here."

The Permian Basin chapter of the Red Cross had been partially opened but now they'll remain open to the public and offer services in-person such as classes. "We'll be able to have classes again," Austin said. "We're hoping that this is the end of a very long pandemic. One of the reasons people volunteer is because they want to have a social interaction. So doing that, via technology, isn't a lot of fun."

Everything in the office has been redesigned, Austin said.

"We've repurposed our offices because we realize that not everyone has to be in the office to carry out our mission. So now, for example, I'm a mobile employee and I can work from anywhere because COVID really showed us that I don't really need an office per se. I don't need a space where I store papers and things because everything is now digital so I'm able to use that office that was dedicated to me and now it can be used by our fundraiser or by our volunteers or by anyone that's visiting the Permian Basin for Red Cross businesses."

Austin said the newly designed office will have a lounge place set up for volunteers to relax as well as a work area.

"They can have a cup of coffee and talk and make it feel like a place that you'd want to come to and be with people that you care about while carrying out a very important life-saving mission," Austin said. "We also have another work area that's set up for volunteers. We've really revamped the way our office flows and our office works and that's one of the reasons why we're doing the open house. It's to celebrate that we're back in the office even though we never stopped for a minute. We continued to deliver missions throughout the pandemic but now we're able to do it in person and we're celebrating that."