Northlanders celebrated in Volunteer Week: Red Cross' Dave Pennington

Dave Pennington has been volunteering with Red Cross in Whangārei for five years and has learned so much already.

This week is National Volunteer Week where all around the country our 1.2 million volunteers are celebrated. Northland has the highest rate of volunteering in New Zealand. Around 37 per cent of the adult population volunteer for about four hours per week on average, according to Volunteering Northland. More information, including how to volunteer, can be found at nationalvolunteerweek.nz or volunteeringnorthland.nz. Today we feature another of our amazing volunteers and send out our thanks to everybody who gives some of their time to help others in our community. Northland's volunteers, we salute you all.

Dave Pennington has been volunteering his time with the New Zealand Red Cross in Whangārei for the past five years, and he's still surprised by just how much he has already accomplished.

Pennington is the team leader of Red Cross' Disaster Welfare and Support Team (DWST), a group of volunteers trained to respond to emergencies, in Whangārei.

Among his recent deployments was at the Whangaparāoa Defence Force training base in February to provide welfare support to the evacuees who arrived from Wuhan, China and were placed in a 14-day quarantine.

He is also a committee member of the Red Cross' Whangārei Branch.

"Branches are the heart, life and soul of the Red Cross at the local level. It's like being Red Cross' feet on the ground. You are the pulse of what's happening in the area. We help direct projects and funds to meet the specific needs in our area," he said.

As well as helping his local community, Pennington also lends his expertise to support the Red Cross internationally as part of a specialised IT and telecommunications emergency response unit.

"I was sent to Indonesia when a tsunami struck the area of Palu in 2018 and the whole area was completely destroyed. There was no IT or telecom infrastructure - nothing was working. We came there to bring and set up high-tech equipment generators to get the place up and running again," he said.

"It was a real highlight of my life. We weren't heroes. We just did a small part that goes mostly unnoticed, but the work of Red Cross couldn't carry on without basic infrastructure for things like IT and telecoms."

And, as if volunteering internationally was not enough, he also signed up to be "thrown out of a plane" to raise funds for the Red Cross.

Whangārei Red Cross volunteer Dave Pennington.

"Some people would probably think it's a crazy idea, but people should also understand that Red Cross relies on fundraising to keep all their disaster response activities going so I'm keen to help wherever I can," he said.

In July, New Zealand Red Cross will host a series of tandem skydiving events called "Jump! for Red Cross" across Aotearoa to raise funds to help support the work it does for vulnerable people in the community. Pennington will take part in the first event in Auckland on July 25.

• To support his fundraising efforts, you can donate on his page: jumpinjuly.everydayhero.com/nz/throw-me-out-of-a-plane