It has been my great privilege to have served as the Chair of the British Red Cross for nearly eight years, a deeply trusted humanitarian institution that celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2020. It has been said before, but this past year has been like no other, and the Red Cross has been there to help the most vulnerable in the face of the global pandemic, both at home and overseas.

In its lifetime, the Red Cross has responded to many cataclysmic events that have shaped our nation’s psyche: two World Wars, the Aberfan mining disaster, the Lockerbie bombing, the 7/7 bombings, the Manchester arena attack, the Grenfell Tower fire, and more. The Red Cross is a part of our history and so many of our lives – indeed, my own uncle Joe worked alongside Red Cross teams in his role as an interpreter at the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

The British Red Cross also works with other national Red Cross societies around the world to respond to international disasters, including the devastating Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004 and recently, the Australian bushfires and the Beirut port explosion in 2020. My own time on the governing board of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) showed me the extraordinary humanitarian feats this global movement can accomplish by pulling together across borders.

The central role the Red Cross has played around the world in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic highlights that the organisation is as essential now as it ever has been.

Covid-19 has dominated our thoughts and actions over the past year. As we start to look beyond the pandemic, we have been handed an unparalleled opportunity to reimagine our future and build back stronger. This includes pulling together to overcome major challenges, both those created by the pandemic and those which have sadly been exacerbated by it.