Outside the comfort zone

This National Volunteer Week we talked to Taranaki DWST Team Leader Monica Schael-Isenor about deploying for Cyclone Gabrielle, building up the Taranaki team, and making a home in Aotearoa.

When Monica Schael-Isenor moved to Taranaki in 2018, she’d had plenty of experience trying things and making new places home. She’s a Canadian who has lived in Malaysia, Germany, and Scotland, as well as many different regions in her home country.

Still, when one of her neighbours in New Plymouth asked if she would be interested in joining Red Cross as a Disaster Welfare and Support Team (DWST) volunteer, Monica wasn’t sure.

“At first I thought, ‘that doesn’t really sound like me’ – but then I thought maybe it would be good to step outside of my comfort zone. And I’m really glad that I did. I definitely caught the bug, and I really believe in what Red Cross stands for,” she says, “and I want my kids to see that volunteering is possible for everyone.”

Monica was deployed multiple times in 2023, first for the Auckland floods, then three more times for the response to Cyclone Gabrielle, and again for another smaller weather event.

“Auckland was my first deployment. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and what people would expect of me,” she says. Although Monica quickly gained experience, she also found that “every deployment is different, and things shock you for different reasons.”

Supporting strangers in distress

Taranaki DWST Team Leader Monica Schael-Isenor

Monica has a background in journalism and communications, and now works as a French language teacher, so she’s always been interested in connecting and talking with people. This helped her start conversations and offer support to people who had come to evacuation centres during the severe weather events of 2023.

“You carry those people’s stories with you afterwards,” she says. “You always wonder what happened to them – it can be a bit hard to detach afterwards, your thoughts just keep spinning.”

Recently Monica also completed her Red Cross training for Comprehensive Psychological First Aid. She sees a lot of value in this added learning to help provide emotional and practical support for people who are in distress.

“If you stand back and think about it, it’s not really a natural thing to help someone cope with their distress if you don’t know them. If it’s a relative or a good friend, it’s different. But if you’re in a Civil Defence Centre somewhere and you’ve never met the person before, you need those extra skills,” Monica says.

The team in Taranaki

After her deployments last year, Monica became team leader for Taranaki’s DWST team. Taranaki team only had four DWSTs who were ready to deploy in 2023, so there’s been a big focus on building up the team, which now has 15 members.

Several of the members are also part of the local Red Cross Area Council. A few DWST have had experience from other parts of the country, including one person who was deployed after the Christchurch earthquake. Most of the others are relatively new, and there’s a real mix of people from different backgrounds and occupations on the team.

The team leader role involves a lot of work, including significant amounts of administration and juggling time to fit everything in. "The people you have on your team are really important. I might not be keen to stay if I didn’t have the team’s support, and from our deputy team leader Frank De Lange in particular. We’re a good team!” Monica says.

The team is working hard not just to train, but also build up connections and understanding with the wider Taranaki community. They’re currently planning a visit to the local emergency operations centre, which some newer members on the team haven’t seen before. During a recent training exercise they met a mana whenua representative who has invited them to visit a local marae which is prepared to serve as an evacuation centre during emergencies, to have conversations about how to keep strengthening coordination and preparedness.

“We’re also looking for guest speakers in the community, for instance people who could maybe teach us things like some signs in New Zealand Sign Language, or raise our awareness about what it’s like to have autism,” Monica says.

Weaving a place in Aotearoa

This year’s National Volunteering Week theme is ‘Whiria te tangata – Weaving the people together’.

Monica’s experiences in DWST have helped her learn more about the hazards and associated risks in her local community, knowledge which she shares often with her community, friends and at home. “We’re probably more prepared than the average family,” she says.

Part of what she appreciates about DWST training is that as a new arrival to Aotearoa is that it gave her a way to build her appreciation of Māori culture and language. When her children joined the local school system and started learning about tikanga and te reo Māori, Monica says she was wondering “how to get to a place where I’d have an idea of what people were talking about. I think DWST really helped because there’s a lot of that learning in our courses.”

Monica’s original three-year plan to live in New Zealand has already stretched to six, and she says she loves it here. She’s now firmly woven in as part of the fabric of the DWST and Red Cross community, both in Taranaki and across the motu with connections that she’s made during her deployments and training courses.

“You make some good friends. Everyone comes from different backgrounds and you might not have anything besides DWST in common, so it’s not necessarily the same kind of friends as in your personal life. But you know you can count on them, and when you’re on deployment together you have a pretty good idea of how that person thinks, or what they might need, or what they might be feeling. I think those experiences definitely bring you closer together,” says Monica.

More information

• Want to help people and make a difference? We urgently need volunteers in many locations across the motu.
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• Learn more about being a Disaster Welfare and Support Team (DWST) volunteer.
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• If you want to get involved in our work, join us! We have over 40 branches across the motu and volunteer roles to suit everyone.
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