2024160 French Red Cross – Women of Commitment - Miniature Sheet

On October 21, 2024, La Poste will issue a block of 3 stamps to mark the 160th anniversary of the creation of the French Red Cross. This block is illustrated by the portrait of three women who played a decisive role within the association, Coralie CAHEN, Marie-Léonie GÉNIN and Marcelle BARRY.

For 160 years, the French Red Cross has been at the heart of France's history. Its actions are carried out by its volunteers, committed to helping populations and providing health and social support to the most vulnerable, during major crises as well as in everyday life.

Among them, women have made a place for themselves and have largely contributed to building the association. Pioneers, innovators, often in the shadows, they have played a decisive role in building the identity of the French Red Cross. This anniversary year is an opportunity to pay tribute to them through three emblematic figures of a commitment that spans generations. Each of these women, in her field and at her time, played a major role in the evolution of the association.

Coralie Cahen (1832-1899) was one of these pioneers, involved from the very beginning during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. In besieged Metz, which she refused to leave, she organized an ambulance reserved for the care of ordinary soldiers. She knew that, unlike officers, they were less easily welcomed and treated in the homes of local residents. Then, at the request of Léon Gambetta, she went to Vendôme to transform a high school into a hospital, where wounded soldiers from both sides would be treated. After the war, she took up the cause of French prisoners still held in Germany. Going there, she informed the families about the fate of the detainees and obtained hundreds of releases. She would maintain her humanitarian commitment within the French Red Cross and other associations until her death.

At the end of the war of 1870, the French Red Cross looked into the crucial issue of training nurses. Marie-Léonie Génin (1859-1947) devoted her life to it. In 1899, she was chosen by the association to run its first dispensary-school, in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, which combined care for the population and practical training for nurses. In 1908, she took over the Peupliers school hospital, designed by the association to be at the forefront of teaching and care, which she transformed during the Great War to accommodate wounded soldiers. Until her death, she trained several generations of nurses and social workers there, with a passion for teaching in her heart. Marcelle Barry (1896-1989), for her part, was in 1935 one of the first nurse pilots air rescuers (IPSA) trained by the French Red Cross. Appointed in 1940 as team leader in charge of repatriating the wounded for the army, she participated in the creation of the association's emergency teams in 1943. After the war, she headed the mission seconded to the French Expeditionary Forces in the Far East. At the end of 1948, she went to the Middle East to organize aid for people displaced by the Israeli-Arab conflict. Back in France in 1949, she was appointed director of the association's emergency service. Until her retirement in 1971, she coordinated and developed the association's systems for helping populations in crisis situations.

La Poste and the French Red Cross partners since 1914
Since 2006, more than 27 million euros have been donated by La Poste to the French Red Cross to finance numerous international, national and local actions carried out in the fields of health, humanitarian and social action.

The transfer of this donation has contributed to the implementation of numerous French Red Cross projects in various fields of activity, including:

- The increase in first aid actions, either by creating the first aid activity itself (as in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence) or by modernizing equipment (in Lens for example), but also to allow the French Red Cross network to renew its equipment and renovate its premises intended for training in life-saving actions.

- The deployment of itinerant devices throughout France with Red Cross on Wheels, mobile devices reaching out to vulnerable groups who do not have the means to travel to the association's local fixed units. - The development of support systems related to hygiene, which is so important for self-esteem. For example, the solidarity laundromat (providing vulnerable people with a space where they can wash their clothes) or the Solidouches project (which allows vulnerable groups to access hygiene) also allow the people they support to find a friendly space for reception, listening and guidance.

- The creation of Alzheimer's Respite and Relaxation Centers in Normandy and Hérault. These non-medicalized reception centers offer activities adapted to people with Alzheimer's disease and allow caregivers to take time for themselves. A temporary relay centered on listening and sharing, to maintain a social bond unfortunately too often altered by the disease and break the exclusive face-to-face between the caregiver and the person being cared for.

- The improvement of reception and activity conditions in many local units of the French Red Cross, for example the food aid unit of the Epinal and Montauban branches or the vestiboutiques of Pontarlier, Mayotte, Quimper, Caux Vallée de Seine, etc.

- The establishment of transport adapted to the elderly and residents of French Red Cross structures, to promote their autonomy and maintain social ties, as for example in the Tours region or in the Yvelines.