Bhubaneswar, Sept. 2: The higher education department has directed all junior and degree colleges to activate their Youth Red Cross (YRC) units.

College principals have been directed to open a separate savings bank account in the name of YRC college fund. The principal and the counsellor of a nationalised bank would operate the account jointly for smooth management of YRC activities.

At the college-level, YRC conducts various activities such as blood donation camps, campus cleaning and plantation drives.

The students, who are a part of YRC, would be engaged in crowd management and extending medical facilities to people during major festivals. For the first time, YRC members would be engaged for monthly cleaning services at the district headquarters hospitals.

The idea of activating YRC units in colleges has received overwhelming support from students and authorities of these institutions.

“Although we had around 1,400 YRC units in various colleges across the state but only a handful of them are actively functioning. We are thankful to the state government for providing support to Red Cross,” said Mangala Prasad Mohanty, secretary of the Indian Red Cross Society, Orissa.

He also said YRC units would constitute of an ecology club to create awareness about environment, and at the same time, develop cultural values within youngsters.

Sabuja Mitra Behera, a student of Ravenshaw University, said the idea of YRC unit in every college would help identify more youngsters, who are willing to serve the society.

“The units would help students to inculcate the attitude to serve others, which is the need of the hour. Today’s youth is tomorrow’s future and so, they must be guided in the right direction so that they can guide others and make the world a better place to live in,” said Sabuja, who was one of the participants at the International Red Cross summit in Malaysia.

YRC units also take part in various awareness programmes such as road safety, disaster risk reduction and HIV-AIDS.

“The students are very much willing to serve the people. Earlier, voluntary blood donation camps were rarely organised but with more and more youngsters coming forward for this noble cause, thousands of lives are saved everyday,” said Sanjay Kumar Satpathy, vice-president of the YRC unit at Ravenshaw.

The guidelines state that college principals would supervise the activities of YRC units and are required to submit quarterly activity reports to the state headquarters.