From Nigeria to Maine: Red Cross volunteer remains committed to the humanitarian mission

By Peter de Paolo, Red Cross writer

Angela Okoli

“I love to help people,” says Chinenye Angela Okoli, M.D. “As Red Cross members, we touch lives. We reach out to people who can’t always get the services they need. We go to the root of the problem.”

Angela first became a Red Cross volunteer in her native country of Nigeria.  As she explains, Nigeria is a developing country and many don’t have reliable access to water, food, and electricity, much less basic medical care.  As a medical student, then as a doctor, she saw her chance to help her fellow citizens through the Nigerian Red Cross. 

As a young girl growing up in Lagos, Angela always enjoyed listening to her relatives talk about their careers in medicine. The daughter of a teacher and an engineer, she knew early on what path she would follow.

“I grew up surrounded by doctors,” she says. “Several of my cousins are doctors. At family gatherings everyone would be talking about a certain case at the hospital. It all sounded so interesting. It made me want to become a doctor.”

Her older sister was inspired by her relatives’ work as well and went on to attend medical school. Angela followed her sister’s lead and both became physicians.

“In Nigeria, I was a family doctor, a general practitioner,” she explains. “I’m preparing right now for my board exams so that I can practice here.”

For Angela, “here” is Portland, Maine, her home for the last four years. She moved from Nigeria to the U.S. in November of 2021, when her husband took a position as a surgical resident at a hospital in southern Maine. In the time since their arrival, they have started a family and now have two children, ages 2 and 1.

Photo courtesy Angela Okoli

“Portland is a wonderful community, and I’m happy to be here,” she says. “The people are super nice, and I feel loved here.”

When asked about the weather in Maine, she laughs, “It’s cold, but after four years, I’m adapting.”

Angela’s involvement with the Nigerian Red Cross began in 2018, when she was in medical school in Anambra state. She had a senior colleague, an engineer, who was head of the Red Cross for that district.  

“Why not come and see what we are doing?” he asked her one day. “We could really use a volunteer with a medical background.” 

“When I went for the first time,” she says, “I loved the activities they were involved in, reaching out to people with a variety of needs.”

Angela started taking advantage of Red Cross trainings, becoming versed in CPR and other emergency services, and disaster preparedness, including specific skills required for aiding her fellow Nigerians displaced by flooding, a common occurrence in the country, where the rainy season lasts for months.

Photo courtesy Angela Okoli

To say that Angela was active in the Nigerian Red Cross is definitely an understatement. In the years of her involvement there, she provided medical services and medications, gave talks on disease prevention on radio and television, distributed food to schools, sourced funding for an orphanage, assisted rape victims and also families who had lost their homes to fire, and even facilitated the drilling of water wells for communities that lacked a source of clean water. 

Of her radio and TV experiences, she explains, “There was a cholera outbreak at the time. I spoke about proper hand washing techniques and other hygiene practices to limit the spread of the disease.”

Photo courtesy of Angela Okoli

At the orphanage, the Red Cross provided food and shelter, schooling, medical services, and even helped initiate the adoption process when that possibility arose.

A couple of years after her move to Maine, and even though she was very busy as a new mother, Angela decided it was time for her to get back to helping others. She signed up to volunteer on the Red Cross website and was onboarded as a member of the Disaster Action Team (DAT). For Red Cross community outreach event, Angela got to attend her first ice hockey game. 

“We handed out flyers on fire safety and gave out smoke alarms and showed people how to install them,” she says. “I helped with setting up and taking down our display. For now, I’m happy to do whatever is needed.”

Angela and volunteer Donna Hastings

As for the hockey game, she was impressed. “I was thrilled with the perfection of the skating and how they maintained their speed while they played.”

After a switch to the Service to the Armed Forces (SAF), she helped out at an Honor Flight Maine event at the Portland Jetport. Honor Flight Maine is part of a nationwide non-profit that sponsors trips for veterans to Washington D.C. and other memorial sites.

These days, with much of her time devoted to her two children, Angela is content to help in any way she can. But it’s clear that she is eager to put her medical knowledge and varied experience to use in her new community. In the future, her plans are to continue the kind of work that gave her such satisfaction in Nigeria.

“I love being a first responder,” she says. “After I pass my board exams and get my license to practice here, I look forward to working with the other doctors and nurses who volunteer with the Red Cross.”

This March — Red Cross Month — we honor Angela and all those who deliver support when help can’t wait, including our volunteers, generous blood, platelet and financial donors, and other supporters who power our lifesaving mission.

In Maine, the Red Cross has more than 600 active volunteers, who, on average, log more than 55,000 hours a year providing care and comfort to Mainers in need. Last year, the Red Cross responded to more than 250 home fires across the state and installed nearly 1,000 free smoke alarms in Maine homes. The Red Cross collected nearly 43,000 lifesaving blood products and held more than 1,900 blood drives. The Red Cross trained more than 11,600 Mainers in first aid, CPR and AED skills – and provided nearly 1,500 services to military members, veterans and their families.