Blanca Batencourt, a 27-year-old woman from Puerto Vallarta, took up her position as the administrator of the Cruz Roja Chapala Delegacion just three months ago. She’s in charge of the day-to-day operation of the organization with its four ambulances (in two stations), the 24-hour-a-day clinic, 35 employees, at least some of the bookkeeping and collecting money. Certainly, the graduate of Centro Universitario de la Costa (CUC) in Business Administration is not a stranger to hard work. The eldest of seven children, she began working in her uncle’s tortilla store every day before school when she was 11 years old. She put herself through each level of her education. Her position before she decided to relocate to Lakeside was as a manager of the Deportenis sports equipment company in Puerto Vallarta. The change from her hometown is a big one, but she’s excited about what she’s doing. She managed a couple of hours away from her job this week to talk about it with Jeanne Chaussee.
How is working for a non-profit organization like the Red Cross different from working for a commercial company like where you worked before?
The big difference is that here we have to work constantly to collect the money that we need to operate. We have to go not only to our patients, but to businesses and ask them to help us. Here in the Chapala area a lot of people don’t bother to pay because they think that the Red Cross is free; but it isn’t free for us and when we go to companies to ask them to help we need a lot of information to document our needs. They say that they will help but that they need special receipts so that they can deduct donations from their taxes. It requires a lot of preparation. With a regular business, you present a bill and that’s that.
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