hi i'm ian o'brien and welcome back to ask the experts i'm so happy a busy evening to have two experts from the united way of chinon county here to talk about the united way and the volunteer programs of the united way allison plants are and ruth and hackett are here to talk about the r s v program and the new program called neighbor ride so we wanted to just be informing people more about these programs and welcome to both of you i think we want to kind of start by just giving people the high level overview about what the united way does and why you exist great thank you so much for having us on here and united way of chicken and county we really focus on building a stronger county by mobilizing the community to improve people's lives and we do that by focusing on education income and health and by education we mean all children youth and young adults can reach their potential for income we mean helping meet basic needs and promoting financial stability and for health it's improving the health and well being of all members of our community and so to do that for united way we do it mainly in three ways we invest directly into programs and that are meeting these needs and a lot of people think of united way in the nitty donations and a lot of the donations go directly to fund those programs we also do it through strategic initiatives like neighborhoods which we'll talk about more in a minute and then we do it through volunteer mobilization so one of the things i think many of us know about the united way is that we're asked to give to the united way so i think it's quite exciting to have you here to show people when they make donations to the united way the kinds of programs that they're supporting so what is the volunteers involved in the community so with the volunteer connection what we do is we help folks that are interested in volunteer ing make that match with a volunteer opportunity in chipping county we match up all kinds of volunteers through their skills and interest and time availability we work with youth and adults of all ages we work with groups from employers businesses that have groups of employers that want to do some community service and we do a lot of work with school groups and individuals in schools to that have to do community service for graduation requirements and such so we have a lot of volunteers that way and we help them connect and we also work with agencies on the other side of things as we work both ways working with the agencies to help them with their volunteer management in helping develop meaningful opportunities so we work both ways between the volunteers and the agencies and makes for a much more powerful exciting experience so if i wanted to volunteer  find who needed volunteers how would i how would i go about that you know there's just a couple ways that you can do that you can give us a call and we agree can actually make an appointment and sit down with you individually and talk about what you think you might be interested in what your skills are some people like to do work with something that they really know how to do something maybe from there that they've been doing for as their employees some people like to try something new and learn a new skill so it can go either  way so we can either sit down and talk with you and look at the various opportunities or we can direct you to our online at united way c c dot work there we have about three hundred fifty listings of different opportunities with about two hundred nonprofit organizations around to in county and on the online web site you can actually do a keyword search so if you're interested in volunteering with children in education setting you could put in those key words or environments or animals and the opportunities would actually pop up on the screen you can click on it get a full description of the opportunity and then connect directly with the agency through an automated email and then they will get back to you and hopefully make that connection  and get you placed with an agency so great so what are some of the kinds of programs that you recruit volunteers for within the united way volunteer connection and kind of under the i kind of tend to look at it that way we have our artist d p program which is for volunteers that are age fifty five and up and what we do with our s p p is we sit down with a little more lengthy interview and actually work one on one from the moment we interviewed them until they are actually placed with an agency so we do the kind of a personalized placement so we do the actual connection with the agency for them and pass along the contact information and that's basically one of the benefits of aristide pay and we do we have aligned a lot of our opportunities under the education income in health so those are three distinct areas where we put volunteers and then there are other areas such as the arts or the environment or animals so everyone has a different interest that we can direct them to r s v p has a couple other benefits other than the personalized service they do get a newsletter twice a year and some other  social activities that don't want to couple times a year so we look at it it's kind of a group of that age group that are either wanting to do something different that they haven't done before or it's a skill a specialized skill that they're bringing to an agency that we can help them only sorry that's ok people need to have a certain time commitment like so many hours a week or r c p just requires one volunteer hour a year actually and so we say to people whether you want to volunteer once a week once a month or once in a while we can usually find a volunteer opportunity for you i know a woman her graham that people in richmond in the area might be familiar with is the foster grandparent program which  that's also that's also one of our programs yes the f g people program which also that an r s v p come underneath the corporation for national community service and f t p is placing a volunteer again who is fifty five and older in a classroom or an educational setting and that volunteer just provides a kind of a nurturing positive role model for the children in that classroom so they would be matched with one classroom and they would have to commit for one year with the school  year in order because we wouldn't want to disrupt you know and pull them out in the middle so and it's they're required to do about fifteen hours a week they have to meet an income eligibility baseline and then they do research also receive a small stipend for the work that they do major reason to have this program with you here tonight is to talk about the neighbor rights program and it's a new project of the united way and they're looking to expand to richmond maybe you could just talk about that short excuse me human rights is a fairly new program so about a year ago the united way of getting a county convened a meeting with a lot of different community partners including transportation providers and service providers those who provide services for seniors and people with disabilities and the theme of that meeting was that there's a continued erosion of transportation services for this population people have a hard time getting where they need to go they can't get to dialysis treatment they can to get to chemotherapy treatments they can't get to regular doctor appointments they can't get to the grocery store maybe they've been married for fifty years and their spouse is now in a nursing home and they can no longer go to visit them so there's all kinds of  reasons that people just can't get where they need to go so with all these different players sitting at the table together i was trying to look at a creative idea of what's another strategy we can do there's a great infrastructure in place of trying to provide services but resources are just stretched too thin so how can we creatively try to add another piece to the transportation puzzle they have decided that you know what way should take the lead in star driver program in partnership with all of these other organizations so we officially launched in january of this year and we got our first volunteer in march and as of the month of may five current volunteers provided about one hundred twenty rides for seniors and people disabilities in chittenden county and so we started off small and we're really trying to get it going now here in richmond in underhill in jericho who who are the passengers and i know we're talking about the volunteer side of the drivers but if you could just sort of mention who the passengers are sure generally they're seniors so one of the reasons we work with the transportation providers and by that i mainly mean in county transportation authority c t a when you're in burlington people usually know by the buses and also access to a special services transportation agency those are the white vans people see and they have a great system set in place and so c t a works with  provide what they call paratransit rights so they're for seniors and people disability and what that means is anyone over the age of sixty or anyone who has a self declared disability so we already know there's a huge need out there and they are ready have the passengers identified and do a great job of dispatching right now vans or sedans or other vehicles to take these passengers places but because the need keeps growing in vermont vermont the population is aging and there's a really big push to age in place so people are staying at home more more and and they have no way to get places so there's more and more people asking for rides but the resources are staying the same and a volunteer driver here cost about half as much as one of those vans so the basic idea is by using the volunteer drivers they can take these people who are over the age of sixty or have a self declared disability and they cost about half as much so we can try to do twice as many rights for the same amount of money right so in terms of the reimbursement i know you know i've been talking to people as i was anticipating your coming on the program and you know one of the questions was overly like to volunteer but you know gas is really expensive it's kind of prohibitive to be driving people long distances what you reimburse for mileage yes that's a great point so we recognize that it takes wear and tear on your car and gas is expensive these days so we provide it's at about fifty six cents per mile which is the rate that the government sets and so if you're already coming from richmond and you're going into burlington for whatever purpose you're going might as well take your neighbor with you and have that trip paid for or i mean if you have time in your available it can be especially for retirees it can be a nice nice incentive to have that sure that reimbursement come in and you can see a very tangible impact that you're making on your neighbors lives so what is your message about why someone should volunteer to be a driver well i mean i think that it's a very easy way to volunteer you you know we do have a puppet organ do background checks because you are transporting someone and safety is our number one priority but besides that you work you know we try to work with your schedule when you're available and if you're already going somewhere let us know and we'll try to match up with the right for that and you really get to see the difference you're making in someone's life i mean think about having to go to art dialysis treatment and you're already dealing with all  physical issues and the stress related to that and then you add on top of that not knowing how you're going to get there and your are already at capacity with your stress levels and all of a sudden now you have to try to beg a friend or a family member and you just have to worry about one more thing about how to even get there so another thing that interested me when we talked about this it's was that it's neighbors so if i live in richmond and i'm volunteering i wouldn't necessarily be asked to drive to milton to pick someone up and bring them somewhere or would i or how does that work that is a great point it's exactly why they call it neighborhoods because for this program to work we need richmond volunteers to help richmond residents get where they need to go we need not residents to help milton their mill neighbors get where they need to go and it really works because it doesn't make sense for us to send someone from burlington out to underhill pick someone up and bring them back into underhill yeah we need that person from underhill who's going into you know once every two weeks they go into burlington to run their errands bring someone with you because the only way it works is if you do  your neighbor and so we you know if you're in underhill you might take somebody from jericho but you're not going to go in i'm sure a lot to pick somebody up i'm not saying i wouldn't go to milton to give somebody a ride it doesn't make sense for us but at terms of the program itself the idea is really when people are jericho people hoping exact their neighbor to provide them a ride like i've supported in a way that you get the mileage reimbursement and what about the issue of liability or insurance like your car and assurance and driving someone that's a great point so volunteers do use their personal vehicle to transport people for insurance the car has to be insured but are requirements at the state minimum so if you're out driving and your car is insured right now you meet the requirements in terms of liability having a pastor in your car with you changes nothing if you are in an accident and you call that accident then your insurance is primary if the other driver calls that their insurance is primary and in terms of insurance as well people get concerned that their rates will rise that's not true there was actually a law passed in vermont within the past five years i forget which you know but it protects volunteer drivers an insurance company cannot raise a volunteer drivers insurance rate just because they're serving as a volunteer driver  what happens if there were if there was an accident with your car and your home you were on tour driver would be treated the same as it would be treated the same as if you were driving by yourself if you were driving with your sister in the car or if you were driving with a friend it doesn't change anything the liability still stays the same as if you're alone or have somebody else in your car regardless of that person is a passenger that you give a ride for because they're all you're doing is getting mileage reimbursement you're still in a volunteer position here not an employee so it doesn't change the liability  i know you mentioned dialysis as one example and sometimes those appointments are quite long so if if someone is driving a neighbor to dialysis do they have to wait there for them or how does it work in terms of  schedule no volunteers do not have to wait we provide door to door service so we ask that you go to the passengers house you knock on their front door they get in the car and all the passengers are ambulatory enough to travel with volunteers so there's no specialized training required either and you will not be lifting anyone from a wheelchair or administering medicine so you'll just walk with the passenger to your car they will get into the car you can land and they really hand and open the door for them you can drive them to their dialysis appointment help them maybe i get to the front door open the front door and then they're there that's their medical appointment and that's what they're doing and then you leave now if you want to give that same person a ride home you can go do whatever it is that you do you can go run your errands go have lunch with a friend go grocery shopping we don't ask you what you do in that time in between you're not expected to wait with that the passenger though in all the rides are actually scheduled one way so if you happen to be going from underhill into burlington at ten a m but you're not going back to late at night you could just drive somebody one way we do ask for volunteers that provide rides that are usually shorter in length maybe it's only a fifteen minute thing somebody needs to go to a pharmacy to get a prescription picked up we generally ask those volunteers for a ride around trips just because it's not going to be that long but when someone has a three hour doctor appointment there's no expectation that what do you have to do to volunteer you have to be a certain age driver's license you do have the marriage license and i think one of the requirements i think i mentioned before that we do the background checks for safety  check into people's motor vehicle record and that's mainly to make sure you know you were in for accidents last week we're not trying to get too far into your life but we want to make sure safe driver i mean safety is the number one priority both for the volunteers and for the passengers  you have to have your own personal vehicle it has to have insurance it has to be up to date with inspection so all the things you're already doing if you're out driving on the road to be safe and those are main requirements and then as their paperwork for mileage reimbursement  is the whole program paid for actually we have a lot of generous support for some outside organizations that you can county regional planning commission is very supportive of it and part of it through the the eco sporadic that most people know we also have support from the fannie allen corporation from the fletcher allen health care community benefit is also a very generous funder and then we have a small portion coming from the community investment committee at the united way but the vast majority of this is from outside sources and we anticipate that we need funding for the first two and a half three years because the idea is once we get enough volunteers the program will fund itself and we won't need any outside funding because volunteers are more efficient in terms of cost than the vans incident so with enough volunteers even given the mileage reimbursement it should be self sustaining and we hope within about two and a half to three years we still waiting to see how it works so i do know several people in richmond who use the s s today so system that the van would come out and pick them up and take them different places will this impact that like with stop and not at all as i mentioned before this is just another piece of the transportation puzzle going very closely with as s t a and so s s t is the one who matches the volunteer with the passenger so when isis to schedules a ride for a passenger those here richmond who are receiving rides they look to see first they look to see if there is a volunteer available in richmond at that time and they would match that pastor of the volunteer volunteer isn't available they'll match them with either an assist yesterday and or bad and there's always going to be people who require a ride on a necessity even for whatever reason but there's always going to be what is your core message in terms of what you want people to learn from this program you're recruiting volunteers you want them to sign up i think that karma says that we are recruiting volunteers in front of that it's really educating the community about this need i think people take transportation and individual transportation for granted in a rural area like burl state like vermont and then shit in the county as well i know we have the urban core and the burlington south burlington when you syria but transportation is just something most people take for granted you need to go to her store you get in the car and go you want to go see your friend you get in the car and go you have a doctor's appointment you don't even think about it you just go in for a lot of people they don't have that luxury and this is a really large need and as the population here in shouldn't count it continues to age it's go keep growing and growing and so part of the message is really having people start to realize how important this is in this really affects the health and wellbeing of not just seniors people disabilities but in turn the whole community and when we talk about how the nexus to care it's having know home medical provider but it's being able to get there as well it's having transportation and allowing people as they get older to live where they want to live and maintain independent they want to maintain it and transportation is a huge barrier to that and so it's really trying to educate people so that their they realize that they could do if everybody just in so little if you just help that one neighbor get to her dials is what meant that would have a huge impact so while the need is great volunteers all we need to do a very little to have a huge impact and if we have a lot of people doing that all work really well did want to ask people to call in if you have a question the phone number is four three four to five five zero happy to take your call with any questions you might have for either ruth ann or allison about the united reimburse for mileage or does it just depends on the specific program and because it depends on a specific program the only one other one that would reimburse for mileage is the foster grandparent program they do receive like i said a small stipend and they do get mileage reimbursement  the other programs are purely voluntary programs and if you know if a person were volunteering with an agency in that agency offered it it would be different but it would be through united way pretty much  we have large grandiose goals but we would like to start with getting our first volunteer here in richmond because what we're learning is that once you get one or two volunteers starting they start talking about it to their friends and then more people volunteer and so as we're starting off in towns and setting up here in richmond we really need to get that first and that second volunteer to go and then when they're out having breakfast with their friends and they're talking to different people and you see him at the market and you see him at the hair salon they're going to talk to you about it and they're going to get you to volunteer so while we have grand recruiting the volunteer connection we're going to come august fourteenth from seven to eight p m in the evening and just have some conversations about volunteering here in richmond and volunteering throughout ginning county will be an ice cream social and we'll have representatives from ours p p and f t p and the volunteer connection itself and neighbor rights just to answer questions and talk about volunteering and we're addressing it to youth who might be in need community service project for school on up through all the some of the agencies have needs like in marketing and computer skills and things like that so we're just looking to kind of spread the word and we're going starting in richmond and hopefully if it works out we're going to do a few other towns throughout the year and do the same thing and we could anybody that's interested and wants to learn more about volunteering come bring a friend bring a spouse and just have a nice conversation about volunteering and have some ice cream and have some ice cream don't ye great ice cream social at the richmond library i think it's exciting to really think about the development of the united way as an old visiting nurse you know i did some work with understand and appreciated that the donations to the united way benefited programs at the v n a for example and so sometimes there are little places that touch us that we don't even know about and i know that the foster grandparents or the this new program of neighbor rides in richmond you know all ways that we can all contribute to just being a stronger community i'm having a little more capability of just raising us all up so that people get their needs met and so we don't have to have especially seniors or people with just ability to struggle so much yes it's a key way to get you know resources out into the community through volunteerism there are a lot of needs at the nonprofits and with the economy being the way it is in order to address some of those needs through volunteers is really helpful so if you have time within your day where you know like we said you know once a week or once in a while  just to give an hour or two to an agency is really beneficial and helps the whole community as a whole we have a few minutes left if you'd like to give us a call we're happy to take phone calls  the phone number is four three four five five zero love to hear from you if you have any questions about the united way or about these programs when i was talking with friends and colleagues of mine and told them about the program tonight you know that the the questions many people have very full lives and feel like i'd love to volunteer but i just don't have the time so i wonder if you could speak to that i appreciated that you that you said you know you could just a volunteer for an hour doesn't have to be a major commitment like we think of foster grandparents were you making the commitment for the whole layer  we like to do is as i said before you know sit down and talk with them about their time vale ability and we understand that time commitments are in a crunch a lot of the time so we try to match them up as best we can with an agency that you can still meet that need and give to that agency and you know whatever you give in your time you get back doubly in the what you're doing for the community so it's kind of works two ways to meet that need and hopefully just a little bit of time you know mike we said an hour a week or even an hour a month sometimes it does make a world of difference i would say that to i mean anybody who's interested either neighborhoods or any of the other programs that resume was talking about tonight just volunteer in general i would just really encourage him to call you know that way and just sit down and meet with us and that's not making any commitment yet it's just learning and worrying what can you possibly do that better than your schedule and your interest and there might be a great opportunity you don't even know about and you're really excited about excited then you actually meet with some representative from the agency and talk about the opportunity and so you do have a period where your you see if you are the right match for that agency and they are the right match for you in with a lot of the youth that are working from middle school and high school you know we kind of stress to them it's almost like a little job interview kind of thing but you really want to make sure it's the right match for you and we when we meet with folks they usually go away with three or four choices of options that might fit their skills or their interest and so they might talk with a few agencies before they actually decide on what is the right match and part of that would be you know building in what's the time availability is and make sure it's good for them well i want to just thank you again i want to wrap up with a couple of things one is your recruiting for volunteers and especially for the richmond they borat's program if you're interested in the program  can go to the united way website or you can call or you can come to the ice cream social on august fourteenth at the richmond library which will be an overview not only ice cream but also some interesting  information about how to be a volunteer and what the volunteer opportunities are i really appreciate your you both coming to the program and hopefully we will have some success and put a little pitch on the front porch forum for  recruiting volunteers for this really really wonderful opportunity to serve our community and that's a lot thank you so much for having us and we really appreciate it