 I'm Tom Handell with another CTN member highlight and this time we're featuring the Southern Main Area Agency on Aging. And I'm here with Susan Gold, a VISTA volunteer for one of their new programs, Vet2Vet. Thanks a lot for joining us. Well, thank you for having me. Just to start off with, what is this new program, Vet2Vet? Well, we will be matching veterans, volunteers who are veterans themselves with other veterans who are older, aging, homebound. They may have younger veterans who are disabled or have disabilities. Anyone who could benefit from some more companionship who are isolated. And these volunteer companions, they're all veterans that you're looking for? Yes. They're all veterans themselves and they will be visiting the veteran client at least twice a month and then they'll be calling, checking in on a regular basis. They'll be having training sessions so they'll be able to assess the veteran's situation and see if they can qualify for any other services that they might need. What kind of things do you cover in the trainings for the volunteers? Well, we'll have a number of things in the training including listening skills, maybe how to elicit stories from the veterans. We'll have assessments, we'll show them how to do assessments of the situation so that for example, if somebody might need a food service, they would be able to refer them to our Meals on Wheels program. We'll have the main veterans services talking about VA benefits and we'll also have the vet centers talking about situations that might arise that they might have to deal with. So once these volunteers are trained, they'll have a lot of information for the people that they'll be working with. Yes. Is this just for aging veterans or is this for any veterans that need the assistance? No, it'll be any veteran who would need the assistance. We are also aiming at younger veterans who might have some disabilities or feel isolated who could benefit from a visitor. I know my father and my father-in-law were veterans and before they passed they could use a lot of services like this and be very helpful. Why are you specifically targeting the volunteers to be veterans, to work with other veterans? We thought that peer-on-peer, peer-to-peer would be much more beneficial. People tend to open up and be able to relate to others who have had the same kinds of experiences. That said, we're trying to match combat veterans with combat veterans. Women with women, we have a number of women in the program already and we'll also take into consideration geography, but we're really trying to match them as closely as possible. Now have you started recruiting already for the volunteers? Yes, we have 17 signed up already where my goal is to get 20 by the first training session which is May 6th. We will have other training sessions too later in the year so people will still be recruiting throughout the year. Do you have a certain pool of veterans that need this assistance right now that you're looking to match up with? How big is that pool? Right now we have about 20 in that pool, or 15 or 20, but we could always use more. We're asking people if they know of a veteran who might benefit from this service to give us a call and let us know about them. It sounds like a really unique program. Is this particular to the Southern Main Area Agency on Aging, this type of program? Yes, it is. We have based it on a VA program that's offered nationally, I think it's the Friendly Visitor Program, but this is, as far as I know, it's the only one like it in this area. And how did that idea develop, how did you come up with this? One of our focuses has been veterans services and the manager of the volunteer services, Carol Rancourt, proposed this program and SMA, embraced it. That's great. It's a unique program studying right here in our own area. It's wonderful. Now, if people want more information about this, where can they go? What can they do? Well, they can contact SMA and they can call, they can go on our website, SMAAA3A.org, or they can call us directly, 396-6500 and ask for volunteer services. Or they can email me directly if they would like, it's Sgold, S-G-O-L-D at SMAAA.org. And that's for anybody who wants to either be a volunteer or get those services, is that right? Yes. Okay. Great. Well, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. My pleasure.