 National Commander from 2019 to 2021. He's joining me to talk about DAV Community Impact Day, which is coming up on April 6th. This is a nationwide call to action for people to pledge at least an hour of their time in service to veterans. You can visit communityimpactday.org to learn more and to pledge your time. But Butch, I'm bringing here on today because I wanna talk to you more specifically about what your department is planning to do so that others can be inspired with your ideas of how they might be able to serve in their communities. And as you're watching anyone out there, if you have any ideas of yourself or if you have plans already for Community Impact Day, please put those in the comments below, share with others what you're planning on doing so we can just get this great resource for people. Butch, thank you for joining me. Absolutely, Brian. Thanks for having me and I'm actually excited about this. You know, the first year there was a big focus on this. And like you said, here in Minnesota, we're very proud of our volunteer pool that we have. As you highlighted, we have a great pool for volunteer drivers. But what this is doing is now bringing a whole new area of focus on helping veterans even more, right? Our veterans that are living at home, they need more assistance. And we as veterans sometimes are, you know, strong-willed, I'd like to say, and we don't like to ask for help, but this is another way to help our veterans to, again, little projects on somebody's house or some little simple things just helps veterans that much more. Yeah. Why for Minnesota, you know, why has it been such a focus for service? Why is this such a focus for your department and for your chapters around your state? Well, one thing that I'm learning here in Minnesota is there's a lot of people that are wanting to give back to help veterans. You know, when we're actually out in the community, I have a great network here in Minnesota and they're always asking for other ways to give back to veterans. And this is a prime example, you know, we're all disabled veterans, not all of us can actually go out there and swing a hammer or stuff like that, but we have people in our communities that want to do that and they're just looking for ways. So this really motivated me in the Department of Minnesota to give back to the community using non-veterans. People just in your community that want to, you know, lend a hand. Yeah. What is your department planning and doing that for April 6th? Well, this year we just have a couple projects lined up. One of the things we're doing here in the Twin Cities area, we actually have an elderly veteran in a spa and his spouse says, love their backyard. You know, they have a little deck they go sit on, but you know, it's really hard for them to get down onto the ground to go look at the garden and, you know, kind of clean the garden up. So we're going to just kind of prep the backyard. You know, lovely here in Minnesota weather, you know, April this year, knock on wood. We've had a really good winter. We can be able to get to the yard and kind of rank it up, get the last year's leaves picked up, twigs, loosen up the garden. So when it comes time to put those plants in, you know, the veteran and his spouse can get out there and do it and not have to work but the extra labor work to do that. So that's one of the projects we're doing here in the Twin Cities. The other one is we have a veteran that lives in Northern Minnesota that still lives on a farm, still wants to be active on the farm. So we have some volunteers going out there to kind of help prep the farm yard for spring, you know, kind of go through some of the equipment and the lawn mower and things like that. So again, these little things that we can make a big difference helping a veteran not have to take all the burden on his or herself are a couple of things that we identify. You know, and I like what you said there. These aren't huge acts, but they're profound. I think they can have a huge impact on those veterans. I think it helps in a way to connect other veterans with people they may not know in the community, right? You know, this is a chance for veterans to bond together. It is about the service, but I think it's also just about showing up and saying, hey, we're here for you if you need anything. And it doesn't take a whole lot. Like you said, it's a little bit of gardening. It's a little bit of just spending time and sometimes it's those conversations that come out of that. So I really like that. I think those are really concrete, very actionable ways for other members and other people that are just in support of veterans that they can get out there and do these things. How did you connect with these two veterans in particular? How are you finding people in need? You know, Brian, I think the direct and easiest way for me this year was this having conversations, going out, talking to a couple of my chapters and asking the direct thing is like, hey, what do you know is needed in your community? What veterans? How can we help some of the veterans in your community? Not making it robust, complicated, simple, going direct to somebody and asking say, hey, can we come out and help you with this? I know it's something that you have to do every year. Let us come out and help. We have people that can help you have to get this done. How will we have people? And it was very beneficial. You know, it was easy. I actually had people identified within a couple of days of just having a couple phone calls and conversations. So I didn't overthink it. I just kind of went directly to a couple of my good chapters that are very active in the community that are already helping veterans in other ways. I actually went directly to the chapters and say, hey, help me identify some veterans that we can help. Yeah, that's great. So it's just a conversation. It's a couple small things. It does not take a whole lot of effort to have a big difference. As we talk about Community Impact Day, a little action here, an hour here from one person, an hour here from one person, then they start building up and it becomes this nationwide thing that a couple hours from a couple people grows into a massive movement. And so I think what you're saying here is just, it's a great example of that thing. It doesn't, it's conversations with people. It's face to face. It's picking up the phone. It's saying, what do you need? I like that. I really like that proactive. You know, Brian, what do you want to add there too at the conversation? Yeah. It's very important to think about, think outside the box. You know, you have people in your community that are non-veterans that also want to help. You know, make it a few phone calls to people that are, you know, that we have relationships that are already through the DAV and just say, hey, you know, we're looking at doing this project. You have anybody in your organization that maybe wants to volunteer one hour, you know? And it was amazing when I talked to two different places that are like, oh yeah, all of us have to volunteer X number of hours every year anyways. Great idea. Yeah, we want to come on help. So don't think just going out and asking other veterans, health veterans. We wish out to the community and found there's a lot of community networking groups that want to help as well. So that's great. You're putting the community and community impact day there for sure. I think that's great. I think it's a great place to end too because people can go to communityimpactday.org. They can pledge an hour of their time. You don't have to be a veteran to serve. You just have to have a willing heart. Honestly, that's all it takes to get involved. But please make sure you check out communityimpactday.org. If anyone else, if you have any ideas about service, if you have a project, please put that in the comments below. We're looking forward to seeing how many people can come out and serve on April 6th. I would say finally, if you're not able to serve on April 6th, pledge your time anyway. Encourage others to pledge their time and find another day within the month of April to serve so we can give as much back to veterans who have given so much for us. But thank you again so much for joining us and sharing just what your department is doing for community impact day. Absolutely, Brian. Thanks for having us. And D.B. Minnesota, we're just so happy you're getting involved with us as well because again, in a way we can highlight these areas to continue to help more veterans. That's what we're here for, helping more veterans. Great, well, thank you so much.