 Hey, hello, everybody. It's Brian, live with DAV. Unfortunately, given our national situation right now and even global for that matter, I'm not in my normal state. I'm actually in the basement of my house in my new home office. If you hear a kid running around or a dog barking, I apologize and I'll quickly take care of that. But today I have a guest is John Kleinings, who a lot of you are probably familiar with this DAV's National Voluntary Service Director. John, haven't seen you in a while, but how you doing? How's the family? How's the kids? Hey man, it's good to see you, Brian. Yeah, it's been a while. We're all doing good. You're doing the same thing you're doing, you know, holding up in our new home offices, doing what we need to do. Daughter's still doing school, wife's working. She's making masks right now for the family. So just trying to take care of ourselves. I hope you're doing the same. Hope the family's doing well. Yeah, thanks, John. I'm glad to hear that. No, it's, you know, right now going through this, obviously I've never seen anything like this in my lifetime and trying to maintain as much normalcy as possible. And it sounds like your family's doing the same. Yeah, we are. We're trying to do the same anyway. He's our new normal. Yeah, yeah, no kidding. Well, with that in mind, part of the reason we had John here today is it is National Voluntary Week from April 19th to the 25th. Obviously, with the situation we've already addressed, it's a little different than normal. But being DAV's Nintendo, we do have the 100 acts of honor campaign that did start at the beginning of the year. It will continue to run through the end of the year. Obviously, there's more obstacles in place now, but if you don't mind, John, tell the audience a little bit about that campaign, how COVID-19 has kind of impacted it, but how they can still stay involved and help their fellow veterans and at this point, neighbors, anybody that they can. Yeah, man, thanks, Brian. 100 acts of honors are really important and an easy thing that can be done. Simple as placing your flag out in front of your house in the morning when you retire your colors at night, when it gets dark, if you don't have a light on it. We've done stuff with schools, saying the pledge is allegiance. It's so easy, no task is too big, no task is too small, and during this current pandemic that we've got going on, you can still do an act of honor, 100 act of honor. You know, video call your neighbor who's a veteran, an older member of your chapter, do a video chat if they have the capability. I think just about everybody nowadays has a smartphone. I do see a few flip phones here and there, but I really want to encourage people to continue to check in on our brothers and sisters in arms and make sure they're doing okay. You know, we've had some pretty turbulent weather here lately, storms have ravaged to south, tornadoes, a very large amount of tornadoes have happened already this year. We've had some unexpected snow out west. Obviously, every state's different, but I want to encourage people to find new and creative ways to get involved and engage the veteran community while still being safe. Practicing that proper social distancing, washing our hands. I know my hands are rough. I'm washing them all the time. Just take that extra abundance of caution and do what you need to do. We've had some folks at DAV, April Roush, our results manager. She did a great Facebook live. She had a tree that was devastated from the storm and her and her parents took the time and practiced the appropriate social distancing. Cut this tree up and donated it to a veteran in need while all being safe and taking care of each other. So not to expose someone out of the norm, but just do what's right using abundance of common sense and caution and check in on your brothers and sisters kind of like we're doing right now. It's really that easy. Yeah, John, perfect. Let me write into it. I know the common term or the popular term social distancing and obviously we want anybody that might go out and take part in any of these activities to adhere to those CDC standards and not put themselves at risk, especially the ones that they're trying to help. But to me, it's more of a physical distancing and stay socially connected, which is, as you mentioned, is what we're doing now. And, you know, human beings, in my opinion at least, I'm not the expert, are not meant to live in isolation. So having these type of phone calls that we're having now, I think is extremely critical and valuable to a veteran who might be pent up in their house and go in a little stir crazy, doesn't take long, doesn't take too much of your time to make phone calls like this, interact, see how they're doing, see how you can help them. I don't know about you, but we're only going shopping now about every two to three weeks. But if you've got a neighbor that's served, that's a veteran that needs some, you know, groceries and the regular things that we all need, you know, make a phone call like this, maybe get their grocery list and when you go, maybe you can pick up some of their stuff or figure out a safe way to do that. Do you have any, I guess, advice, John, for a veteran that might find themselves a little isolated? Maybe they, you know, aren't married with a family as I am, where I still at least have some of my nearest and dearest loved ones close to me on the daily basis. But for those veterans, what would you suggest to them or what would you suggest to your fellow veterans to reach those veterans that they may know have or know about that need a little social interaction? Well, I would say one first and foremost, you know, reach out to the local DAB chapter or in your community and find out if there's things that they're doing. One of the chapters up in Minnesota has a clothing box and I'm working very closely with the Mayo Clinic to get PPE, personal protective equipment donated in a safe fashion. And they're bringing that stuff in and then in turn donating it to the Mayo Clinic so they can disperse it as needed because a lot of our first responders don't have the, or we're being told, excuse me, don't have the appropriate amount of personal protective equipment. Reach out to your local DAB chapter, find out if there's something that you can do. Maybe go off to a veteran's monument or memorial and look at, you know, maybe doing a little bit of ground keeping while we're all socially isolating ourselves to ensure to help slow the curve of COVID-19. You'll probably find some other people out there doing the same thing, get involved. It's important that the individuals who don't have this interaction find some interaction. Hopefully you have a pet at home. Maybe the weather's nice, like it's beautiful here today, just a lot of wind. Get out and walk your pet or just get out and take a walk, take in some fresh air. Find something to do. Please, please do not sit at home and bury yourself or immerse yourself in television. It's just not good for you. Find something to do with, like I said, get out, take a walk, ride a bicycle. If you can, find something you can do. I'm certain there's an activity that you've enjoyed prior to this happening that you can get back and get involved in. I think that's the most important thing I can say to people who may not have a family and know that we are going to get through this. There's better days in our future. Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. And just to go back a little bit to the 100 acts of honor, obviously, if you are out there, if you do recite the pledge, if you do call another veteran or even if you're not a veteran yourself, you don't have to be a veteran to reach out. And I thought John touched on something very valuable and important about the local DAV chapter. Even if you're not a veteran, you can reach out to them and maybe find out about a veteran in your neighborhood that you might go to give a phone call to, check in on them, see how they're doing. And in order for DAV to recognize you in that activity, which you would like to do for those of you that do take part in this, maybe it is a phone call like this to a veteran in your neighborhood, just to give them a status check or buddy check, see how they're doing. You want to know about it. And all you got to do, you don't have to necessarily capture it on video like this. But if you just maybe make a post, write us about it, tell us about what you did. And just use the hashtag 100 acts of honor. Again, that's 100 acts of honor. If you tag DAV on that on your favorite social media platform that can be Facebook, it could be Twitter, it could be LinkedIn, Instagram, on and on. We will get that and we will do our best to highlight that and let people know what you're doing. I think John that about covers it for today. I have a feeling, go ahead. One more thing I wanted to throw out there. Right now, all of our hospitals, our VA hospitals are really limiting volunteers in general to our transportation program is either in a positive state or running on a very limited state. If you're looking for something more structured, if you can give us just one day a month and want to volunteer, reach out to your local VA hospital, ask to speak to voluntary services, tell them you want to volunteer for DAV at their facility when things get back to normal. But until then, I encourage you to volunteer, let us know what you're doing, reach out to us at DAVs at DAV.org, tell us what's going on, become one of our volunteers in our DAV's local Veterans Assistance Program. We call it LVAP or Veteran Organization. Everything has an acronym and you do not have to be a veteran to volunteer. If you just want to give back, it is so rewarding and once you get that opportunity to get one chance to make a difference in somebody's lives, you're going to be hooked and keep coming back for more. Yeah, I think John's just nailed it again. I've seen it firsthand. I know he has more than I have. Two things he did mention that I want to reiterate one more time. You do not have to be a veteran to get involved and help and you do not need to do this eight hours a day, 40 hours a week, one hour a month, a day, a week, whatever it may be that you can provide does make an impact and it definitely adds up. If we get enough people doing that, there's going to be a lot of veterans with smiles on their faces and a little bit better of a quality of life than maybe they had before your active honor. John, I want to thank you for your time. You're looking good. I like the hat. Stay safe. Keep that family safe and I'll be bugging you again. You do the same, Brian. Thanks so much. Appreciate your time, everybody. Take care. Thank you.