 I'm John Cline and I'm the Voluntary Service Director of D&B. Welcome to the Commision 100 D&B Convention. I'd like to introduce some folks up here on the stage with me. We have Jim Shuey. He's the Intermospital Voluntary Services Committee Chair. Don't be afraid! Michael Elmore is on the committee as well from Missouri. He's a member of the Voluntary Network in Attenbury House. He's not a member of this today, but he's at another meeting from West Virginia. Am I right? Assistant Voluntary Services Director Ron Minner? Not Shane Leary. This is not Shane Leary. Alright, I hope you guys are having a great conference. It's great to see so many people. We'll go ahead and get started. Alright, that's my father's only profile pick up there. Of course, you got Ron. That's his post office munch-shot. Katie Deschler, the Voluntary Services Manager. She's been to a couple of conventions. She's been with the department going on in years. We have Ashley Shedler. She's a temp employee right now. She's currently serving as my assistant and Ron's assistant. She's doing a great job. Amanda Wynne. She's our winter adaptive sports planning liaison. She handles all the winter sports planning, golf planning sponsorships. So if you're a department or a chapter or unit that sponsors one of those events, you may have an interaction with Amanda. Connie Kinney. I bet everybody in this room knows Connie Kinney. We have a training protection network. Connie is the lead for all of our vehicles. She places the orders, gets a decal, and then calls you and has you come pick them up. She's been with us for quite a while. Shelby Butler. She's one of our Voluntary Service Specialists. She specializes in reaching out to you guys to get reports so we can get into the system and get an accurate accounting of what we have going on. Pam Hink. She's responsible for our transportation network and hospital service coordinator directories. So you have interactions with her if you want to change your HFC and change your contact information. Tina Wardorf. Another Voluntary Service Specialist. She's responsible for getting your reports and getting everything input into our system. So we have an accurate reflection of what you're doing in your communities. Terry Isbell does the same thing. She's no Voluntary Service Specialist. We have a great team. You can do a lot with 11 folks. Last year, in 2021, DAP Dedicator was almost $23 billion for our Voluntary Service initiatives. That's an absolutely remarkable amount of support. Volunteerforveterans.org. We were talking about that a few years ago and we've currently gone through and revamped it. It's an umbrella. It talks about everything DAP Voluntary Service related. So if you go to volunteerforveterans.org, you can sign up. You can volunteer. You can let us know if you need. It's a whole cache of the DAP resources that we have to offer the men and women who serve. Our scholarship program. We'll talk about it a little bit further down in all these other programs that we have to bullet in. All your app that you have in your phone right now, if you want, it's one of those little banners at the bottom of the app. There's 10 of them. One of those is sign up to volunteer or tell us about your needs. If you click on that, you can become a registered DAP volunteer by doing that from this app on this little banner here at the bottom. It scrolls. It changes all those 10 of them. So if you're not registered volunteer for DAP, please do so while you're here. And if you have a need or know somebody with a need, put that need in there. We want to help them, okay? This is what it looks like when you go to the volunteerforveterans.org website. I need help. I want to help. If you know somebody who has a need, I encourage and I implore you, build profile form, let us know so we can find a volunteer to help meet that need. It's only going to ask for a little bit of information. They can ask seven questions. It's pretty much all we're asking for so we can get a hold of somebody, okay? This is the Shiny Star DAP and I want to congratulate everybody in here. Over the last 12 months, we exceeded 1.6 million L back hours in the last year. I want to be standing up here saying we need to go back, continue doing the good work that you're doing hours. You're doing a great job. I want the top five every year since we started that award, these guys have got it. South Carolina, does this count? Absolutely it does. If you're doing something serving better to their family and community, it counts. Please report your hours to your appropriate individual within your chapter of your department, okay? These are just a few examples of things that you can do. How many chapter department service officers do I have in the department? Are you compensated? That's why you haven't reported your hours. We just forgot to report. Don't be embarrassed. I understand life is busy. If you forget or if you think it's not important, it's very, very important. First, when you went through your training, your certification, right? Same question, how many did you? You can report those hours, that training. All that stuff is important. So, just think about it like that. Again, it's easy to do not be anybody else, but just think about it. There's a lot of hands that are still in the air. Think about how many hours you did and how many you missed out on, okay? B-A-B-S, how many volunteers do I have in the hospital in a room? If you've been to one B-A-S, you've been to one B-A-S. It's a challenging process. Bear with us, we'll continue to work with you B-A-S if you run into certain issues. Think of the phone call with all myself, anybody on your team. We might be able to elaborate and dig in a little bit more. Hopefully, you find us as a valuable tool and a resource, and we can help get you where you need to be. So, thank you for what you're doing inside the hospital, okay? Here's a few pictures of some of our outstanding volunteers who have won awards in the past, but these are just some of the assignments that might occur inside the hospitals. How many hospice volunteers do I have in here? Any hospice volunteers? That's a tough job, and I was going to say, thank you for doing what you do. It's a very difficult job. I'd like to be a hospice volunteer. I just have to sign up for this. Talk to your chief or your CDC director, whatever they're going by nowadays, and let them know you're interested, okay? They're always looking for hospice volunteers. Thank you for that. Transportation, how many volunteer drivers do I have in the room? Drivers sticking with it. You guys provided more than 163,000 rides last year, but it's absolutely remarkable knowing the hurdles and the issues that we continue to face day in and day out as a result of coding. So proud of you guys. Thank you so much. How many people know that we have resources and availability to help you recruit new drivers? We've got a whole bunch of that great stuff. We have a product that works. Anybody in Minnesota? I've been with you guys a few years ago. We've got new new drivers in Minnesota. That's the kind of success we can have. We work with your local media. We'll work with the HSC. We'll schedule a ride-along, get a news crew, ride in a vehicle with you while you're transporting a bearing. What a sexy story that sells itself, right? If that doesn't motivate people to become a driver, nothing will. Thank you for what you do. We have that availability, okay? We expect this upcoming year to be one of our largest orders in our transportation network's history because of how few vehicles we've ordered over the last few years as a result of the limited use of COVID. So I tell you right now, and I say that, I want to tell you that right now because we need to go back and start looking and thinking how many vehicles you're going to want to order because when that order sheet comes out, we're going to be stuck on a tight, tight deadline to get those back in, get them ordered so we can get those vehicles on time. I know you probably drive by car lots right now and you see no vehicles on them. We've got a Toyota dealership in Florence that doesn't have a single truck signal here. We're going to continue to fix that issue for a few years. They anticipate that open 2024. Go back and start your planning now. I bet some of you guys are going to order 10 or 15 vehicles. Pennsylvania, where are you at? You're probably going to order a lot of vehicles. You've always been on Montana. You're probably going to order quite a few as well. So just think about that. Make sure you have to start talking with the people in your life that you're going to need to work with to work that out early, okay? Right now, I could also pick on Oklahoma. They've got a great on-boarding, the Drive a Hero program. If you haven't talked with Danny Oliver, he's got this thing worked out with the VA Medical Center. They come to the Department Convention and they onboard all their drivers right there. He does that prior proper planning. He's got a great recipe. I want to take a talk with Danny. If you haven't done it, I'd love to tell you about it. What do you do? I would. Thank you, brother. We've purchased this 1987. Isn't that remarkable? That's DABs and yours that are committed to the men and women of Georgia's country. Great, great, great guys. Keep up the great work. It came from the Senators, John Tester, Margaret, Asan, and Tom Tillis. All that's a result of the great state of Manhattan. So where are you guys at? Volunteers. Why does it take so long? I applaud you guys for your staunch advocacy and being in that squeaky wheel. And so if you think you're not doing something, you think, oh, we're just a little state of Rhode Island. We're not going to make a difference. You're wrong. You're a member of DAB. You're proud volunteers. You want to continue this legacy of service that we've done for over 100 years. Stay vocal. Stay involved. It's important. They're making progress. Super proud of those guys at the house. All of you. Stay in it, okay? Don't give up. Scholarship program. This is Ron's baby right here. He's made a significant change. He worked with DAB leadership and had gotten more money for this program. We now have more than 10 scholarships valued at $110,000. $110,000? Exciting. All right, excuse me. These days we're only going to go to the leader. Wow. We also sent each of your departments and chapters letters letting you know that they aren't database. John C. Smith is still eligible for the scholarship. Reach out to him. Encourage him. You sent letters to all the individuals in our system that are still 21 years younger and eligible to meet the criteria for the scholarship. Encourage him to apply. Last year we only had 76 applications. We just sent out 97 letters to people that we didn't have email for. If you know a young animal who was volunteering their time and had 100 hours in the name of P&E, nominate them yourself. You can do that. Talk to them. Say, hey guys, you know 30,000 dollars can be paid for a whole education. Encourage them to do that. I'm asking them. I'm challenging each of you to get at least one person to nominate themselves for the scholarship. Retreats. Another one of Ron's great programs that he's working with at the Gary St. East Foundation on, we do five of these retreats a year. One of them, DAB solely funds specific for women veterans. Is Carmen McGinnis in the room? Carmen's a national area supervisor in Denver. She'll be going to the retreat this October to serve as a leading mentor. She's a remarkable individual, probably seeing her in one of our PSAs. Retreat is probably not a great word for her. It's a very intense therapy that focuses on post-traumatic growth. And I know you've heard that term. I've seen her in a few seminars. Very, very holistic. I've been to about eight of those retreats. They're very intense. And I'm always all, when I hear what individuals have gone through in their lives. What are sports playing? Thank God we had that again this year. Two years we haven't had the again. I was so glad to be back just to romance. We had 147 veterans. 130 veterans for this bank this year. Very reduced. We had a lot of, a very strict COVID protocol we had to follow in order to have the event. We'll have the same COVID protocol that we had at the Winter Sports Clinic at the Gulf Clinic next month. But we had veterans on the mountain doing what we did best. Folks on rehabilitation. We're very proud to co-present that with our partners at the VA. And we're looking forward to a full event in 2023. The Gulf Clinic, our newest adaptive sports program. I haven't had the opportunity to, I didn't ask you but, so it was three days. It used to be called the T Touring. We now have all the National Central Veterans Gulf Clinic break. Nice new logo here. But I think it more accurately depicts what the event is about. In other words, tournament, you think, I have to be a great golfer to go do this. You don't. So clinic to change. It's been a very great, welcome change. We're going to have 143 veterans at this event this year. We'll probably lose a few more as we get closer. But it takes place September 11th through 17th in Iowa City, Iowa. Do I have any for the Department of Iowa? Woo! Thank you for your continued support of that. You guys have a wonderful job there. Something to be very proud of. Most of those veterans I've participated in are visually impaired. It sucks getting your butt picked by a willing golfer. A wonderful event. They also have other activities such as adapting cycling, fishing, air rifles, so on as a forklift. Absolutely remarkable event. I want to thank everybody who supports it. Primarily most of you, Jack, for your support to ensure a primary source of sponsorship. Thank you for your continued commitment to helping us put on wonderful events. And last but not least, there's no IIT, but there's a you and volunteer. And I need each one of you in this room to consider becoming a D&D volunteer if you're not already a volunteer. How many of you are going to sign up to become a volunteer with your app and you can mention that? Got any hands? I appreciate that. Contact information. Anytime you need something from us, email, vps, or db.org. Because we're on or out on the road, somebody else is on the road, but every one of the team members up there has access to that email box. Anything, any resources you have, you can contact us. I get called all the time, a little more all the time. I still help.