Rick Houchin, project director for the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program discusses the volunteer opportunities available for older adults throughout 11 counties with both the RSVP and Shine Bright programs.
Rick Houchin, project director for the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program discusses the volunteer opportunities available for older adults throughout 11 counties with both the RSVP and Shine Bright programs.
Good morning. This is Kitty Glomski along with
Brooke:my cohost Brooke Mainville
Kitty Glomski:from Region 9 Area Agency and Aging and another episode of Let's Talk About Aging.
Brooke Mainville:Good morning. I'm really excited to have my coworker Rick with me today to talk about the R S V P program.
Rick Houchin:I love talking about volunteers, especially our senior volunteers. I'm Rick Houchin, the project director for the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program here at NEMCSA. It is a grant-funded program through AmeriCorps Senior. We're sponsored locally through NEMCSA. I'm part of the community programs department, and I have been with NEMCSA over four and a half years now. I started as a coordinator with the Senior Volunteer programs and I've just kind of moved up through the ranks since then.
Brooke Mainville:Rick, you talked about the Senior Volunteer program. Who can do it? How does it work?
Rick Houchin:It's not a program that's very well known in our community, but it is a national service program. Most people are familiar with AmeriCorps, but AmeriCorps Senior is a division of the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program, which falls under there. it Is a program for members of our community, 55 and older. It was originally started back in the seventies as a way to get older adults out of their homes to fight social isolation. I'm sure you're aware, that social isolation and loneliness are not only detrimental to physical health, but mental health, and you see a quick decline in overall health in that population. So it was designed to originally fight social isolation. We go out in the community. We cover 11 counties in northeast Michigan. Otsego has their own program and they are an amazing group. They work out of the United Way there.
Brooke Mainville:So, there still is a RSVP program, but it's just not run by NEMCSA and Rick?
Rick Houchin:No, their director is Lori Andrews and they're out of the United Way.
Brooke Mainville:Rick, two fun facts that you just talked about. One, I was an AmeriCorps member. I figured as much. For two years at the Boys and Girls Club in Alpena. Loved it. And then the second fact, have you heard that social isolation is just as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day? Have you heard that fact?
Rick Houchin:I have heard that. I gave that to a presentation at one of our local civic organizations and they were just floored.
Brooke Mainville:I am too, but like you said, it's not just physical; it's mental. Which can lead to depression, that which can look like signs of dementia. It's really all encompassing.
Rick Houchin:And what's great about this program is it takes the life experiences, the skills, and the knowledge of all of our community members, and then we place them in nonprofits in those communities. They can use all of their knowledge, experience, et cetera, to get out of the house, find fulfilling, enriching opportunities, but also to give back to their community. You're familiar. We have some RSVP volunteers helping us out in our office here, and they think it's no big deal but they don't realize how much they're helping us or taking a little bit of burden off of us mm-hmm. and how much we actually learn from them too. So it's a great program.
Brooke Mainville:You said placements in the community, so what are some other placements? You talked about NEMCSA here. What are some other ones?
Rick Houchin:We like to keep our volunteers within their own community. If they live and work in Alpena County, we are not going to ask them to go to Presque Isle County or anything like that, so the opportunities are very dependent on the county: food programs, thrift shops, humane societies, senior centers, I know we have some domestic violence and assault shelters and recovery shelters. If you can think of a nonprofit, like a social service organization, we probably have a partnership with them, and if we don't, if somebody comes to us and says,"Hey, we would love to work here", as long as they're a nonprofit or a healthcare organization, we're allowed to go approach them. Most of the time when we go to someplace and say, Hey, we have some volunteers who are interested in helping you out. People love volunteers, they're all on board. So just because we don't have them currently on our list doesn't mean we can't take care of it fairly quickly.
Brooke Mainville:Great. So besides giving back to the community, which is already a great benefit, what are some other benefits they get for joining?
Rick Houchin:There's not a lot of benefits we can give to our volunteers, but we are able to give some mileage reimbursement from their home to where they're volunteering and back again. How much we can give them depends on the time of year, depends on the budget in general, but we are currently reimbursing at 50 cents a mile. The average check that we give out per month to a volunteer is about$50 a month. It's not a lot, but it just kind of helps maybe with a tank of gas.
Brooke Mainville:Gets you from point A to point B to volunteer. So that's great. So we have RSVP, and I also know you have Shine Bright.
Rick Houchin:Oh my goodness. Yes. Shine Bright is like a newer-ish program here at NEMCSA. It's been two years now. We came up with the idea of how can we bring more volunteers into our organization instead of time and effort giving them to our other partner agencies. Mm-hmm. How can we attract quality individuals to come help us at our headstart programs and aging programs and food programs and housing programs, everything that we have here. So we developed a general volunteer program. We call it Shine Bright. We stripped it down to take as much paperwork off of the volunteers as possible. You have to be 18 and older, but there's no requirements other than that. There is an online application and I will review it, and then if you want to help out with some of our vulnerable populations, then we ask you to go through a background check, but if you just want to help pack some food at our warehouse or work at a distribution. I just ask you to fill out the application. I'll chit chat with you to get to know you, and then we'll put you to work.
Brooke Mainville:Nice. Yeah, we have no problem doing that. We've got plenty of work to do. So Rick, you talked about both of these programs. How do they go about applying or doing the application? Who do they contact?
Rick Houchin:You can contact me directly at my number 989-358-4637 or you can go to our NEMCSA page and there's a volunteer tab right on the front page. If you click it, you'll get to our senior volunteer programs and you can scroll to RSVP, or you can go to one of our sister programs: foster grandparents or senior companions. Our email address is there and contact information. If you go to the Shine Bright tab, the application is on there.
Brooke Mainville:And that was www.nemcsa.org is the website. And you said 989-358-4637. 4637. So if you are interested in helping out the community, is there a minimum amount of hours that they have to volunteer Rick? What if they babysit their grandkid on a Wednesday? Are they able to do some other days?
Rick Houchin:With volunteer work, we try to be as flexible as possible and we'll work around your time and your schedule as best as we can. Mm-hmm. There's no amount of days or times with our R S V P. With the senior volunteer program, we do ask that, that you volunteer at least once every quarter, every four months. But if you can't do that, we have some who, go to Florida or Arizona in the wintertime. If you can't do that, we can work around it. But with that program we do a lot of grant reporting and numbers, and so we don't want to carry a lot of volunteers if they're not volunteering. We're, we're pretty flexible and we'll work around whatever you got.
Brooke Mainville:If you have special projects, you would just contact them as well, like a special day project.
Rick Houchin:That's another great thing. As people sign up, we have this big roster of volunteers and currently across our 11 counties for the senior volunteer program, we have 300 and six as of right now. And so if you ask, Hey, I need a little bit of help, I'll just search through whatever county, and then we just put out a request saying that, Hey, Brooke needs like two hours of your time if you want to help. Yeah. And that would be great. We also are putting together a special project. We've had to put it on hold. We were trying to get it done this month, but it'll probably be March. We are putting together emergency preparedness kits and we're going to make about 150 of them for each of the departments to be able to give out to clients or participants. When we get a little closer to having all the details ironed out, we'll put the word out and anybody who wants to come help pack these and ask people to come in and help.
Brooke Mainville:That sounds like a great project. The community is definitely going to benefit from that. Rick, you utilize the NEMCSA Facebook, right? You put different flyers and information on there as well?
Rick Houchin:Yes, we do. We use the NEMCSA one. We also have our own NEMCSA RSVP one, where we'll put some information as well. But I think the NEMCSA one has a little more so we try to use that one a little bit more than the RSVP specific one.
Brooke Mainville:So that's a great way to find information as well. So there's a lot of ways you can get ahold of Rick. Call, our website, or any of our Facebook pages. So, anything you want to add, Rick?
Rick Houchin:I appreciate the opportunity to come on. We love our volunteers and we will never turn a volunteer away, it's just finding the right opportunity where they feel that they would fit.
Brooke Mainville:Right. Trying to find what they would enjoy doing too. Yes. So you're retired. You should do what you enjoy.
Rick Houchin:That's exactly it. The benefit of volunteering is doing something that brings them joy and fulfillment and enrichment. We don't want to plug'em into a desk job if that's not what they want to do. So, Right.
Brooke Mainville:Well thank you for stopping in, Rick. Thank you. I hope to have you again. If you have any special projects, send them our way. And thank you listeners. I hope you are here for next time.
Kitty Glomski:This is Kitty Glomski and Brooke Mainville, with the Calendar of Events. On March 8th that's the second Wednesday the MMAP program has a New to Medicare presentation starting at 10 o'clock on Zoom. This is a virtual presentation. This is information for anyone that is new to Medicare, is starting Medicare due to disability or has questions and wants to know how Medicare works. Then afterwards you get to meet one on one with a counselor and talk about your personal situation. To register, you can call 1-800-803-7174 or contact your local Senior Center, your Commission or Council on Aging, and they can make the appointment for you. On March 10th from one to two o'clock is the Virtual Caregiver webinar series called Navigating Difficult Conversations. A panel of persons that are living with dementia will explore strategies to approach difficult conversations. For more information or to register, contact Brooke at 989-358-4616. On February 21st, begins the chronic pain PATH class. PATH is personal action toward health. The chronic pain PATH class, is held on Tuesdays, from February 21st through March 28th from nine to 11 o'clock, and this is a virtual presentation.
Brooke Mainville:You could register for these items through contacting me. That's 989-358-4616. Again, that was That's 989-358-4616 or you can email me at mainvilleb@nemcsa.org. My information is on our website in our Facebook page So we would love to have you, and those are my two events.
Kitty Glomski:So this is Kitty Glomski and Brooke Mainville asking you to join us again next time on Let's Talk About Aging.
Carla:Let's Talk About Aging is a production of the Region 9 Area Agency on Aging, 2569 US 23 South, Alpena, Michigan 4 9 7 0 7. This Podcast was supported, in part, by grant number 90MPPG0039 from the US Administration for Community Living, Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC. Podcast music provided by Groove Music, selection titled"Modern Logo," created by Vadym Kuznietsov and can be found at https://elements.envato.com/modern-logo-ZVHFBJ6