Jessica Lewis
For The New Era
The local Trauma Intervention Programs needs help.
TIP uses volunteers to offer support for people dealing with everyday disasters, such as deaths, heart attacks and car accidents. People in need can receive support any time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and volunteers arrive just 20 minutes after receiving a call for help.
Area TIP leader Kari Clark says she needs more volunteers. A training session for volunteers is scheduled to run Thursday, Jan. 24, through Feb. 3, with the exception of Jan. 28.
“I think it’s one of the, unfortunately, best-kept secrets in the area,” said Jody Seward, a TIP volunteer. “There are so many situations where it would make a difference.”
While TIP provides an important service for the community, it has many benefits for volunteers as well.
“TIP is probably one of the single most valuable life trainings I’ve ever had,” said Steward, who added that the skills that she learned and the friends that she made by volunteering helped her cope with the death of her son last April.
“The training itself has impacted me personally in a way that is kinda difficult to describe,” she said.
Merrill Gallagher, a Sweet Home resident who has been a TIP volunteer for two years, said that working for TIP is “a very worthwhile and rewarding thing to do,” and that she encourages people to get involved.
“We all get together and were kinda like a family. We laugh a lot, we share calls, we have training,” Gallagher said. “We’re not allowed to talk about our calls to anybody outside of the group, so when you talk about it to someone who is in the group, they can give you feedback…just listening to them, you can learn a lot about maybe a different way to handle a situation you were in.”
Volunteers must commit to being on call for three 12-hour shifts per month.
According to Clark, this does not necessarily mean that they will be called on, just that that need to stay in the area so that they can arrive within 20 minutes if they are.
Both Seward and Gallagher say that there is no way to tell how often a volunteer will be called; sometimes they may receive multiple calls in one night and sometimes they may not receive a call for months.
However, according to Seward, volunteers are able to pitch for the hours that best suit their schedules, and if something comes up that prevents them from being able to make a shift last minute, others will usually help out.
“For a person who is retired, it’s wonderful because days are open for people during daylight hours,” she said. “It’s an avenue for retired people to service the community during regular working hours.”
Volunteers must attend monthly meetings to maintain their skills and continue their education.
Seward said that she encourages teenagers to join the TIP teen program.
Teenagers attend the same training seminars as adults and are partnered with an adult volunteer to go on calls with and gain experience. Once they turn 18, they are able to respond to calls alone.
Volunteers are an important part of TIP, and without them, Clark says that the program wouldn’t exist.
“People do this because they want to help,” she said. “It is a serious commitment but it doesn’t really take that much time.”
To learn more about attending the training seminar and becoming a TIP volunteer, contact Kari Clark at (541) 905-2768.