The City of Tonawanda Fire Department’s (Erie County NY) Explorer Post’s motto is “Our Best Today for a Better Tomorrow.” Their efforts have not gone unnoticed as they were recently identified as winners of a National Junior Firefighter Grant sponsored by Baskin-Robbins as announced by the National Volunteer Fire Council. The National Volunteer Fire Council […]

You’ve read my previous references to “Run to the Curb” type kids in “Fortune Tellers” and in my other writings. Now I’ve created a whole new web site just for telling my stories and to give you a place to share your stories too. Run to the Curb.com is a work-in-progress blog I just created […]

Patience is some times not one of my better virtues. I’ve been kicking around the idea of creating an online clearinghouse of recruitment and retention resources for quite some time. Needless to say, it’s an area of the fire service that I’m quite absorbed in but I’ve always waited for someone else to create such a […]

Sex shop Antalya

I’m blessed to be the keeper of a three-ring binder that details my father’s entire military service history from his enlistment in World War II through his survival from the Korean War. Military campaigns, the boats he traveled overseas on, the camps he received his training at, the medals he received, and more — it’s all detailed in this book created by my first cousin Jim Schmittendorf, my father’s godson and a retired Lt. Colonel in the US Army.

Are you SAFER than you were last year?

That is, did you submit a grant application under the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) “Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response” program for recruitment and retention?

If you didn’t, you missed out on a great opportunity to better your fire department, or in our case, the entire volunteer fire service in our region.

Here’s the good news. You get another chance. DHS just announced that the application period for the 2009 SAFER grants opens November 16, 2009.

Unfortunately, I think it follows a growing pattern of articles and news pieces that focus on the problems — and not the solutions to our recruitment and retention challenges.

While we certainly need to identify and acknowledge what the challenges are, I don’t think that promoting them, making a news story out of them — is our best approach to motivating people to help us overcome our staffing issues by volunteering. Do you?