Indian River Continues with Recruitment and Retention Initiatives --

As Indian River continues with its Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) Grant Recruitment & Retention Initiatives it prepares to film and complete the fourth commercial broadcast and media clip pursuant to these initiatives.

The Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response Grants was created to provide funding directly to fire departments and volunteer firefighter organizations to help them increase or maintain the number of trained, "front line" personnel available in their communities. The goal of the SAFER grant is to enhance the local fire departments' abilities to comply with staffing, response and operational standards established by the NFPA.

One key objective of this initiative is Community Awareness.

Community awareness is key to any successful recruitment initiative!  It is easy for those of us inside the volunteer fire service to think that everyone in town knows we have a volunteer fire department and that we need people to volunteer.

However, the National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC) has found that public awareness of this kind is generally poor. We in the volunteer fire service struggle to see what our communities see. We tend to recruit among ourselves, and our outreach to other audiences has been weak.

To help departments tackle this barrier and raise community awareness, the NVFC has developed a national online program called ‘Make Me A Firefighter’ - https://makemeafirefighter.org. This program allows local fire departments to profile themselves and their need for new volunteers on the campaign web site, and then generate recruitment materials such as social media, mailings, and other outreach to drive local residents to the site, where they can apply to join their local volunteer fire department.

The Indian River Volunteer Fire Company does utilize this website as well.

Illustrated herewith are previews of previous recruitment videos sneak preview of future videos:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/59zcntz333y520k/IRFDTHENEED.mp4?dl=0  

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hkipoz8repuz5e2/IRFDJUNIOR.mp4?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/09sj6wya8my3prz/IRFDJAKE_trimmed.mp4?dl=0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GrKTOlCdWk

http://www.delmarvalife.com/covid-19-community-stories/delaware-volunteer-firefighters-association-volunteer-your-services/

Interested in becoming a volunteer?  Please check out - http://irvfc.com/page/become-a-member