Minutes

Date: May 22, 2014 Venue: Red Cross, Minneapolis

Attendance: Ruth Talford, MNVOAD president Red Cross; Dennis Walter, HSEM; Nancy Beers, Lutheran Social Services; Dan Christopulos, International Orthodox Christian Charities; Liza Brazelton, MN ADC; Garrett Alessandroni, Salvation Army; Cheryl Vennestrom, Headwaters Relief; Charlie O’Brien, past president, CERT; Rich and Pat Grasman, World Renew; Sean Coffman, Cass-Clay County COAD; Angela Brown, HSEM; Patrick, Waletzko, Ottertail County Emergency Management; Rick Sutphen, Dakota Co.; Les Morrison, Adventist Community Services; Dale and Sharon Morgan, Disaster Response Communications, Paul Oby, MN ARES; Ed Olson, MN-WI Baptist Convention; Dave and Jeanne Wedekind, MN-WI Baptist Disaster Relief; PJ Doyle, Red Cross; Sharon Anderson, HOPE AACR; Kiersten Young, Red Cross; Betsy Phillips, ARES; Fred Mead, Salvation Army; Seth Garner, Red Cross; Erin Coryell, Margaret Cargill Foundation; Ian Becherer-Gerrie, FEMA VAL; Katie Holliday FEMA VAL;

Agenda:

Meeting Focus: Have a brief communications exercise, and share updates, announcements & opportunities for the benefit of our MNVOAD members and partners

1.  Welcome 5 min

Started at 6:01 pm with a welcome by Ruth.

2.  Roll Call/Introductions 10 min – See list above

3.  Simulation of disaster coordination call

4.  Minutes from last General Meeting: Since the minutes had not been sent to the general membership ahead of time, their acceptance was tabled until next meeting.

5.  Feedback on disaster simulation – Included in Disaster Simulation minutes

6.  National VOAD conference report
Ian and Katie convened members from Region V and it was mentioned that it would be nice to get together with other members from Region V. The VAL will be having fairly frequent calls that we can all participate in to continue the sharing and collaboration.

Ian asked for topics for next conference call.

Lots of sharing of best practices, points of consensus, documents and templates, etc.
Next year it will be in New Orleans and in 2016 in Minneapolis

7.  Treasurer’s report
Garrett gave the treasurer’s report.

8.  MNVOAD Board Update
Ruth updated the members about the projects that we have been working on especially around our communications efforts to our membership, our website, and she shared a possible Partnership Guide template/tool that could be used by member agencies that talks about the agencies, what they do, and who to contact, etc. The hope is to unite the several different documents we currently have and merge them into one.

We will be reaching out to every agency and offering this template.

We will be having a Board Retreat on June 7 to prioritize our goals and strategies for this coming year.

9.  Member Update
World Renew: Current director is retiring and the new director is Ron Willett and will be taking over in June.
Clay-Cass COAD: Will have an officer on future calls and just had their quarterly meeting where they talked about a train derailment.
LSS – Nancy Beers, Long term recovery and Camp Noah and are doing 32 camps this summer. She also talked about their work in Duluth. She also gave an update on the LTRC manual.
Dakota County – Rick Sutphen – working on volunteer and donations management, EOP Annex and shelter management with Red Cross. Rick also offered to get more involved with MNVOAD.
ARES – Betsy Phillips reported about there working to create Rapid Response Teams. There is more interest being shown in ARES. Field day coming up and details can be found at: www.minnesotaares.org; She can be contacted at: ,

651-646-0259 home, 651-248-2554 cell from noon on Saturday until noon on Sunday June 28-29, 2014.
Headwaters: Cheryl reported doing clean up and mental health and have a group going to Arkansas at the end of May to do tornado recovery.
Adventist Community Services: Les Morris reported and stated a need for volunteers in Conway, AR at their warehouse. Looking for self-contained people but there is lodging available that provides lodging and food.
MN Animal Disaster Coalition: Liza gave report they are doing a training on animal sheltering and looking for a president. And working on a new MOU with Minneapolis for VASI cache access.
Disaster Response Communications: Dale Morgan gave report put on a Hamm radio class that is offered twice a year. On June 28 they are running a non-registered field day in Belle Plain. They are also trained in CISM. Also have developed relationships with many non-VOAD members.
Southern Baptists: Jeanne Wedekend reported that they have changed from CISM to Operational Stress First Aid (OSFA) for their chaplains which will occur in Minnesota.
SE MNVOAD – David Wedekend reported that they will have an exercise at the end of October on Long Term Recovery.
HOPE Animal ACR– Sharon Anderson reported they are a national organization which covers 34 states and responded to nine incidents this year in the US and 67 disasters last

year. They are usually made up of K-9 teams with comfort dogs. They are always looking for new places to drill. There are currently two teams in Minnesota.
Salvation Army: Fred Mead reported that they have a training in Recovery After Trauma at Valley Free Evangelical Church in Chaska on June 13 & 14. Call Heidi Mathison 651-746-3415 if interested in doing training.
HSEM – Dennis reported about the drill will occur on June 24 and the graded exercise on July 29 for Prairie Island Radiological exercise. They have tele-seminars every other month next on June 3 LTR from 1 to 2 pm. Call your Emergency Managers if you would like to participate who will have details by Wednesday on how to connect by phone if you can’t get to EM office. In August it will be on donations management. In addition to the LTR guidebook they will be putting a Volunteer and Donations management and Community recovery guidebooks out.
IOCC – Dan reported about the CISM training that the IOCC Frontliners will be doing in Chicago the week of May 25 and the IOCC Homefront project
Red Cross – Ruth gave report; Under One Roof went well and doing a lot of training on adapting ICS structure. They are doing a lot of exercises this summer. She will be sending out details

10.  News from Partners & Guests
Ian gave the report from Region V and introduced Katie as another VAL in our Region. They will be piloting a training in Donation Management. Have a monthly third Thursday ESF6 Mass care call. The next YAL call, which we will be invited to, will occur next month.

11.  Adjourned at 8:13 pm

Respectfully Submitted,

Dan Christopulos, IOCC
MN VOAD Secretary