Dear Friends of Raleigh Village East,
We have a new CEO, Deborah Owens, who has served this past year as our Vice President. More about Deborah and her position later, but for the moment, just know that she is heading up our effort to help with COVID vaccinations, an out growth of our informal effort to help people in our area get the vaccine.
RVE has entered into a collaboration with Activate Good (an organization that trains and puts volunteers into various events), NAACP of Raleigh and Apex, and Neighbor Health to do a series of clinics for underserved populations. Neighbor Health Clinic gets and administers the vaccines, Moderna mostly, and approves a site for each one-day clinic. NAACP advertises the clinic and takes the names of people who call in or sign up through their website. Activate Good and Raleigh Village East recruit and train volunteers. Activate Good's volunteers staff the vaccine site and Raleigh Village East trains and manages volunteers who call the appointment list.
We have done one clinic on March 20 at the Boys and Girls Club on Raleigh Blvd. For that one, we quickly grabbed 5 volunteers and called the 300 people who had signed up for appointments. We learned along the way how to do this and that it was a valuable process. We want to have more volunteers going forward because there will be more clinics and there may be an increased demand for this assistance. This is the process you would be volunteering for:
Call between 30 and 40 people over 2 or 3 days in the week before the clinic.
Use your own phone and leave that phone number as a call back, both for those who answer and for voicemail.
Go through a brief training with the leader of your team, consult the team leader on any questions, and report all cancelations you get right away.
Our team who called for the first clinic on March 20 felt this was a valuable experience and that people welcomed the calls. We took 62 cancellations, which means that 62 more people got the shot than would have without our calls because we substituted people on the waiting list. We also did troubleshooting. Our reminders helped more people get there and at the right time.
The next clinic is on Thursday, April 29, Roberts Community Center on E. Martin Street. Calling for that clinic will start on April 22 and be completed by April 25.
We are doing 2nd shot call backs for the April 17 2nd shot clinic at Boys and Girls Club and would like to include some new callers so they can learn how the system goes and be ready to hit the ground running for the April 29 clinic. We will make those calls on April 14 and 15.
To sign up or to ask questions, call me, Sara Stohler, at 919-916-9593 or email stohler00@gmail.com
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