Hello Dearest Division 1307 Member!
It has been a while since my last divisional update, and so I thought I would email the entire division with news.
First Off, thank you so much to all the volunteers who are keeping up with their monthly training. As you know, our Training Team puts in a lot of efforts to ensure that our division has the most up to date and best training, accessible for all of our members. A good number of our training team are training to be primary care paramedics, making their research for our training, very up to date and current. Please continue to do your monthly trainings as they will become more and more relevant to our division’s needs, and will be used more in the future with respect to in-person trainings which will have a limited amount of spaces. Completion of trainings also may be used for eligibility for certain more popular events and MFR training.
As some of you may already know, we are slowly preparing to leave Better Impact and make use of St John Ambulance’s own new software, called VMS (Volunteer Management System). We will be the last area in the province to make the switch, which means the other areas have already identified many issues which are being resolved. Our time is scheduled for approximately mid May. There will be follow up emails marked "**ACTION REQUIRED**” as you will likely have to create and access your profiles on the new system. Those who fail to do so may not be able to remain members of our organization, as this update is not fully automatic. Please make sure your hours and information are up to date on better impact as anything not entered will no longer be correctable after the eminent switch. In other words, what isn’t in there at the time of the switch will not be able to be added later. Lost/forgotten hours will be lost.
Our membership has reached an all-time high, we are currently at 99 members, and I keep recruiting interested parties. With the new system, we will no longer have the privilege of counting on other divisions to keep staffing our events, simply because the events will no longer be public as they were in Team Initiatives on Better Impact. This mean that we will now be responsible to staff our own events, which means everyone will need to step up and sign up when they see events with not enough staffing. Our slow time is in the summer, and I am told that it will not be as slow as last year. We are asking that our members please step up more often, there is no way we should have unstaffed and understaffed events with our current membership numbers.
Lastly, for the first time in a long time, the Canucks have a shot at winning the cup. This means that we have entered Playoff season. These are historic times, with historic events. Sign up for playoffs is a rare privilege, and we urge our members to be a part of history. At this time, the first few games have already had less staffing than needed, even with the help of other divisions. These events are short lived, and I would like to remind you that although the events have a scheduled end time, they may go on a bit longer due to the nature of Playoff games, which can go into “sudden death” and extend until such a time that a team loses a tie.
Thanks for reading this email, we look forward to seeing you out there,
All the best, and please keep your eyes peeled for updates,
Sincerely,
Philippe Lurol, MStJ,
Primary Care Paramedic
Divisional Superintendent
Division 1307, Rogers Arena Operations
St John Ambulance BC/Yukon