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Yeah, we have to. Sonoma County, a diverse county of over one million acres is famed for its agriculture industry and recreation boasting a booming economy and a unique lifestyle for its citizens described by the famed Luther Burbank as the chosen spot of all the earth. Sonoma

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County is the place to live, work and play as we move into the 21st century. Led by the forward looking philosophy of its governing bodies. Sonoma County's 340,000 residents are a harmonious, successful blend of ethnic and economic backgrounds. We invite you to take a closer look

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at Sonoma County in the nineties with your host, Rich McGlinchey. How you doing? Everybody welcome to this edition of Sonoma County in the 90s. We're gonna be talking about volunteering. We're talking with two persons on the left screen. Betty Garcia Patterson who is a social services

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volunteer coordinator and in the middle as she always is throughout life. It seems like Don Matheny who is our own county volunteer program specialist and you didn't know I'd sneak that one in. Did you don's been with us before? I don't know if any of, you

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know, we haven't talked to you before. Well, these two women are involved in what I consider to be one of the most important functions anybody's involved in over at the county, uh, as you know, unless you've been off on mars for the last couple of years

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counties are really having a tough tough time and they have had for the past few years. There are not enough people to do a lot of things that have to be done. One of the groups that have filled that void are the volunteers and they've done

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a magnificent job of filling it. Both gone to the Countywide and Betty's with social service department have just been absolutely wonderful with that. Having been said, I want to pause for just a minute and talk about the artwork on the set today. This work is by

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pencil master Sherry Warburton. Sherry was born in santa rosa and intended local schools. She has studied art but she is also self taught now. She has shown her work extensively throughout Sonoma County and she is now gaining a reputation throughout the state for this beautiful work.

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She accepts private commissions for portraits. So if you're interested in following up on this in that respect, you can reach Sherry at 83609 88. And Sherry, thank you very much for sharing your artwork with us. Don't you think it's beautiful. Fantastic. Um, well, welcome. And I

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said before you guys are doing a great job and an important one. Don, first of all, you are the county's volunteer specialist. What is the county volunteer program? I have a fair idea. I think you do. But maybe maybe I can enlighten other people. The county's

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volunteer program is a place where people can volunteer in a county department or for a county service. There are over 1600 people that volunteered last year for some department or program in county government and that giving, if we gave a dollar value to their time, it's

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approximately $2 million dollars worth of contribution. Yeah. And you know, that's, you know, as I said before, that's so very, very important in these, which is always important. But it's really important in these crucial fiscal times too. How is this different from the volunteer center located

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in downtown Sonoma County Volunteer service or something? What is it called actually? Volunteer volunteer center And I call myself then the volunteer office in county government county. How do you differ from them? Well, what my focus is just county government, county run programs and departments And

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they have a much broader focus. Um they actually were instrumental in beginning this program uh 10 years ago and getting it up in and running. Um, but they serve the broader specter of the nonprofits in Sonoma County, of which there are many doing a wonderful job

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of providing services. And my focus remains just county government. Betty, I think what we'll do is jump back and forth here and try to tie things in here. How does your volunteer program different from Dawn's? Well, I should start out by saying that I'm actually part

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of the volunteer center of Sonoma County, which is what Don has just described and in being one of their staff members. My placement is with social service. So I run the volunteer program out there. And what's different is that I'm limited to placing my volunteers within

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the different units of social service. And currently we have about 100 and 30 volunteers that are doing various types of jobs for social service. How many people in the whole department For all of social service employees? Oh, 400. Yes. At least 30 volunteers. And those volunteers

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that are not just located in the main building, but located out of Valley of the Moon or various other through family and children's services. Just all the various other units and departments of social service. Why do people volunteer who has the time? Well, that's a good

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question. Um, increasingly people are coming to me, um, interested in volunteering in order to gain some work experience in a career field with this tough job market. That's become a very um, um, important reason for volunteering as people add to their resume or actually explore a

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new field or get some work experience that they can, they can cash in on. Um, but traditionally people have volunteered over time because they really care about a cause and they want to make a difference in their community. Um, so, you know, there are many reasons

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why people volunteer students will volunteer for college credit. Um, but it does tend to break down between the cause and the work experience. Some people just would like to be involved in their community. That's another, another way you do some volunteer work yourself. We could ask

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you understand. Yeah. Actually I have maybe you want to share with people what, why you, I retired from the county as a paid employee last december and a year ago and I felt that it was important that we keep Sonoma County in the nineties going, which

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was I in the county and post new sprint cable joined together to present this. And so you provided a space for me over there and I'm able to keep this going through that effort. And I think the effort is beneficial to the county because I think

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it causes attention to what we're doing, how we're doing it and how successful we are are not in what we're trying to do over there. So I, I do it because I think that it's this function needs to be continued and then I hope to be

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able to help you and a few other little things as well. I'm in the office over there. But my reason really is that it's necessary to continue to put what local government is doing before the public. So you understand where your bucks are going and you

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understand why agencies like this exist to help alleviate not only the fiscal straits were all in, but to help the people find many cases you said add to their resume to re enter the workforce, which many of them do. Many people like me, I'm not about

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to re enter the workforce I don't think, but I think that it's wonderful that some of the people come over there to both of you and then do so. Um, I'm gonna ask you both this, but one here, what kind of things do volunteers do for

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Sonoma County? They do just about everything. We have, um, people doing data entry in various departments. Um, again, that would primarily be for the work experience. We have people on the AIDS hotline, giving information about the disease and helping people make appointments for testing. Um, we

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have people up at community hospital, um, that assist the patients and the hospital in a whole variety of different ways. We've got trail walkers out in regional parks, People that uh, give of their time on a weekly basis to walk a particular trail and then report

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any problems into the ranger. So we have the, the physical exercise, the, the computer and um, And the one on one helping. Just a whole variety of ways that people do volunteer. Um, I, I hope I can convey how how really broad it is the possibilities

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for volunteering. Well, before we jump over to bed in her side of it, there's, there's approximately 40 county departments and about 70 divisions. If you count the departments and and there and the divisions of those departments. When you're talking about 70 entities like that, you're 70

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different areas that need help from volunteers. So the volunteer that comes to you at the county level. There has a wide variety of opportunities in which to volunteer for whatever reason they wish to do it. And then I wanted to jump over you Betty, What are

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some of the volunteer opportunities available to the social service program? Volunteer program? Well, we've got several I've mentioned to already. Um, and one is out of Valley of the Moon, Children's Home working with Children in the dependent unit. Um, various kinds of things that volunteers can

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do you out there. Um, a lot of tutoring. A lot of, just the 1 to 1 working with Children. Fun activities. We really encourage volunteers that have uh special interest or a hobby to come in and share that with the Children out at the at the

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Valley of the Moon. Um, and and kind of become an expert out there and a mentor that these Children can learn from. We also do um, a program called visitation aid and that helps the family and Children's services. Uh folks that need a volunteer that assist

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with monitoring and supervising visits between families and their Children. One of our bigger programs is the information and referral program. Uh, we have about 28 volunteers that are out at the main social service building working on the phone lines, answering calls. Uh we get approximately Anywhere

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from 15 to 1600 calls a month. Um, and we're answering questions about where do they go for legal services? Um, how do I um, find out about food stamps. Um, just all various kinds of questions. Uh folks who need to know where they can spend the

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night, what homeless shelters are open and what's available. We do the legwork as far as calling in to see what's available and what's open information referral has been going on for about nine years now and it's a real valuable service. And our volunteers are there from

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8 30 to 4 30 every day. And um we have our christmas project, which is a way that we I wanted to ask you something else. As you mentioned, information referral, I was thinking, does it provide service to social service clients only. That's a good question.

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A lot of people think that that we are limited to just the clients of social service, but in fact it's not, it is open to any, any person who wants to call in. We even have an 800 number. We service all of Sonoma County and outside

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of Sonoma County to folks that are just moving into the community that want to uh to find out information about. Where do they call for certain services? We connect them with agencies. Um Throughout Sonoma County, we definitely would refer to all the the towns, some of

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the small towns that people don't really have a lot of services uh were able to give pinpoint as to who they would call there. So. No, it's open to everybody. And and r if anyone's interested in getting that nation, they can call 5 to 7 to

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one oh eight. Let's make sure I get that right, that's our information and referral line. And as I said, that's open to 7 to 1 oh eight and that's open monday through friday. That's interesting because I was wondering as you talked about that, whether or not

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that was limited specifically to social service clients now, you were about to touch on the christmas project, how did that program assist the county this year? Let's say, first of all, tell us a little about it. Okay, we the christmas project is, it's several different uh

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projects rolled into one. We do work in conjunction with Salvation Army in their christmas clearinghouse and we assist them by providing a Approximately 8000 names of people in the county that are on some type of assistance that could use uh food or clothing or gifts of

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any type. We also work with other agencies, help them by screening some of the folks that come to them asking for for Christmas help. We do A program called adopt a family where we connect businesses or individuals with families that are in need. We do another

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really fun program where Children are able to get hooked up with businesses and businesses provide a party for them. And we had 20, businesses this year that provided uh parties, gifts and all kinds of fun things for Children and we probably served. My figures aren't all

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in yet, but I think we probably served about 15 to 1800 Children this year just with the christmas program. Yeah, it is. And it's fun. It's people really, people are looking for things to do. A place to volunteer at christmas and we're able to give them

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a lot of that, that ability to give of themselves. So this has been a project that not only is fun but immensely successful. Very successful, very helpful back to you buddy. Um why would people want to volunteer specifically for Sonoma County? We've talked about all the

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departments and all that, but, but why? Well, the county runs a number of excellent, it provides public service. And so it runs a number of excellent programs that um, for instance, if if the if AIDS is an interest on the part of someone, our county's volunteer

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aids project um offers great opportunities for volunteers to get involved in that. Um, so we have a number of of cause causes. Uh, and Betty's program is a great example of that. Um, but another, a real strength I think of coming to volunteer for the county

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is to gain some work experience. Um, and I think that we, there are a number of positions that provide excellent work experience. And both Betty and I have had the had the pleasure of working with the volunteer who then went on and got paid employment because

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of their volunteer work with us. And that's very gratifying when both people can get their their needs met. Our programs really benefit by um the help that was provided and yet the person is really able then to take that and move us step forward in their

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life. So I think that we do that real well in county government provide that work experience for people to resume and to move on. I think you both, as I said earlier and I'll repeat again before we're through doing an excellent job of bringing people in

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to work with county government. And secondarily, to benefit those people in many ways, we're gonna pause right here for an announcement from the station, a public service announcement after which we'll come back and talk to Betty Garcia Patterson and Dawn Matheny more about volunteering at Sonoma

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County Government center and social services. First this message, the works of black authors have moved from the negro section of libraries to the Pulitzer prize list. The 1987 Pulitzer for Poetry went to Rita Dove, now an English professor at the University of Virginia. What others see

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as ordinary lives she captures as the story of humanity and weaves it into her poetry. Non blacks who read thomas imbula my poems that chronicled the lives of my grandparents say they are surprised to find their own lives there. They shouldn't be poetry transcends borders, It

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maps our common humanity. Poetry is a microscope, making it easier for us to see that we really are more alike than different Rita Dove. Excellence has many faces. Welcome back to this edition of Sonoma County in the nineties. Were talking about volunteering at the Sonoma County

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Government Center. We're talking with left of your screen. Betty Garcia Patterson, who is the Social Services volunteer coordinator. She's a member of the Countywide Volunteer Bureau. And then we're also talking with Jon Matheny, who is the volunteer program specialist for Sonoma County, both of whom are

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doing a very necessary, very vital and a very good job bringing people in people who want to volunteer into the county services and giving them an experience working in these various departments, some of which will allow them to go out and renew their life in the

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work field if they choose to. And then for people like me, it's something I enjoy doing and and I look forward to doing. Now, dawn back to you, given that work experience is one of the reasons people volunteers. The question arises were volunteers service help someone

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get a job with the County of Sonoma. That's that's an important disclaimer for me to put out. I think that volunteering in any capacity is a very uh, important and useful thing to do for someone who has some time in their job search process. Um, but

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there's no direct correlation between volunteering for the county and getting a job i. E if you were interested in in a job that was posted for the county and you came in to volunteer here for that job, there really wouldn't be any connection between the paid

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employment process and the and volunteering. Um If you are otherwise competitive in terms of the county as a civil service hiring system, which is very structured and um and you have to meet some minimum qualifications and you have to test and interview well if you're otherwise

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competitive, I do believe volunteering gives you an advantage. But there's no direct connection and that's important to let people know going going into it. Not a promise. No Betty. What are the benefits of volunteering with your pa very similar to what Don has mentioned already. It's

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a a good way to get some experience, uh great training. Um We offer some supervision for people that are um trying to maybe get a few new skills on their resume. And um we have been able to work with folks have gone on to other jobs.

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They volunteered for a while, which which is kind of sad in a way because we get them trained and really brush up on their skills and they really know what they're doing. They're excellent folks. But of course the job market's then ready to snap them up,

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but that's that's a good benefit for them and they're able to move on into into other things that they do everybody. I've volunteered over there with you, everyone that I have met. I won't say this to everyone has told me when I talked about it, that

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they've gained a great deal out of it. So it's it's really satisfying to hear that not only there providing a service and helping us in a lot of ways, but they feel they're deriving the real key to that is establishing a match between what the volunteers

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needs are and what the volunteer job has to offer. And if we can make that match between what the volunteer is looking for and what the job offers, then it's a win win situation in both sides are benefiting. I think it's important for volunteers not to

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end up being talked into doing something they don't really want to do Because that's not gonna benefit either. And it usually doesn't work out for any length of time. We have volunteers for the county who have been at it for up to 20 years now. These

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are not people getting it for job experience. Um, Betty, Betty dishonored someone who's been at it for 10 years. Information referral. And she actually was there when the program started. I have another gentleman that started the exact She did. That's been in information referral for 10

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years. We just celebrated an eight year anniversary for somebody else. So those folks are just are dedicated and just do it for their own reason of helping out. The library is not really part of our daily with anymore. It used to be years ago. But they

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have a number of volunteers and one of the reasons the library services, David Price told me recently has been able to keep going is because of people being volunteering to go in and serve in some way or other. Doing so. Many schools now encourage and even

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require volunteer work at the high school and college level. Now, do you have positions for students? Well, the county has quite an extensive internship program on the college level. Um, variety of different departments. Uh, do use interns and uh, there are even a few paid internships

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within county government. Most our, our volunteer um, for the high school student, there are less opportunities in government. But there are a couple of good programs at the animal shelter and at community hospital. And we can, I want, I really want to encourage people to give

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me a call and we can I, if I know about it, If it's out there in the community, I can get them in touch with where other programs are that will meet their needs. So if if county government can't supply it. Certainly the volunteer center and

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a variety Of other other sources in our community have some great opportunities as well. So I want to ask you, where is your program in 1994, I think what we're looking at is because of shrinking budgets were looking at maintain training the volunteers that we have,

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um, trying to do some more outreach so that we can fill some of the needs that the county is seeing and doing some outreach for college and university students, students that would like to do internships. That that's something else we're looking for. Um, We're also trying

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to find placements for the high school students that you were just talking about. That is a big, big emphasis this year. What's your phone number? Our phone number? If you're trying to reach the information and referral line at social service, it's 5 to 7 to one

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oh eight. But if you're trying to get information on how to volunteer, there's another number and that is. That would be my number 5 to 7 to 317 5 to 7 to 317. That's right. If they happen to call the the information referral line and are

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still looking for someplace to volunteer, we'll pass it on to don. Okay, now, how can we have a couple of moments left here. How can people get more information? Let's say on your program. Give me a call and we can say that number again, but give

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me a call, make an appointment to come in. Um Takes about a half a half hour. I can go over what volunteer jobs exist and try to match what their interest is with um one of the jobs we have available. And if they're interested specifically in

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social service department volunteer. Um, volunteering, I can refer them to Betty. So it works to call my number, which would be 5 to 7 to 317 Betty. Why don't we ask the same question? How can somebody get more information about the volunteer programs that you administer

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in your area? They can either call at that same number. I won't toss in any more phone numbers. We can use those phone numbers that are already given. And the other piece of information would be to call to the volunteer center directly. And the volunteer center

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on Fourth Street will also channel people to me as well. Okay, This is, as I said earlier, this is an extremely important program because so many people are, are served by all this people that come in. They're gaining a lot out of it. I know that

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because as I said, I've talked to many, we gain a lot out of it because they help us with services that in some cases we're not funding anymore. We have about a minute and a half. What final thoughts do you have on volunteering at the county

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level? I wanted to to add just in terms of the future of volunteering is, there was a community service bill passed recently, um, that is being worked on here in our county as a collaborative effort between a number of nonprofits more specifically. Um, and this will

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be a bit more of a where someone signs up similar to the Peace corps only here in our country, um, where they can earn some credits for for college or um, is it over? It's done anyway. And the community service program is forming in in nationally

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and will be happening here in our county. So if people want some more information on that, we can funnel them to the correct now. We are. So I have to hurry and we thank you Betty, Garcia Patterson Social Service Don Mattingly. I'm Rich McGlinchey Program, Sonoma

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County in the nineties. I'll be back with you next week. Another Memory County, Government, family or related agency. Until then. Good night, Good luck and good health to each and every one of them.