Thursday February 28, 2008, 7-9pm, Andover Fire Station #1, 13875 Crosstown Blvd NW Andover, MN 55304

Hello BART Volunteers! Basic Animal Rescue Training is looking for volunteers to take on a wide variety of NON-TRAINING roles in our organization. We want to assemble a diverse group of talented people to continue to expand and grow our program within Minnesota and nationwide. Want to help BART Save Lives? Please plan to attend a planning meeting Thursday February 28th, 7-9pm at the Andover Fire Station 1 (directions below). RSVP to Michelle.Reckard@BasicAnimalRescueTraining.org and we will send you more information.

The MVMA Convention was a success and we recently were awarded grants from East Central Energy and Banfield Charitable Trust! We are eagerly awaiting the evaluation results from FEMA – Office of Training and Grants for our Small Animal Curriculum, to let us know if BART will become the national model course for training first responders for animals. Over 30 states have asked if we can come and teach them to deliver BART there, and we posted a formal application for them on our website last month. We have $50,000 in funding from the American Veterinary Medical Foundation to help 5 other states get BART up and running, so our National Expansion is just a stones throw away!

Our Board of Directors has recently expanded to help make all this happen (from 3 people to 11, more details will be coming soon) and an Executive Committee has been formed to run our day to day operations, which are taking more time each day.

We need help to manage the growing work of running BART, and are looking for volunteers who want to take on areas of more time commitment and responsibility in our organization. The Executive Committee is targeting 5 areas where we need help: operations, planning, finance, logistics and public information. We are looking for volunteers to take on a wide variety of non-training roles in our organization. We want to assemble a diverse group of talented people to continue to expand and grow our program within Minnesota and nationwide. Please note that this is NOT a meeting to train-in certified trainers. The volunteers we are looking for in this meeting will help manage and operate BART, and do not have to be in the veterinary profession.

If you are interested in joining a committee to help with any of the areas below or if you have ideas of your own, please plan to attend a planning meeting Thursday, February 28th, 7-9pm at the Andover Fire Station 1 directions below.

Operations: We want to form a committee to help update and expand BART’s bylaws, policies and guidelines, manage our database and Information Technology, and research insurance and risk management for BART.

Planning: We need a Committee to help with National Expansion, evaluate the applications from other states to determine where BART will go, and make the arrangements with other states for Train the Trainer course delivery in that state. The BART curriculum will need to be modified for each state. In addition, we want to write our Community Responder and Large Animal courses up in the FEMA format and submit them for to FEMA for evaluation in 2008.

Finance: We need more help writing grants, and with community, individual, corporate, local business and veterinary clinic fundraising efforts. We also are looking for help with accounting and bookkeeping.

Logistics: These volunteers will help coordinate MN training, including certifying new trainers, overseeing scheduling of classes and getting BART training equipment moved to where it needs to be next. These volunteers will need to work very closely with Finance – we are now turning departments away due to our lack of funding.

Public Information: This team of volunteers will help get the word out about BART. We need help writing stories about BART’s activities for our electronic newsletter The Siren and our website, expanding our media contacts, writing press releases, and attending conventions. We need to develop a Speaker Team who are trained to represent BART to the public, veterinary audiences, emergency responders and the media. We need people to learn what the big picture of BART is and be able to explain it to others, and help us meet the requests we are getting to come and speak at various events, and do interviews for BART.

RSVP to michelle.reckard@basicanimalrescuetraining.org

Thanks and we hope to see you there!

Address of Andover Fire Station #1:
13875 Crosstown Blvd NW
Andover, MN 55304

Directions:
Take I-35W North. Continue on I-35W for about 3 miles after you cross 694.
Merge onto US-10W via Exit 30 – follow for about 10 miles
Take the Main Street/MN-242 Exit
Turn RIGHT onto Main Street/MN-242
Turn LEFT onto Coon Creek Blvd / CR-18 N. Continue to follow CR-18 N for 1.8 miles
End at 13875 Crosstown Blvd NW

The phone number to the station is 763-755-9825 if anybody gets lost along the way. They can also contact Chief Dan Winkel’s cell at 612-328-7765.