Carl Crawford, interculturalPotato Harvest: WarehousecoordinatorWorkersatandLakeGraders Superior College, at a recent training for volunteer drivers.
“I’ve been surprised at the compassion of this group,” said Carl Crawford, Intercultural Center coordinator at Lake Superior College.
Every year the volunteer drivers for Arrowhead Transit are required to take a refresher class so they can stay current on proper procedure. This year Crawford has been providing the diversity training for several of these classes.
Within the eight counties of the Arrowhead, there are currently 268 Arrowhead Transit active volunteer drivers. These drivers are reimbursed 57.5 cents per mile they drive, but, “None of these drivers that I have met are doing it just for the money,” said Crawford. “It’s a really compassionate group. All of them are dealing with people who are often at the toughest times in their lives.
“Sometimes it’s hard not to look at people and identify them by their needs. I tell the volunteers, ‘see the human side of your clients.’”
Arrowhead Transit contracts with insurance providers and counties to provide rides for qualifying persons to medical appointments. In addition Arrowhead Transit’s Rural Rides Program provides volunteer drivers to assist persons with work-related transportation needs. Each month the volunteers drive almost 250,000 miles. That works out to over 11,000 miles per day (Monday through Friday), which is equivalent to driving back and forth from Los Angeles to New York, twice! Yet there has not been a serious accident caused by one of the volunteer drivers in the millions of miles driven.
Transportation advocate Martin Lepak, a one-man HR department for these drivers said, “We have a really good group of drivers right now. I mean a really good group! Right now we are not looking for additional drivers, but if anyone is interested, they can contact me by email martin.lepak@aeoa.org and I’ll get them on our waiting list.”
The Arrowhead Transit Volunteer Driver Program is part of the Arrowhead Economic Opportunity Agency.
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