Great.  I understand we’ve got a question from Region Four.  Region Four?

Hi my name is Karen Wright, we’re calling from the Public Assistance Recovery Division in Region Four in Atlanta.  And I was wondering, other than being 18 to 24 what are some of the other requirements for members such as having a driver’s license, physical fitness, what are the other requirements?

I think this is a good one for Kate Rafferty who is our executive director of NCCC.

Thank you.  We have an actuality, we try to be as broad as possible in terms of our criteria.  We in fact do not even require a high school degree although we work with our members over the course of their 10 months to achieve their GED as well as doing their service.  They pass a medical, a psychological test, we do vetting for criminal backgrounds.  All of that is done to allow us to have a core, a group of young people that are coming in.  We also have joined with a number of organizations across the country that work with young people to be recruiting partners.  So we use them to do promotion, to look for again, the most diverse group of young people that we can draw into this program.  So it is not only the age of 18 to 24 but also the background, medical and psychological testing.

I’m going to take another question that just came in.  And Kate, maybe you can piggyback on your answers here.  How will you recruit these young people and is there any kind of specialized skills that they need in order to apply?

Currently we are using our recruiting process that we have in place to draw in our members.  We currently have in any one year, two to three times the number of applicants than we have openings.  So we have a pool of young people that are constantly coming to NCCC with the hope of becoming a member.  What we are going to be doing and working very closely with FEMA staff is to look at, is our traditional recruiting mechanism bringing in the kinds of folks that speak to the skills that you want for each one of your disciplines?  So as we do the first few groups, we will be looking at the background of each one of them.  I mean currently we just did a search.  We don’t traditionally let’s say go out and recruit for architects but that might be a skill that you need as we go forward.  What we found out that we in fact have a good number of architects that are currently in the program but we didn’t recruit them because of that skill set.  So we’re going to be turning to Bob and many others as we go forward to look at who’s coming in through our normal traditional recruiting mechanism to see if we don’t get those skills then we will go back to the colleges, universities that might be focusing in those skills or to our recruiting partners to ensure that we are bringing in the largest pool possible of the skills that you need as we move forward.

All right, our next question comes from an e-mail.  What capacity, which programs will the FEMA Corps members support when deployed and Bob, maybe this is a good one for you.  It says PA, IA, et cetera and will they be fully trained to function in these capabilities?

So as we said earlier four different areas, eight different positions.  Specifically those positions would be the PA project specialist, an IA report specialist, a voluntary liaison specialist, mass care and emergency assistance specialist, IA applicant services program specialist, community relations specialist, logistic specialist and logistic system specialist.  They will all come in as trainees as Richard indicated.  We will put them into the FQS system, issue them task books, provide them the required training under FQS and then as they get deployed, start the demonstrative performance with regard to their task book and our goal is to eventually get them qualified.  And there may be some opportunity to cross train in certain positions and other functions and we’ll look for those and modify based on operations requirements and how the initial pilot goes with the first 480 coming on this fall.

We have a question here about whether or not the new FEMA Corps members will leave AJFO in advance of the reservists that are there at the same time or afterwards.

So I would say that what we’re going to do is, it’s probably going to be more dependent not on, you know specifically what is your hiring authority but the operations and requirement and the workload assigned.  And I think everyone that’s been in disasters, you know an individual may be assigned a DRC in a specific county where you know that DRC goes on and IA is eligible in the a county for a certain amount of time and so those people may stay there and work in that area whereas maybe in another area maybe the application had already closed or operational requirements dictate maybe releasing someone.  So I think we’ll look at those and we’ll leave those decisions down to the FCO and the JFO leadership there to make decisions on how to best manage that workforce but our goal is to continue to be able to offer these members opportunities to deploy and focus on whether it be response, recovery or even long-term objectives to help us with providing disaster assistance to the individuals.

I can see there that Region Four has a number of people sitting in a town hall meeting so we’re going to kick it back over to Region Four because I understand there’s another question.

Yes, hi my name is Cynthia Belson.  I sit in the Declarations Unit here at Region Four and my question relates to I guess some of the mechanics; one is that are they going to be assigned to regions?  Or are they going to work out of headquarters as a sort of national cadre?  And in line with that, how does that relate to sort of proportionally how many numbers of them will deploy to a particular situation as compared to engaging DAE people?  And then I know that AmeriCorps functions in many ways and some cases the AmeriCorps people have insurance for example.  Is this going to provide insurance to them in the event that they are injured out in the field?  And then are they eligible for per diem and all of that given the limited stipend that they do receive.

I’ll start, ask Kate to come in, in the middle and relief and then I’ll ask Brad to close on the question.  So as far as declarations and order and resources, we’re going to try to you know, personnel resources, we’re going to try to make this consistent with how you order currently personnel through ADD and we’re going to work on the business processes and how to do that and how to do that most efficiently and effectively over the next couple of months.  We’re actually in the process of going into implementation plan right now and we’ll work through a lot of those issues directly with the regions on how we deploy personnel.  They will as far as insurance, Kate will cover the insurance and then I’ll go to Brad to clean up anything that we didn’t answer.

Yes, the insurance they will be covered under the NCCC Healthcare so that is not an issue.  They receive a food allowance of $4.75 a day and that’s -- they pool those resources to be able to cook as a team.  That is they receive a stipend which allows for certain walk-around expenses but the housing we will be doing the housing the same as our NCCC members now which is that the community provides that.  So we will be working -- our staff that’s used to going out to a community and joining forces with -- it could be a church group, it could be a youth group but facilities would be provided for them to sleep and to have a kitchen facility.  We will be obviously taking a lead from FEMA staff in terms of good partners that you would direct us to for those housing opportunities.  But one of the things that’s important for us as an organization is that all the NCCC members have the same experience so we don’t want to have the FEMA Corps and then the traditional NCCC Corps have different benefits.  So the benefits are going to be exactly the same and you can see not very many.  So but we want them all to be the same in terms of those resources.