Below is a copy of the body of a letter I recieved recently from President Jim Burns of FASNY regarding the Recruit NY 2014 campaign. Although FASNY is not often well represented in our County they still represent us as members of the Fire Service and they offer some great programs including things like the Higher Education Learning Plan (HELP) and the Recruit NY effort.

Departments across the state participating in the 2014 Recruit NY Event are already signing up and are listed on the FASNY website. If your department if planning to participate in the event you can also register with FASNY and have your department listed on their site as well - http://www.recruitny.org/opendoors.php. They also have all kinds of nifty propaganda that you can print out and hang up, use for the media as well as use on your facebook and webpages to promote the event.

President Burns' letter:

My fellow firefighters -

Welcome to RecruitNY 2014!

While the official RecruitNY 2014 weekend is still several weeks away, the time to begin preparing for your fire department's recruitment open house event is NOW!

April 26 and 27 will be here before we know it. If your department has yet to participate in RecruitNY, now is a great time to join the 592 fire departments in 59 counties across the state that hosted recruitment open house events as part of RecruitNY 2013. And if your department has participated in RecruitNY in the past, but we just don't have record of it, we want to thank you for your efforts to support the New York State volunteer fire service. We sincerely hope you were able to benefit from it and gain some new members. This year, please make sure to let your community know you're participating by RSVPing with FASNY here: www.recruitny.org/signup

Over the last year and a half, FASNY has worked exceptionally hard to build and deploy a multi-tiered plan for helping our state's more than 1,700 volunteer fire departments recruit new volunteer firefighters in their own communities. With the help of a $4.3 million federal SAFER grant, FASNY has taken a number of important steps to help create heightened interest in becoming a volunteer firefighter, while also providing local departments with the tools and skills they need to go out and recruit more than 15,000 new volunteer firefighters across the state. These have included:

• Providing tuition assistance to hundreds of student volunteers attending SUNY community colleges

• Creating a great media campaign featuring REAL volunteer firefighters in TV and radio commercials

• Developing printed posters, brochures and other resources - including a great "Fire In Me" recruitment video that local departments can use in their own local recruitment campaigns (all available at www.fasny.com)

• Conducting more than 120 "Train the Recruiter" classes across the state, where each attending department left with their very own recruitment kit to bring back to their firehouse

• Building www.fireinyou.org - a Web portal anyone interested in joining a volunteer fire department in New York State can visit for information and contact with the local fire department

Look for more "Fire In You" TV commercials or coverage of RecruitNY activities in the news as the weekend approaches. While FASNY is shouting the recruitment message from the mountain tops, only YOU and YOUR DEPARTMENT can "close the deal" by getting members of your community into the firehouse during RecruitNY weekend. Please take part in this event again this year and show these prospective volunteer firefighters why they should join your department.