HOUGHTON – Dial Help is looking for people in the area to be “part of the movement of making the community safer for people who are suicidal or in another type of crisis,” Rebecca Crane, executive director of Dial Help, said. “We need people to be part of the coalition that we want to build. Parents, professionals, youth – and then we want to bring people to the table as part of the process in the community and everywhere else.”

While Dial Help is an important part of the Upper Peninsula, Crane always sees room for expansion.

“We’re trying to start a coalition locally like we are in the all the other counties that don’t have one,” she said, “so that might be, again, to kind of marshal resources and networking, to bring in training, that sort of thing – just to make sure that the people in these communities are more prepared to assist people who are suicidal or in crisis.”

According to Crane, the coalition would be made up of “professional people.”

“It could be parents, it could youth, because youth suicide is a big issue here,

she said. “So, we really would like anybody who is interested in joining us. The Suicide Prevention Initiative, which is what this grant is, to be at the table and be part of the process.”

The heart of Dial Help is that agency’s volunteers, which Victims Crime Act Coordinator Jeanette Dorh, happily acknowledges.

“We love volunteers, we always need volunteers. We have volunteers that work our crisis lines; we have volunteers that do our victim service 24 hours a day,” she said. “We have volunteers for everything from crisis line to administrative stuff – whatever they feel comfortable with.”

Dorh said becoming a volunteer is not a complicated task – those interested can simply come in and pick up an application, or have one mailed to them. After filling out an application, Dohr said an interview will be coordinated to get them into training as quickly as possible.

“They get trained extensively in crisis intervention and give them the skills that they’ll need,” she said.