What is the difference in the Key Volunteer and the Navy Ombudsman? I'm thinking Key Volunteer is only for Marine spouses, but I'm not sure. I'm interested in volunteering while my Navy hubby is serving greenside and need some direction. I'm trying to find out what an ombudsman/key volunteer actually does on a day to day basis to see if its the sort of volunteer opportunity that would work for me. Any suggestions, links, and info will be appreciated.
Thanks,
G

Yes, Key Volunteers are the Marine's version of the Navy Ombudsmen.

Some days are busy, some aren't. You are a "conduit" between the command and the spouses. You are the contact point for emergency situations and so forth.

Sgt Mom

I have been both.. An Ombudsman and a Key Volunteer.
As an Ombudsman I put my name in the hat and the CO interviewed and made his selection.
As a Key Volunteer, the Battalion CO 'said' who was going to be KV's. That was all the Platoon Commanders Wives.
Being an Ombudsman and a KV are too different balls of wax.
As an Ombudsman the biggest drama I had was wives who couldnt make ends meet or ones who didnt get an email in over a week and wanted to know 'where her husband was'.
As a KV, you would be required to call all the wives in the Platoon after an ALL CLEAR has been issued informing them of deaths in the Battalion. That is a hard thing to do, very hard. Monthly meetings. We never did half-ways or a bunch of functions, no fundraising either. You are only responsible for the wives(no girlfriends or parents) in your spouses platoon. On a ship you are responsible for all the wives.
It is hard emotionally doing this for 12 women. But they were the strongest 12 women I had ever met. No complaining about lack of email or any sort of communication. We all knew our men were doing a job for the nation.

I served as a KV while my son's reserve battalion was deployed in 2005. Everybody who was interested in being a KV attended an all-day training class and then they picked who they wanted to use and in what capacity.

I was assigned 12 families (wives and/or parents). It was a pretty time-consuming job, maybe because it wasn't a regular active-duty battalion and they didn't understand a lot of what goes on. I spent a lot of time on the phone and email explaining situations. We also had fundraising events, lots of get-togethers for the families, etc. I'm glad I wasn't trying to work full-time.

The worst part of the job was when something happened in the part of the country where our guys were and everybody wanted to know if it involved any of our guys. Unfortunately, we lost 10 men during that deployment (Al Anbar Province) so that made the job a lot harder.

I think the KV setup is different depending on the battalion and their COs.

yeah, i would think that a key volunteer would require more training since there is more work involved. i don't know if i would be able to handle that position. personally, i have never heard of it until reading this thread.

I have been a KV for three years and a KVC for almost a year. I originally became a KV because I wasn't getting any information while DH was deployed.

If a unit isn't deployed, there isn't much a KV does, just keep in contact with their spouses, make sure their information is correct and current, answer the occasional base or benefits question. Deployments are where KV's really get moving.

docswife21 - Hi I am a corpsman's wife and I was a KV at out last Marine Corps unit. I took the training online prior to moving there and then took the training on the base. I took the one day course. Being a KV is very rewarding and really not very time consuming. The KVC is a lot more time consuming. Here is the link for online - you might just check it out to see

https://www.marinenet.usmc.mil/marinenet/Courses/Catalog.aspx