Independent Living Partnership

The goal of the TRIP volunteer driver mileage reimbursement model is to encourage volunteerism to provide needed transportation for people who have no other way of getting to health services or accessing needed resources to enable them to continue to live independently.\n\nOverall, we are committed to the empowerment of older adults, people with disabilities, and their caregivers through collaborative and cooperative partnering with public and private organizations, agencies and businesses to implement programs and activities that motivate, educate, and promote the maintenance of a healthy and independent life style. Our vision is for communities and households where older adults and all people with disabilities can live successfully, with dignity and purpose, and with ample choices that support and promote independence.\n\nOur national goal is to assist cities, counties and organizations across the country to establish cost efficient and effective volunteer driver, mileage reimbursement transportation assistance services for persons with disabilities, older adults and the elderly, low-income, sick and chronically ill individuals who do not drive, do not have family to assist them with their transportation needs, and are unable to utilize available public transportation options. Our goal would be to eliminate transportation inequity for the most vulnerable populations to ensure access to needed services and other resources.

The empowerment strategy we follow is to provide tools for our constituency to use to take personal responsibility for success in living independently in their own homes and communities. Having pioneered the low-cost and efficient TRIP volunteer driver mileage reimbursement program and successfully operated the service for more than twenty-five years, providing now more than two million needed trips for people who could not get where they needed to go in any other way, we are now reaching out to other communities across the United States to help them start and operate similar services.

We work closely with State and regional agencies and organizations to identify and assist unserved and underserved community residents with their daily transportation requirements. Typically these individuals are low-income, in compromised health, with mobility impacting disabilities. We have developed a proprietary database application and tested business practices that make the delivery of TRIP model volunteer driver mileage reimbursement services highly cost efficient and effective, and easily transferable to other communities across the United States.

Since we began we have helped thousands of isolated and often home bound residents of Riverside County to access needed services, to rebuild and strengthen their social network, and to continue to live independently in their own homes and communities. We are working to support the start-up and operation of similar services and have been successful in helping nonprofits, and government and transit agencies in other states start and operate volunteer driver mileage reimbursement programs.\n\nWe have helped start proven successful volunteer driver, mileage reimbursement services, similar to TRIP, in California and in other areas of the country, including Michigan and Massachusetts.