Someone Will Answer: My Vision for VIA LINK, Human Services, and the State We Love
By LaVondra Dobbs, President and CEO
Somewhere in Louisiana tonight, a phone will ring after midnight.
The person calling may not know our name. They may not know what 211 or 988 stands for. They may be sitting in a car because it’s the only quiet place left, or staring at water rising in a living room they spent twenty years paying for. They may be calling for the first time in their life, or the tenth time this month.
They don’t need a brochure. They don’t need a program name. They need to know one thing:
Will someone answer?
For more than a hundred years, VIA LINK’s answer has been yes.
Where We Began
We started as the Volunteer Information Agency. We were volunteers with paper directories, helping people who didn’t know help existed. There was no technology, no data, no hotline. There were just neighbors who believed nobody should be left alone with a problem they couldn’t solve.
Our tools have changed. Paper became phone lines. Phone lines became text and chat. Directories became data systems that help leaders see where a storm will hurt most before the wind even arrives. But the promise has never changed. When you reach out, a person reaches back.
Why This Is Personal
I came to this work the way many people do: through my own family’s pain. I know what it is to need help and not know where to turn. I know how long a night can be when you are waiting for someone to tell you there is a way through.
That is why I will never see our work as a list of services. Every call is someone’s worst day. Every text is someone deciding, for one more moment, to hold on. Last year, VIA LINK answered 95,179 requests for help. I don’t see a number. I see 95,179 moments when someone was afraid, and someone answered.
Some of those people are still here because someone picked up the phone.
My Vision for Human Services
I dream of a day when human services is no longer the place people go after everything has fallen apart. I want it to be a net woven so tightly that no one falls through.
In that future, there is no wrong door. A call about a light bill becomes a conversation about the stress that’s keeping someone up at night. A crisis call becomes a connection to housing, to counseling, to a person who checks back in. Someone coming home from incarceration is met with a hand instead of a closed door. And the data we collect doesn’t sit in a report. It becomes a map that shows us where our neighbors are hurting, so we can get there faster.
That is what it means to be a Visionary. It isn’t about seeing the world as it is. It’s about refusing to accept that this is as good as it gets.
Why Louisiana Matters
Louisiana knows storms. We know what it means to watch the sky turn and wonder what will be left standing. We know blue tarps and boil advisories and the silence of a neighborhood waiting for the power to come back.
Our state too often shows up at the bottom of national lists. But those lists never measure what I see every single day. They don’t count the neighbors who took their own boats out into the water. They don’t count the church kitchens that fed strangers for weeks. They don’t count the call specialist who stayed on the line for an hour with someone who had given up, until that person said the words, “Okay. I’ll stay.”
That is Louisiana. We are a people who show up for each other.
And I believe this with my whole heart: if we can build a stronger, more connected system of care here, with our storms and our struggles and our unbreakable spirit, it can be built anywhere. What starts in Louisiana can light the way for the nation.
Will You Answer, Too?
I’m asking you to become a VIA LINK Visionary. I’m not asking only as a donor. I’m asking as a neighbor, as someone who believes the person on the other end of that midnight call deserves to hear a voice that says, “You’re not alone.”
When you give, you become part of that answer. You’re the reason the phone gets picked up. You’re the reason a family finds shelter before the storm. You’re the reason someone who was ready to give up sees one more sunrise.
Tonight, somewhere in Louisiana, the phone will ring.
Because of you, someone will answer.
With love for this work and for our state,
LaVondra Dobbs
President and CEO, VIA LINK