FORT GORDON, Ga. (Nov. 7, 2012) - Hoping to ease transitional stress for service members arriving or leaving post as well as ensure they abide by Army regulations, Fort Gordon has increased its efforts to promote the Total Army Sponsorship Program.

"The goal and objective of TASP is to improve sponsorship by facilitating a warm handoff between losing and gaining commands, and Soldiers and their sponsors," said Ella Freeman, senior quality assurance officer for the Fort Gordon Military Personnel Division.

In her position, one of Freeman's responsibilities is to assist the Department of Human Resources with ensuring the sponsorship program at Fort Gordon is executed. While it seems simple enough, Freeman said the program will succeed or fail based on the effort put into it by the command and individual units.

"It's an important program, but it requires command emphasis to work," she said.

In order to meet Army sponsorship requirements, units must ensure a trained sponsorship pool exists at company, battalion, and brigade levels of command. Additionally, sponsorship points of contact must be appointed at the brigade level to communicate and coordinate between incoming personnel and the post.

Incoming personnel are required to take electronic Sponsorship Awareness Training prior to departing their last duty assignment. This also applies to service members out-processing from Fort Gordon. Participation in a web-based survey is also required for incoming and outgoing Soldiers.

According to AR-600-8-8, the Army's regulation on TASP, all Soldiers in grades E-1 through O-6 receive a sponsor. Within two days of the sponsor being appointed, contact information should be provided to incoming Soldier. Freeman said the program tries to match up incoming personnel with a sponsor at a similar rank. Units also try to match personnel with sponsors on other similarities as well. Factors such as marital status, children, and age can all factor in to the assignment of sponsorship.

"It ties in to unit readiness, increases morale, cuts down stresses, and builds unit cohesion," Freeman said. "Sponsors provide community information such as housing, schools, or anything else an incoming Soldier may need or want to know. Finding Soldiers in similar circumstances can make for a smooth transition between commands."

Fort Gordon's Civilian Personnel Advisory Center will also implement an internal system to provide sponsors for incoming civilian employees graded GS-15 and below.

In order to ensure the best sponsorship experience, Fort Gordon's Army Community Service office offers training to the units on post. According to William Valentine, ACS training, the best way this can be accomplished is through eSAT on the Military Homefront website.

"This year, Fort Gordon has already had had over 1,200 Soldiers trained online as sponsors. Only three posts have had more," Valentine said.

The Fort Gordon ACS will also provide live sponsor training upon unit request.

Soldiers, family members, or Army civilians transferring to or from Fort Gordon can find more information about the post sponsorship at http://gordon.army.mil/mpd/strength.htm#sponsorship.