Speaker 1: Everybody is Bill Courtney with an army in normal folks.
Speaker 1: And we continue now a part two of our conversation
Speaker 1: with doctor Ashley Cross right after these brief messages from
Speaker 1: our generous sponsors. All right, so that's the crisis intervention part.
Speaker 1: What else?
Speaker 2: We have the care Portal, which is one of my favorite.
Speaker 1: I love the.
Speaker 3: Care Portal for our listeners who haven't heardress for.
Speaker 2: You know, the care Portal is a platform that DHS
Speaker 2: workers as well as in our community. Now we've world
Speaker 2: it out to some of the higher CPS reporting schools
Speaker 2: and a charter school and so it allows for child
Speaker 2: welfare workers and other helping professionals to communicate needs in
Speaker 2: real time to the community. We have twenty four churches
Speaker 2: and that are collectively made up about six hundred responders
Speaker 2: that at any given day they're receiving emails.
Speaker 1: So if a kid's in crisis and needs something, yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's no resources for it, and go to the
Speaker 1: US post it on care portal. Yeah. And all you
Speaker 1: have to do is have the care Portal on your
Speaker 1: phone and when you see a need that you can fill,
Speaker 1: you fill it.
Speaker 2: And it's normal folks doing it.
Speaker 1: That's right, normal folks, the easiest way to know that legitimately,
Speaker 1: whatever you can give is actually going directly to the
Speaker 1: service of somebody needs help. Yep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they're all vetted needs, right, So these are
Speaker 2: not people who can put their own needs into the
Speaker 2: care Portal. It's vetted by a professional who's working with
Speaker 2: the families. And we've been running that initiative for eight years.
Speaker 2: We've served about twenty five hundred children and how to
Speaker 2: more than one million dollar economic impact in Monroe County.
Speaker 2: But recently what we've done is we realized that the
Speaker 2: care Portal has been used to reduce the number of
Speaker 2: removals to children and foster care, which is amazing. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: But what it got me thinking about was we've started
Speaker 2: this initiative that's really focusing on narrowing the front door
Speaker 2: to child protective services, which is very different than where
Speaker 2: I started my career. My career really started with foster care.
Speaker 2: We need more foster families. These kids need families. One
Speaker 2: day at down Dummuth, many of these kids have families
Speaker 2: who really loved them and lost them because they could
Speaker 2: not afford them right, lost them because they were navigating
Speaker 2: poverty and to me, it's a huge injustice for a
Speaker 2: family to be separated because their basic needs haven't been met,
Speaker 2: because again we're talking about generational poverty. And so I said, well,
Speaker 2: if the care Portal can reduce the number of removals,
Speaker 2: then the care Portal can also reduce the number of
Speaker 2: calls made to the state Central Registry by mandate reporters
Speaker 2: for issues that are not abuse but more neglected to poverty.
Speaker 2: So that's why we're now, we're using the care Portal
Speaker 2: to help narrow the front door to child protective services.
Speaker 1: Care Portal says that seventy six percent of child welfare
Speaker 1: cases stem from neglect link to poverty, not abuse. Yep,
Speaker 1: in our seventy would have fault. I know it was
Speaker 1: not poverty, it was abuse and fighting in the home
Speaker 1: and all of the stuff that we expect. But care
Speaker 1: Portal says seventy six percent of child welfare cases stem
Speaker 1: from not from the neglect from abuse, but just simple
Speaker 1: poverty seventy three quarters. So what you're saying is let's
Speaker 1: keep kids out of foster care in the first place
Speaker 1: by supporting them where they are with their families, which
Speaker 1: I think when I read that, I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's a few things. It was a light bulb.
Speaker 2: Moment for me too. Seven thousand calls to go to
Speaker 2: that are in our community each year, seventy five percent unsubstantiated,
Speaker 2: is that right?
Speaker 1: Yep? And the highest seventy unsubstantiated. Yep. That's so interesting.
Speaker 2: So when I look at okay, well, what are the
Speaker 2: highest reports by allegation? Right, why are these kids coming
Speaker 2: to the attention of child welfare? Inadequate guardianship, lack of food, clothing,
Speaker 2: and shelter. What is lack of food, clothing and shelter
Speaker 2: that already poverty? Educational neglect. Kids aren't going to school?
Speaker 2: Why aren't they going to school? Right? Why aren't they
Speaker 2: going to It depends. That's a good question we're learning.
Speaker 2: We're in the middle of a pilot right now, and
Speaker 2: younger kids who don't go to school is almost always
Speaker 2: tied to poverty. Right, parents, transportation, kids missed the bus,
Speaker 2: it's hard to get them to school. Older kids staying
Speaker 2: back to watch younger siblings because mom can't afford childcare,
Speaker 2: because child aware is expensive. We've also found illness right,
Speaker 2: a sick parent that a kid feels responsible to stay
Speaker 2: home to watch and to help. But then we're also
Speaker 2: finding with our older kids it's actually like they're refusing
Speaker 2: to go to school because they don't see the point
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: I see you talk about a lack of hope.
Speaker 2: Yep, we have a kid that won't get out of
Speaker 2: bed because they're like, I'm so far behind, I'll never
Speaker 2: catch up, ever going to catch up. I'm never going
Speaker 2: to catch up, which is hopeless. Or we have young
Speaker 2: people who have unmat mental health issues and school feels
Speaker 2: chaotic to them. They're like the thought of walking through
Speaker 2: that door it makes me want to have a panic,
Speaker 2: like I just I can't do it. So we're seeing
Speaker 2: increased mental health challenges in our young people since COVID,
Speaker 2: nobody's addressed that, right, So these kids were isolated for
Speaker 2: years and now we're like go back to school, and
Speaker 2: our school district just cut. I think almost half of
Speaker 2: the social workers in schools. So again earlier when I said,
Speaker 2: you get that twenty six year old and you have
Speaker 2: to say, okay, there's some systems that it failed. When
Speaker 2: I look at our young people and I see their behaviors,
Speaker 2: and I see the media and social media and all
Speaker 2: of us pointing fingers at young people. I get it,
Speaker 2: accountability is needed. But I'm also looking back and I'm saying,
Speaker 2: but you guys just cut all the social workers. You
Speaker 2: just cut social workers, right, We're not investing in mental
Speaker 2: health at all.
Speaker 1: Well, and the other thing is if you're dealing with
Speaker 1: all of that as a kid. Back to the original
Speaker 1: overarching picture that I hope our listeners get. No amount
Speaker 1: of grit can help an eight year old overcome that. No, none, no,
Speaker 1: And I can see it. I can see a sick parent.
Speaker 1: I also wonder, and you said you started a pilot.
Speaker 1: I'd be very interested to find out if young teenagers
Speaker 1: avoid school that are locked in poverty because they're embarrassed
Speaker 1: about their food, what they're wearing, their hair, and just
Speaker 1: their general appearance and ability to show up and feel
Speaker 1: less than.
Speaker 2: We had a young lady who wasn't going to school
Speaker 2: because she couldn't her parents could afford hygiene issue hygiene stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's a real.
Speaker 2: Thing, yeap, And can you blame her?
Speaker 1: I go back to when I was thirteen to school.
Speaker 2: Some kids are just not nice and social media, so
Speaker 2: I come to school and not looking my best, and
Speaker 2: that'd be the day that somebody takes a picture and
Speaker 2: it goes viral, like you have all these pressure.
Speaker 1: Man, if you are ragged and stincty, you don't need
Speaker 1: anybody to tell you, you know, you know, yeah, and
Speaker 1: you already have a have a self conscious of it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see all of that. And again that's all
Speaker 1: linked back to poverty. And so what you're saying is,
Speaker 1: let's let's stop it in the home with the family
Speaker 1: before it becomes a foster care situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think one challenge is, you know, there's this
Speaker 2: this thought that if you're living in poverty, it's because
Speaker 2: there's a lack of trying or lack of effort, right,
Speaker 2: because you.
Speaker 1: On behalf of the right.
Speaker 2: So it's it's if you're if you're poor, it's because
Speaker 2: you're not you're not working.
Speaker 1: Hard or nothing, you're not trying, And I'm like, lazy.
Speaker 2: Do you know the people that I know living in
Speaker 2: poverty are some of the hardest workers I know. They're
Speaker 2: working sixty hours, seventy hours a week, two three jobs,
Speaker 2: catching one bus to this bus to this bus, dragging
Speaker 2: three year old to daycare, going They're very hard workers.
Speaker 2: And so it's not that they have a there's a
Speaker 2: lack of trying.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: We're talking about generations of poverty. And I always say,
Speaker 2: you know, it's so easy to look at a parent
Speaker 2: and say, why did they make that that choice that bad,
Speaker 2: that bad decision that landed their kid and foster. Can
Speaker 2: I can say, well, they actually did not have a
Speaker 2: good choice to choose, Like there wasn't like out of
Speaker 2: all of the choices that they had, their.
Speaker 1: Was it It was just the least worst, get the
Speaker 1: least worst.
Speaker 2: Right, leave my child with my boyfriend that I you know,
Speaker 2: barely know, leaven with the neighbor that I barely know, miswork,
Speaker 2: and risk losing my job, Like none of those are
Speaker 2: good options, but I got to choose one of those three.
Speaker 1: So this diverse from your level of expertise, I think,
Speaker 1: but it does speak to I mean, it's part of
Speaker 1: the picture, I think is that I hear what you're saying,
Speaker 1: and I know many of these people. I have people
Speaker 1: that work for me that in Memphis fifteen dollars an
Speaker 1: hour is let me, let me set this up for you.
Speaker 1: I don't know our listeners are listening, but we are
Speaker 1: now straight up in a chat. Even me, Okay, I
Speaker 1: remember when President Obama. It was years ago, probably ten,
Speaker 1: but he it was in a speech, and I was
Speaker 1: half assed paying attention to him. To be honest with you,
Speaker 1: I was in my den doing something, working at night,
Speaker 1: but listening to the TV, and in a speech he
Speaker 1: said something about the poverty level is this, and if
Speaker 1: you don't make I think at that time it was
Speaker 1: eleven dollars and twenty five cents an hour, you are
Speaker 1: officially going to be in poverty. And nobody should work
Speaker 1: forty hours a week and live in poverty. That is
Speaker 1: not the social construct of America. And at that time,
Speaker 1: this is again years ago. At that time I did.
Speaker 1: I was starting people at nine to fifty an hour
Speaker 1: in the most laborious positions I had, and if they
Speaker 1: made it thirty days, I got them up to ten.
Speaker 1: But then I thought, I'm an employer with a business
Speaker 1: and I have people. They're they're holding up there into
Speaker 1: the bargain of the American construct. They're working forty hours,
Speaker 1: they're doing their they're not out robbing people doing anything.
Speaker 1: They're working, and I'm not paying them enough to stay
Speaker 1: out of poverty. And it never dawned on me as
Speaker 1: a business owner, and I went to work the next
Speaker 1: day and literally raised every single body up to a
Speaker 1: quarter over whatever that number was. President Obama said, I
Speaker 1: could not look myself in the mirror and know I
Speaker 1: had hard working people working for me forty hours, and I,
Speaker 1: as an employer, was not giving them a wage to
Speaker 1: keep them out of poverty. I did that. That's a
Speaker 1: real thing. Fast forward today, I have people that work
Speaker 1: for me making fifteen dollars an hour, which by that
Speaker 1: whole metric is two dollars an hour over in Memphis
Speaker 1: what poverty level is. So as an employer, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to do my part. Profits are necessary measure of any businesses,
Speaker 1: it says. And as much as I'd like to pay
Speaker 1: everybody a whole bunch of money, I still got to
Speaker 1: put money on the bottom line. I answered to a
Speaker 1: bank that I owe money to know if you could
Speaker 1: say this or not.
Speaker 3: But it's a low margin business. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you're open to saying the percentage, but it's not some
Speaker 3: businesses there's a lot of margin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my business is a low margin business. It's a
Speaker 1: high volume, low marching business. It's manufacturing, it's commodities, there's
Speaker 1: all kinds of variables, will make real good money one month,
Speaker 1: and thirty days later we'll lose that money again because
Speaker 1: of the commoditized nature of my business. But all I'm
Speaker 1: trying to say to you is, before I say what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, I get what hourly wage looks like because
Speaker 1: I employ a lot of them, and I have tried
Speaker 1: to do the right thing, all right. However, I know
Speaker 1: that somebody making fifteen dollars an hour is still struggling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I have people that work for me that do
Speaker 1: that all day at my place, go take a couple
Speaker 1: hours off, and then they go work in a kitchen
Speaker 1: at a restaurant for another four or five hours, and
Speaker 1: they're doing that to pay the rent and make ends meet.
Speaker 1: And I do wonder what their children are doing, you know,
Speaker 1: I do. I wonder. And I know that I have
Speaker 1: people that work for me that have the least worst
Speaker 1: decision to make when things get tough, and I know
Speaker 1: there's no way they have in savings ninety days worth
Speaker 1: of an emergency fund, and so they are always living,
Speaker 1: even if they're not in poverty, they're always living just
Speaker 1: on the cusp of it. But as a business owner,
Speaker 1: I also have to make money for our company, So
Speaker 1: I can't just automatically raise everybody up, so those issues
Speaker 1: don't So that to me is where the conflux of
Speaker 1: you know, here's the question what do we do? Because
Speaker 1: I can't do it all as a business owner, although
Speaker 1: my heart wants me to. There is a reality of
Speaker 1: owning a business, right And I tried to pay fair
Speaker 1: wages and I listen to my president and I did
Speaker 1: do the things that I needed to do to at
Speaker 1: least make sure at the very minimum no one worked
Speaker 1: for me was earning below the poverty level. But the
Speaker 1: same respect, I know it's really not enough for a
Speaker 1: lot of folks. Yeah, so as a society, now you know,
Speaker 1: and again I know this is kind of off, but
Speaker 1: I do think because of your experience, you see the
Speaker 1: people affected by these issues as a society, have you
Speaker 1: have you thought about or got your arms around the
Speaker 1: true fact is there's just always going to be people
Speaker 1: trying to get up and that don't And it seems
Speaker 1: like such a difficult issue.
Speaker 2: It is it is, But you know what, I think
Speaker 2: that that is the beauty of what Agape is doing
Speaker 2: right with trying to get an entire community to focus
Speaker 2: on hope. Because I think that what happens is it's
Speaker 2: so easy to just say, okay, we need every business
Speaker 2: owner to increase minimum wage, go past the threshold for
Speaker 2: minimum wage. And I think that that's a start. But
Speaker 2: people who are living in deep poverty, they need communities
Speaker 2: of people all doing a little bit of something that
Speaker 2: helps change their condition. It starts off with their employer
Speaker 2: doing the right thing, right, but it also moves into
Speaker 2: so many other pieces of from you know, obviously policy,
Speaker 2: and all kind of other things that would impact their conditions.
Speaker 2: It doesn't just start with one. It starts with us
Speaker 2: looking at schools and rec centers that can have safe
Speaker 2: spaces for kids so that when parents are working, they
Speaker 2: have good options of where to send their children.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It starts off with us having conversations around how expensive
Speaker 2: childcare is.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It starts with us ensuring that even employers are investing
Speaker 2: in their people, like trying to create ways for people
Speaker 2: to increase their skills so that they can move up
Speaker 2: and not always have to be at the same position
Speaker 2: that they're in. I think that there are so many
Speaker 2: ways to think about it, and it's not just an
Speaker 2: easy thing to solve. I think if it was that
Speaker 2: easy you would have had somebody do it a decade ago,
Speaker 2: probably so many decades ago, right, But I think that
Speaker 2: if you have a bunch of people who at least
Speaker 2: care the way that you care to say, Okay, what
Speaker 2: can I do? Like if everybody just says what can
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 1: It? We'll be fun. That's the whole idea about it, right,
Speaker 1: it really is.
Speaker 2: And so I think that that it goes right back
Speaker 2: to you know, but I guess.
Speaker 1: What I'm saying is that person who this all started
Speaker 1: with some of the hardest working people you know, were
Speaker 1: forty sixty hours and despite it, are still right on
Speaker 1: that poverty level, and as a result, their kids end
Speaker 1: up being in this at risk group. Right oftentimes not always,
Speaker 1: but sometimes how do they have hope? If you're working
Speaker 1: yours off at two jobs six hours a week and
Speaker 1: you're still barely keeping your head above water, and you
Speaker 1: know that your children aren't getting everything they need, you know,
Speaker 1: that feels pretty hopeless to me, And I just you know,
Speaker 1: how do we help them have hope?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: One as a mom myself, right, I think every parent
Speaker 2: finds some level of hope and inspiration in the achievement
Speaker 2: of our children.
Speaker 1: No, it's a good point. It's so true.
Speaker 2: Like there's nothing more than I want than for my
Speaker 2: children to life. I don't mind, while at the same time,
Speaker 2: I do want someone to acknowledge that outside of being
Speaker 2: a mom, I'm Ashley, and before actually became a mom,
Speaker 2: actually had goals and aspirations and dreams, and so they
Speaker 2: need they need community too, right, Like mom needs someone
Speaker 2: to say I remember five years ago you were saying
Speaker 2: you wanted to go back and get your associates. When
Speaker 2: are we going to do that? What's it going to
Speaker 2: take to get you there? I know you're working sixty hours.
Speaker 2: What is it that you want?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Can you start taking a class this summer? All right?
Speaker 2: How much debt do you have? How can we pay
Speaker 2: this off? Can you talk to like it's and I
Speaker 2: mean it's not easy, but it's at least acknowledging that
Speaker 2: I see you. I know that this is not everything
Speaker 2: that you want for your life to be. How can
Speaker 2: we start working for you to get there? One thing
Speaker 2: that I love about the hope theory and in Hope Rising,
Speaker 2: you have the Hope scale, but you also have family
Speaker 2: hope right like you can how do you increase hope
Speaker 2: in all and a collective and a unit right, a
Speaker 2: team of people. And so I really do believe that
Speaker 2: when young people have the support that they need and
Speaker 2: their hope starts to rise. Did it frees family and
Speaker 2: parents up to say, Okay, now I know my child
Speaker 2: has the support that they need, that it's not just me. Like,
Speaker 2: one of the things that helps my hope is to
Speaker 2: know that my kids are loved by so many other
Speaker 2: people than just me. So I can be here Mephis
Speaker 2: with you today because my kids are taken care of.
Speaker 2: And this is something that I'm passionate about that I love.
Speaker 2: So I don't feel like I'm having to sacrifice my
Speaker 2: dreams for my children because we have a village.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back.
Speaker 3: One thing you're doing, Ashley directly on this in terms
Speaker 3: of a village and hope is I love the mentoring
Speaker 3: model of multiple people around a kid. If you want
Speaker 3: to talk about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's a model that actually came out of
Speaker 2: Oklahoma's standard. The Gap Ministries has a life Launch program
Speaker 2: and I actually worked a life Launch program when I
Speaker 2: lived in Oklahoma, came to Rochester and wanted to continue that.
Speaker 2: And it's a group mentorship program for system impacted youth.
Speaker 2: And the reason we do that is because some young
Speaker 2: people are can handle the one on one. Many young people,
Speaker 2: because there's such a deficit of relationships in their life,
Speaker 2: they need more than one person, so we do group mentorship.
Speaker 2: So I'll give you an example. Me, my husband, and
Speaker 2: my mom. We've been mentoring a twenty year old young
Speaker 2: man who is preparing to age out of foster care
Speaker 2: for the past two years. And it's great because he
Speaker 2: gets three people who are all very different that he
Speaker 2: can talk to about different things. He talks to my
Speaker 2: husband about things that he won't talk to me about
Speaker 2: talk about, right, He talks to me about things that
Speaker 2: he's like, I'm talking to Melvin about this yet, or
Speaker 2: you know. And then my mom brings like the grandma,
Speaker 2: feel like she's the grandmother of But he graduated two
Speaker 2: weeks ago. No one was there but our family. He
Speaker 2: wanted my three year old there, the five year old
Speaker 2: that he wanted the whole family to be there to
Speaker 2: watch him graduate. And we tripled his social capital. Yeah,
Speaker 2: just by one connection, right, you know. I love mentorship.
Speaker 2: I love one on one mentorship, but many of the world.
Speaker 1: Hits him in the mouth, he at least knows he.
Speaker 2: Can call you, and it has it has hit him right,
Speaker 2: and we've showed up. And I mean, and we've also
Speaker 2: learned a lot from him. Like I think that that's
Speaker 2: also a thing. Sometimes we go in just thinking that
Speaker 2: we're saving these kids and we do not realize like
Speaker 2: we can actually learn a lot from them.
Speaker 1: If people listening to this were watching this, it was funny.
Speaker 1: You're you're affect and your face changed when you talked
Speaker 1: about him. Yeah you brightened up. Yeah, yeah, you got
Speaker 1: a whole lot less serious and put a small on
Speaker 1: your face when you're talking about him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, he's him as well as I mean,
Speaker 2: my oldest daughter. I think when I think of stories
Speaker 2: like these are people who mean a lot to me.
Speaker 2: So it's not just a case study. Is not just
Speaker 2: like these. He's family. You know, my daughter Jordan, that's
Speaker 2: that's she's as much as my daughter is the babies
Speaker 2: that our birth right. And I'm just I think I
Speaker 2: smiled thinking about him because when we met him two
Speaker 2: years ago, he was just he was an incredibly guarded kid,
Speaker 2: lived in a group home, had a very negative experience
Speaker 2: in that group home. And I've watched us. To me,
Speaker 2: I feel like we've provided him the bare minimal. I
Speaker 2: don't think we've done anything substantial for the camp to
Speaker 2: show up, and just watching just us showing up has significant.
Speaker 2: I mean it's changed his life. It's it's giving them hope.
Speaker 1: Is that simple? I don't think we've done anything groundbreaking.
Speaker 1: What was your grandmother? What'd you call your ground Oh?
Speaker 2: My gosh, I call her nanny. It's actually her birthday today?
Speaker 1: Is she still nanny?
Speaker 2: That's my grandma? Yep, nanny.
Speaker 1: I can't help but think that. I mean, we got
Speaker 1: more to go over, but maybe a weird place to
Speaker 1: even ask it. I should have asked it earlier. But
Speaker 1: all this started.
Speaker 2: With her, it did it?
Speaker 1: Did?
Speaker 2: I actually am doctor nanny?
Speaker 1: Yeah, doctor nanny. Listen.
Speaker 2: I preached on Sunday at this church and it was
Speaker 2: about you preach. Yeah, you're also my husband.
Speaker 1: I passed her at church and everything else. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I taught a sermon called close Enough to Touch,
Speaker 2: and I was talking about how Jesus healed the man
Speaker 2: with leprosy and he chose to touch him. And I
Speaker 2: was talking about the ministry. Transformation really happens in proximity
Speaker 2: when we can get close enough to touch someone's pain,
Speaker 2: we can we can really challenge our perceptions and typically
Speaker 2: a lot of times our biases around who these people are.
Speaker 2: But I talked about my grandmother how she started foster.
Speaker 2: My grandmother has fostered fifty boys. What fifty boys? And
Speaker 2: it wasn't just any type of boys. My grandmother I
Speaker 2: have a I got to interview her, probably fifteen years
Speaker 2: ago now, and I learned a lot about my grandmother's
Speaker 2: fostering journey. And she took boys that no one else
Speaker 2: would take, boys coming straight at at the detention center.
Speaker 2: She was like, there was times like I had closed
Speaker 2: my door after the police dropped a boy off, and
Speaker 2: I put a chair under my door. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: I just.
Speaker 1: Hoped was there any looms left on the street in
Speaker 1: the backyard.
Speaker 2: But I used to watch those boys protect my grandma
Speaker 2: like they love and they still come around, Like many
Speaker 2: of these boys, I mean they have been their forties
Speaker 2: and some in their fifties down they still come around
Speaker 2: for Thanksgiving. They're gonna call her today on her birthday.
Speaker 2: So she fostered over fifty boys. Then she started a
Speaker 2: child placement agency, recruited fifty six foster for years.
Speaker 1: Are we talking?
Speaker 2: I was in elementary school. They sent me pictures of
Speaker 2: our placenic So I mean we're talking the nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: probably two, nineteen ninety three. Wow, And my grandmother would recruit, train,
Speaker 2: and support foster families.
Speaker 1: Was your grandmother holly educated?
Speaker 2: Nope?
Speaker 1: She was in life Nope, nope.
Speaker 2: So she was just our grandmother probably has a the high.
Speaker 1: School diploma, maybe maybe maybe maybe what a phenomenal woman.
Speaker 2: Seventeen years she ran that child placement agency. She started
Speaker 2: a child That's where I got so again going back
Speaker 2: to Hope. The reason that I know the power that
Speaker 2: I have is because I watched a woman build like
Speaker 2: hold five eight five, everything I've put my hands to
Speaker 2: that I know that God has called me to do.
Speaker 2: I watched someone else do it before me.
Speaker 1: Now, I used the woman who that grip.
Speaker 2: That you talk about, grit, grittiest woman I know. And
Speaker 2: I used to spend my summer else she is. I
Speaker 2: used to spend my summers at that child placement agency.
Speaker 2: I was her secretary. I used to pick up the
Speaker 2: phone and answer the calls and leave the sticky note
Speaker 2: and tell us who to call back. I mean we
Speaker 2: I spend my summers at the food at the food bank,
Speaker 2: loading up the van so she could take food to
Speaker 2: the foster families who are taking kids in.
Speaker 1: I've watched, my girl, I've watched. I don't want to
Speaker 1: know your grandma.
Speaker 2: And not only did my grandmother do it, all of
Speaker 2: my aunts and uncles have been foster parents, her children,
Speaker 2: all of her children have done foster.
Speaker 1: Care, as well as your mom, as well.
Speaker 2: As my mom yep, yep, as well as my mom.
Speaker 2: My mom moved to Rochester. My dad still does foster care.
Speaker 2: My parents are divorced now, but they both still well.
Speaker 2: My mom doesn't do it anymore. My father still does
Speaker 2: foster care. But everybody in my family. I mean, you
Speaker 2: got to think our Thanksgivings and Christmases for diverse group
Speaker 2: of group of people.
Speaker 1: I loved it.
Speaker 2: I loved it.
Speaker 1: I bet they're on enough T shirts for your family reunion.
Speaker 1: Not at all.
Speaker 2: My grandmother, She's touched so many people, including me. I mean,
Speaker 2: but I always just say that I'm I'm just living
Speaker 2: out her legacy. She she gave me something to see,
Speaker 2: and she gave me something to She gave me vision.
Speaker 1: Right, if you don't believe in the power of an
Speaker 1: army in normal folks. Understand, that's what your grandmother was.
Speaker 1: She was a normal person, not overly educated, but she
Speaker 1: had a passion and a desire and saw in the
Speaker 1: area need and filled it. And now three generations later,
Speaker 1: all of what we're talking about comes basically from her. Yeah, yep,
Speaker 1: that is beautiful, man. I mean it really kind of
Speaker 1: chokes me up thinking about it. I mean, what what
Speaker 1: a legacy? Yeah, from just a normal person said I
Speaker 1: see need, no'm my fella.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a normal person that made it. I mean
Speaker 2: it was. It was just a contagious environment to be in.
Speaker 2: If you were around my grandmother, you were full of
Speaker 2: you were gonna leave, ready to do something. You were
Speaker 2: going to I mean, and uncles, they put their jobs,
Speaker 2: it came and worked for her. It was you talk
Speaker 2: about it. I used to walk. I used to love it.
Speaker 2: I loved being there in the summertime, we were all
Speaker 2: just doing stuff. I watched my mom sit at a
Speaker 2: table printing binders to train foster families and going in
Speaker 2: to do home visits, and it was beautiful.
Speaker 1: Please tell me. On top of everything else, she can
Speaker 1: cook good.
Speaker 2: Oh, you know, she can't.
Speaker 1: Oh you know, I got a mental picture. I know
Speaker 1: that woman could cook.
Speaker 2: She could cook, and she is just the sweetest. I mean,
Speaker 2: she's amazing my herold for sure.
Speaker 1: All Right, there's a powerful saying that relationships move at
Speaker 1: the speed of trust, which sounds exactly like your relationship
Speaker 1: with Child Productive Services. Kind of tell us about that
Speaker 1: because child prospective services. Let's just be fair, I think
Speaker 1: the vast majority of people that work in child productive
Speaker 1: services are really well intentioned, good people, but they are
Speaker 1: the government, and typically they are overworked, and typically they
Speaker 1: can never do one of what they need to do.
Speaker 1: And because they're overwhelmed, and typically it's one person way
Speaker 1: overwhelmed with case studies, things get fall through the cracks,
Speaker 1: and as a result, when you hear child protective Services
Speaker 1: when they get a bad rap in two, it's almost
Speaker 1: like the police when Child Protective Services called, somebody's losing
Speaker 1: their family, and as a result, nobody even wants to
Speaker 1: have a relationship with them. They're like Darth Vader. But
Speaker 1: you have a relationship with Child Protective Services and have
Speaker 1: fostered a relationship that doesn't look like what I just
Speaker 1: described as Yeah, yeah, you know, I.
Speaker 2: The past two years have been really I've had to
Speaker 2: sit with myself a lot because the work that we
Speaker 2: do at Whole five eighty five, and the work that
Speaker 2: I really believe that God has called me to do,
Speaker 2: is what I would say, leading from the middle, right,
Speaker 2: how do I connect with system leaders in a way
Speaker 2: that holds some accountable questions how and why they do
Speaker 2: the things that they do, but stay connected to them.
Speaker 2: And it's really important, right because the leaders of many
Speaker 2: of these systems, to your point, well intentioned people who
Speaker 2: really do care about children to families, but they're also
Speaker 2: they're held by a standard that the systems created, right,
Speaker 2: I always tell them, like guys, when I say systems
Speaker 2: have felt people, I'm not talking about the people in
Speaker 2: the system. I'm actually talking about the system. It's the
Speaker 2: way that you are forced to function, many.
Speaker 1: Of which were designed by well intentioned people sometimes four
Speaker 1: five and six decades ago, and the systems hadn't changed
Speaker 1: when culture has and they no longer fit. But we're
Speaker 1: still shoving those systems down our culture's throat.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And there's I mean, we could go back to
Speaker 2: decades of policies that started off well that nobody's analyzed
Speaker 2: and three decades and things have changed. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: actually that the policy is creating more harm than good
Speaker 2: for people now. But the other piece of leading in
Speaker 2: the middle is the group that I have to prioritize
Speaker 2: trusting our organization is the community. So how do you
Speaker 2: maintain trust with the community who don't necessarily trust this services?
Speaker 1: And that's what I mean communing when they hear that
Speaker 1: they like lock the.
Speaker 2: Door, they lock the doors. And the way that I
Speaker 2: can only do that is by leading from the middle
Speaker 2: and being a truth teller and being a truth teller
Speaker 2: in a way that is true to lived experience the
Speaker 2: people who are saying this is what I experienced, This
Speaker 2: is how Child Protective Services has harmed me and my family.
Speaker 2: While also working with the leaders there to say how
Speaker 2: can we work together to address these Not pointing any fingers,
Speaker 2: but this is the experience, and I've learned some heart
Speaker 2: lessons that have challenged me and how I do that.
Speaker 2: But I do work very closely with our county, but
Speaker 2: I'm also prioritizing the voice of the community.
Speaker 1: Do you find that if you approach it the right way,
Speaker 1: that even inside the construct of all of these big,
Speaker 1: top down, systematic government services that you can make change.
Speaker 2: My hope centered approach would be yes. I think over
Speaker 2: the years, I have come to realize that systems are
Speaker 2: really hard to change, and so do I want to
Speaker 2: put more energy into preventing children and families from coming
Speaker 2: in contact with the system in the first place. Because
Speaker 2: once you're in a system, you're a tangle.
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite sayings. We can keep pulling
Speaker 1: kids all the river all we want to, but eventually
Speaker 1: we need to go upstream and find out.
Speaker 2: Upstream, right, because once they're in the river, it's like God,
Speaker 2: they're drowning, and it takes so many resources and people,
Speaker 2: and and then once you even pull them out, there's
Speaker 2: still traumatized from the experience of drowning. You got to remember,
Speaker 2: they were still on that river and they were drowning,
Speaker 2: and they're traumatized. So why not just stop them from
Speaker 2: falling in in the first place? And so I just
Speaker 2: I don't know that I want to spend the bulk
Speaker 2: of my career trying to change the system.
Speaker 1: But at least you keep a reasonable relationship with it. Correct.
Speaker 2: That's interesting.
Speaker 1: It makes a lot of So it doesn't do any
Speaker 1: good to jump up and down and raise about the
Speaker 1: system and call them crazy and terrible and everything else.
Speaker 1: There's still people in.
Speaker 2: It, yeah, and the people who care. Yeah. So we
Speaker 2: started an initiative to you ago called Reimagine, and Reimagine
Speaker 2: was a We did eight design sessions with twenty to
Speaker 2: thirty different stakeholders. And I mean we're talking nonprofits, We're
Speaker 2: talking the University of Rochester Chief of Psychiatry DHS was
Speaker 2: there and we came together for eight months to co
Speaker 2: design a solution to narrowing the front door to child
Speaker 2: protective services. We used data to.
Speaker 1: Narrow the door, narrow the keep kids out of it the.
Speaker 2: First keep them out and DHS was a part of
Speaker 2: that initiative.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they'd love to reduce their caseload, so they're
Speaker 1: part of that. Yeah, I mean it would be all
Speaker 1: about that, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and this is where the this is
Speaker 2: where the system piece comes in though, because as much
Speaker 2: as they say, yes, we want to narrow the front door,
Speaker 2: there's also fear and compliance concerns. Right. So what I
Speaker 2: have found is that and this is not just for CPS,
Speaker 2: many systems are driven by compliance, and compliance doesn't always
Speaker 2: want keep children safe, and it doesn't always do what's best.
Speaker 2: And so that's where I think that good people kind
Speaker 2: of get swallowed up in the system. And then that's
Speaker 2: where you start hearing well, I had to well, this
Speaker 2: is what the statue says. Well, these are the limitations
Speaker 2: that I have, and I'm like, okay.
Speaker 1: And and our overlatigious society liability is everything correct. So again,
Speaker 1: so it's I rather actually call it that, let's just
Speaker 1: keep them out of it the first place.
Speaker 2: And then there's this perception in the community for some
Speaker 2: depending on what community, that Child Protective Services is actually
Speaker 2: like a resource, and so some of the work that
Speaker 2: we're doing is really around narrative, right, And it's not
Speaker 2: to paint CPS is a bad but it's like, guys,
Speaker 2: you're using the wrong tool. CPS is not the tool
Speaker 2: for poverty.
Speaker 1: That in and of itself is the very definition of
Speaker 1: when human beings become systemized if they see Child Text
Speaker 1: Services as a resource to just whatever, Boy, have we
Speaker 1: got it wrong societal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And because you use the example of like law enforcement,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's almost the same thing, right, tell people
Speaker 2: like you don't you don't want to call the police,
Speaker 2: and someone who's having a mental health challenge. You want
Speaker 2: to call a therapist right right, because we don't want
Speaker 2: to abuse the system, over use the system, because that's
Speaker 2: also where the lack of trust between that system and
Speaker 2: the community comes.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. This Tulsa and Rochester girls somehow finding
Speaker 1: herself in my hometown doing hopework too. Lord, do I
Speaker 1: know many in my community lack hope. What are you
Speaker 1: doing around here to start a hope revolution? What you're
Speaker 1: doing in Memphis? What are you doing?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Working with the Goatbe you yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So you know, a Goatbe is a family and child
Speaker 2: so organization here in Memphis that works with you know,
Speaker 2: children and families who are are in need. You know,
Speaker 2: they have everything from therapy to adoption to outreach. They
Speaker 2: do amazing work here in the community. And AGAPE has
Speaker 2: sought out to do something incredibly ambitious, and that is
Speaker 2: to make Memphis a hope centered city. And so they
Speaker 2: have these ambassadors that are within a GAPE and also
Speaker 2: within other youth and child serving organizations that are working
Speaker 2: on really embedding this not just as an activity, right,
Speaker 2: not just as a one off movement, but as really
Speaker 2: the fabric of Memphis right where what would it look
Speaker 2: like if every system, every sector, every organization and business
Speaker 2: in Memphis was has to had this unified hope language.
Speaker 2: We were talking about people as if they had dreams
Speaker 2: and they had goals that were worth us investing in.
Speaker 2: And so that's a piece of the movement. It's to
Speaker 2: get people not just talking about hope, also measuring it,
Speaker 2: also being intentional about increasing it, being intentional about sustaining it.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back, Well, how did God they find you?
Speaker 1: How'd you end up going? How? They can't answer that question.
Speaker 1: I don't know how they found me? The relationship.
Speaker 2: So David Jordan reached out to me probably about a year, yeah,
Speaker 2: and he reached out to me via email almost a
Speaker 2: year ago to talk about the summit and to see
Speaker 2: if after the summit we can you know, enter into
Speaker 2: this kind of long term relationship to turn Memphis into
Speaker 2: a hope center city. David found a a YouTube video
Speaker 2: that I posted like three years ago. I had a
Speaker 2: couple hundred dollars, got this guy to shoot this video
Speaker 2: in my husband's office, just talking about my dreams and
Speaker 2: my aspirations of Rochester becoming a hope centered city. And
Speaker 2: I talked about what that would look like. And I
Speaker 2: always start the video off by saying, I'm Ashley and
Speaker 2: I have an A score of seven, right, and just
Speaker 2: talk about how aces really impact us, but how hope
Speaker 2: actually heals with what what trauma steals?
Speaker 1: Who heals what trauma steals?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I love that. Yeah, so that's that's like. That was
Speaker 1: the video that I that I shot.
Speaker 2: I mean again, I was like, you know, just just
Speaker 2: talking about the power of hope. And surprisingly a lot
Speaker 2: of people have learned about hope five A five in
Speaker 2: our work through that video that I just decided to
Speaker 2: shoot one day and put on on on YouTube. And
Speaker 2: now now MEPhI is like my second home. I love
Speaker 2: your Memphis.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, we talked about your grandmother a little bit,
Speaker 1: but some than you said. That's pretty funny is you
Speaker 1: said you were raised in foster care, but not the
Speaker 1: way people think. Yeah, touch on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean my mother had me when she was
Speaker 2: eighteen years old, and I think as early as I
Speaker 2: can remember, I've been in and out of my grandmother's
Speaker 2: home with her having foster boys.
Speaker 1: Like I just I've only ever been brothers and sisters.
Speaker 1: Would you say you had?
Speaker 2: So my parents started fostering when I was in the
Speaker 2: seventh grade. I remember our first foster boy was a
Speaker 2: four year old named Isaiah, and I mean we fell
Speaker 2: in love with him. He went off to be adopted.
Speaker 2: But my parents started fostering when I was in the
Speaker 2: seventh or eighth grade. Prior to that, my grandmother was
Speaker 2: a foster parent and all of my aunts and uncles,
Speaker 2: so I think my parents were the last of the
Speaker 2: siblings to open their home to foster care. So I
Speaker 2: always say, I mean, I've only ever known having foster
Speaker 2: uncles my grandmother, so I was the only person in
Speaker 2: our family who started fostering only girls. Everybody had foster boys.
Speaker 2: So my grandmother told me when I was really young,
Speaker 2: she had foster daughter.
Speaker 1: She is her home.
Speaker 2: She would take boys or girls, and she said that
Speaker 2: was that obviously just didn't didn't work out well, so
Speaker 2: she had to choose if she was going to boys
Speaker 2: or girls. Definitely doing teenagers, so she kept teen boys.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that I you know, I grew up obviously
Speaker 2: with my biological parents. But I always say that, like
Speaker 2: I just have always had foster aunts, uncles, siblings.
Speaker 1: I can't help but that asked us. But I'm I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm curious Denver, right, Yeah, it's kind of a white place.
Speaker 1: It's pretty white, and I'm just curious. Did you have
Speaker 1: white and Hispanic and African American foster? Oh? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: this right, the United Nations?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I said, yeah, that's why I said our thanksgivings were
Speaker 2: very diverse.
Speaker 1: I mean that had that. That's but that what an education? Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, to learn so much about so much that way?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, So I mean it was one, come one all,
Speaker 1: we don't care.
Speaker 2: Come on, yep, yep, black boys, white boys, Hispanic boys, yep. Absolutely,
Speaker 2: even with yeah, even with my mom, I remember her,
Speaker 2: And yeah, our first foster boy was white boy.
Speaker 1: They might say you, I say it was a white kid.
Speaker 2: No kid, he had been mixed, he had I think
Speaker 2: he had a little little hinted brown in him somewhere.
Speaker 1: It's really not meant to be a racial commentary question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just that's interesting, and to be candid, so many
Speaker 1: people when they think about foster, care to think about
Speaker 1: white families fostering like children and your whole family throws
Speaker 1: that entire narrative right on its head, which is also
Speaker 1: telling you wan't to talk about that at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know what, you should talk about that
Speaker 1: because that's that's such an important, inaccurate societal paradigm that
Speaker 1: we need to destroys.
Speaker 2: Well, it's inaccurate for a few reasons. You know, there
Speaker 2: is this thing called hidden foster.
Speaker 1: Care, called hidden foster care yep.
Speaker 2: And there are children who are removed and never put
Speaker 2: into a former foster home.
Speaker 1: So where are that group homes? Our kin?
Speaker 2: Right, you have some black and because I posted about
Speaker 2: this probably ten years ago as a foster parent, again,
Speaker 2: it was one of those very I meant, well, right,
Speaker 2: but now that I'm looking at it, I was like,
Speaker 2: what was I taught?
Speaker 1: Why did I ask that?
Speaker 2: But I was like, why do black people not foster
Speaker 2: are kids? And the comments and also now my lived experience,
Speaker 2: we're so eye opening. Black people are constantly opening our homes.
Speaker 2: We're just not doing it through a formal life system.
Speaker 1: That isn't that interesting.
Speaker 2: And many of it is because of the lack of
Speaker 2: trust in the system. So you'll get I get black.
Speaker 2: I know black people are like it, I'm not They're
Speaker 2: not going to be in my house.
Speaker 1: These are the hidden foster kids. They're actually being fostered
Speaker 1: but it's not through a system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are kids being raised by by sisters and
Speaker 2: aunts and brothers.
Speaker 1: And they really are faster kids.
Speaker 2: And sometimes and sometimes CPS actually will facilitate the removal,
Speaker 2: and then the family will refuse to actually become foster
Speaker 2: fit because they don't want the relationship with the government.
Speaker 1: Refuse to take money and I don't want I don't
Speaker 1: want the money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so it does. It eliminates the support that
Speaker 2: comes with it. But some people are like, I will
Speaker 2: figure this out.
Speaker 1: Because I don't trust some of y'all.
Speaker 2: I know a woman who is raising her her son
Speaker 2: was murdered, she's raising he his children, and she's like, no,
Speaker 2: these are not foster kids. These are my kids. These
Speaker 2: are my grandkids. I don't need the system. I will
Speaker 2: not take their money and I don't need them coming
Speaker 2: into my home and monitoring me and asking questions and
Speaker 2: telling me what I can and cannot do with my family.
Speaker 1: I honestly want to give that check a high five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's a lot of those, right. So there
Speaker 2: are just black people and black and brown people who
Speaker 2: have a little bit of a less of an affinity
Speaker 2: for like that type of formalize structure and don't want
Speaker 2: to be what they would call surveiled or monitored by
Speaker 2: the system. They're like, I will take care of my
Speaker 2: own kid, I will take care of our family. Like
Speaker 2: we're not. We don't. We don't need to go that route.
Speaker 1: So it's not that we're we we got I don't
Speaker 1: guess we need to ask why that population may not
Speaker 1: particularly trust the systems and the government. Yeah, no, you
Speaker 1: want to go two hours on that.
Speaker 2: There's a book that I'm going to say you should read.
Speaker 2: It's actually written by a good friend of mine now
Speaker 2: doctor McCall ross. It's called Abusive Policies. How the American
Speaker 2: Child Welfare System Lost is a Way, and it talks
Speaker 2: about all of these different things that we've done well
Speaker 2: or we thought we were doing well, and how it
Speaker 2: really impact black and brown communities negatively. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 2: things that we were doing right and then just due
Speaker 2: to a lack of funding, all.
Speaker 1: Turned this story one hundred times. But I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: it to you again because it is metaphorically this very thing.
Speaker 1: A guy that worked for me that I cared very,
Speaker 1: very very much about, kicked the substance abuse problem, which
Speaker 1: was a work for him spent three years cleaning his
Speaker 1: life up, because when you have a sub abuse problem
Speaker 1: and you're in and out of you know, homelessness and all,
Speaker 1: you end up having all kinds of small misdemeanors that
Speaker 1: ended up bigger problems because you don't take care of them.
Speaker 1: And I mean that cycle happens, right Anyway, he got
Speaker 1: it together and he was quote his wife's husband and
Speaker 1: father of her three children. But that looked like he
Speaker 1: moved in and started acting like his father. But they
Speaker 1: never got that. They had to this point had never
Speaker 1: actually gotten a marriage license and got married, right, yep, yep.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, dude, you're doing all of the things right.
Speaker 1: Please give your children an illustration of what a legally
Speaker 1: married family looks like. Make that commitment, and the fourth
Speaker 1: three of trinity he kept. Shaikh said, I know you're right.
Speaker 1: I know you're right. I know you're right. And finally,
Speaker 1: like after the third time of Sandy said, man, you
Speaker 1: just don't know what you're talking about. And I'm like
Speaker 1: what he said. We are barely getting by and if
Speaker 1: I marry her, she loses the government assistance for her
Speaker 1: children and we can't make it. So he said, so
Speaker 1: you folks, and the very government that tells me the
Speaker 1: only thing that's good is is a nuclear family, which
Speaker 1: is exactactly what we want, are the exact people insenting
Speaker 1: me not to marry her. And he said, you don't
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. And so it was an
Speaker 1: eye own experience for me to say, well intentioned systems
Speaker 1: to stop abuse that started in the sixties just no
Speaker 1: longer applied and were actually doing the antithesis of what
Speaker 1: they were entined and designed to do. But that is
Speaker 1: a beautiful example of how this systemization has become very
Speaker 1: untrusted in the black and brown community. Therefore, why there
Speaker 1: are plenty of black and brown foster parents and families,
Speaker 1: but we just don't know them because they ain't getting
Speaker 1: involved in the system. Yep, yep.
Speaker 2: The book Abuse of Policies has a whole chapter on
Speaker 2: that are that very thing, Yeah, on how we have
Speaker 2: pulled black fathers out of the home because of policies
Speaker 2: that make it really hard for poor families and to
Speaker 2: get the help that they need. Even though and I
Speaker 2: won't get too far into it, that these these welfare
Speaker 2: programs were actually not designed for black families, right, And
Speaker 2: a lot of the requirements and eligibility requirements changed once
Speaker 2: black women started to use them, and then we started
Speaker 2: to coin black women who were using them as welfare
Speaker 2: queens when we weren't the first particulars all of it, right,
Speaker 2: That's why, And that's.
Speaker 1: Almost a political thing in the eighties. We know the truth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, that whole that whole welfare queen term
Speaker 1: came from eighties POLITI yeah.
Speaker 2: But when Moyni Ham started that, I mean he did
Speaker 2: a I think it was a report called the State
Speaker 2: of the Black Family, right, and again I probably maybe
Speaker 2: well intended, maybe not. I'm not sure the intent behind it,
Speaker 2: but it painted black families in a very negative light
Speaker 2: in America, and I don't think that we've ever bounced
Speaker 2: back from that. And so that's why I think we
Speaker 2: have to be very careful with the stories that we tell,
Speaker 2: how we tell them, how we understand data, because I
Speaker 2: think one of the data set that always just kind
Speaker 2: of rubs me the is just the number of black
Speaker 2: children growing up without a father, because I don't know
Speaker 2: what exactly that means. Does it mean that they don't
Speaker 2: have a father, or they don't have a father that
Speaker 2: lives in the home, right, Does it mean that the
Speaker 2: father is not present, or that the father doesn't live
Speaker 2: in the home.
Speaker 1: Does it also mean that there's a man out there
Speaker 1: who birth the child, who himself doesn't have hope and
Speaker 1: therefore doesn't even feel worthy of being a father and
Speaker 1: opts to stay out because they actually think they're doing
Speaker 1: more damage than good. And that is a very very
Speaker 1: real thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, but again it's we tell the story, right.
Speaker 2: We want to tell the story, but we don't want
Speaker 2: to tell in a story that paints this picture to
Speaker 2: America that you have a bunch of black men who
Speaker 2: just don't want kids, They don't want us, they're just
Speaker 2: out here just having kids. And then just I have
Speaker 2: not met many of them, and so we actually partner
Speaker 2: with a fatherhood initiative more.
Speaker 1: Of those than there are white guys doing the same thing. Well,
Speaker 1: that means's true. Yeah, so interesting. I could talk about
Speaker 1: that forever. But the point is you were raising foster care.
Speaker 1: Although you were in a foster child, you're part of
Speaker 1: very loving family, but because your entire family were foster people,
Speaker 1: you were basically raised in foster care. And it looked
Speaker 1: like a rainbow. I don't know about a rainbow.
Speaker 2: I think when my family started to do foster care
Speaker 2: my high school years, I actually started to really resent it.
Speaker 2: You start, what resenting them doing foster care?
Speaker 1: Tell me about that. Now there's something that you missed
Speaker 1: that in a property? Did you? Yeah? Why?
Speaker 2: I actually told myself I would never do foster care.
Speaker 1: Why did you resent? You felt like you were losing
Speaker 1: your time with your family for all these other kids?
Speaker 2: No, the behaviors, Well, explain it. I mean you bring
Speaker 2: in a traumatized fifteen year old boy right who you
Speaker 2: feel like is underappreciating your mom, disrespecting her, coming home
Speaker 2: when he wants. I'm like, why are we doing this right? Mom?
Speaker 2: I don't. I mean, I have an incredible mother, and
Speaker 2: when her and my father divorced. I think when they
Speaker 2: were married, I was okay with it. When they divorced,
Speaker 2: as she decided she wanted to continue to do it,
Speaker 2: I said, I actually didn't agree with it. I thought
Speaker 2: she needed to focus on herself and she needed to
Speaker 2: focus on us, and she had had some boys that
Speaker 2: she really cared about that she was like, I don't,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't want for.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was like, I don't. There's three things. I
Speaker 2: told God I would never do mary a pastor, which
Speaker 2: I've done, go to or Robridge University, which I've done
Speaker 2: three times, and do foster care. So I stopped telling
Speaker 2: him what I'm not going to do because it just
Speaker 2: sets me up. But I was just actually wasn't interested.
Speaker 2: I was not interested.
Speaker 1: Isn't it interesting the seeds that grandparents and parents plant
Speaker 1: that start getting wilter on them and grow and they're
Speaker 1: like weeds in New can'sas. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was like, I mean, I think it's great
Speaker 2: that my family does it.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do it. This is not how
Speaker 1: I'm going to spend my life.
Speaker 2: But I loved it early on. The older I got,
Speaker 2: the more I started to see certain things and I
Speaker 2: was like.
Speaker 1: This changed for you.
Speaker 2: Roberts. I went on a missions trip to Brazil, and
Speaker 2: while we were there, I really believed that I had
Speaker 2: an encounter that changed my life, which was we visited
Speaker 2: an orphanage. And prior to us visiting that orphanage, I
Speaker 2: actually had a dream and in that dream, I was
Speaker 2: at or Roberts in my dorm room. I had a dream,
Speaker 2: and in that dream I had I had a group home.
Speaker 2: It was a really nice group home, and I remember
Speaker 2: waking up and I was like, that is not That's
Speaker 2: not something I want to do. So when I went
Speaker 2: to Brazil, we were walking into this orphanage and I'll
Speaker 2: tell you we were there for four hours, and I
Speaker 2: cried the entire four hours because I really felt like
Speaker 2: my heart was shifting back towards probably where it was
Speaker 2: when I worked at my grandmother's child placement.
Speaker 1: Agents, because I was just going with children.
Speaker 2: But the orphanage that I went to, it had cottages
Speaker 2: for parents. It was like I walked in and I
Speaker 2: seen something I hadn't seen before. I'd only seen the
Speaker 2: other piece where it was you take the kids in.
Speaker 2: I hadn't seen someone do it in a way that
Speaker 2: was like trying to keep families together. Were also recognizing
Speaker 2: that in Brazil there were like real orphanages. I mean,
Speaker 2: there are real orphans, so they had, you know, rooms
Speaker 2: for orphans, but they had cottages for families. And hearing
Speaker 2: the stories and hearing those young kids talk and hearing
Speaker 2: the parents talk, it just lit something in me. It
Speaker 2: restored for me, you know, I think a dream that
Speaker 2: maybe I once had that that died. I was really
Speaker 2: trying to find myself.
Speaker 1: So it just washed all there was something away.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, but I mean during
Speaker 2: my parents' divorce, I was just like, I just I.
Speaker 3: Hey, before we get to those finalswer questions, I think
Speaker 3: it could be cool to talk about your experience in
Speaker 3: Tulsa and then some of it now too, with having
Speaker 3: a home for kids aging out of foster care. Yeah,
Speaker 3: what that experience was like and how it changed you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So when I was in Oklahoma, I worked at a
Speaker 2: shelter for kids aging out of the foster system, and
Speaker 2: I spent majority of my time there working in the
Speaker 2: Big Girl in Big Boy Cottage, so cottage for the teenagers.
Speaker 2: And I loved it. I absolutely loved it, but it
Speaker 2: was so heartbreaking for me because there were so many
Speaker 2: times that I was watching kids put their clothes in
Speaker 2: trash bags and prepare to age out of foster care.
Speaker 2: And I remember there was a young man he was
Speaker 2: aging out in like three months, and his behavior. He
Speaker 2: started to punch in walls and I mean just he
Speaker 2: was really acting out. And I remember sitting with him
Speaker 2: one day after he was in trouble and I'm like, Drake,
Speaker 2: what's going on, dude, what's what's going on? And this
Speaker 2: kid just, I mean balled up at a field position
Speaker 2: started crying. He was like, I'm just scared, scared. I
Speaker 2: don't know what I'm going to do when I turn eighteen.
Speaker 2: And after a few of those situations, I was like,
Speaker 2: I want to do something about this. So I started
Speaker 2: working with people who had properties that would rent, and
Speaker 2: a gentleman purchased a home, rented it to me for
Speaker 2: a very modest amount, and I got licensed and became
Speaker 2: a foster parent to teenagers agent got a foster care,
Speaker 2: fostered about twenty girls over a three or four year span,
Speaker 2: and then my husband and I ended up reconnecting after college,
Speaker 2: and after we got married, I knew I was moving
Speaker 2: to Rochester, so I merged the Foster Home or the
Speaker 2: man of House is what it was called at the time,
Speaker 2: another organization in Tulsa. And then when I moved to Rochester,
Speaker 2: I knew I wanted to continue that work. So that's
Speaker 2: when I started Hope five eight five. At the time,
Speaker 2: it was called the Hub five A five. The first
Speaker 2: initiative we started was a care portal. Because the care
Speaker 2: portal is so easy to roll out, it doesn't really
Speaker 2: cost a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Like you, you just get people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but two years ago we actually opened the first
Speaker 2: professional foster home in Monroe County, using the same model
Speaker 2: as a model that I started in Oklahoma. So right
Speaker 2: now we have four young ladies. One is pregnant prepare
Speaker 2: to have a little boy any day now. So we'll
Speaker 2: have five, well four women and a baby in that home.
Speaker 2: And we're actually about to purchase another home now to
Speaker 2: be faced two to that. So when girls age out,
Speaker 2: they will be able to rent a room from Hope
Speaker 2: five eight five to give them a little bit more
Speaker 2: time to prepare for adulthood.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. I prior to doing this, had never, ever, ever,
Speaker 1: ever not even considered the thought of what happens when
Speaker 1: children aren't adopted and they age out of foster care
Speaker 1: and they become eighteen. They put their stuff in literally
Speaker 1: a black garbage bag, and I think they're given a
Speaker 1: couple hundred box and they're set out. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I watch kids put their stuff in a trash bag,
Speaker 2: get in a taxi and go to Salvation Army. I
Speaker 2: was their eighteenth birthday from a children's shelter to birthday, and.
Speaker 1: Then we ask ourselves. Why these folks end up in jail,
Speaker 1: on skid row or on drugs. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: care who you are. Get that start in life, have
Speaker 1: that lack of hope, and see how you do, and
Speaker 1: ask yourself why you don't have enough grip.
Speaker 2: So this this and this is why, this is why
Speaker 2: I started to get into the narrowing the front door
Speaker 2: to shop protective services. I said, the outcomes are not
Speaker 2: the outcomes are poor. So you move a kid because
Speaker 2: their parents can't take care of them. You put them
Speaker 2: in a system, The system bounces them around eight to
Speaker 2: twenty times, they don't get adopted, they age out.
Speaker 1: The outcomes are poor.
Speaker 2: Why not keep them at home, support their families, and
Speaker 2: at least they know where they belong.
Speaker 1: At least. I tell people all the time, I'd rather
Speaker 1: be poor with my mom right than to be you.
Speaker 2: Then for you to remove me and put me with
Speaker 2: a well off family that doesn't understand my culture, and
Speaker 2: that at any given day call and say this isn't
Speaker 2: working out, it's not keep me with my poor mom right.
Speaker 2: At least I know where I belong and I know
Speaker 2: I'm loved right, So I think that that's and that's
Speaker 2: really the work that we're doing is really saying, you know,
Speaker 2: if we look at this system, how do we create
Speaker 2: this culture of systems change? You know, we have this
Speaker 2: front door, we have this system, and when children are
Speaker 2: entangled in the system, they deserve dignity. And that's why
Speaker 2: we create our homes and we have something like how
Speaker 2: are we going to ensure that when young people are
Speaker 2: aging out they're not aging out? Just to come back
Speaker 2: to the attention of child welfare, but now, as the parent,
Speaker 2: I had a CPS worker looked me on my face
Speaker 2: and say, this kid that we're talking about, I was
Speaker 2: his grandmother's child welfare worker.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm like, well, there's three generations. Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: And if you don't care about it from an idealistic standpoint,
Speaker 1: which is you don't, you need to check yourself. But
Speaker 1: even if you don't, pragmatically you should care about it,
Speaker 1: because these are the very people that, if we don't
Speaker 1: do something about it, end up not hang into our
Speaker 1: tax space but taking I mean there's a pragmatic side
Speaker 1: of this too.
Speaker 2: Yep, they don't go away.
Speaker 1: That's what our taxes are paying form.
Speaker 2: When they're in care, then they age out incarceration, homeless.
Speaker 1: It sounds cold, but these are the people that are
Speaker 1: filling our jails too if we don't figure this out.
Speaker 1: So if you don't even have the empathy for them
Speaker 1: in humans, I have empathy for yourself and your tax
Speaker 1: space and your children's tax space, because this is the
Speaker 1: biggest thing we could fix.
Speaker 2: One of the things that we did back in November
Speaker 2: was we released a report called the Cost of a
Speaker 2: Fossil Alarm, and it shows the socioeconomic impact of over
Speaker 2: reporting for families. We put a dollar to it, because
Speaker 2: some people don't care unless you put a dollar to it.
Speaker 2: I can tell people all the time, like where we're
Speaker 2: moving children, we're doing this, We're wasting tax pan dollars.
Speaker 2: Do you remember what the dollar figure was and our
Speaker 2: county was twenty two hundred dollars. You multiply that by
Speaker 2: the seventy five percent that are substantiated, you're talking twelve
Speaker 2: million dollar economic impact. There you go twelve million dollars.
Speaker 2: What could we have done with twelve million dollars to
Speaker 2: address the conditions that brought them?
Speaker 1: The whole dragmatic side to it, right what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: But what if we started doing these type of studies
Speaker 2: for other issues, kids aging out. How much does it
Speaker 2: cost for them to be homeless?
Speaker 1: The kids aging out thing? If you did that nationally,
Speaker 1: that number is, I don't know what it is.
Speaker 2: Staggering, yep, multiple multiple, multiple millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. Easy, yep,
Speaker 2: because we're paying for them incarcerated, homeless, substance used. I mean,
Speaker 2: all of these different things that become real issues.
Speaker 1: And because I think they're I think kids who age
Speaker 1: out of foster care are like three times more likely
Speaker 1: to have their own children end up in foster care.
Speaker 1: And not right, three times or something. Okay, So whatever
Speaker 1: that number is today, triple it twenty years from now.
Speaker 1: It's staggering.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: So there's all kinds of reasons. The work you're doing
Speaker 1: is absolutely phenomenal. What does the average person not really understand?
Speaker 1: If you can sum it up, what is the average
Speaker 1: thing a person really doesn't understand about a kid's life
Speaker 1: in foster care.
Speaker 2: I think the perception is that kids in foster care
Speaker 2: are being given a better life or better outcomes, a
Speaker 2: new family, a better.
Speaker 1: Family, Annie, Daddy Warbucks.
Speaker 2: That's it, right, Kids in foster care, now, they have
Speaker 2: a home. We message it like that every kid deserves
Speaker 2: a home, every kid deserves a family, and it's true.
Speaker 2: Well we're not realizing is they have a family. Many
Speaker 2: of them have a family, right. I want one thing
Speaker 2: that really it bloils my bud when we call children
Speaker 2: foster care orphans because they're not orphans. They have families.
Speaker 2: There are some if they've lost their parents or orphans,
Speaker 2: but we have.
Speaker 1: The very name and orphanage for a building that houses
Speaker 1: children who aren't with their families is actually missing omer
Speaker 1: because the vast majority of them have living families.
Speaker 2: They do, they do.
Speaker 1: That's interesting.
Speaker 2: What what messages as into their living families when you
Speaker 2: start to call them morphine? So I'm dead now, I
Speaker 2: don't matter. I'm not here, I'm invisible. You're trying to
Speaker 2: erase me from their lives. These kids, they have families
Speaker 2: that they love. And I think the average person would think,
Speaker 2: because I used to think it, kids in foster care
Speaker 2: are something horrible has happened to them, and it's typically
Speaker 2: because their parents have made bad choices or have done
Speaker 2: something bad. It's just not the truth.
Speaker 1: So I don't even know what the politically correct term
Speaker 1: is for your children that are not foster children. I
Speaker 1: guess they're natural What do you call those?
Speaker 2: What do you my children are not foster children, my biologog.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's the number. All right, So you have how
Speaker 1: many biological children? Three? All right? And what are their
Speaker 1: names and ages?
Speaker 2: Riley is three, Madison is five, Harper.
Speaker 1: Is eight, and Riley is also a girl?
Speaker 2: Yep, all three girls.
Speaker 1: Yeap? Oh, poor Melvin, poor man. He ain't never gonna
Speaker 1: have a hot shower. And then Jordan is also female. Yes,
Speaker 1: And now Jordan is your foster daughter.
Speaker 2: She was yep, she was yep.
Speaker 1: Well what is she now?
Speaker 2: Well, now she's my daughter.
Speaker 1: Oh she's adopted. Yeah, I got it, okay, And how
Speaker 1: does she Jordan is twenty nine? Wow?
Speaker 2: Yeah. I met Jordan uh when she was seventeen. I
Speaker 2: met Jordan when she was seventeen. I had my home
Speaker 2: for young ladies preparing in age out of foster care.
Speaker 2: I had a full time job working at a shelter,
Speaker 2: and Jordan was one of the residents in the shelter.
Speaker 2: She was preparing to age out of foster care. And
Speaker 2: some of the workers who are working on her case,
Speaker 2: they knew that I did foster care. And that I
Speaker 2: would take young ladies who were over eighteen. And so
Speaker 2: they connected Jordan and I. She came and stayed four
Speaker 2: weekend to see if she felt like it would be
Speaker 2: a good fit. And so she signed herself back into
Speaker 2: foster care when she turned eighteen and became my foster
Speaker 2: daughter when she turned eighteen.
Speaker 1: And when did you legally make it? Yeah?
Speaker 2: So I moved to Rochester in twenty and sixteen. Jordan
Speaker 2: stayed behind in Tulsa and we rented her an apartment
Speaker 2: and she was doing the transitional living stuff. And one
Speaker 2: day I had a conversation with my husband and I said, Hey,
Speaker 2: out of all the girls, you know, Jordan is just
Speaker 2: I love all my girls, I really do, but there's
Speaker 2: just something different and special about Jordan. And I told him,
Speaker 2: I said, you know, Jordan doesn't really need us, Like
Speaker 2: she's super independent. She works, she's a hard worker, she's
Speaker 2: always had a job, she got her driver's license, she
Speaker 2: was independent. I said, But one thing that Jordan doesn't have,
Speaker 2: like she won't have a dad to walk her down
Speaker 2: the aisle and she gets married, she won't have a
Speaker 2: mom to be in the delivery room when she gives
Speaker 2: birth to her first child, Like, Jordan still just doesn't
Speaker 2: have family, and she has ties to her birth mom
Speaker 2: and her siblings, but the connection just again because of
Speaker 2: the removal, which people don't talk about. It's so hard
Speaker 2: to reunite when you're eighteen with a woman you haven't
Speaker 2: lived with for fifteen years, right, and just to go
Speaker 2: back to how things were, it's hard. So Jordan came
Speaker 2: to live with us in Rochester a month after we
Speaker 2: had Harper, our eight year old. Oh, so we joke around,
Speaker 2: we say we brought home twins, so we brought home.
Speaker 1: The baby and a half years whatever.
Speaker 2: So Jordan came to live with us, and we were
Speaker 2: going through the process of actually formally adopting her, and
Speaker 2: it was expensive even as an adult, like you have
Speaker 2: to pay to adopt an adult. So our attorney was like, hey,
Speaker 2: you know there's other ways around. It's like, what's the
Speaker 2: goal of the adoption And I just said, well, if
Speaker 2: anything ever happens to us, we want for Jordan to
Speaker 2: be considered in are like the same way our daughters are.
Speaker 2: So it's like, well, you could change your last name
Speaker 2: for sentimental value and then put her in your wheel
Speaker 2: and that that still accomplishes everything that you would have
Speaker 2: wanted to accomplish the adoption. So we say it's more
Speaker 2: of a moral adoption, you know, we didn't go do
Speaker 2: them for what she's ours as our girl.
Speaker 1: I love that. Tell me about her? What does she doing?
Speaker 2: Jordan's oh? Man, So she has a boyfriend.
Speaker 1: Really cool guy.
Speaker 2: Actually, it's just hitting me though that she's going to
Speaker 2: get married probably one day, if not to him, to someone,
Speaker 2: because she's just incredible. She's a caregiver or caretaker for
Speaker 2: an older lady. So she takes care of an older
Speaker 2: lady through an organization in Rochester and then works with
Speaker 2: people with developmental disabilities. So she's working on her associates.
Speaker 2: She'll be graduating soon with an associates in human services
Speaker 2: and just a really incredible human.
Speaker 1: Very cool story. Yeah, yeah, does mister doctor Ashley Cross
Speaker 1: also known as Melvin a track out to no what's
Speaker 1: he doing up at? What's he do up in Rock?
Speaker 1: He's actually a third generation pastor.
Speaker 2: His grandmother his grandmother was the first ordained woman minister
Speaker 2: in Rochester and Katie Cross yep, and he talks about
Speaker 2: her and just lights up. But my husband, who actually
Speaker 2: just became a Reverend doctor Melvin Crass.
Speaker 1: This this week, he.
Speaker 2: Defended his dissertation at BAKI and he did on transformational
Speaker 2: leadership and did a really cool study on gentrification in
Speaker 2: urban churches. But yeah, he is the leader of a thriving, beautiful,
Speaker 2: life giving church called Gloryhouse International. He actually started the
Speaker 2: church the same year that I started the Girls Home
Speaker 2: in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: So he knew what he was marrying.
Speaker 2: Oh, he knew what he was So my in laws
Speaker 2: were foster parents, his father and father, and he has
Speaker 2: adopted siblings. Yeah, so that was his pickup line when
Speaker 2: we took me out. He said, Hey, so you know
Speaker 2: my family has done foster care too, and you know
Speaker 2: I want to do foster care one day and I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, okay, is that your way of telling
Speaker 2: me that our futures a lot?
Speaker 1: Yeah. So so Melvine ain't got game, but he's got story.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, gay, but he got a really good story.
Speaker 1: He got a really good story.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. If he was here, I'd be a lot nicer
Speaker 1: and he would.
Speaker 2: Just Melvin is just he's an incredible guy. If you
Speaker 2: see him, he's always got a smile in his face
Speaker 2: and just an amazing past or. Amazing father.
Speaker 1: I want to give you the last word as we close,
Speaker 1: tell our army of normal folks with regard to the
Speaker 1: work you do. Army normal folks, then they're not going
Speaker 1: to get their doctorate in this stuff, and they're probably
Speaker 1: not going to start a five oh one C three
Speaker 1: and do all that you've done. But you know what
Speaker 1: our whole construct is. You don't have to. You just
Speaker 1: have to see a need, care about it, and engage
Speaker 1: in whatever way you can in your community. So I
Speaker 1: want to give you the last word. What do you
Speaker 1: want to tell the arm and normal folks with the
Speaker 1: guard of the work you do, what can they do?
Speaker 1: It's just a normal person to make a difference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I'm reflecting on the message that I
Speaker 2: taught on close enough to touch. I think what I
Speaker 2: would challenge normal people to do is to make yourself
Speaker 2: close enough to someone else's pain and someone else's story
Speaker 2: and just start there. Like, I think that the most
Speaker 2: significant thing that we can do is just to find
Speaker 2: ourselves close enough to people who are suffering. And that's
Speaker 2: why I lit up what I talked about Elias, because
Speaker 2: I've done nothing really for him. I don't think I've
Speaker 2: done anything significant, but just be close enough to answer
Speaker 2: the call when he reaches out for help, to be
Speaker 2: there to remind him of who he is and what
Speaker 2: his goals are, to listen to see him. And I
Speaker 2: think we've overcomplicated it. I can give you all the
Speaker 2: other steps, you know, find a nonprofit, connect with a nonprofit,
Speaker 2: become a mentor find a young person, like all of
Speaker 2: those things. But I think the most simple thing to
Speaker 2: do is just to make yourself available. Be okay with
Speaker 2: being uncomfortable, be okay with being inconvenienced, and just find
Speaker 2: yourself being that one person for just one person.
Speaker 1: Ashley Cross. There's no better way to close it than there,
Speaker 1: because that is exactly the power of millions and millions
Speaker 1: of army and normal folks. If we had millions of
Speaker 1: people doing just what your wisdom right there imparted, we
Speaker 1: change culture.
Speaker 2: We would, and I believe we can.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being here, Thanks for joining us. It's been
Speaker 1: an awesome discussion and you are a bright right life.
Speaker 2: Thanks you so much. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: In you, and thank you for joining us this week.
Speaker 1: If doctor Ashley Cross has inspired you in general or
Speaker 1: better yet, to take action by implementing the science of
Speaker 1: hope in your own life, your business, your service work,
Speaker 1: or joining the Hope centered movement in Memphis by visiting
Speaker 1: a gape's website. Please let me know I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear about it. You can write me anytime at Bill
Speaker 1: at normal folks dot us. If you enjoyed this episode,
Speaker 1: please share it friends and on social subscribe to the podcast,
Speaker 1: rate it and review it. Join the Army at normal
Speaker 1: folks dot us. Join or start one of our local
Speaker 1: service club and buy our merch any and all of
Speaker 1: these things that will help us grow and army in
Speaker 1: normal Folks. I'm Bill Courtney. Until next time, do what
Speaker 1: you can do.