 Aloha and welcome to this week's edition of Business in Hawaii. I'm Dayla Nyanagida, and we're broadcasting live from the ThinkTech studios in Pioneer Plaza in downtown Honolulu. If you want to tune in live, we are at www.thinktechhawaii.com, and there you may also subscribe to our programs or get onto our mailing list. The theme of Business in Hawaii is to share with you stories of local businesses by local people. Our guests share with us how they're able to build successes in our challenging business environment. In the studio with us today is Kevin Henry. Kevin is the volunteer engagement manager and encore fellow at Child and Family Service. Welcome to our show, Kevin. Thank you very much. You've got quite a ton of, in fact, you've got two titles. No, I can barely fit it on a business card. Right. So why don't you tell us about Child and Family Service? Child and Family Service has been on Oahu for over 117 years, and we provide over, I think there's over up to 45 programs now or more, and all of these programs focus on serving and assisting what I like to call vulnerable populations. Our slogan is, one of our slogans is from twinkle to wrinkle, and that we have programs that help infants, parents with small children, small children themselves, older adults, adults, people who are dealing with different types of challenges in their lives. So in some cases it might be more economic. So we have people that come to our donation center, our Eva Family Center, and actually shop for donated items. We have counseling for victims of sexual child abuse. We have a domestic shelter for survivors of domestic violence and alternative high schools. So we have a wide array of programs to really try and meet the needs of the community. So we were talking earlier and Child and Family Service is a nonprofit organization that's not directly affiliated with the Department of Health. Is that correct? Right. Even though we do have contracts where we have certain programs where we have contracted, we are contracted to provide a particular service. We also get donations, we get grants, and other funding sources as well. So you have a varied background, from radio broadcasting to, I understand, a very sophisticated position with the city of Belview. Sophisticated. I like that. With the city of Belview. I'll use that sometime. The city of Belview, Washington. So you said that you're familiar with Belview, Washington, as you were in the Northwest. So I worked for the city of Belview, Washington, a suburb of Seattle for about 20 years. And I helped create and manage the cultural diversity program for 20 years. And thankfully it's still going on and going gangbusters right now. And that involved really bringing different factions of the community together to promote understanding, collaboration, to ease tensions. One of the reasons why the program was seen as something that was needed was because the demographics were changing. So Belview was one of these cities that in 1970 was 95% white. Today it's more like 61% or 57% white. So there was this influx of immigrants, people of different nationalities, backgrounds, languages. And when that happens, there's a certain amount of isolation that can happen because people don't connect. So my job really was to put on events, seminars, workshops, cultural events to educate people about different cultures, to bridge those gaps, to also encourage and increase workplace diversity so that when people came to City Hall, they saw the people there as a reflection of the community, which was meaning that that would be a very diverse workforce. So I managed to fortunately apply some of those tactics and strategies to this position as well. So with your experience in cultural sensitivity, if you will, building that in the city of Belview, how do you compare that to Hawaii? Where are we? Hawaii is, well first of all, Hawaii is very refreshing. In fact, what's interesting is that I'm still very much in tune with what's going on in the mainland. And there's a lot of controversy and there's political stuff going on and polarization. I go on social media and people are unfriending each other and yelling and screaming and typing furiously. And I come to Hawaii and I go, oh, I mean, I've been here for four years. But it's like I talked to somebody in Hawaii and it's like, did you hear about the police shootings? And it's like, what? What's going on? People here are very diverse. I love the diversity of Hawaii. I love the Haloha spirit. I really feel, I'm not saying that there aren't issues between groups, which need to be addressed. But I really feel like in my four years here, I've been really very much treated as an individual. It's about relationship building and my background. It's not that it's not seen or recognized, but it seems secondary to making that connection on a positive level with someone. That makes sense. Absolutely. But I love the diversity here. And we are that diverse group. I think culture is paramount to our interests, not just in community and personalized but in business as well. So tell me about your two roles at Child and Family Service. First of all, the volunteer engagement manager. Volunteer engagement. What is that about? What is that about? Well, I am trying to engage volunteers and that means there are people out in the community. And by the way, we have offices on the Big Island, Maui, and Kauai as well, in addition to our main office on Oahu, and we have some facilities on Oahu as well. But there are people in the community that have value. There are people that have skills, they have knowledge, they have wisdom, they have time, and that's who I'm trying to engage because we have, as I said, from twinkle to wrinkle, we have small children, we have adults, we have older adults. All of these people can benefit from somebody spending an hour a week, 10 hours a week connecting with them, helping sort donations, helping talk to kids about careers, helping in a variety of ways. In some cases we have volunteers who they just want to help out by working in the office. They're more behind the scenes people. So what I do is go out into the community, go on social media, have meetings with people, do public speaking to various business groups, various other groups, senior groups, to tell them about child and family service and really emphasize how valuable they can be to helping us achieve our goals of serving the community and giving back to that community. What I like about the Volunteer Program 2 is that I like to say it's kind of a menu of different options. In some cases when you want people to volunteer you have one thing that you want them to do. Every Tuesday from one to five they sort out, they file something and then that's it. In a little room somewhere we have like 10, 15 different ways you can volunteer. You can volunteer one hour a week, 15 hours a week. It's really up to you how much time you have and want to commit to giving back your time to child and family service and the people we serve. So in your role you recruit volunteers for Oahu programs or? Mainly when I first started this program about, I guess it will be two years this summer. I focused on Oahu, I was trying to kind of take one island at a time. Now in the last three or four months we've been kind of branching out to some of the neighbor islands because what will happen is for instance with the thing that's going on with the volcano on the big island there was a need for volunteers to go and give out information, resource information to the residents there, certain areas. So the need has grown a little bit on the neighbor islands and so now that I've got kind of a core group on Oahu I'm kind of branching out to Maui and kind of seeing what they need in Kauai and the big island as well. The program I might add is split into two areas in the sense that anyone over 18 can volunteer but there's a special program called Encore which we'll get to in a minute which has a focus on engaging people who are over 50 to be volunteers at child and family service. So how many volunteers does it take to make your operation work? It really varies. It's kind of a hard question to answer just because it's a variable. The more volunteers we have the more we can do and we have volunteers that kind of come and go. I mean there's kind of a transitory nature to it in that I've had several volunteers in the last two years that have moved back to the mainland. Some of them are military so they're here for two years, one year, five years. So right now I think there's a core group of probably 15 volunteers that are basically based on Oahu and then there's a few on the neighbor islands. But a month from now that could be 20 or that could be 10 so it really varies. But we feel that even if we have one volunteer we're able to accomplish something even by having them come and help in the donation center because for instance we get so many donations that they start to pile up and it's like the staff can't even get to all the donations and so those volunteers play a really important role in helping facilitate how that donation center works. There are a number of nonprofits here in Hawaii and I'm sure that a lot of them struggle with the recruitment of volunteers especially with the low unemployment rate but the volunteers are crucial to making the services happen. Tell me about some of the effective things that you do to recruit volunteers. Well what I've found is that Hawaii is the same in some ways as my work in Seattle and Washington state in that it's really about relationship building. Now I think in Washington what I notice is that I think I could send out more unsolicited emails to people I didn't know and engage them. Here it's really about getting to know people. So very often I've gone out and spoken to groups. I've gone to like I remember going to a retirement center in Kapolei and talking to some of the seniors there about recruitment. It takes time to get to know people and I think there's a certain amount of trust and credibility that's built up so then when you start to meet some of the key people in the community they then refer you to other people unlike me sitting there just sending out random emails to these groups that I find on the internet and getting no response which is what was happening initially. I was sending out all these emails and it's like well nobody's emailing me back but then I wind up sitting down to coffee with someone and they go oh I got three volunteers for you right now and boom you know next week they're in the office. So what I found is just getting out and talking to people and listening because what I found is that sometimes you know a lot of people have jobs where you work eight to five and you turn your brain on you go into work five o'clock you turn your brain off you don't think about your job until eight o'clock the next day. With me I've met people standing in line at the supermarket I've met them in you know the hot tub at 24 hour fitness because you get into conversations with people and then they mention something and they go oh yeah you know six months from now I'm going to be retired I wonder what I'm going to do. So it's much like I think a marketing person who has a product to sell I mean if you run into you know if you're a car salesman and you happen to be in Safeway one day on a Saturday when you're not working and somebody says you know my car just broke down and darn it I'm going to go buy a new car the next week. Well if you're a salesman you're going to go whoa what's that you know hey here's my car let's talk about this you're not going to just think to yourself well I'm not working right now you know until eight o'clock on Monday. So I think it's having a certain mental frame of mind is that once you open the door and leave your house potential volunteers are everywhere just like customers if you had a business. Why is volunteerism important to our business community? I think for a variety of reasons I think that for one thing the volunteer group that I have right now is very diverse and I think it's really important that if like if you have a business for instance and you know I'm not saying you're not successful at your business I think having an influx and input from different perspectives from different people can really enhance you on a personal level but more importantly it can enhance your business because you're not getting tunnel vision I mean I've run into some businesses that are somewhat rigid not so much here but back in Washington and it's like well we've this is the way we've done it for the last 20 years and I said well have you considered you know changing your marketing strategy changing your strategic plan you know things like that changing the training that you have because if you look outside the world doesn't look like it did 20 years ago a lot of times so volunteers I think bring new ideas fresh ideas one of the things that we focus on in our Encore program which we'll talk about is having youth and older adults collaborate because sometimes you think well I'm 17 whatever I got to say to a 62 year old you know well we're setting up circumstances and programs by which those connections can be made and the benefits are are mutual I think of those types of connections right we're gonna take a short break but we're gonna come back and talk about the second part of your job as an Encore fellow this is business in Hawaii we'll see you back here shortly everyone I'm DeSoto Brown the co-host of human humane architecture which is seen on Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. and with the show's host Martin Desbang we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live but other aspects of our life not only here in Hawaii but internationally as well so join us for human humane architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii are you tired of sleepwalking through life are you dreaming of a healthier wealthier happier you you're not alone and that's why thousands of people tune in each week to watch RB Kelly on out of the comfort zone Tuesdays at 1 p.m. make a change get the help you need and stop sucking at life hello it's 1 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon and I'm your host RB Kelly welcome to out of the comfort zone in fact this is business in Hawaii and today we're talking with Kevin Henry from child and family service we're talking about volunteerism and its importance to the business community I think there are benefits for the volunteers but as well as for the businesses tell us a little bit more about right one thing I was I was mentioning before we came back was just that sometimes volunteers are your future employees because in a lot of cases you when you have a job opening you you know go through the resumes you set up the interviews people come in in some cases you might know the person or have a good referral or whatever but if you have a volunteer you actually get to see them in action so you can see their work style even people at child and family service have start some have started out as volunteers and wound up being employed so there's that advantage of being able to see somebody and how they work and how effective they are and how they get along with the dynamic of you know your workforce so you can get you can get kind of a preview of what this person would be like as a future employee so that's another advantage to having volunteers in addition to saving money there you go so there I'm sure there are volunteers of all ages a lot of times in in in high school even in college we encourage students to seek out volunteer opportunities to device diversify their resumes and then you have those who have entered the workforce and then you have those in the the the older portion or the non-traditional workforce so volunteerism in each of these groups what do you have to say about that about like you for instance I really encourage you to do some volunteering because as you mentioned you know a lot of times I've gone like to Campbell high school and different high schools and talked about you know okay your senior you're going to be graduating you're going to start looking for a job you have a blank piece of paper as a resume so if you can put volunteer experience down that's just as valuable as paid experience especially if you can show that you were there for a while and what you were able to do in terms of the the duties that you perform and then you get referral letters so that when you come in for that first meaningful job or just any job really you have something on a piece of paper in addition it also provides networking opportunities again you know if you might be a 17 18 year old teenager you come to work for my company I get to see hey this person's really sharp they're bright they're punctual they're reliable and then when that job opening comes about you know six months down the road that's the first person I think about so it's an investment of time and I really want to encourage it I mean I know youth want to make money I wanted to make money when I was 16 but if you can make money and even if you're volunteering three hours a week rather than sitting there you know what playing video games or something like that doing something investing time into something that won't produce anything go and start networking and volunteering at a local organization you never know who's going to you know help you reach some more important goals later on it's not always watching over who you know who knows you right some of the other people like you had mentioned like nontraditional groups sometimes I spent a fair amount of time convincing a volunteer that they're of their value and what I what I mean by that is sometimes when initially when I meet with a potential volunteer they come in and I say well you know we're doing these career talks where we're talking with survivors of domestic violence about you know how to go into a bank and open a checking account they have they need to know that and sometimes the person's a little you know nervous well you know I've never worked in a bank I'm not an expert you don't have to be an expert you have information that's valuable if you were a janitor for 25 years you have something to give so sometimes the challenge sometimes is convincing the volunteer of their value because their whole idea of volunteerism is something that's maybe a little narrow and needs to be widened business people business people are great because a lot of times business people a lot of businesses have something built into their business where their employees are supposed to devote a certain amount of time to volunteerism anyway they tend to be the easier ones we've had business groups that have come and done like a cleanup and repainted the inside of one of our shelters for instance they you know travel around these groups and do that I think again some of the harder groups might be you know retired housewife you know because I've heard more than once well what do I have to get what are these teenagers care about what I have to say you know well just your life experience about like talking about dating you know or what what to you know look for in a potential you know life partner things like that one thing I will say about being older is that you've accumulated a lot of knowledge you made a lot of mistakes and if you can help someone younger than you avoid some of the potholes that you stepped in it's a win-win situation in addition it adds value especially with the older adults in the uncle program it adds it builds self-esteem on the part of the volunteer it adds value studies have shown that people that get retired or have retired a lot of times are more prone to depression you add to that like a spouse passes away the kids are all gone maybe you don't have grandkids you have all of a sudden you have this time on your hands you know you don't get up every morning and six o'clock and go to work and come home you have nowhere to go so it's it's a little scary for some people and it's a little depressing so there's a whole untapped market of adults and especially older adults who have that time they have the knowledge they have some experience and we really want to tap into that and it's also a win for the potential volunteer or encore volunteer as well so let's back up a little bit and tell me how the on-core program came about what were you were you feeling a need how did that come about yeah the uncle program is a national program all across the mainland there are on-core people all over there's organized effective we're part of a smaller group of ten nonprofits who all received funding to run on-core programs at our individual sites so there's an organization on back east on the mainland in san francisco philadelphia all these different cities down south I think I believe in houston we there's another organization down there where an on-core fellow was hired to recruit more on-core talent so it's a national program we also are very putting a fair amount of energy into just having people reconceptualized what a volunteer is because again I think people get stuck into this will of volunteers somebody who comes you know and files or they come and put the chairs away after the church service or they you know there's a very narrow view of that so we're really trying to even use like technology as a way to connect people so with skype being and things like that a program I'm hoping to get started is called skype a mentor so it means that the kids or the teens or the adults for that matter on kawaii in the neighbor islands we can set up a skype call where somebody can talk about a particular career you don't have to be in the same physical space to collaborate and benefit from information you might receive oh that's gonna be amazing yeah yeah so really well um so you're an on-core fellow how do you become a fellow of the on-core program well usually what happens is in the case of this particular it's called a gen-to-gen program meaning just intergenerational generation to generation so for instance if you had the answer question an ad could be put out so I'm at if I'm in Houston I have an organization I have a position for an on-core fellow to run this on-core program I might hire through a through a classified ad in my case I was already working for CFS so I was just kind of offered that position because it melded really well into the fact that I was doing community outreach anyway in some cases there might be some other more traditional ways of actually hiring someone but then once you hire the on-core fellow then they go out and recruit the volunteers however there's also an emphasis on finding employment for people over 50 so you might have somebody who's over 50 hey I want to volunteer for a while but ultimately I want to get a job so both could happen they could volunteer hypothetically for five months and then they could be hired by the same organization or perhaps they could just be hired by the organization and as a result of some outreach done by the on-core fellow who was hired that all makes sense hopefully so how many volunteers do you have in the on-core program right now all together all together oh I Hawaii and Hawaii I think at last count there was about eight we have about 15 volunteers and of the 15 eight or on-core so it's kind of split almost in half and I hope to increase that number it has been bigger it has been smaller depending on who's had to leave and you know different factors that people have had to deal with that have forced them to leave the island in both cases so why would folks over the age of 50 want to be interested in joining up as a volunteer for the on-core program well we were talking about this earlier and I think that you know there's things we mentioned the word passion there's things in all of us that resonate with us in some cases it might be the environment cleaning up the environment in some cases it might be making a difference in the life of a child some cases it might be helping organize an event we all have that somewhere my task is to find in those persons what is what pushes your button what do you have a strong enough passion about where you you would think I'm gonna volunteer my time there's usually something that everybody would do because let's face it we don't work 24-7 there's things that we do after you know we're home from work or on the weekends but what are those things you know a lot of cases it's more fun oriented but fun can can come through volunteering as well I mean so I mean this for instance the organizational access surf which goes out and helps people with disabilities go surfing and do things on the water you know and I went out there and it's like almost brought tears in my eyes because I'm thinking you know wow I for one thing I have nothing to complain about when my aches and pains you know I'm in reasonably good health and these here's somebody that has to is missing two legs but they're on a surfboard so I think that also on a personal level people can really be inspired by the people they meet especially if they're less fortunate you know I think it really helps your perspective in general when you see someone that's really overcoming a challenge I have one general volunteers who's who's legally blind she's 19 years old when she's a student at UH we're just about out of time but why don't you tell our viewers if they're interested in volunteering with the Encore program how they can reach you you can call 808 342-2516 or you can go to our website at childandfamilyservice.org we are out of time Kevin but I wanted to thank you for spending time with us today amazing program I'm sure there are a lot of nonprofits out there who are definitely looking at volunteer engagement and what they can do to recruit volunteers so thanks for sharing that with us I wanted to also extend a big thank you to our production staff amazing production staff here in the studio if you would like to be a guest on our show please email your information to shows at thinktechhawaii.com business in Hawaii airs every Thursday at two o'clock and we look forward to seeing you here next week