 Hi Longmont! My name is Karen Stallard. I'm the membership director with the Longmont Area Chamber of Commerce. The Longmont Chamber has been working hard to support our local businesses and connect the community during this challenging time, because we don't think that being physically distanced means that we can't still socially connect and support one another. So I'd like to tag in Jessica Wanasek, the Chamber Event Director, to tell you a little bit about what we've been up to. Hey everyone! So the Longmont Chamber of Commerce has been hosting daily Facebook Live events Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. over on our Chamber Facebook page. We are featuring a local business or a nonprofit while having fun interactive activities, giveaways, and just connecting with our community. We wanted to share the fun with you after the facts, so we are airing all of our episodes from last week with you here now so you can enjoy. And we hope that you see some familiar faces from around Longmont. And remember, if you ever want to see the live thing, just tune into the Chamber Facebook page at 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Or check out a themed list of businesses over on our Chamber website. www.longmontchamber.org forward slash llama is open. And find a business that you would like to support. Enjoy the show! Hi friends! So we are so happy to be back here. It must be what? It's 4 o'clock. We're just going to let the audience come in. We're going to give them a few seconds to come in and get comfortable. We have some fun, exciting stuff that's going on today. So hopefully you're tuning in and you're ready to join us today for our very first Thankful Thursday. Let's see. Alright, we are rocking and rolling. Hi guys! So we need to see that you are here. So if you are tuning in live with us, make sure to say hi in the comments or click or like or share just so that we know that you are with us today. My name is Jessica Wanasek. I am the event director over here at the Longmont Chamber of Commerce. Today, like I said, is Thankful Thursday. This is the day that we like to showcase all of our non-profit businesses who are out there doing amazing work. And as most of you know, COVID came along and kind of changed some of these poor non-profits plans. Many of them run on grants, their events, their gallows, and with the precautions and stuff in place, they were no longer able to hold those. So this is where we are coming in. So again, if you're here, comment, say hi to us. If you want to see a list of the non-profit businesses, go to our Longmont Chamber page, which is www.longmontchamber.org, forward slash we speak Longmont, and you'll find us under the Longmont is open tab. So just scroll down and you'll see us under the Thankful Thursday. So with that being said, we are giving away an amazing gift today. It was donated by one of our special guests that we have on today. So we hope that you are tuning in and we will pick a live viewer from our comments. So make sure that you are letting us all know that we're here, that you're here watching us. That's how this works, right? So with that being said, the business that we are highlighting today is an awesome, awesome organization. We would like to give a shout out today to the Mountain State's Children's Home. So with that, I would like to bring in the executive director of the Mountain State's Children's Home. Everybody say hi to Randy Scho. Hi, Randy. Hi, Jessica. Hi, everybody. Say hello, everybody. Randy, we're so excited to have you on today for our very first Thankful Thursday. Can you tell us a little bit about, for those people who don't know what, you know, Mountain State does, can you tell us how long have you guys been in business? We have been in business for 60 years. In fact, this year we'll be celebrating our 60th anniversary. So we're excited about that. Happy 60th birthday. That's awesome. Thank you. Can you tell everybody where you are located? We are located not quite three miles north of Longmont on Highway 287. As you go to Berthad, you'll be passing us because we're just right along Highway 287 on the east side of the road. I think, yeah, I must pass you guys. Mile marker one, two, three is our entrance into the campus. That's awesome. It's so easy to remember. Mile marker one, two, three. Easy peasy, right? Yes, it is. So in our little, we were, you know, my background information of learning about you guys is you said something about a 155 acre farm. Can you share a little bit about that farm that you've got? Yes, we do have a working farm. We raise grass, alfalfa. Hey, we raise our own beef and pork. And sometimes we sell us, I mean, we have extra. We have people that donate calves and pigs and we fill them out and use it for our own use and then sell others that if we have a surplus. So the kids are involved in some of the activities on the farm. Very cool. That was my next question was how did the kids get involved? Do they have like a list of chores that they know they're supposed to do each day? Well, they are involved like helping feed the animals and, you know, we definitely expose them to the opportunity to, oh, when a cow is having a calf or pigs are having their little piglets, you know, we want them to be involved with all of that and just experience a different sign of our different way of life that most urban kids don't experience. Right. And very hands on, which is that's the way I have to learn is hands on getting in there and seeing how it's done more than just sitting and listening to somebody lecture it. So that's great. What can you share with the viewers? What is the main goal? The main picture with Mountain State's Children's Home? Well, you know, we get a lot of calls. In fact, we probably have close to last year's about a thousand calls, people calling in, wanting help for their children. We're, we work with families that call in, usually it's a single mother struggling, doesn't have the financial means, doesn't have the emotional support, doesn't have the parenting skills, and they're going through some very difficult times and the age of the children that come into our care, it's from usually around age 10-11 and then on up to graduation of high school. But they've managed up until that age of 11-12 and then things kind of go haywire. And they're really reaching out, seeking help. And so what we do is we work with the children that come into our care. They're all privately placed. We work with the parent. It could be a father also. And, you know, we try to get the child back home. They usually stay here for a year, maybe 18 months. And if we can get them back home, we'll do that. Every child has individual counseling, helping them to work through, oh, any traumatic issues that they may be dealing with. And then we work also with the family and whatever family or parent that's there to equip them so that they could take the child back home. Because that's what we really want them to be able to do, is to go back home. And that's where they need to be. Not here. But if they can't be, I mean, can't go back home, it's not a good home situation. They can stay till their age 18. And then we help them to after they graduate to go on to college, get a job. In fact, we have three that are graduating this year. And we are making plans in regards to how we can help them to make the next step in their life to be self-sufficient and or continue their education. But every child has weekly counseling. We do family counseling. We work with the families. We also have a school on campus where we help kids to get caught up. A lot of times they come in from chaotic family situations, dysfunctional families, and the children are behind in school. So we've started an on-ground school where the average improvement is 3.7 grade levels in academic achievement. So we get them caught up to where they can be mainstreamed back into public school or some of them go to the Longmont Christian School. So it's a it's neat to see them to achieve and I've had kids come say, Randy, Randy, I got an A. I've never had an A before. You know, they're just excited because they see that they do have the ability and they always believe they were stupid and dumb and they can't do that. No, that's not at all. They just have not had the support that they've needed. That is amazing. What a huge hearts that you guys have that just gives me the shivers. I just want to hug all the little kiddos over there. That's amazing. Well, with I bet and maybe that's one thing we could do maybe someday a follow-up of you know, maybe a progress report of, you know, how many kids that you graduated, you know, this year or, you know, some sort of status because I know a lot of people like to follow up on some of these stories that we're sharing. They want to know like, you know, how did I help, you know, they want to know when I helped you guys out, how did that, you know, where did that go and who did that go towards. So it really does. It's an awesome thing and you guys have huge hearts over there. So we're again, we're really appreciative that you came on and just to help, you know, shed the light on a little bit of what you guys do for those families out there that may need the help and not sure where to go. So this is an awesome opportunity for you guys. So, Jessica, one other thing is that we take kids in regardless of the ability of a parent to pay. I mean, we want them to be contributed, but that makes us very unique in the state of Colorado because there are no other homes that offer that. I mean, if we can serve the child, we'll serve the child. And that's a big blessing for the parent that is looking for help because a lot of times they don't have the ability to do so. Now, do you guys run mostly on, I saw somewhere on like grants, is it mostly donations, but how do you guys, the funding side of it, how can people help? Yeah, we do not have any government funding. So we have about 80% of our support comes from individuals. That's individual gifts could be, you know, from a gift, you know, from a dollar to whatever amount and some people help us out. So so about 80% of our support comes from individuals. We have about nine, maybe 10% of our support come from churches. And then there's another 10% that comes from grants foundations and other various, you know, sources of funding. So that's what makes this pretty unique. Well, I know, due to the COVID restrictions that have been in place, I know that you guys have been hit in one particular area where you have not been able to, I guess, conduct your regular food runs normally for your food pantry, right? That's exactly right. You know, we do food runs through churches and churches aren't meeting. I mean, they're congregating together and therefore, groceries aren't brought to a church building. And so that has really hit us hard in the sense of not having food to fill our pantry. Well, this is where we wanted to step in. And I'm going to introduce you to a special guest that we have on today. And let me bring him in here. Let me undo his microphone so he can hear us. So I would like to introduce you guys to this is Matt. Matt, he is from Matt Eldred. He is the executive director over at the TLC Learning Center. So say hi, Matt. Hi, everyone. Hey, Matt. Hi, Randy. So Matt is the one that came to the chamber and he said, I have heard of Mountain State's Children's Home is in need of filling their food pantry. So when Matt came to me, I said, okay, we have to do something about this. And so Matt and I kind of got together and did a little brainstorming. But first, Matt, I want you to tell the audience a little bit about TLC Learning Center. Sure. Yeah, it's going to be with Jessica and chamber members and people watching online. So my name is Matt Eldred. I'm the executive director at TLC Learning Center. We're a 65 year old nonprofit organization here in Longmont serving children and families with special needs as well as typical families. So I know I look a little bit older than Randy, but I'm only five years older than Randy. So Mountain State's Children's Home has been around a long time as well. I think Mountain State's Children's Home and TLC Learning Center are probably two beloved Longmont nonprofits that have been around serving families and children of need for many, many years. And I'm really excited to share with your viewers today about how we can help Mountain State's Children's Home. Well, and that's awesome. I know Matt, you're an avid and a Longmont chamber ambassador who we love. Our ambassadors are very dear to our hearts. So we wanted to help in any way that we could. So at this point, I am going to I'm going to turn it over to you and why don't you let us know what it is that we brainstormed and what what we see happening here in the future. Yeah, thanks, Jessica. So yeah, I wanted to just remind everybody that so the the ambassadors club is kind of the welcoming arm of the chamber. Randy's been a part of for a long time. In fact, he's been an ambassador of the year, which means he's gotten his hands dirty and done a lot of work for the chamber over the years. And Mountain State's Children's Home is one of the members that's also a nonprofit. And I'm really excited to be a part of the ambassadors club as well as another nonprofit. Part of what I'm thinking of, I'm wearing my Unity in the Community t-shirt today, our Unity in the Community event is the major event that the Longmont Chamber does, which is really bringing the community together. And it features and highlights nonprofits. And so I thought, what better way to kick things off with our thing? Well, third, they did them with one of our long standing nonprofits, Mountain State's Children's Home. And so I want you all to just think for a second. Mountain State's Children's Home, as Randy said, serves children about the ages of 10 and up. And they do this in a in a home setting where there's the husband and wife team that live in the home with five to six children in the home. And as Randy said at this time, the pantry is running dry. So I want you to if you've got children at home, if you got a teenager or two, Mountain State's Children's Home. And so I thought, what better way to bring the Longmont community together than what we're all struggling with right now is how do we get our basic needs met? How do we feed our families? And Mountain State's Children's Home, they've got four or five houses of five or six kids each. So whatever you're struggling with right now, take that times five or six and take that times four or five. And that's the number that we need to feed kids right now. So what we would like to do as part of the Ambassadors Club and the thankful Thursday through the Longmont Chamber is that we have conveniently located places around town that you can drop off food items. And we'll share with you about the list of items that we need from the Children's Home. Obviously non-perishable foods, but things like fresh fruits and vegetables, bread. If it goes bad in your house, it will go bad at Mountain State's Children's Home. So we want to make sure that they have fruits and vegetables, milk, bread, as well as non-perishable foods. And we'll share that list scrolling across the screen here. So when you're at the grocery store next time, grab an extra box of snack crackers or chips or salsa or you know what teenagers eat. So just grab about three or four extra things of that. And then we've set up three convenient locations in Longmont. We have an east, west and south locations. So on the east side of town, we have a residence, a house in Mill Village, which is kind of at County Line and Kin Pratt, just west of the Walmart there, Carter Lane. And there will be a box that looks just like this box on a front porch, on a red bench. You can drop off your food items there at 318 Carter Lane if you live on the east side of Longmont. If you're on the west side of Longmont, we want you to stop by TLC Learning Center. I'm sitting here at the main entrance of TLC Learning Center. This is our box that is ready to go. It's empty right now and we want it to be filled in the next couple of hours with the things that you're seeing on the screen. So the address of TLC Learning Center for those of your viewers that don't know where we're located is 611 40 Parkway. That's K-O-R-T-E 40 Parkway. We're just north of the train, sunset and Kin Pratt as you can hear. We're just behind the flower bin at 611 40 Parkway. That's the west side of Longmont. You can drop off your items there. If you're in the south part of town, close to Prospect Village, we have a member called Hattig CPA. Hattig CPA is a CPA firm that does taxes and financial services and their address is 710 Tenacity Drive. That's 710 Tenacity Drive Suite 101 and it's a big building and there's a box just like this one right outside of that location. And then our fourth location in Longmont is very convenient. It's right downtown Longmont and it is if you don't know, the Mountain State Children's Home has a thrift store which right now is temporarily closed but they have a trailer there in their parking lot and they are ready to take your food donations and the address there is 818 Kauffman Street. 818 Kauffman Street is the address for the Mountain State Children's Home thrift store. You can go by and check out the thrift store. You can look in the windows but you can't go inside but when they are open they'll be ready to serve you and I know they'll be ready to take your donations as well when we're able to be back up and running but they're accepting donations between 10 o'clock and 5 o'clock so between the hours of 10 and 5 you can stop by the 818 Kauffman Street Mountain State Children's Home thrift store and drop off your food items there. So four convenient locations on the south side in Prospect Village on the east side at a house in Mill Village on the west side of town here at TLC Learning Center and in Central Longmont at the Mountain State Children's Home thrift store. And if you'd like to go by the Children's Home again as Randy said it's three miles north of town or a couple miles just north of the north Walmart on Highway 287. Their main location the address if you want to google map it is 14780 North 107th Street. It's 14780 North 107th Street. They will also take your food donations at the main campus there at Mountain State Children's Home again it's mile marker one two three on the east side of Highway 287 which is also doubled as North 107th Street which is their physical address. So there's four convenient locations in town here in Longmont you can drop off the items that you're seeing scrolling across the page or you can actually go out to the Children's Home and drop off your food items. Yeah because I hear that Randy is going to be there accepting those donations with bells on right. Oh yes yes I will. That's awesome information thank you Matt for that information and I know it was a lot to hear so at the end of today's live before you guys log off before I log off there will be two pages that will list all the items that we're hoping to receive and then all of the locations that you can donate those. And what Matt also has graciously volunteered is that for those of you people who didn't want to actually go out but maybe you have a lot of items in your pantries Matt has actually actually accepted to come by your porch and pick up those donations as well. Is that right Matt? That's right yeah so we're going to allow people to if you're you know if you're a little bit concerned about getting out or going to an unfamiliar building if you live in the Longmont Long City limits of Longmont we will come to you. So you can simply text or call a cell phone number and I'll give that to you and we'll have it up at the end of this show as well. You can text or call 303-718-1665 and again if you'll just text or call 303-718-1665 give us the location of where you would like for us to pick up those food items and a good time that you would like for us to do that and any other things that we need to know like watch out for the dog or don't touch the electric fence or any other things that we need to know about picking up their food items let us know that but we're happy to swing by and pick those up off your front porch if it's more convenient for you than going to one of the four locations that we have. Absolutely that's amazing and we so appreciate you doing that Matt. Randy I just wanted to share some of the comments Gwendolyn says hello let's see Beth Denton says hi Randy so does Kathy Stevens Nikki says I love MSCH and that she misses thrifting there's another somebody over at the Longmont Chamber of Commerce which they say I remember meeting the baby cow at the business before ours last year so that was a big memory that has there so it's awesome to see that you guys are touching so many lives here in the Longmont area so here for those of you guys who are tuning in again make sure that you are commenting something we want to know that you're here we want to tell you know Matt and Randy that you're here show your support and out of all of you who are viewing we are going to pick one lucky person who has commented we're going to ask you guys a question here in a minute and if you get the question right you guys one of you is going to win a really cool BMX bike a children's BMX bike so with that I I'm going to take myself off for a quick second I want to show everybody what the bike is that we're going to give away so hang on one second which is pretty cool I know one lucky person is going to love that so Randy you're going to help me with that here in a second is there anything that people need to know about mountain states children's home that we did not cover yet randy can you hear me okay is there anything sorry we have a lag is there anything else from mountain states children's home that you feel that the public needs to know that we haven't covered yet no I you know I think we're doing good I just appreciate Matt for what he's done and Jessica you too and you know there are just so many children out there that need help and this is just you know just such a great way for get the word out in regards to helping children so and and we do want to say when things kind of settle down we're we definitely want anybody to come out we'd love to give them a tour of what we do so you get to know what we do you know and we just want to thank all the people who are helping out you know with the food driver we just that'll really be a blessing thank you okay so I didn't I need to back up a little bit so the bike that we're giving away today that was given to us to donate from Matt and TLC so first of all we want to really thank you for stepping up and giving this amazing gift to one lucky viewer today so thank you so much for that that is awesome super okay so for those of you guys who are viewing and hopefully you're commenting we asked a question or I asked Randy a question at the beginning of our livestream about their farm and hopefully you were listening so the for the first person who can answer how many acres was that farm if you can put that in the comments the first person who gets the correct answer is going to be the one who wins the bike so let's give them a second here and see if they remember what we were talking about I know the answer I know the answer Randy do you know the answer I know the answer I'm having a bike you know especially on real life I asked Matt if he could demonstrate you know jump you know yeah yeah I was hoping Matt would get the demonstration of how you can jump with that bike yeah we were trying to talk Matt into wrap it bubble wrap I think that'd be great you know I don't think we need any more emergency room visits uh I was gonna say you probably don't want to eat broken bones no emergency room visits no no not today no we don't want that we don't want that I don't want that happening on one of my lives that would be that would be bad I don't I don't do well with blood either so that's not good all right so I think we have a winner the first person who came in with the answer drumroll is niki and I'm not sure how to pronounce your last name is it nez knez with 155 acres was the correct answer yeah you are the proud congrats niki and you are the proud owner of the brand new BMX bike so before um or at some point today will you email me at jwanasek at longmont chamber.org and we'll get your information and we'll we'll match it up and we'll get that bike to you okay so that is that's awesome and congratulations and again Matt thank you so much for donating that bike that's going to make some little kiddo super happy love it love it love it well you bet yes I know this lag is weird sorry we're having like technical issues today but um I wanted to thank both of you guys for being on today for our very first thankful Thursday we hope to continue these um as long as they're needed and again we really appreciate the hard work that both of you are doing both with um tlc learning center matt and randy with mountain states children's home you guys keep doing the great and amazing work that you're doing and the chamber we are happy to step in and and folks out there raid those pantries go to the store like matt said get you know two or three items extra and and help us fill this this pantry for these kiddos over at at the mountain states children's home so with that I would like to say goodbye to you to you both you guys have a great afternoon and thanks again so much for joining me today and we'll talk thank you guys good to see you thank you guys you too good to see you they are they are amazing guys with huge hearts and I want you guys to really uh see how you can help with um both with both tlc learning centers uh you can go over and visit um their website tlc learning center is www.learningwithtlc.org and if you have questions or you want to visit uh what mountain states children's home is doing you can go to uh it's msch.org and go check out the amazing work that they're doing over there um let's just see and if we have any other questions that came in here yes it is a BMX bike um for those of you guys uh we there's also a strongmont hat and strongmont bracelets that you can purchase so if you have those you can always go to the longmont chamber page and there's some more information about that um and you can always email me too if you have questions about how to find those um before I log off today I will put up the sheet that shows again what the items of food that we're looking for to fill this uh food drive the food pantry over at mountain states and also uh the locations I know it was a lot of information to throw at you guys all at once so um take a look at that there were also it's also been posted in the comments below um as we were talking as well so hopefully between those locations you guys can find um how you can help out today um I think we had a great day today I hope you guys enjoyed our very first thankful Thursday um big hearts over in longmont and open up those hearts and see how we can help uh mountain states children's home feed their pantry today so tomorrow um right here at four p.m we hope that you guys come back to us uh we are going to be featuring our very first feel good friday and we have um some kind of fun silly stuff along with sharing some great and amazing stories of of the businesses who um again have been going above and beyond helping um other local businesses and the the residents of the longmont area so please come back tomorrow at four p.m I'm going to go ahead and put those information sheets up if you have any questions feel free to uh email me jwanasek at longmontchamber.org or go stop by see the the list of all the businesses that are open in some way or another uh during this crazy time and you can see that on our website it's www.longmontchamber.org forward slash we speak longmont and it's under the longmont is open so again we love you thank you so much for tuning in stay well stay happy and uh we will talk soon love you guys and I'm gonna put those sheets up right now so that you can see them we'll see you tomorrow bye bye