 Welcome to Serving Locally with Me, your host, Michelle Dynast, podcast for the Spotlight Service in the Longmont and Timerowning communities. All right, let's get it. Hi, welcome to today's episode of Serving Locally with Me. I am here with Jessica Schultz of Voices for Children, Casa of Boulder County. Um, so I just wanted to say thank you for coming out today and being on the show and, um, we'll just start with, um, who are you and what is Voices for Children, um, just in a quick overview. Yeah. Well, first, thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. So excited to be here, um, and share a little bit more about Voices for Children. So as you mentioned, I'm Jessica. I get to be the development officer with Voices for Children, Casa of Boulder County. And just our mission is to build a healthier community by delivering services, support, and advocacy to children who have experienced trauma. So we do serve all of Boulder County. Our primary program being our CASA program, um, which is court appointed special advocates. So it's community volunteers who come in and provide really the just what our mission states, service, support, and advocacy for kids who are either in dependency and neglect cases or truancy cases. Um, so youth who become involved in the child welfare system are some of the most vulnerable in our community and face some really extreme adversities. So these volunteers become a consistent adult for these kids throughout their entire case, which can sometimes last up to 18 months. Um, but just someone who is there for them, who can advocate for them, um, in regards to education, health, and really just so much more. Can you give us a little bit of a background about the organization? Yeah, voices for children in Boulder County started in 1985, but we are a part of national CASA, which started in the late seventies by Judge David Sukup. He was in King County in Washington. Um, it came about because he was making a placement decision for a three-year-old who had experienced abuse and he realized he just didn't have enough information to make a decision in the best interest of this child. So little brain child came about for CASA. He made a call out to the community to say, Hey, can we have volunteers who are available to advocate for the children? We have so many adults in the courtroom to advocate for the parents and really everyone else involved, but no one really specifically for the child. So his call to action brought in a lot of success, turned into a nationwide movement. CASA is now in 49 states and there are 18 jurisdictions in Colorado. And then just in the last year, we served a little over 200 kids with about 120 community volunteers. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's a lot. That's, that's awesome. Yeah. What is your focus? At Voices for Children. So our vision at Voices for Children is to ensure that all children have a safe, nurturing environment where they're able to thrive. We work towards this by providing those kids with CASA volunteers who can advocate for them. These volunteers go through pretty extensive training before they're able to onboard. It's a three week in person and online training that they go through to really just ensure they have the resources, the tools they need to be successful and provide best interest advocacy for those kids. In addition to that, we're realizing that we need a more diverse group of volunteers. So one of our big focuses right now is recruiting more. And in addition to that, volunteers who are representative of the kids we serve just last year in Boulder County, about 50% of the kids we serve were children of color. And we realized the importance of having a volunteer and an advocate who maybe looks more like you or has similar lived experiences to you so that you can create stronger connections, more trusting relationships to build that advocacy and really give this child everything they deserve. So in order to fulfill that mission really of ensuring that all kids have a safe and nurturing environment where they can thrive, starts with having a more diverse group of volunteers that can advocate for them. That's awesome. So who are you trying to reach with your organization? So because the clientele we serve, the kids, we do get court ordered to have CASA on those cases. So that's not necessarily our target audience. Our target audience is the people who have the capacity to give. So whether it be volunteering with their time, great as need, we can only function if we have our volunteers and folks who can donate monetarily. So we are a 501C3 nonprofit organization and we are only able to provide this critical support because of the generosity of our community, whether it be volunteers or donations. Right. What makes the work of Voices for Children CASA Boulder County different than other similar serving organizations? Yeah, so Voices for Children CASA Boulder County is different in that our CASA volunteers are that consistent adult that is not only there to advocate for them, but allows them to just be kids. They're put in really difficult situations at no fault of their own and we hear stories about them needing to step up in different ways or almost a little bit of their childhood being taken. So having that CASA involved really allows them time to just be kids. They take them to the library. They take them to swim lessons. They take them to the zoo. So really just opportunities that they might not otherwise have had. So it's more than just an advocate that they just see in the courtroom or whatever social work cases, whatever they are part of their lives. Yes, absolutely. Our CASAs are required to meet with the kiddos at least once a month option to also do it virtually, but really to create that relationship so the volunteer can learn more about that about the child and what truly is in their best interest. A lot of times we hear from caseworkers in the court that they get so much value from CASA volunteers because they're the ones spending so much time with the child. Yeah, there's relationships there to see what the likes, dislikes and needs are actual. Yeah, that's really cool. The kid can't really verbalize that, I'm sure. Yeah, I don't know what they're, you know, what they're looking for. Yeah, and a perfect example that I came across the other day, we had a CASA volunteer working with a teen who was involved in a truancy case. And then in the courtroom, they wanted to address the truancy. Well, the teen didn't have a super close relationship with any of the other adults involved and didn't feel comfortable advocating for their needs in the courtroom. They built that trusting relationship with the CASA, where the CASA could then step up and advocate for them. Turns out this teen was being bullied in school, didn't feel safe. This wouldn't have come out otherwise because the child didn't feel comfortable advocating for that in the courtroom. As a result, the caseworker and the court has ordered therapeutic intervention to work with the student on overcoming the bullying. But they have also now are looking into a transfer of schools for this teen. So. Yeah, that's really great that they have, they can, that this organization creates that steady, you know, person that knows what's going on from case to case, probably from family to family, if they're doing from school to school to see the growth, to see the change, to see the difficulties that they're having. That is invaluable and I appreciate that with you guys. That's fantastic. So what are your greatest needs as in all non-profits? It's volunteer and money, is what I'm hearing. But if this is something that that volunteer base is very much. So what I'm looking for, it's very important for those kids. Yeah, definitely. Beyond the volunteers and monetary needs that all non-profits do, one of our greatest needs really is community awareness. We talk often about how our kids are the next generation, they're the future. We need to be there for them. However, kids involved in the child welfare system, foster care are often really overlooked in that area. So bringing more awareness to the work that we do that really supports those kids. I just think there's not enough people in the community that know about it. I hadn't heard about you guys at all, except for I met you guys at the Unity and Community. Yeah. So I'm really glad that we're doing things like that. So we can get to know. And that's why I go to those things is to try to dig you people up. So I can get you guys to give you a little bit of space to talk about and get you exposed. Well, in this platform too, thank you for hosting it because it just reaches a whole new audience for us as well. That's what I'm hoping. So that way you can not only get to the people that want to help, but people that might need the services or just, you know, hey, I might know somebody that you can connect with each other. So yeah, I see that. It's it's I'm hoping that that it's helping somebody out there. So that's good. I'm sure it is. Do you have any events coming up or volunteer opportunities that you guys do like a special thing for? Yeah. So like we talked about always recruiting volunteers, our training session has just started. We have a group of 22, which is super exciting and the largest the organization has ever seen. But there's always cases being open. So always recruiting volunteers. Our next training session starts in April. OK, volunteers can and are required to attend ACASA 101, which is an informational session to learn more about the opportunity. So those are held two to three times a month over the lunch hour and at five p.m. So whenever really works for potential volunteers to join, all information is on our website at vfcboulder.org back slash volunteers. And then we also have our annual fundraiser Night of Hope coming up on Thursday, April 11th. It will be at the Lionsgate Event Center and really just an event to generate awareness and raise the necessary funds to continue this work. We do have sponsorships available as well that they can learn more about on our website. Also vfcboulder.org back slash Night of Hope. How can people contact and find out more about voices for children? So people can visit our website vfcboulder.org. They can also call our main office. Contact information on our website or shoot over an email development at vfcboulder.org. Awesome. And I will as always have them in my QR code in the show notes so you can check that out. Check them out on Facebook and stuff too. Yeah. Is there anything else that you would like to add or just give you some space to talk about something that you just feel passionate maybe that I've missed or that you just you just feel like you need to you need to share the talk a little bit more about. I think that covers it. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Sometimes people are like, oh yeah, we've got this other thing, but you know, so it's like I just want to I want to open the floor up to anything that you feel that you want to that you want to share. No, I think that covers it. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. Thank you so much Jessica for coming out and if you guys have any more questions or anything, let them know and if you guys know of organizations like this or of any kind that are nonprofit or just service for the community in any way, please connect with me so we can keep this going. I I love this. This is a passion project for me and the editing is hard for me so it takes me a while to get these out, but I appreciate all the support and hope that this is that somebody is getting help or being able to connect with other people through my podcast. So thanks you guys for viewing and thank you Jessica for being here and have a great day. Thank you. Thank you to my guests, my listeners and my supporters serving together. We can strengthen our community. Please like and subscribe. Do all those other things. You know, you got to do them. Because that's the easiest way that you can serve right now. All right, now go connect with others and be a blessing.