 Awesome. Yeah, we'll get everybody. Hey, everyone. Welcome. We are just waiting a few more minutes for everyone to kind of join in. If you'd like to say hi, place your name, where you're from, go ahead and place that on the chat. And we'll kind of do some housekeeping here in the next five minutes before we get started. Thank you for joining us. Hey, everyone. Welcome. As y'all come in, please feel free to introduce yourselves, place where you're from. Say good morning. Thank you for joining us. We'll get ready in the next minute or so. Just having people join us. So we're just going to slightly go over some housekeeping rules. First, I do want to thank Neil Johnson and Ms. Kristen Ham for joining us today and doing a workshop for us for NUSA. I just want to, my name is Brenda Pinner. So if you have any questions, I'm with the community engagement team, helping host all of this information. I know it's a lot of information that when you get started. So hopefully you're kind of getting the hang of it. But just to make sure if you are here for the first day on the right-hand side of your screen, you'll see the little pop-ups. And that's the chat. Please use that if you wish. You don't have to use any of these, but just know that, you know, if you're just here to listen, that's completely fine too. Right below it, it looks like a person with the square behind them. And that is where you can ask questions. Kirsten and Neil will be kind of responding to you back and forth there. You can also place them in the chat, but it's easier if you put them in the question. In the next, if they have a poll, that's where you'll be able to do that. If there's not a poll, that's okay. Neil and Kirsten, if you want to do any feedback as far as getting people to talk with you. The very last one is it shows people that are in here. And if they raise their hand, you can just ask them and you will be allowed to speak and come on screen. Please note that you're not able to see your faces or anything like that. So if you're like waving or have your hands up, I'm sorry, we can't see you. Okay, unless you're a speaker. So I do want to introduce y'all and welcome y'all to the first workshop this Thursday. So at 945, it should be till 11am. Neil Johnson and Kirsten Hamm will have something for you and I'll let them introduce themselves. So I promise I'll stop talking soon. They're doing employing the homeless for the beautification of our city and neighborhoods. So Neil and Kirsten, if y'all want to introduce yourselves before I start the video, there will be a video and then there'll be some kind of conversational pieces after. Take it away. Well, hello, everyone. I'll start it out. My name is Neil Johnson. I'm happy to be here. I'm actually a district superintendent for the city of Fort Worth. I'm in co-compliance, our solid waste division, and I'm super intended over our litter abatement, illegal dumping, and also our drop off stations, our waste drop off stations here with the city of Fort Worth. And we're closely together with Kirsten Hamm who will be introducing herself. So I thank you for joining us. Hopefully you get a lot out of this. And feel free to ask questions that we'll be happy to help out any way possible. And again, thank you. Hey, I'm Kirsten. I'm with Presbyterian Night Shelter and I oversee the Upsfire program. So I started about five years ago now and we do litter landscaping, staffing and janitorial specifically in this presentation. And then we'll be talking about our litter program and our awesome partnership with the city of Fort Worth. So we look forward to spending the next hour or so with you. Feel free to ask questions during the presentation. Neil and I will respond. And then we can have some Q&A after. You're all set. All right, thank you. Hi everyone. My name is Neil Johnson. I am the district superintendent for the city of Fort Worth's Co compliant solid waste division. And I manage our city's litter abatement crews is in charge of the litter collection throughout the city of Fort Worth, and also illegal dump operations. And I'm also one of the district's superintendents for waste drop off stations here with the city of Fort Worth. And I'm happy to have Kirsten Ham here as one of my co-presenters here. Kirsten, if you want to introduce yourself. Hi everyone, I'm Kirsten. I'm the vice president of workforce and career development at Presbyterian Night Shelter and I oversee the Upsfire program. I'm happy to be here today. Thank you so much Kirsten and everyone and we're, we're here and very excited and proud to be talking about something that we feel very, feel very passionate about and that's our partnership, the city of Fort Worth's partnership with Upsfire. I have a request for a cleaner city. And this, this, this, this partnership is key, not only for the success of our city's fight against litter, but also assisting homeless in the path of employment to employment, and also permanent housing with this partnership goes to what we're presenting on and that's employing the homeless for the beautification of our city and our neighborhoods. And that's our partnership with the city of Fort Worth and also Upsfire and Kirsten's group. The first one to look at is our partnership goals. As you see right here in the right hand corner apologize for the distortion of the picture but this is actually a banner. That's actually placed on if you look at the bottom picture there on the Upsfire litter cruise trailer. It's really, it really shows exactly what our goals are with this partnership, it says partnering together for a litter free Fort Worth. And it shows the Upsfire logo with the city of Fort Worth. And as you can see there is beautiful truck here it's wrapped with the Upsfire and also having that banner with this crew, the litter crew which is three of the five showing the pride and what they do. And also the acknowledges that they're not only working on the behalf of Upsfire but they're working on the behalf of the city of Fort Worth in partnership with us in that fight against litter. And also one of our main main goals with the city of Fort Worth is a litter free city. And if you're not familiar with the city of Fort Worth is very is very large. We cover approximately 350 square miles or more of city. We have over 900,000 residents I think we're pushing closer to a million at this time, and also rank the 13th largest city in the US. So, so we have quite a bit of ground to cover and a lot of residents to to to really tend to. The quest for a litter free city is something that we feel very strongly about. And with this partnership with Upsfire and the inclusion of those groups that that crew those crews they assist us in helping is very imperative to that to us accomplishing that. The next partnership goal is is a beautification and revitalization of our neighborhoods with over 900,000 residents we have quite quite a few neighborhoods and many customers throughout the city. And we want to really make sure that they were available for them for any request to ensure that their neighborhoods are clean that they're proud to be a full worth residents. And with the the inclusion of Upsfire litter crews on top of our internal litter crews, we're able to proactively go into those neighborhoods and ensure that we were were actively participating in cleaning up their areas, addressing their concerns if they have accumulation of litter going into their neighborhoods and out that they can actually probably go into the neighborhoods and see that it's clean and also encourage participation with those residents with our residents. So they're very they're very active in those neighborhoods and very well seen. Also what is great with the city of Fort Worth we take pride in customer service and responding to the request of our residents. And we presently employ internal litter crews, but we're with with with a smaller staff, we really, we really, I guess it's great to have that additional that additional the additional crews that Upsfire has to respond to customer service requests. We get those in daily. And we try to respond to those requests within 72 hours and with the addition of p or Upsfire litter crews were able to respond to those requests. And, and majority of time, the majority of time of 24 hours. So, so that that aids in and having great customer service, which is our mission here with the city of Fort Worth, and also happy residents. The next would be employment, which is very important the employment of individuals struggling with homelessness. Kirsten will elaborate on this, and much more detail and their success with this, and we're happy to be a part of that they've, I'm actually, I've actually been a part of this from the start, and seeing the success of individuals being employed, seeing the success success of this of them being employed and actually transitioning into permanent housing is great and the pride that they have with in their jobs. So, we're happy to be a part of that partnership. As I said before, it's a transition into homeless from homeless to permanent housing, and also what's great about this the job training and career growth. And their group has done an excellent job, not only with the city of Fort Worth, but outside outside the city of Fort Worth providing career and job opportunities with with their employees, and also our litter crews. We've been happy to to assist in that with them working with our guys with the litter abatement and also providing any type of assistance and career growth possible. We also have a program with them if they're employed with with up spire for a year and have a great service record. They're actually guaranteed the opportunity to, to, to interview for some of our positions as maintenance workers and and so forth within within the city and successful at hiring one recently within parks, Parks and Recreation Department. So this is something that we really take pride in, and in this partnership, and I look forward to not only, you know, I'm proud of the success we've had, and I really look forward to what we're planning to do in the future. Next I want to go into how our partnership began I really wanted to kind of get a basis of our success and what we've been doing recently, but I want to kind of go back to the beginning of how this started. Basically, within the city of Fort Worth, we have actually we have internal litter crews that serve the city in multiple capacities, which is litter abatement. That internal crew which is a limited staff is in charge of pretty much the litter cleanup or collection throughout the whole city of Fort Worth. That can that task can be daunting with with just the limited staff that we have. We're also responsible for a nuisance abatement case of public property and in private properties throughout the city. So if enforcement finds a complaint with with nuisance within within the city such as high litter accumulation. Access debris on properties, private property we leave it up to the owner to we try to get the owner to clean it to clean the property but if they don't. The responsibility falls upon our litter crews to actually clean this and build the property that also includes the public property so we have to update. So that becomes pretty pretty daunting for the for the existing staff. So, one of the areas in which we were having problems with was if you look on this right side here. This is actually an area east of our downtown downtown Fort Worth. So just west of this highlighted area would be our downtown area. So, for, for residents or people coming into the downtown area throughout our this interstate here. This would be the main quarter leaving in, leading into our downtown area. We began having accumulation of litter throughout this area which is actually an area where we have a lot of homeless outreach groups, which is great. And we have which causes the influx of the homeless within this certain area, because of the resources that they have. And it started with within this area of the abundance of homeless individuals within the area. And it started to get a lot of accumulation of litter and debris. And it's became very visible within that area. So, rather than exhausting the resources we have internally city of Fort Worth sought out. Which is up spire this time, test a program to hire non profit contractors instead of for profit. So we, we, we offered what we spoke with pressure night shelter which is Kersen's group with its which is up spire to provide us with a crew litter crew that would actually service this area. And that's a day, 10 hours a day, seven days a week. This would give them ownership within this area. Also we're killing two birds and one stone. I hope I can say that, but, but it's actually true. We're employing the homeless. We're actually giving them charge and accountability of an area in which, you know, we're having high litter problems. And it's, you know, it's ongoing it's actually successful to this day, I result in a collection of over 3000 cubic yards of trash for the first 15 months, and we're continuing on and on today so so it's been a great success. So with that success, we were proud to say that with that success, we began a progression or advancement of that partnership into citywide cleanup groups and also neighborhood improvement projects. So in 2017. We expanded our contract, not only to that Lancaster area which is east of Fort Worth. We saw it after a contract with up spire to provide us with a citywide litter crew that would permanently assist internal, our internal teams to address the litter concerns throughout our city. So, we were successful at securing a contract of five full time individuals. Truck truck and trailer that work directly with our internal groups to address. First of all, daily litter collection. The cleaning of bacon lots throughout our city which is, which is pretty prevalent. We have illegal dump removals, which they become pretty instrumental in just elaborate on that we have illegal dump crews, which they have huge trucks with boom trucks that go out to all these different areas to tackle big illegal dump areas throughout the city. Sometimes those are smaller. So we enlist that citywide crew to go out and actually tackle the smaller smaller legal dumps which leads our resources for the larger equipment to larger jobs. Also dump tire collection, they've been very instrumental in that which has been a been an issue within the city of Fort Worth. So, that influx of that one citywide litter crew to to help us out has been very, very, very instrumental, not only in that, and also taking care of the needs of our customers and residents throughout the city of Fort Worth. Next, we we move forward from the citywide litter crews into neighbor neighborhood improvement projects. Just a little insight on our neighborhood improvement projects. Each year the city Fort Worth selects a neighborhood one neighborhood throughout within the city of Fort Worth, and there's a list of criteria that they use to select that neighborhood. We, in our proposal, we, we propose that we have one litter contractor, which we selected upspire for this to contribute to the significant reduction of litter and illegal dumping and those neighborhood projects. We, when they, they've been successful we've been successful in actually employing them for three neighborhood improvement projects that for the city of Fort Worth. Now we're actually just starting the full neighborhood improvement project, and that's based on the success that those litter cruises had in the past project. These projects the upspire litter cruises contributed to the removal of 200 230 tons of litter and debris collectively from those three neighborhood projects. We also have one not this last project, but the project before that where the residents actually recommended are the acts for the planning of trees. So, we're actually able to use the the upspire group with Kristen's permission and they actually really enjoyed it working without forestry group and planning of 89 trees within that that neighborhood improvement project. So, it's been very instrumental. I just want to touch on just if you look on to the side these two pictures here is just an example of some of the legal dumping that happens in these neighborhoods this and that this is these are actual pictures. So if we look at some of the the improvement projects from beginning to end, there's a significant difference. Also to kind of include on that the presence of those workers in their five full time staff and their Monday through Friday with that banner and those residents seeing them on a day to day basis and seeing the impact that they make on those communities. And knowing them face to face and seeing them every day is really made a huge difference in those neighborhoods and we're actually still going back to those neighbors today to sustain what we've started. They've been very well received complimented, and it's been very, it's been very successful. And this just an example of just a two year summary of what what we've accomplished here in 2019, we've got over 5000 lane miles of coverage with with these PNS crews and over 600,000 over 680,000 pounds of waste collected. In 2020, almost close to 5000 lane miles and we've almost I mean it's quite a significant increase in waste collected due to their additional responsibilities for the legal dumping, which I discussed earlier. So we've kind of increased their capacity. So that shows, and the increase the waste collect waste collected. This really gives you a good idea of the impact that these crews have made in in the overall cleanliness of our city. This picture to the side gives you a good idea of some of the right of ways that they're actually covering. So they do this pretty much all day. We make sure those areas are clean. We actually proactively clean those areas that are high littered areas in which we don't wait for complaints. We actually send them out there to ensure that it continues to stay clean. So some of our successes with with this program. So for instead of being reactive, which we were with the small limited staff that we had, we had prior to expire, we actually be able to be proactive in the cleaning of these areas with greater litter accumulation throughout the city. We were able to complete litter requests that come into us daily in a timely manner. We generally have a targeted response time of 72 hours I've said before. When these litter crews available. We're able to receive those requests, send out a upspire litter crew to to respond to those requests within a 24 hour period of time. And not only that, we're decreasing and decreasing our complaints because we're actually able to put the high litter areas on a schedule. So if we had one area that we received a lot of complaints, we put that area on a frequent schedule, and it stayed clean, and we, we weren't getting any more complaints from that area. And that's worked out citywide. So we decreased complaints. Also, we discourage littering. It's been a proven fact if you have a clean area, people are most likely not to to litter in those areas. It's just a, just a normal occurrence. So if we keep those areas clean, it kind of discourages littering. And on top of that, what we really want is happy citizens and customer satisfaction in a cleaner city. And we're really, we're really progressing on that with, with our partnership with upspire. On top of that, with all the success we've had in our continuous progression with our partnership with upspire with the Lancaster area near downtown to the success of that program. We go back to the, the, the acquiring of the citywide crews to help us out throughout the city, the neighborhood improvement projects, those crews are that are planning in those, those areas. We've also person has been successful at encouraging donor sponsored programs. She will expound on this a great deal more later on, but I just really want to touch on this right quick. She was actually approached by a couple who wanted to remain nameless to sponsor a crew that they, that they felt very passionate about the very outdoor people they love parks they love waterways. They, they, they, and they saw a problem that was there in the areas in which they frequently spent time, which is litter accumulation in those parks, litter accumulation in the watersheds and waterways. And it really disturbed. So they wanted to take action instead of, instead of sitting back and watching a complaining they wanted to take action so they reached out to person to say what can we do we want to, we want to make a difference. Employee people, and also, and also make sure these areas are addressed. So person said well, I will get back with you she reached out to me, and this is more kind of like an environmental issue also. So I worked together with environmental to select some sites and I'm kind of getting ahead of myself, but basically, we identified areas, six areas were identified within the city of Fort Worth, which were consistent of parks. Also, local waterways and watersheds that that that were frequently used by the city of Fort Worth residents. So person if she can provide the staff, I'll provide the actual locations and the instruction on how we're going to address this. So we were successful at identifying six areas person successfully identified, you know, provided a crew of staff with barriers to employment working full time. And only that they were able to provide a path for them in personal and inform you a little bit more on that but it's great what they've done providing driver's license and first certificates and things like that so they can actually be employed and go forward. With this program and it continues till today, it accounted for over 10 tons of litter and counting of debris collected nearly from our local waterways and right away. And trash that could impact the cleanliness of our watersheds. They've been recognized by both the residents and local government for their work and providing a clean area for citizens to enjoy. Here's a picture of that group and they they're actually still continuous tilted to this date, and they take great pride in what they do. Just to kind of rehash on on how this occurred. Whenever we're approached with this, this is the approach that we took. For example, a picture of Lake Como here which is which is an area that are that is frequently used by the residents of the Como area that we had a significant problem with a lot of trash and debris entering into into that lake. So if you look at the area map, each one of these air, each one of these squares. It's very much identifies a stormwater in our approach was if we were to to send crews out and actually clean these areas proactively throughout here, we would eliminate the majority of the trash and debris and float of us that would enter into those stormwater areas that would eventually wind up in Lake Como and these other six areas that look the same. So we targeted these areas not only not only just the lake itself but it's parameters to to prevent trash from entering to those environments that will eventually affect this this late and the results have been phenomenal. They really have done a great job. They've been well recognized with the residents within that area and very thankful of what they've done and what they've accomplished, and they've done the same for the other five and in other in other areas we've kind of expanded also so they've done a great job. They take their job very seriously and I'm very proud of what they've done. This is an example of a prime example. This watershed here leads into one one of our most widely used lakes which is Lake Arlington Lake Arlington serves the community both in Fort Worth and Arlington. We received a complaint in this area this local watershed where a lot of the residents within that area use as a fishing spot. That week we received a lot of rain, and we received a complaint of the abundance of trash in that area so my group went out to inspect and it was this is not this is not everything it's it's quite a bit more. So, I went out to Kirsten and I called the group to come in, and I'm not sure if they were going to be able to tackle it, tackle it, but between the four within two days. They actually clean this whole area and its surrounding areas, as you can see here the before and after just this one area that four people were able to to to accomplish. Through there throughout that those two days they received visits from the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality. Also, Tarrant Regional Water District, and complimented them, and they were in awe of what they were able to accomplish just with a team of four, and also recognize for the local residents for what they've done. So this kind of gives you a great idea of the seriousness and the, of what they do, and, and the, you know, just how they feel about their job. At this point in time I want to transition to Kirsten. She has, you know, she wants to inform you of what elaborate a lot more on the upspire group and their path and their success and what they've been doing and what they, they plan this for the future. Kirsten, if you just take it over and we'll go from there. Thank you so much. Thanks, Phil. Well, to start I just wanted to talk about our parent agency. Neil mentioned it a few times Presbyterian Night Shelter is our parent agency, it's a large local nonprofit. Neil, if you'd go to the next slide. So Presbyterian Night Shelter is the largest homeless service provider in all of North Texas. We have the capacity to serve over 1000 individuals a day, and has about 700 guests in our overnight shelters on any given night. Our mission is to guide the journey from homeless to home. And we also have a day resource center called True Worth Place. True Worth Place is a building where anyone can come during the day it's open seven days a week and receive emergency services such as showers, food, mail, but we also offer space management, diversion services, and then some fun things like classes, emergency documents help, you know, recovering social security cards, birth certificates. So that's that's our third brand, if you will, and then there's also upspire. So on the next slide, we have some numbers from our 2020 year, despite all the challenges that the 2020 through at us that I'm sure everyone's experienced in their own way. We were able to move 141414 individuals out of homelessness across our various programs. We were able to serve over 3000 unique individuals, see 6000 people through True Worth Place, and then in upspire we were able to move 89 people out of homelessness thanks to their income and employment or 52 I'm sorry, and we were able to do it 102 into higher paying jobs. And so, even though 2020 was a hard year, we were very proud of our work. And, as you can see presbyterian night shelter as an agency is rather large. So one of the questions that I frequently get is how did upspire come to be and why did we decide to launch it. In 2015, our leadership decided to not only kind of manage homelessness by moving people out of the system, but try to address one of the root causes. So, our guests have identified for years now that the leading reason that they become homeless and then are not able to exit homelessness is lack of income and opportunity. So, seeing those numbers and really looking at why people were becoming homeless in Tarrant County presbyterian night shelter decided to launch a social enterprise, which we defined as a mission driven business. So on the next slide, we have our definition of social enterprise. So social enterprises are mission driven businesses that directly impact hard to employ individuals by providing job training and employment opportunities. Their mission as a social enterprise is equitably as important as our profit. So the profit allows us to be sustainable, right so we kind of control around growth, determine where our resources for training and employment opportunities are allocated to we're not as dependent on donors because we operate as a business. So I hold contracts like the contract with the city of Fort Worth, and I operate as any other service provider would. I just have to also answer to our mission, really work on on serving our employees making sure that we're meeting their needs and providing all the resources that they need to be successful. Not only to move out of homelessness but hopefully re enter the general workforce and graduate on to a higher paying job after employment with us. So, we're mission driven as I said, and on the next slide we have our mission vision and what we believe is our foundational just words to what upspire is so we create jobs that empower people to have their own home. And our vision is that anyone who comes to Presbyterian night shelter that needs employment or you know it's just going through a hard time is able to access, not only the resources of our parent company but upspire and find supportive employment and people who believe in them and can help them, you know, achieve whatever goal they would like to achieve. And so to do that, we operate for businesses for business line items. And so, as Neil was talking about litter baitment is one of our four businesses. We also do landscaping with the city of Fort Worth, as well as commercial staffing. Some of our staffing partners are waste management, a local type of heat treating company. And then we also have commercial janitorial where we go out in our community and clean the offices of businesses local nonprofits some churches and so across the board we have 35 customers. We have 125 positions available to enterprise staff, and we are definitely looking at continuing to grow. So we're looking at things like skilled trades. Possibly enterprise located on our campus that's more like warehouse fulfillment type so we're still looking at expanding but those are for established businesses as of now. And so our current status is that within initial gift of $50,000 that was given to us during a capital campaign in 2015, we were able to launch upspire in 2016. And since then we've been able to build a three and a half million dollar enterprise with 125 permanent positions. We've removed over 2500 tons of litter from our city streets and moved 175 individuals out of homelessness. So we're very proud of the success, but we were excited to see, you know what we can continue to do and grow to. The city of Fort Worth partnership has been instrumental to our success and to the, to the company that we are today. So we up for the city of Fort Worth contract was our second contract it wasn't our first, but it was the most important in the sense that not only did it launch our litter of Bateman business but really blended upspire legitimacy. When we were very young and new. So, a huge part of, of our success here is that with the city of Fort Worth as a partner and with us as a vendor, we're able to not only prove our model and show people in the community that this was a legitimate business, we did have an important purpose but that we were able to achieve. If market we were able to perform at market standards and achieve some some pretty impressive numbers. And so, working with with Neil and his crew. We were able to realize a 264% increase in the city wide miles that were cleaned. We were able to remove over 70 tons of litter a month. And then the donor crew that Neil was talking about is also able to add to that number and remove about 3.2 tons a year of litter out of our waterways, which these are huge numbers. And this really helped us just kind of prove our business model. The city of Fort Worth obviously has some has some recognition some brand recognition in the community so if we can be successful with them and it gives our customers. And encouragement that will be successful with, you know, with, with what their best seeds as well. And so, this partnership also just really caught the attention of local media. And so there was a local news story. I think, you know, I think there's 2017, but it was picked up by the by the national media. And we received a lot of attention I know meals phone was ringing off the hook and so was mine and we actually got some inquiries from other other countries. It caught is just really caught on with social media and really told a great story and recognize the hard work of the upspire employees which at the time we are brand is Queensland. And so meals crew as well and just the commitment of the city of Fort Worth to find a unique way to not only clean our city, but support its own citizens that had fallen on hard times and so this was a huge boost to our program. I think is why we still receive calls to this day about our partnership and how we've been able to structure it. And so, looking to today. We have, you know, we continue to just really work on local awareness, community engagement, education, those are huge parts of, of, you know, litter abatement and trying to keep our city clean. And so we are working with our environmental department and the waterways donor who still supports that that waterways crew that Neil was discussing to start trialing litter traps in our waterways. We really want to be more efficient and effective in cleaning our waterways and watersheds and so this year, the city is sponsoring to litter traps in our local watersheds. So approaching some donors to purchase some more litter traps that we will put in different watersheds strategically in the community to hopefully, you know, catch all the litter that runs into the streets and down into our drainage pipes during rain events. And our goal is to prevent it from getting to the Trinity River, which is our local river so we're excited about that we're excited to see its impacts. You know, just as a whole, social enterprise can have such a large impact, not only on the employees who work for us and are able to receive the wages and the benefits and the transportation and case management that they need. But it really does impact our community as a whole and local taxpayers. Using our 2020 numbers. You know, if you want to go to the next slide. There was this great research that was done and posted by a organization called Red F REDF. And they are based in San Francisco, but they really wanted to study and support, you know, the growth of social enterprise and why it's important to local communities so for every $1 that social enterprise like Upspires spends $2 and 23 cents and benefits is returned to society, a dollar 31 of which is direct saving to taxpayers. So this is huge. So just just looking at 2020 which again was a hard year. We were able to avoid playoffs thankfully with the support of our customers and we paid 2.12 million in wages to our enterprise staff. And that returned 4.7 million and benefits to society 2.7 million of which was direct savings to our taxpayers. And so by using our model. The city supporting an organization like Upspire, they are being very good stewards of taxpayer dollars and they're investing in a program and a company that not only, you know, achieves what we need to achieve as a city government which is cleaning the city, but it generates savings moves people out of homelessness it gives them a job. And so we're really proud of this partnership we think it's impacts to, you know, to our community to the city of Fort Worth is huge. We're happy to answer any questions that you all might have about you know how how this started and, and what's what's coming in the future, but thank you guys for for listening to Neil and I and we look forward to answering your questions. Thank you, Neil and Kirsten. If y'all will, I know y'all been answering questions from the question tab. Thank you for that. If anyone has questions you can kind of look at that as well. And then there should be some coming from the chat and we know if you'll need help with that. Kirsten, is there anything that y'all want to talk about in advance or anything that y'all want to address that you might be getting more questions from. Well, I would say, you know, as far as, well, first of all, thank you. I've seen some comments on the chat and as far as response to the program. And we really appreciate it. We've been getting great, great responses as far as what we've started here and great, I guess, success. And I did see some inquiries as far as, you know, how as far as how would they implement this in their own cities or questions. And I, you know, we're open to the range of time as far as any communication that you would like to maybe talk with us or chat with us as far as emails or, you know, I'm even open to direct calls if arranged. So feel free to utilize the emails or direct information to contact us and arrange a meeting or what have you. We're very open to discussing or getting you any information to kind of help you organize the same type of programs within your city or organization. Do you have any questions on here? I'm not sure if you have answered some of these. I know you have answered a lot. One recently, two minutes ago. For homeless workers. Our service. Where'd you go? Let's see. How does a fire help address some of the challenges and employing individuals experiencing homelessness. The life circumstances of the individuals themselves like working with a physical job, maybe without access to healthy food as well as things like documentation and bank accounts to set up without addresses. That's a great question. So we so Presbyterian night shelter as a whole is a very large organization. And they have a lot of community partners and resources that we utilize to help people experiencing homelessness gain employment. So as there were a couple different things that you asked in that question, but for documentation people missing their critical documents. Our recruiter works with the local community partner prior to someone gaining employment with up spire to get those critical resources to get those forms of ID and or passport. And so we help with that on the front end. And then while their employees of up spire, regardless of whether or not they're currently or previously experienced homelessness or maybe never experienced homelessness we we offer what we call job aids. So we have free transportation to and from the job site each day. We provide food, provide uniforms kind of basic necessities so we do do what we can, while individuals are employed with us in order to remove some of those barriers. And then I also saw some questions around housing. Presbyterian night shelter has the capacity for over 700 individuals to stay on our campus each night. And a lot of our employees who are currently experiencing homelessness do stay at Presbyterian night shelter, they do not have to that is not a requirement. But we do have an up spire specific dorm in both our men's and women's shelter and we do what we can just to kind of help with their comings and goings based on their work schedule make sure that they have meals when they return access to showers all of that. And we also have a very strong case management program and normally an up spire employee who receives a paycheck can move out within 30 days. Joe unfortunately we do not have any affiliate in Houston. I'm from Houston originally, we'd love to get there but we we do not as of now. You know, I asked a question that we help hard to employ people experiencing homelessness. Yes, we can help people that are not currently experiencing homelessness, but possibly have other barriers to employment, like criminal history that's a that's a large population that we help. We do open interviews Monday through Friday at true worth place, and anyone's welcome to come in and meet with our recruiter, or they can reach out to her directly you can find her information on our social media, and she can set up a one on one interview. You know I don't know if you want to jump in on Priscilla's question with the smaller cities in DFW up spire has the capacity to go beyond Fort Worth, but this contract specifically is with the city of Fort Worth. And then the shield. You asked how can you can we explain how the donor workers get paid. So the donor workers are still W to employees full time. They're just assigned to that crew. Honestly, our employees don't really know the difference between our donor sponsored crew and our city of Fort Worth crew they all consider themselves city litter crews and so that's just how we handle the funding on our side. The donor and up spire have an MOU that states the scope of work that that we commit to doing and how many individuals we commit to employ, and then that donation is made to up spire and then we just pay the wages and insurance and all the benefits. Exactly like we pay the other crews. And then Dan, your, your, you asked what would we suggest for a city to do to take the first steps to start a program. I would just evaluate all of your local service providers and see if you do have a nonprofit interested in starting a social enterprise or maybe that has the resources and capabilities to do this. And then this might be a better conversation for us to have offline. Like Neil said, we're willing to meet with people and talk through it. But we definitely couldn't have got gotten this up and running without the support of code compliance city council. So it did take a lot of people involved at both the city level and Presbyterian night shelter but hopefully our experience and help kind of put those those things in place if if you'd like to reach out more. Yes, as person said with with this it's just also also identifying a need within your, your local community. And with your, your, I guess the city in which you live any government entity. So it's come conversation conversation with those groups such as like person said we're a part of cool compliance identifying a need that's there, reaching out to those, those, those entities are your city to find out what's available and just starting that that conversation and seeing where you can fit in, whether it's litter and person to person her group have done a great job exploring other areas outside of services and things like that. So if you can identify a need, and I'm going to, I'm going to say this and I know Kirsten can can say we've, we've come a long way, and we we talk about this within, you know, all the success stories and things like that. But understand just to be out at the beginning process is a challenge. And it takes hard work, patience. In a good core group of people to make it work. It takes a while. So, even though we all have the good feeling you know and we see all the success and things like that is still we still face challenges but at the beginning. It really is it takes some patience and work in a good group of people around you. I have we have good internal. Also, we have great relationship with with Kirsten her group and working together to make things work. So we understand the importance of it. And also at this time, we're, we're actually expanding. We're looking to expand it as Kirsten said before it's it's growing. So, so just understand that it's identifying the need creating a communication putting it putting together a great model. As you can see with Kirsten's part of the presentation, there's a lot of work, a lot of just a lot that goes into it. Just start and identifying the need create community communication with your local leaders and your local groups and and understand that it's a challenge. It's a it's it's steps that needs to and we're here. We've been available. We've been speaking on this for quite a while and meeting with other cities and so we're here for reference, you know, anything or any questions or help you in any way possible. Definitely. Zina, I see you asked about the budget. I believe it's there's stories. I believe it's exactly 376,000. Then we also have a smaller contract as well where we pick up East Lancaster corridor, which is an additional 50. And then Claudia you asked who provides the equipment and tools needed to get the work done as a vendor in the RFP that burden falls to upspire. However, like Neil said this is a partnership and I know for a fact that our guys have broken some of their litter pickers out while on route and Ronnie, who works with Neil has been kind enough to to lend one. Very much a partnership but yes we provide the bags and the litter pickers the vehicles the trailers all of that is purchased by upspire. The city does allow our crews to access the city. Landfills and recycling centers which is huge so we do not dispose of this trash on our campus. Reverend Dr. Terry, I believe our emails are on our profiles but if not my email is khamham at journey home.org. And I will include mine on the questionnaire just in case you don't. It's not a deal. Place them in the chat for them to copy and say that if they click on your profile on your picture anywhere they see it you know on the beginning of the presentation they should your email should be able to be linked and popped up. Okay. We still have a few minutes so if anyone has any questions I think I see some more in. What's the hourly rate. Does the city pay in part itself. So the city the city does not pay any of the wages directly all. I build the city as a vendor once a month after the work's been completed and then we have a 30 day that payment term and then we handle the payroll and everything as a regular service provider would upspires starting salaries range everywhere from 8 to 15. And that's across the city contracts because we also do landscaping so it just depends on the experience and the position. But yeah, 8 to 15. And then we also provide and pay for all of the benefits. Like I said PTO workers comp health insurance we subsidize about 75% of the health insurance costs so that it's affordable to our workers. Just just kind of do what we can to alleviate those burdens eligibility for employment. So all of our employees have to pass a drug screen and background check and you know complete the interview process. We are background friendly. There are only a few charges that we can't employ that would be a sex offense murder manslaughter and animal cruelty. Those are those are our no goes which is set by workers comp that very state by state. This is just how Texas works. And so but yeah just pass a drug screen background check and then complete the onboarding and safety training and then we partner new employees with a veteran employee. Wherever they end up whatever crew they end up on and we start work. If you have any more questions please feel free to place them on here for a few more minutes or reach out directly to them. Remember that you know from wherever you're coming from you know these are things that you can share these are things that you can do within your city or try to implement within your city. If you are a neighborhood association or HOA please remember that these are your local people that you know if you want to have a speaker or anything just remember that our office also does this and is able to connect you so use this share it. Use it at your next meeting if it's something that you you know want to share with your with your membership it's something that we can all kind of learn about you know even us in community engagement we work with. Almost every department and sometimes you know we're learning this stuff to firsthand in order to share so use it to your advantage and if there are no more questions. We're going to have one more minute where the questions please remember to once we are done and stop the stream just go that very top right. Arrow that says back to lobby that will take you back in the next session starts at 1115. Thank you so much Neil and Kirsten. This was amazing. It was great you know listening and in all of that I think there is one would it be possible to see the scope of the landscape responsibilities included. Mindy if you'd like to email me. Yes it's however just so you know our landscaping is. Both under parks and rack and code compliance and it is truly private mo so like when when. You know houses lawns get overgrown and then right of ways and like on city on streets and sidewalks so it is very much just. Regular city landscaping if you will right well once again thank y'all for yes please reach out to them you can click on their picture and. Their information will pop up or they do have it on the chat please remember that this will be available starting next week. So once you get back to it you'll be able to start seeing these pop back up and kind of play. At your own pace and those will be available until August so thank you all so much for joining Kirsten and Neil thank y'all so much again for. Being on here and we'll see y'all next time thank you Brenda thank you all have a great day bye bye bye.