 Bingo, 12 o'clock rock. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech. Today we're doing a Thursday noon show Aloha United We Stand and today we're featuring the Salvation Army and our guest is Major John Chamnes. He's a divisional leader of the Salvation Army Hawaiian and Pacific Islands Division and he's been here before. Welcome to the show John. Thanks Jay. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me on. Great to see you. I look out to this discussion. So let's look at the problem first that the Salvation Army addresses here in Hawaii, especially here in Hawaii and that is per our discussion before the show. First you look at I guess the most visible expression of it and that is homelessness because we see them all day long and you know what five years ago or ten we were shocked by that. Now it's part it's the new normal. It's part of the landscaper and part of the scenery we're getting used to. It's bad to get used to this. But per our discussion just before the show you know you can explain to me and I think it's really a critical point is that the fundamental problem is poverty. Yeah. Poverty leads to all these things that they in turn bring with them homelessness. Talk about it with you. Yeah you know I thought often I think we think that homelessness is is the issue and certainly an issue but poverty is really the root issue of a lot of these different systemic problems that we face not only here in Hawaii but you go to the mainland and you see a lot of the same issues and poverty leads to poorer results in schools so when mom and dad live in poverty kids often don't perform as well as kids who grew up in a lower income or middle income or higher income household. Poverty you know often leads to other issues such as addictions and that's something that the Salvation Army here in Hawaii deals with acutely. We treat you know 22 to 2700 men and women every year through one of our three drug and alcohol treatment programs and again we're just really treating the not the root cause of addiction but really just the result of addiction. Right but we've got to do that. Oh absolutely. We can't solve the you know the root cause without a really special effort. We talk about that later in the show but for the moment Salvation Army and many other 240 or 50 other charitable organizations funded by Aloha United Way are addressing the people on the street. Yeah so we're doing it in a number number of different ways. The five million dollar grant that was given by the state to Aloha United Way I think has been really helpful in getting people into housing. I forget the number right now but there's several thousand that have been housed through that grant by the state and we need to see more of those types of things but one of the one of the more difficult parts of this Jay is that there's just not a lot there's not enough affordable housing here in our state. There's just not enough apartments that are really affordable to those that live you know in the lower income. For this discussion help me understand what is affordable housing. How do you see it? What is the best model? You know if I were if I were going to give you affordable all the affordable housing you wanted I'd like to be able to do that. What would it look like? What kind of housing are we talking about? You know I think it's a variety of housing you know it's it's looking at what they're doing over at Mayor Rights and they're going to be re-gentrifying that area. Fortunately they're going to keep the same number of low-income units within that housing units but they're also going to build moderate income to middle income to workforce housing and I think we need to look more at that. I would hate for us just to do low-income housing all by itself in isolation. It's a project problem. Yeah I think you know that's the the issues of the 70s that we're now dealing with today and so I'd rather see multiple economic ranges living in the same type of housing. I think that's a much more healthy approach and I think studies would demonstrate that that's a better way to look at this issue. The fact is that we just do not we're about 16,000 units short of housing just here in Oahu right now. That's huge when you start counting them. If you build any housing whether it be middle income upper income or low income any housing right now is going to help the deficit in the housing market across our state. It's something that we just have to do if we really want to deal with this issue of homelessness if we really want to deal with this issue of poverty we've we've got to build more housing period and certainly some of that needs to be affordable for those that live in that lower percentile. So you're talking about all kinds of business models all kinds of ownership arrangements but somebody who doesn't have a lot of money or maybe even no money will be able to get housing. Yeah of some sort I mean otherwise we have people living on the street and that's just not that's not we should not this is America and we shouldn't have people living on the street. They're supposed to have big hearts. Yeah and I think we do have big hearts but I think we just have to really come together on this issue and understand this is a crisis in our community. Hawaii News now, Star Bulletin, I think have done a great job of profiling this issue for the past couple of years and they really pushed this to the forefront in our community to help us to really get our hands around this but then I think the next step is for us to to really figure out an effective way to deal with this and that really maintains the dignity of the individual. I mean the Salvation Army is down there on the streets of Chinatown and Cock-A-Col on a regular basis. These are our friends that we go to on a regular basis and we provide a peanut butter sandwich just to develop a conversation and to get to know people and that's kind of the the entry point for us to hopefully finding a way that we can get that person from that really basic step of living on the streets to maybe into some corner sort of a shelter or into a treatment program just that next step before they go further. So how does it work? I'm really curious this moment here at Christmas you're down there. You're in uniform. You have a bag of peanut butter sandwiches and you see somebody on the street who is clearly a candidate for assistance of some kind so you approach that person. What's the conversation like? You know often it's just getting to know them. One of the things that people need to understand is that you have to build a relationship with anybody and so a lot of what we do is just building relationships with people on the street so they trust us that when we refer them someplace that we're really thinking of their best good and for a lot of these people living on the street it's very difficult and it's very difficult to get from where they're at to where they want to be or where they need to be. For instance there was a lady down in Waikiki and she wanted to get into one of our drug and alcohol treatment programs but before she could do that she had to go get a couple of prescriptions because when you're dealing with an addict and they're going through detox. They need support drugs. They need some support drugs to help them with that. It took all day for somebody to drive her from to several different places filing in it ending up at Queens where she had to wait four or five hours in the waiting room before she could get that final prescription then to go on tour. So it's very difficult and all along the way her comment was I just want to give up I just want to go back this is too hard it's easier for me to be on the street and so people really need a friend to come alongside them to walk them through each one of these steps and that's what we as well as other great organizations tried to do in working with this population of people. No question you're committed. We have talked to you in the past two years a number of times and I can tell you that I'm very impressed with the Salvation Army always have been and with the work you do the organization you build the volunteers you achieve so it's it's really remarkable and I think you're a class A organization but the question is with Hawaii News now and the other media and the message is that we're in a crisis and you know if you didn't know it we're in a crisis K a crisis which is going to affect us all crises by definition affect us all how do you you know and so people therefore should be educated about the seriousness of the situation about what's happening on the street about the need to take action. What should they do? We know what you do but what should they do? I think the common person I think one of the things that they can do is certainly support nonprofits around the state that are really making a difference that that's one thing I think another area is to to get educated themselves about the challenges of homelessness and poverty and addictions. Thirdly I think is to encourage their representatives their elected officials that something more has to be done than what's currently been being done. I think the governor and the mayor have done have made great strides and I think they certainly are heading in the right direction but there's lots more to do and it's it's a complicated issue it's a challenging issue it's going to take a lot of resources to deal with this but at some point this isn't going to go away hasn't yet in fact it's gotten worse. It's not going to go away so I think it's really sitting down and saying okay what how can we really address this as a as a community so I really think that it's government it's nonprofit it's for profit it's our community coming together and say we want to solve this issue here's the steps we need to take to do so and let's get going on it and it might mean that we have to put some things aside right now and really focus on this one issue to resolve this. At the end of the day Jay we're always gonna have the homeless we're always gonna have poverty but I think we can take a substantial bite out of this if we are to to really address the housing issue and the poverty issue to begin you know nicking away at this we got to fight this at both ends we have to fight it on the end of homelessness but we also have to look on the other side and look at our educational system and in our poverty system and say what can we do at the front end of this to hopefully avoid families falling further into poverty at the same time dealing with those that are experiencing homelessness to extreme extent and helping them to get off the streets. Yeah good point on both sides yeah and in order to you know it's not so much that we are going to stamp it out because as you say it'll always be it's part of it's part of the American democracy actually in the American economy but it's to me and you can comment on this it's it's holding the line anyway it's so it doesn't get worse and worse we we want to contain the problem we want to limit you know the the increase in these unhappy times by at least ameliorating what we have yeah yeah I'm not sure how well I mean my point only is that we're not going to stamp it out no and so we should address making sure it doesn't get worse well and I think that's a little bit what we try to do during the Christmas season the Salvation Army for the past 121 years has tried to make Christmas a little brighter for those who are down and out so that's our angel tree program and yeah the great sponsors that we have like Central Pacific Bank and Burger King Hawaii to make sure that you know those kids who are struggling at this time of year the families that are struggling get presents and last year alone we provided 72,000 toys to kids and I should also say seniors across our state to ensure that on Christmas morning those that are in need have a Christmas a brand-new Christmas present under that tree that's what you've been doing for what 150 years or more 121 years here in Hawaii 150 years worldwide is little things like that that you know they they might seem inconsequential but the thing that I love about angel tree is that we put these trees in our malls that are Central Pacific Bank branches and an individual can go in and they can pull attack one of these tags off a tree and say I'm gonna go get a toy for a seven-year-old girl who wants just something simple for Christmas like one of them has a yes so this is an actual boy or an actual girl their name and a suggested gift four-year-old boy wants beach toys it's lovely and one a more practical way for our community to get involved and make sure that that kid has a new toy under the tree at Christmas yeah but you know what I hear at our Christmas kettles is people will come up to me say you know 30 or 40 years ago my family was down on their luck and parents didn't have any money to buy Christmas gifts but we got a gift from the Salvation Army that year and that really made a difference never forget they don't they don't and so we have the kettles yep we have the angel trees tell me about some of your other programs that are either focused on this season or otherwise the kettles and the angel tree are the primary focus of our efforts this time of year certainly raising the money through our kettles is vitally important that that funding goes towards first of all it stays right in the community in which it's raised so if you're in Kona and you're putting money in that bucket in Kona it stays it's good to know and it we have homeless feeding programs across the state so you know you go to that soup kitchen you're gonna get a hot meal you go to our adult daycare program over on vineyard and a great place for families to put their adult individual who needs that extra care during the day it's providing a week of summer camp to a kid who otherwise could not attend camp so it goes to provide lots of different services across our state not just a Christmas but but year-round so that kettle money is absolutely vital so when you see a kettle put some change reasonable request yeah I mean we've been doing it for 150 years well and a lot of people don't realize a lot of people come up and they'll put some change in the kettle and they'll say oh I'm sorry I can only give you know a couple of corridors or whatever but one-third of our kettle income comes from coin alone so that coin what we like to say is the change you put in provides change coming out of that kettle the change and transform lies from those that are going through one of our drug and alcohol treatment programs to a summer camp to an after-school program for a kid so that's your big method of fundraising that's it the cattle it's I think it's it's one of most our most visible we do many other sorts of fundraising efforts but certainly it's the most visible that the Soviet Army has we can take a short break major John Chamnes of the Salvation Army we can be right back and we'll hear more about their programs and their successes I want to do metrics with you John I'll be right back thanks hi I'm Ethan Allen host of likeable science on think Tech Hawaii I hope you'll join me every Friday at 2 p.m. to discover what is likeable about science we bring on scientists of all astronomers physicists chemists biologists ecologists and they talk about their work and more importantly they talk about why you should talk about their work why you should think about their work why you should like their work I help them bring out why their work is understandable why it's meaningful why people should care about it why people should support science we have a good time we talk about current events of interest we talk about a historical event sometimes we dig deep into their research why they do what the joys and delights and frustrations of their work are and in all we show a real world of science a real world of likeable science I hope you'll join us every Friday at 2 p.m. we're back we're live we're here with John Chamnes major of the Salvation Army for the Hawaii and Pacific region and at this point in time I think we ought to do some pictures a little slideshow see what a chronograph you have let's see the pictures and John can describe what they say so this is one of our Christmas warehouses and this is a collection of all the toys that will go out to both our keiki and our capuna and several volunteers there and this is amazing to see you know all these toys come together and these are all these all come through our angel trees at the different malls and our central Pacific Bank branches across the state so that's so that's that first picture it's a lot of stuff here's our Thanksgiving dinner we've been doing this for 46 years now actually 47 years and in that last 47 years we've served over 129,000 of our state residents through this Thanksgiving dinner at the Blaisdell thanks to the mayor and sitting County of Honolulu very nice here we are down at Tamron Park and this is one of our bell ringing days where we invited different branches of bank branches to come out and ring with us or different celebrities across her community to ring the Christmas kettle with us and here's two great partners we've got Aloha United Way and Burger King Hawaii and they've been a great support Burger King Hawaii through a partnership with Aloha United Way and Salvation Army they raised funds at their Burger King stores and then that money goes to buy gifts for kids and there's Cindy Adams at the left yeah okay we'll shout out to both of them thank you ladies that's it that's the photographs that's it yeah so let's talk about your in our remaining programs I have a category list here drug and alcohol rehabilitation give us a pricey about what you do there yeah so we treat both men and women we have three programs here on a wahoo down an evil a above that first story we have our men's treatment program there and many people don't realize that the thrift store operation actually supports that rehabilitation program so there's no state or government funding that comes into that program that is totally supported by the thrift stores around a wahoo it's an excellent program and I tell you when you go up there on a Wednesday night a chapel service to hear these guys most of them will say if it wasn't for the Salvation Army I would be dead on the streets and so these guys come right off the streets or right out of jail into our program and we provide that addiction treatment that up on the poly we have our program for both single men and single women where we treat about 1300 to 1700 men and women every year through both inpatient and outpatient treatment programs it's an amazing program does an amazing job and then down in Kamel Key we have our women's treatment program where only program like it in the state of Hawaii where mom actually gets to come and either deliver baby or get baby back so it's a what we try to do is use this program to help mom to really want to get the treatment that she needs and so the the judge will say if you go through this program you're gonna get to keep baby and we find find that this is really successful that's a great idea so you incorporate you know the courts and what you're doing in Salvation Army yeah so what what can you hope to achieve with a drug rehabilitation program and can you wean them away from drugs can we say that they're clean and not not going back I mean what what's the recidivism rate so we actually get great results from our programs and we follow many of our people for up to 60 days after they leave one of our drug and alcohol treatment programs and we find that within that first 60 days recidivum rates is pretty low about 15 to 20 percent however what we found and what's kind of the national statistic is that if if a person does not get that continued support and help that they need once they leave treatment very often they're likely to go back to their addiction because they've not built that network they've not really dealt with many of the issues in the continuing support right so we started a new program a couple of years ago called pathway of hope and pathway of hope pairs up case manager a life coach with a graduate of one of our programs where we help them to find housing job and a connection to a new community we find over and over again that if you can do those three things get them into safe secure housing find them a job that actually pays them a livable wage and then connect them to new friends that the recidivism rate goes from like an 80 percent down to about 20 percent so it's almost a complete reversal if we're able to do that I keep doing it's really important because if you if they if they fall back into it they become a burden on everyone and a risk on everyone and they their lives are destroyed ultimately or taken and so what you're doing there is you're you're giving them the gift of life and we see it over and over again we know that if we can follow that person for up to a year to tears after they leave treatment that they're they're you know they're successful in life and we we have so many people that will come back and say I've been cleaning sober now for 25 years 30 years and it was because of those three things I got a job I got a place to stay and I got a new network of friends and we see that over and over again Jay what's the bigger risk alcohol or drugs well certainly the meth or crack is is the number one drug of choice by about 75 percent that's you know when people identify when they come into our program what's the primary drug of choice it's it's crystal meth or methamphetamine is that a crisis too of course you know it's it's something that would often happens is that a young man or woman get in it gets introduced to either alcohol or marijuana at an early age 12 13 14 and then a little bit later they get introduced to crystal meth or something of that nature heroin some of those other things are starting to come back but it's so devastating you know you wait what it does to them to their lives is just horrific but a lot of people to understand actually alcohol is a much more difficult addiction to break and it can be much more damaging on the body so a person coming out of an alcohol addiction you know detox is kind of that first step to really help them to deal with that part of their addiction but it can be devastating it can actually kill people trying to detox off of alcohol so you're gonna take them offline put them in a facility give them service treatment 24 by 7 for a while to detox them yep we bring them into it we're the only provider of non-medical detox in the state so the hospitals often refer their non-medical detox clients to us and then after they detox then we take them through our program in there it's just a really lot of hand-holding it's just really hey come on you got to get up let's have breakfast let's have a meal let's go to classes just trying to build routine back into their lives to build confidence back into their lives and that takes time and hopefully we get to that point where we can start dealing with some of the causes of their addiction and for women that we treat oftentimes you know it's dealing with an abuse that took place in their life either physical sexual mental emotional and they're suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and so we've really got to begin dealing with that at the same time we're dealing with their addiction to help them get away from these things yeah you guys are doing so much and speaking of time we only have a few minutes left so I want to give you the opportunity to pick you know the programs that you'd like to talk about in the remaining time we have time oh gosh you know around the state we have our family service offices and this is kind of the frontline of a lot of our work this is where somebody where they're either on the verge of being evicted from their home or there are some sort of crisis this is where they come to us typically first so they come to us for a bag of food or rental assistance or utility assistance or for counseling or for some sort of service those are the programs we really need a lot of support and help right now that's where a lot of that kettle income goes to fund those family service offices where we can help a person to deal with that crisis that's going on in their life so we often need canned food to support those family service offices we need resources to help pay for rent or for utility assistance or maybe a kid going to camp you know many of the kids that come to us they've never been off island maybe before they've never been to a residential summer camp where they can just for a week be a kid and you know you see some of these kids they'll show up they'll be it'll be their first time flying from Maui or Kona or Kauai and they won't come with a suitcase or something like that they'll often have a plastic bag and in that they'll have a sheet and a blanket and a couple of changes of clothes and maybe a toothbrush maybe not but you know those kids they go to camp and for a week they get three square meals a day they get a safe fun place to sleep they they're involved in crafts going to the beach going on hikes playing in fun games together and oftentimes those kids will say at the end of the week can I stay here do I have to go home because you know they're not happening to to be a the parent to the younger sibling the best time in their whole life yeah and it could define their life going forward it could change them well we've seen that because kids that have come through our summer camp program have eventually come on staff to work for us at our summer camp program and then even come on staff with us somewhere across the state because their lives have been transformed by somebody taking the time to say I care about you and I want to make a difference in your life you know I mean I haven't heard talk about religion and back when the Salvation Army had a certain religious you still do side to it okay yeah tell me about that side tell me what motivates you and the others in the Salvation Army to do these good deeds and how much of this religion so William Booth the founder of the Salvation Army said you know one of our one of our statement is heart to God hand a man and so every one of our we have four churches here in Oahu we have 13 churches across the state and that that's really our main motivation is love for God and then in return love for men Jesus said to love the Lord our God with all your heart soul mind and strength and then to love your neighbor as yourself and so we we take that literally that we're supposed to love God and in return love man and so that's really the heart of what we do however and saying that Jane we don't require anybody that comes to the Salvation Army that they sign a statement of faith that they come to war churches we help anybody and everybody that we can that comes to our doorstep regardless of their orientation or need or whatever so it isn't to proselytize people no it's simply to do what we think is the requirement that we have from God to love him and to love others yeah so it sounds like you know the religious aspect is you doing your good deed in your religion rather than you trying to proselytize other people to join that really you know we think that our testimony will stand by itself stand for itself and you know we just go out there and do what we think God has called us to do and we think that through that some might say tell me more about that so we don't have to do the hard sell we don't have to be the Bible Thumbers we simply can say this is what we do and why we do it yeah and if you're interested come and ask me and but every Sunday we have church services here in Oahu at four different places and even out in the beach in Waianae we have a little tent that gets set up there every Sunday and some of your beneficiaries do come oh absolutely but again it's their choice it's not something that they're forced to do they they have the prerogative to choose whether or not to come you got just 30 seconds now to talk to the people to leave a message whatever message you want to leave and the people I think include the legislature and you know for that matter the state government and the counties what what do you say to them what message would you leave with them at Christmas in 2016 I would say there's camera one I would say support not only the Salvation Army but other nonprofits that are out here working across our state this is a really a vital time for us to raise the funds that we need to support the programs that we offer and if we don't get those funds then we're not able to offer those programs and if we don't offer those programs then we're gonna see a bigger crisis so support us support other nonprofits and it really does make a difference regrettably we haven't had time to cover all your programs and all your metrics but where can people read up on the Salvation Army Hawaii Salvation Army org you can find all about our different locations across the state right there Hawaii Salvation Army org thank you John thanks Jane great to have you here thanks for having a lot of Christmas Merry Christmas