 Welcome to Serving Locally with Me, your host, Michelle Dynas, podcast where we spotlight service in the Longmont and surrounding communities. All right, let's connect. Today's episode of Serving Locally with me. Today, we're here with Fred Hobbs of Imagine. So let's just start out with who are you and what is Imagine and just a quick overview. Sure. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. So yes, my name is Fred Hobbs. I am director of public relations at Imagine. And Imagine serves individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, things like autism, down syndrome, and our services go throughout the entire lives. So from babies and toddlers who might need some early intervention treatments, our therapies to help them meet developmental milestones to school age kids, we have a summer camp program and after school program, school closure day programs. So kids with intellectual and developmental disabilities can be engaged and active in their communities. For adults, we have residential programs if they're not able to live on their own, or need some support where they're living. We have employment programs. So the individuals that we serve can find meaningful work out in the community. And we also have day programs where even as adults, we can help teach them skills that can transfer to other aspects of their lives that will allow them to be more independent and more able to access their community. Okay, so I was thinking it was just for kids. Yeah, it's right all through lives. And we even, I mean, we serve seniors. Also, there is a unique set of challenges that comes with someone who has a intellect, I'm going to use the term IDD, which is short for intellectual and developmental disability. So you don't have to hear me say that 1000 times. So adults, seniors with IDDs, there is a unique challenge that can come with providing them services. So even up to that age, we try to help them always with the goal of giving them as many opportunities as they can to be active contributing members of their communities. That's awesome. Can you just give us a little bit of background about the about Imagine? Absolutely. We are actually celebrating our 60 year anniversary this year. And Imagine was formed by a group of parents living in Boulder, who had kids with IDD, that's not the term that they used at the time. And they wanted their kids to have the same opportunities as everybody else in the community. They wanted them to be able to be part of the Little League teams. They wanted them to be able to go to church with everybody else. That sounds pretty obvious to us in 2023. In 1963, that was really radical. The truth is that most people with IDD back then were not allowed to be part of their community. In fact, the exact opposite. They were literally hidden away into institutions, big buildings that just housed people who happened to have these disabilities, not because they were dangerous, not because they were had committed any kind of crimes, just because society didn't have a place for them. And these parents back then said, no, that's wrong. Our kids have the same inalienable rights to be part of the community, just like anybody else. People too. Exactly. And that has been the foundation of our mission ever since. We believe in the potential of all. We know that people with IDD can and do contribute to their communities every single day in ways big and small and working with our communities. Our goal is to create a world of opportunity for all abilities. That's awesome. I like all of that. What is your focus that imagine? Well, you'll hear me say community a bunch as we talk. I like that. Well, it's and it really is. We're not we are not trying to fix anybody. We're not a healthcare organization in the sense of you come to us with a broken arm. We put it in a cast. The people that we serve. Once they're past a certain age are diagnosed with the IDD and that's for life. So it's not our goal to try to cure them. Instead, it's our goal to make sure that we can work with our community to make sure that they have opportunities to fully be part of that community. And we can't do it without the support of our community. And we're very fortunate to work in a place where there's so many generous caring community members. Longmont's been amazing to us Boulder, of course. And that's how it works. We're at our best at Imagine when we're facilitators that say a business wants to hire somebody that we serve. If we can facilitate making that happen. It's a win for the person we serve. It's a win for the business. It's a win for the community. That's when we're at our best. If we're the ones doing all of the services ourselves, then we're not fully meeting our mission. Fortunately, again, we have a community that's so amazingly supportive of our work, but more importantly, the people that we serve and want them to be part of the community. They want to see them out there. And that makes our work so much easier, but also so much more rewarding. That's awesome. Who are you trying to reach with your organization? Well, I don't want to go too much into how the system works because it's convoluted and complicated and not necessarily I think something that most of your viewers will care that much about. But what we're who we're trying to reach goes back to the answer that I just gave. We want our community to be involved in our work. The people that we serve because of the way the system works, they're already in our system. We're already working with them. So we don't have to try to reach them necessarily, but we want the community to know what we're doing and to be part of that work because that's when it becomes successful. Sometimes in rare occasions, especially families with younger kids who may not know, we do want to make sure that if they have concerns that their children aren't meeting certain developmental milestones that there are resources out there for them. But mostly it's about doing everything we can to have our community not only be part of our work, but in a lot of ways actually lead our work. This is something that I say often and it's half joking, but I am serious in a way that if Imagine successful at its mission, we won't need to exist anymore, because the community will recognize the value of people with IDD and will make the necessary adjustments and adaptations to ensure that they can fully participate. And even though I love my job, I also would love for a day to come when it doesn't have to exist. So I'm using the term reach a little different, I think than you're asking, but we're reaching for that goal of when we don't actually have to be here anymore. And I we've come so long from back in 1963, when those parents were trying to make this happen, we're not there yet. I do think we can get there and I know that less and less of a middle man. Exactly. And I know that we're the this is the right community for that to happen in. That's great. Are you guys in more than just where what is your our service area area is primarily Boulder and Broomfield counties. Okay. It's again, complexity is a system we few we serve a few people outside of those areas, but it's local. You're not a national thing. It's a local thing. Absolutely. Okay. What makes the work of Imagine different than other similar serving organizations? I would say a couple things. First of all, it's the the length of what we're doing. Imagine was the first what's known as a community centered board in the state of Colorado. And that's a designation designed to help the designation of an organization that helps the individuals that we serve find the services. But we also provide the services. So it's that 60 year legacy. But more importantly, I think that because of the communities we've been able to to we're fortunate enough to work in that we've been able to go beyond what I think most organizations can do because of the majority of our funding comes from Medicaid federal funding. But we have a foundation. So a fundraising side of our organization that raises money that helps us do things that go beyond what the traditional funding might allow. Because the traditional funding always comes with a lot of guardrails and restrictions. You can only use the money to do this, which I understand and we respect. But last year, we served almost 4600 people. And that's 4600 individuals. Oh my goodness. So in each case, their needs, their goals, their desires are going to be different. There's no one size fits all unique. Right. So when you're dealing with a funding source that kind of doesn't recognize that uniqueness that says you can only do this, it does limit our options when it comes to trying to create that world of opportunity for all abilities. So we have for the longest time incorporated technology in a lot of the work that we do because just as any one of us now uses our cell phone sort of as a another way to help us navigate the world. In some cases, very literally. We work very hard to provide those same options for the people we serve so that they can use technology that somebody who maybe just 20 years ago would have had to have a full time caregiver 24 seven. Maybe if we can set up some smart features in their home, if we can set up some remote monitoring, they can actually live more independently, be more on their own. And that's something that Imagine has really led the way in. And I do say without feeling like I'm overstating it, we are recognized not just locally, not just statewide, not just nationally, but even internationally as a leader and an innovator in exploring new ways to ensure that people with IDD can fully participate in their communities. That's awesome. Wow, that's really cool. I didn't know the depth of this. Like I said, I thought it was just for kids. It's funny, I will say it's not your question, but one of the reasons that my role exists at Imagine, one of the reasons the foundation's role exists at Imagine is for that very reason. And it goes back to the 1963 story that I keep coming back to. This was a population that was invisible. And to the greatest extent possible, we want to make sure that it's the people we serve that are front and center. So we try to stay a little bit in the background. However, when you're a fund raising organization, when you want and need to have your community be part of your work, you do also have to be out there more. So first of all, I very much appreciate you letting me be here and talk about our work to talk about the size and scope. Bring light on it, yeah. But it's also just a reminder that these folks with IDD, they are out there. They are part of our community and if they're invisible to some people, some of that invisibility may be willful on the part of people who don't want to see them. And we want to make sure that they are visible entirely to the entire community. Very good. What are your greatest needs? Well, as I said, we have a foundation and that is designed to raise funds that allow us to go above and beyond our more traditional sources of funding for services. So it's mostly, as cynical as it may sound, mostly we need money. But what, again, going back to how incredible our community is and how much support we get, we get support from the community in all kinds of ways. This is, we're recording this not long after Thanksgiving. There's a restaurant called the Post Chicken and Beer and there's several locations around the area. The owner is a gentleman named Dave Querrey who's been a longtime supporter of us. On Thanksgiving, he opened up one of his locations of the post to more than 400 imagined families and clients so they could have a Thanksgiving dinner. And so that's not a money thing but what it is is once again this example of here's a community member opening up the doors to their community business, to the people that we serve. So it's, now I'm backtracking a little, it's not just money. It's businesses who are willing to hire the people that we serve. It's organizations and venues around the area who are willing to host some of our services so we can deliver them out in the community. It's being part of our work to make our work more meaningful, not just for the people we serve but for the community itself. Absolutely. And money too. Yeah, money too. Money's a big one. Do you guys have volunteers? We do have volunteers. We're ramping this back up so I suspect you've heard this before. The pandemic made. We got to rebuild everything. We had a very robust volunteer program. During the pandemic we couldn't do it, which I will say, you know, I keep talking about community. Talk about a struggle for us being a community organization that you can't be part of the community. Right, there's no community anymore. Everybody's locked away in their home so it's very difficult. So we are ramping that back up but we do have a volunteer program. If you go to our website ImagineColorado.org, there is under Get Involved a link for volunteer opportunities. There's not as many as we'd like or as we used to have but we're working to get back up towards that. Good thing to keep in mind. Awesome. Do you have any events coming up or volunteer opportunities? Well, so back to the events and back to the money piece. Our big fundraising event for the Imagine Foundation, which is the fundraising arm of Imagine, is coming up on Saturday, February 3rd. It's called the Imagine Celebration. It is, I think this is the 20th annual one and this, it's going to be in the Westminster Marriott. This is an amazing opportunity to come out and support our work. It's a fantastic evening. I will say it sells out almost every year. So if people are interested, also ImagineColorado.org under Get Involved, you'll find Imagine Celebration. But this is more than half of what we raise every year comes from this one single event and it's a really fun event. I promise you'll come away moved, may even cry a little bit when you hear some of the stories about the success of the people that we've served but also help make a difference in our community. Absolutely. How can people contact and find out more about Imagine? Well I've already mentioned it a couple times but I'll do it one more time. The best place is to go to our website that is ImagineColorado.org and it has a contact form if you're looking for more specific information whether it's you want to learn more about services or you want to get involved volunteering or through the foundation but it's got everything right there and I think fairly easy to navigate. Awesome. They'll also be in my QR code as everybody is and I'll have all that information in the show notes and everything like I always do. What is the process to become a client? Well it's a complicated question but generally a health care provider or perhaps a family member it happens usually early on because they recognize like I say they're not meeting it could be school oftentimes preschool the earlier it can be identified the better because I talk about like early on I talked about our early intervention services those are so vital because if you get it while kids are young their brains are still very malleable oftentimes you can come out on the other end of earlier intervention services and not need services from us moving forward but generally especially in this day and age someone with the IDD is going to be identified relatively early in which case if they're in the state system and they live in boulder and boomfield counties they will be connected with imagine if somebody's moving from out of state it's a little more complicated but there's there's 20 organizations across the state of Colorado like imagine now I think imagine is very unique in many ways of so very talked about but there is a very good solid system of these organizations being connected if people move helping them them get set up but it's not something that unless it's a really unusual situation that say somebody who's 25 years old is going to suddenly discover because if it's already been identified that they have an intellectual or developmental disability they will be in the system in one form or another and I don't even mean system in a negative way just that we will be aware be aware of them and their needs awesome um well great is there anything else that you would like to add to the conversation that maybe I add or maybe that I missed or that you just feel passionate about talking about I don't think you miss anything and I great again I greatly appreciate this I just would once again reiterate how fortunate we are to be in this community and this interview is a perfect example of that that we met at a unity in community event so even the name in there and you reached out to us and and this is what makes our work work these folks in our community who see the work who recognize the value of the people we serve and want to be part of it in one way or another so I thank you for that I thank our community for all that they've done for imagine and encourage those of you who want to do more to check out our website and again just thank you for letting me talk a little bit about it absolutely thank you so much for being on the show you bet 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 to that you can serve right now all right now go connect with others and be a blessing