 Welcome to non-profits mean business where we will delve into services provided in our community by non-profit organizations. I'm the host of your show, Krista Stadler, joined by Lena Ijasek, the Chief Administrative and Administrations, excuse me, Officer with IHS. Aloha Lena, how are you? Hey Krista, thanks for having me. Thank you. Excuse me a favor, explain what IHS is and how you got involved with the organization and it's just a little bit about, you know, what you represent in a community that you support. Yeah, so IHS has been around for 40 years. The Institute for Human Services were probably best known for our shelters, our men's shelter, our women's shelter, but in total we have nine shelters all together. So for Hawaii we house about 25% of the famous population. We also have health services, both mental health and general well-being, primary care. We have outreach, case management. We do meals and that's something that, you know, definitely with COVID we've seen a big uptick in our meals that we're providing. We also do family programs, employment, so everything it takes to really empower people to get them out of homelessness into a permanent better situation. Well, that's wonderful. I was about to have the opportunity to come and work with you folks, but then this whole pandemic happened. So I wasn't able to do that, but I promise I will when this is over. Can you let us know a little bit how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected your operations, your staff, you know, how you're dealing with your outreach programs? Yeah, I think like everybody else, we've been tremendously impacted for the homeless community. I really think this COVID epidemic has impressed upon everybody the importance that every individual is a member of the community and the health and well-being of a single individual impacts us all. So the same initiatives that have been pushing out from the mayor and governor of sheltering in place of being able to wear masks, to isolate yourself if you are infected or suspected of being infected. We have those same needs within the homeless community and then of course within our staff. So we've really ramped up measures to make sure that at our shelters we're doing screening and preventing COVID from entering our shelters. We've also stepped up with the outreach program and really to allow people to shelter in place, we've put together kits for the homeless so that instead of them, you know, coming and going from different locations, we all need to do that shelter in place. So we're providing them with cleaning supplies, toiletries, food, meals so that they can shelter in place where they're currently at. The other big one is the social distancing. So we've had to in our shelters create a lot more space for people so that we can abide by that six-feet rule at all times. Yeah, I was wondering about how you would do that, I mean, I can imagine, you know, I always wonder from their perspective, are you, what are you, what are you hearing from the folks that are in that situation? How are they responding to this whole situation? Are they being pretty reasonable and working with you and trying to follow the governor's orders? Do you feel that way? Definitely. So our outreach program is doing a lot of education with people in the community, homeless in the community, and then in our shelters we've been doing a lot of education as well. Everybody wants to keep their friends and family safe. So abiding by the guidelines has been fairly easy. We've asked all of our guests to come home every night and to sleep in the shelter to not sleep out. And those that we've been doing outreach for have been happy to shelter in place when they're provided the additional supplies. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. So what about your volunteer base? Have you seen that diminish or increase and what type of efforts are they doing or using to comply as well? Yeah. So as a nonprofit, we rely so heavily on our volunteers and we wouldn't be anywhere without them. So we've really had to shift gears on that a little bit. Instead of people coming in to do meal service, a lot of times they're now preparing meals at a church or at another facility and then they're delivering lunch and we're distributing. And so there's been a big need, especially from the meal side. We've been doing about, we would usually do about 1,000 meals a day. Now we're up to about 1,500 meals a day because we do feed the people in our shelter and the community as well. My goodness. And so all that preparation of the food, is there a kitchen in your facility that you have that you're able to do that or you use other organizations' kitchens? Yeah. So we have a kitchen and we have a kitchen staff. We're still doing breakfast and lunch for right now while COVID is going on. We have Malama meals helping us with dinner. So they've been tremendous in helping support the efforts because we have so much other need in the shelter. We've pulled some of our kitchen staff to help with general operations because they're familiar with gas. They know how to really talk to them and calm everybody down, make sure everybody's following safety protocols like good hand hygiene, good showering, good laundry habits, good social distancing. So having that team that is already in place, being able to take on a different role, has been so critical and we wouldn't be able to do that without other organizations such as Malama Meals helping to provide those dinners. I'd love to see organizations work together. It's wonderful. Do you have any type of government support or government funding? So for our general operations, we've really seen a lot of private donors really step up. We do a regular communication email and mail to our community partners and just the general public and we've had such an outpouring of love and support. People sending us well wishes, kind messages, people doing financial donations, which they can do on the website. People sewing things like this, like sewing masks that our staff can use and then also we can give to our guests. We have people donating simple things like Clorox and spray bottles and all the things that everybody else needs. We have that same need. So we've had such an outpouring from the community that without the community support, we wouldn't be able to continue our operations. On the government side, we are partnered with H4 and also Local 5 and leading that effort is Department of Health so that if somebody who is homeless does become infected with COVID or is suspected of becoming infected, we will put them on a different site, a different location from our existing shelters and provide them the area and environment to heal. So that partnership with Department of Health has been phenomenal. Department of Health has really driven care for our community in such a positive and proactive manner and then along that, it's really the partnership that comes with the hospitals as well because it's equal opportunity for healthcare. So if it's a homeless person, if it's an elderly person, if it's a young person, if it's a healthy person or previously just regular member of the community who's in the hospital, it's still a hospital bed. So making sure that we have a place for everybody to stay safe, to heal is so critical and then also making sure that we can get patients out of the hospital where better is the other piece that IHS is doing to help the community. So tell me a little bit about, thank you so much, that's wonderful information. I'm curious how many facilities you have or if it's just one and how many full-time or even part-time, you know, what type of staff does it take to operate and I would imagine you have a board and what not. So kind of lay the business end of it out from a non-profit standpoint. So from a non-profit, we have our executive director leading us, Connie Mitchell. I'm under her. We also have a board of directors who oversees and provides us guidance and direction. We have about a little under 200 people on our team who help provide support in all those variety of programs that we talked about, employment, housing, meals, outreach, medical services and we have a total of nine shelters and the tenth, I wouldn't call it a permanent shelter, but the tenth location would be that temporary quarantine shelter that we talked about a little bit earlier. So at the shelters, we cater to different groups and populations because every homeless person is not the same. We want to make sure we're matching the person with the level of service and need that they have. So we have a women's shelter and within that women's shelter, we also have a family shelter so that people can keep their family intact and come out of homelessness together. We have our men's shelter, which is probably our best known shelter, our Sumner shelter. We also have a variety of medical respite shelters that people coming out of the hospital who are homeless will go through to get back to their full level of health. We also have our Kahuiki village site and that's a wonderful partnership with I.O. Foundation and that's more permanent long term for families to have affordable living in a great community setting. And then we also have our Hale-Male-Ola location, which is a partnership with the city and state where couples can go and go with dogs. Also people who have need of EV units, those who are more of working population where they would need some place to park their vehicle. So a variety of settings to try and tackle the needs of our community. Thank you. Well, we're going to take a short break here in a few minutes, but before we do, I'm just going to ask you one last question that was curious when you were talking about the shelters. What's the average length that someone stays in a shelter or participates in that particular program? Well, our goal is to get somebody, sometimes we're able to get people through without them actually even entering the shelter. We can get them housing and placement before they even need a shelter. That's our goal. Other people we try and get out at the longest 60 days. Sometimes it's longer based on placement needs. Sometimes of course it's shorter, but we try to keep it around the 30 day mark and then 60 days kind of is our max. Well that is very interesting and I'm really curious to hear more about how you're finding properties or units, homes for them to live in since I am a broker and property management is my primary focus. So we're going to take a short break and then we'll leave with that when we get back and we hope everyone will please join us. Thank you so much. Aloha. My name is Duretian. I'm the host of Finding Our Future here on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm here every other Tuesday from 1 to 1.30pm. If you're on this show, I cover issues around sustainability, global issues that matter for young people for future generations and other social justice issues. So please join us. It's live streamed on Think Tech Hawaii and also updated on YouTube. And welcome back to non-profits mean business. I'm here with Lina Ijasek and she is from the Institute for Human Services and we are discussing all of their programs and how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected them and the support that they are giving the folks in the community. But where we left off was regarding your placement of people into homes, maybe from the shelter and I also know that you also have support for people getting employment. I really want to talk about that as well but being a broker in the rental market, I'm really curious to hear who you work with and how that process takes place and do they have to go through screening and how is it funded. So tell us all about that. Awesome. So I really look at IHS as a vehicle for the community to do the work that we see fit as a community that needs to get done. So when it comes to housing placement, it's about relationships. It really takes great landowners, great property managers who are willing to work with us to get people out of their situation and we can help facilitate that process. So when we identify somebody who needs housing, they'll do screening, we'll assess how much finances they can provide to the landlord and there's a variety of programs that we can pull from. If it's a government program or if it's even just private donor dollars, that can sometimes subsidize the rent needed. After placement, we'll make sure to work with the landlord, work with the client, check on that family, make sure everything or individual, make sure that that placement is going well, that the property is being maintained. So usually there's a lot of hesitation from a landlord perspective to work with the population we serve, but after they get their first one or two clients and they see the beauty in having IHS as a partner to make sure that if anything's broken, anything's damaged, we're there to fix it, we're there to make sure that the property is maintained, that the person is behaving inappropriately, that there's no noises or nothing crazy going on, then they find out that this is almost sometimes even better than working with the general public because you have this added layer of safety and you're doing something so great for a population in need because reentry into the housing market leads to so many great outcomes for our community. That housing piece that you do is so critical and what the literature and best practice has shown is that if we send somebody strictly for mental health services or recovery services, they usually do pretty poor because the focus is just on that, but if you get them housed and you're nurturing them towards self-sufficiency and you're getting them a job, they're not working strictly to heal their mental, emotional or substance abuse problem, they're working to have a healthy, sustainable life that's beneficial not only to the individual but also to the community where they can give back and become a productive member of society, so housing first is a model that has been very successful, so the role of the landlord with IHS and transitioning these homeless people into great tenets is critical to the health and well-being of our community overall. So I'm getting feedback there. Is IHS a cosigner on the lease and does that agent work that's maybe representing IHS and working with that particular person? Is there a name, somebody to contact if the landlord was to have a concern, they would go to that particular representative within IHS to try to work that out? Okay, well, we'll have to talk about this more later because this is interesting to me. I can imagine in Hawaii, especially coming up with a security deposit and paying a rent that's going to be well over a thousand dollars, I mean, you know, for anything even decent, we're probably looking at 1500. I can imagine that's a huge challenge. So my goodness. All right. Well, I also would love to talk a little bit with you about the support that you provide. I love how you call them your guests, your community of people that you're working for, your efforts in the area of helping them get back into the workplace with clothing, with training on resumes and interviews. I know I was going to be part of that before everything happened and I'd still like to be, I'd like to hear you talk about that. So yes, our employment program is one of my favorite aspects of our organization. I mean, it's one thing to house and shelter and feed people, but we all know the thing the best thing you can do is to teach a person how to fish. And so that's really what our employment program is. We have an urban agricultural program with a rooftop garden to teach basic agricultural skills. We have a cleaning company to get people job training to do cleaning. If somebody's doing well in more of an administration or typing or clerical work, we'll do job training in that area. So we really try and leverage people's strengths and take what they're already good at and make them better at it so they can be the most successful. The other piece that's really critical to this is also helping with the families. So making sure that the children have after school programs. So we have that at our Kahuiki Village. And then also for our younger children, mentoring those families on good practices in the family setting. Also language skills is really important. So those who have English as a second language will do basic English learning. And so it's giving the person the skill set that they need to be successful and self-sufficient. And that's really what our employment and family program stands on. So it sounds like the classes that you provide is what you call them in a class kind of environment. Are they held at your shelters? Is that where people participate if they want to be educated or learn more about a particular subject that you're speaking on? It depends on the actual type of class. We have a lot at different classes at different shelters. We also sometimes will go to different venues. We have a lot of community partners. For example, Central Pacific Bank. They'll come in and do a financial education course. And that's huge to get people who maybe don't even have a bank account set up with an account so that they can start saving and working towards self-sufficiency. Other people in the community, such as Kualoa Ranch or the pirate ship, they'll have our company, our children from our children's program, go and visit. So just giving this next generation the opportunity to see beyond their current situation, really opening their eyes, exposing them to believe in their own potential and dream big. So I think that's really how we can break this homelessness is through that education of the next generation. I love that. Are any of the programs that you normally have in place either completely shut down or being greatly impacted by the COVID-19 or is everything still functioning? I think when we say functioning, definitely there's levels of it. Our shelters are definitely still operating. We're still doing employment training. So that's more on a one-on-one basis now versus having a group setting. Our housing is still doing their piece and getting people placed, doing those check-ins. So a lot of the technology that the general community has adapted, we've done the same. So a lot of video conferencing, just checking in that way. And we still will go visit our clients if there is a need that's in addition to what we can provide over a video. Because some of our clients do need a face-to-face. So when we do make those face-to-faces, we will have somebody from our medical team first make sure that that visit is appropriate. And then when that visit is happening, we make sure that good hand hygiene is being performed. We're having a six-feet distance between the client or guest and the person providing service, that their mask. And we're taking all the precautions to keep our team safe. Because we have to keep our team safe to be able to provide the services that we do. So my team safety is number one for us right now, for sure. I'd love that you have a medical team. Are those actual doctors or that you have an actual team? That's great. It's part of your staff. We do have a team. So we have a clinic with two full-time nurses, also ME. We have physicians rotating through. We have a psychiatrist and APRN. And the health component's huge. Both Pani are executive director and myself are both nurses. So the health component is critical for us, as we really believe that maintaining health is the foundation of our programs. Thank you. Do you have any, I'm putting you on the spot here, but do you have any success stories? You don't have to use the person's real name. But stories of, I'm sure you do. And we'd love to hear it if you do. Sorry to put you on the spot. If there's anyone who'd like to share. We have so many great success stories. And they come in a variety of stories. We have current employees who are all stars, phenomenal contributors to our team. And they've come through our programs. They've come through our shelters and risen above homelessness. And now they're able to give back and really help the people who they were in those same situations. I think a recent one that we've seen is we had a lady who very resistant, a little bit mental illness, a little bit substance abuse came in with our COVID program. And just giving her a place to rest, good meals, really got her mental status a lot more stable. She's a lot more even healed. And so because of giving her that space and time and environment to heal, now we can place her in a setting that maybe we couldn't have if she were just to come off the street. Because she's a very different person when somebody's hydrated, housed with their belly full. They're so much nicer, so much more cooperative. And it really takes those basics and fundamentals for us to make sure that our society is able to get its full potential. And they feel safe. We can imagine of not knowing where your next meal's gonna come from and just elements, just all of it would just be incredibly stressful. So I can imagine that feeling of, like you say, knowing where your next meal's coming from that you have a safe place to sleep and there's people that care about you. So important for anyone's mental health, my goodness. We had spoken a little bit before the show about the outreach program. And you had said your executive director, that was like her baby. And I'm not sure if we actually touched on what the outreach program is, but if we haven't, can you explain that to us? Yeah, so our outreach program is led by Justin. And what he does is amazing. He really reaches into the community and the communities we serve are the east side of Oahu, so Huai Kai wrapping around to Waimanalo, a little bit into North Shore, Windward Side, Kalua Kaneohe and Metro Honolulu. Those areas are designated by the government on what areas we serve. So that's our primary areas. And what's interesting is those areas aligned, the Windward Side and Metro Honolulu are the same areas that are being hit very heavy by COVID. So protecting these homeless in this community is exceptionally important. So what he's done, him and his team have done is they've gone out into our outreach areas. They've mapped out and identified where people are located and where they're currently sheltered or sheltering in place in their tents or encampments. They've done education with them. They've brought them supplies, food, cleaning supplies, you know, paper towels, coolers of water so that they can wash their hands and have some, you know, drinking water available. These are, these sound like small things but just having a cooler of water is so critical if we're asking people to shelter in place. So they go out and do regular checks, education, general health screening so that if they do identify somebody as at risk for COVID having, looking a little sick, flu-like symptoms, coughing, being short of breath, that they can screen them and ask them questions on site. And then from there, we can help transport them to the appropriate locations to get them additional medical care so that we don't have an outbreak in the community. So our outreach program is extremely critical in managing COVID right now to make sure that if it does break out in our community, we can quickly contain it and get those people back to the health and prevent the spread. Well, I'm just so happy to have a new organization in our community and I can't thank you enough for taking the time to be here. I really appreciate it. You're very well spoken and just really helped shed that, kind of give a light on everything that you're involved with from a community standpoint. So much, so from the eat from feeding them to the shelter, to the medical care and all the other programs. It's just really amazing. So thank you so much and we'll look forward to possibly having you back and this is all over to talk about more amazing things that IHS is doing. So thank you so much, Christelle. We would not be the organization we are without the community. We are the extension of the community. So it's a big thank you to the community for really providing the resources, tools, funding to make IHS possible. Yes, thank you. And thank you everyone. We hope to see you again in a couple of weeks on non-profits mean business and we really appreciate you joining us Aloha.