22News InFocus featuring the Springfield Rescue Mission

From the 22 News Plus Studio, this is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry. Hello everyone and welcome to this edition of In Focus. I'm your host Patrick Berry. We are here in the 22 News Plus Studios and today joining me across the desk are Kevin and Sabra Ramsdell. They are with the Springfield Rescue Mission. Thank you both for joining me. Thank you. You both run an organization that is so important to our general community here in the Pioneer Valley. Kevin, give me an overview of what the Springfield Rescue Mission is and does. Sure thing. The Springfield Rescue Mission has been in existence for 132 years and basically it started out by just being a homeless shelter and taking care of men's needs for food and a place to sleep kind of thing. It's morphed into now a totally different package of what we're doing there. We still serve men, women and children through our food programs and also through our giveaway center where they can come in. It's like a clothing store where they can pick up clothing for different age groups. We pretty much cover infant all the way up to adult. The other thing that we have is we now have a more holistic approach to what we're doing there because everything is based on the gospel and we're a Christian organization but also it's taking that Christian value and transmitting it into how do we make application in the practical world. We have a more holistic approach to what we're doing there with the men that are in our program and the program lasts at least a year and again it's on an individual basis now where before it wasn't because everybody has individual needs especially since COVID. The other thing too is the face of homelessness has changed dramatically since COVID and it's not the average person that's out there using and abusing drugs and or alcohol. You know it's somebody that may have lost their job during COVID, weren't able to get back into a situation where they could earn enough to pay off the back rents and things that they owed or you know they lost their home and now they're looking to again establish enough credit and so on to be able to move forward or their job is no longer in existence so they can come in now and we can get them set up through our learning center and through a host of other things through workforce development and bring them back in through Mass Hire to re-educate them in a different vocation if you will or maybe send them back to school and finish out a degree they started on years ago but that's kind of what we do is we reach out we're not we're not just a you know a clothing and a feed where a lot of people think that's what we really do it's just feeding clothes people. Has the mission changed in it since the 1890s when it was first launched or is it the same concept today as it was back then? Well the mission itself as far as what they're set out to do is basically the same but it's grown some and it's you know we've added a number of things to our program because the needs have changed you know years ago that's what it was was a message and a meal where now it's a little bit more extent and what the need is in the community so we had to change some of our thinking we had to adapt to the changes in the economy and again and what the needs really are for each each person that comes through the door so it's no longer one size fits all it's an individual program for each person that's coming through the door depending on their needs. So do do you customize the programs for each person because everybody's different or is it sort of the basic programs that everybody needs education housing food or or once you get below that to you know if I came in you know somebody came in and said you know I'm trying to do this I want to you know do you help that individual out or is it more of a an overarching blanket approach to get everybody the same basic needs all the time? Well what we find is that the it is customized to each individual and that is one of the main shifts that Kevin was able to implement there because we're not all alike and we all have very different experiences in life and different and different needs so I think the way best way to describe it is that the core curriculum is the same it hasn't changed and that stems from a core belief that at the center of recovery and progress is a faith okay and once you have built around that faith then all those systems whether their education financial awareness and wellness physical and mental health housing relationships workforce development all of those components are basically outreaches of a core system that says you put God first and then you start building and implementing that belief system into what you do in life and how you build so those systems are in place we have a robust workforce development program where we have over 70 companies in and around the Springfield area that are willing to hire our guys we have the GED capability we have caring health on site in their own clinic we have financial wellness through FDIC we have a whole host of different options made available depending on where someone is in their recovery right and what we do is pull all those together and from those create the individualized plan based on the need so somebody who doesn't have a GED first we start them there somebody who can't read proficiently or needs English as a second language or because so we'll start where their need starts and that is determined through a process of assessments okay in each department so each person is assessed and then you determine that individual needs to get them back on the right road right but the core belief is remains the same I guess is the best way to put it yeah and then we've actually adopted a few other things where now we have a mentorship program we have professionals coming in from outside you know businessmen that have maybe retired and whatnot and that has been such a phenomenal growth spurt for some of these guys because now they have somebody that's you know kind of holding them accountable to reach the goals that we're setting together as a team and we're just seeing these guys just flourish and then when one person sees it the other say well if he can do it I can do it so it's kind of that rep on each other exactly and it's that repetition that they get excited about and that's what we get blessed for what we're doing and how we're pouring into them right so that was one of the other things that we recently added to our program that wasn't there was the ability to have folks come in and mentor them and kind of act as their cheerleader as they make these different accomplishments and one of the latest ones is we just had one of our residents who's been learning how to and to do I don't want to say his name EKG certification program at bay state wow and the gentleman that is mentoring him is a pretty renowned doctor in the area who loves what we do and actually volunteers in the kitchen there and so he took on mentoring this one resident and just found out this morning that there's a real potential for him to go and work as a an intern that's great at bay state in their cardiology department and so you know we try to create help these guys create the right pathways through all kinds of avenues but the mentoring program is a that's that's that's just evolving now and that is a going to be a huge add-on we are up on our first commercial break stay with us plenty more to talk about when it comes to the springfield rescue mission we're back in just a moment this is 22 news in focus with patrick berry this is 22 news in focus with patrick berry welcome back everyone to this edition of in focus i'm your host patrick berry sitting across the desk from me today are the ramsdells kevin and saber they are from the springfield rescue mission thank you both so very much kevin i want to come back to a comment you made during the first portion about how what you do has changed dramatically really since covet but i have to imagine the number of people you are helping and serving has has grown not just in the last five six eight years but for decades is that is that a safe assessment yes it is absolutely uh because we see an increase in needs all over when we first got there for about the first eight months to a year i was kind of analyzing strategically what our next moves would be as to how can we better serve the community at large and to be honest with you what we started noticing was there was a lot more need for women and as we explored that we put out a survey to ask women are you interested in you know a program like we have here established for the men or are you looking more for an emergency shelter and as soon as we got that word out emergency shelter no that brings uh a bad taste in their mouth if you will because of the abuse and things that go on this and they don't feel safe so all of them every single one picked a program for various reasons so uh back uh almost three years ago we started looking at well how can we better serve that population and we started to experience the different things we we bid on a few properties and we couldn't stay in the bidding process we got outbid a number of times at least three buildings that we were looking at to possibly use and then we started to look at the possibility of raising and erecting a building in one of our parking lots at the mission on mill street that we're basically not using and it made sense but then last year probably a little after february march we started noticing a decrease in funding that was coming in grants became harder to get we've put out over 30 grant applications this year since last february and i think we've only had three that have actually produced anything and again the number of people in the non-profit agencies uh in west springfield it's phenomenal i think well i what what the sort of downturn in um um funding caused was um i started researching what what's going on right because you know everybody out there was sort of scratching their head at least in the um and so i i uncovered kind of a whole series of things one is that um there are over 4 000 non-profits in western mass 4 000 non-profits they employ over 78 000 individuals um and so what you have in western mass particularly in springfield also at the same time that i was researching this i discovered that the state statistics come out right out and tell you that springfield is number one in the state in terms of people on welfare um so that that number was 47 point or 40 44 44 47.4 percent of all people in springfield are on some kind of assistance so that means that essentially and companies are leaving massachusetts not coming into massachusetts so what happens to the population that you want to educate and train to get jobs to break the cycle of poverty if they are embedded in a system that is encouraging or not able to handle and sustain the welfare role while businesses are leaving where do you put people how do you truly guide them into um into productivity so um so that's what sort of began all of this quest to figure out what happened to the funding when i looked at the fact that um as the government funding has dried up and non-profits are really struggling they all moved over to the private sector which is where because we don't take any government money we take no government funds we've went you know that means that their requests have gone through the roof so it's not their fault i don't think it's nobody it's nobody's fault right it's it's sheer numbers because changing on the federal side it's not sustainable the state doesn't have the money to continue to fund and and so it's a it's really kind of a mess so how do you where does your funding come from if you're not are you so you're not private sources so it's it's direct mail it shows like this it's our website it's social media yeah it's the public it's it's businesses that know of us um individuals it's that's our events right you know it's interesting because a number of years maybe a decade or so ago when i owned my business in westfield i learned about the quantity of non-profits in westfield i remember somebody saying to me the the reason there are so many non-profits in westfield is because westfield residents are very giving so the number you state about how many are here in western mass it just it kind of speaks volumes to the people who live here that were very giving to our neighbors and we want to help our neighbors amen yeah so organizations like yours we want to help out even better because to your point if we can help these people get on their feet you know learn different programs different trades different skill sets then they're only helping the economy and all boats right right so instead of praise exactly taking out of the economy they're then able to put back in exactly that's our goal yeah that's our goal right right we are up on our second commercial break stay with us plenty more to come this is 22 news in focus with patrick berry welcome back everyone to this edition of in focus i'm your host patrick berry we are talking with kevin and sabra ramsdell they are from the springfield rescue mission about all the wonderful things they do the programs that they offer people for training and financial literacy and whatever it may be but you are right now really venturing into a well-needed program and and and series of services helping women specifically uh say tell me more about that um well as kevin said that you know when he when we conducted this survey several years ago uh it was really apparent that most people really want of the richness of a whole program and not just emergency shelter um and so when as we have uh grown the programming side for the men we've taken that somewhat separately and redesigned it and tweaked it a little bit to make it more applicable to women with the idea in mind that we would eventually be able to open a facility for single women okay um there's a fair amount of sympathy and and support out there for women with children but there's literally very very few uh very limited help for single women really yeah that's sort of sad you know that can't just let people where you can't i mean no no women are more than 50 percent of the population we can't ignore that right no and they are the most growing homeless population they're growing faster than men than the men's side so tell me a little bit about this the new facility that you're you're looking to get going well it's not new no it's basically what it is is uh you had asked about program updates and whatnot a couple years back we decided that uh again it was costing us so much money and we had to look at again our donor base and what are we doing and uh what we decided to do was go to a dry shelter at taylor street and i was surprised how many of our board members thought we already were but it was costing us a lot of money and and again they were damaging the property so when we went to the dry shelter a number of them they don't want to change their life they want to continue to use drugs come in and take advantage of you know the food and the shelter but they didn't want to change at all so we changed to a dry shelter where they have to you know come in sober and we did drug test and breathalyze and we see a shorter number of men that really do want to change so that's our focus but we could actually move that whole program over to mill street we have plenty of room there and then utilize that building to start a women's program so that's kind of what we've been thinking about doing um and i'm going to shift it back to sabra because she has spent more time in the details of the programming and getting that set up than i have i've overseen a lot of it and we're ready to go but again it's going to take again some funding opportunities to come into place because we do need to revamp the building it hasn't been touched in a number of years and whatnot and you guys have sent me a picture which i'm going to pull up now talk to me about it well this this was an old fire station so on the top floor it has um 15 rooms that we would like to convert into uh individual bedrooms for single women and then the downstairs of the ground level that you see with the you know windows on the bottom floor there um that is what is now there are several more rooms there there are probably four different office the rooms that are being used as office spaces and then there is a big dormitory room and then on the lower level there is the kitchen and dining area so um our idea was to create to sort of renovate the interior of the building and in doing that we would have three different types of um spaces the upstairs would remain for the individual women that have decided they want the help and what really want to work through a year long or better program the middle level or the ground level would be what we call a short stay program where women could come in um if they some people only need a little bit of help they don't need a full-on program and we would offer them that capability on the ground level program and we would also have several classrooms there to utilize good and then the lower level would remain the dining area and kitchen area for women so where are we in early 2026 the opening the ribbon cutting whatever you want to call it for that facility we have the building plans um and the permitting is is pretty well under control and so now is the fundraising okay you know we have quotes from contractors so we're ready to move at any time it's just a question of the funding and also to build up the funding that we need to continue the program with the men that we're already doing but again this is something that came about based on what the need was so we were focusing in on single women that are being aged out of the system because once they turn age 18 there's really nowhere to go if they don't have an education that's a primary thing but what we're doing is to educate people and give them choices so we're looking to intercept at that point bring them in and even if they only come in for the short stay program what we're noticing with the men we've had eight guys come over from the short stay program into mill street in this past year and have settled in and just a doing phenomenal you know because some of them needed a a time out if you will and figure out what the course of action should be for them if are you looking for volunteers are you looking for monetary donations are you looking for supply donations and if right now we really do that right now we're looking for money we need cash so we need to build up our um our revenue stream to support 10 mill street and the men's program because that has suffered through the downturn in funding sources out there and then at the same time we are trying to raise an additional say 700 000 towards the renovation at mill street at taylor street i'm sorry okay for the women's program so it's kind of twofold um uh ask it's gonna be difficult trying to it is maintain one build another one yeah but you know to you to both of your point the the women have come forward and said this is what we need it's not you know top-down directed we're doing this for you it's like and then they're it's if and correct me if i'm wrong it sort of sounds like the women are helping you design what they need so it's not like hey we need this but we need a b and c and you guys are saying okay and more and more people are saying that's like all right we need to do this a b and c whatever it might be so it seems as if what do they call it a grassroots effort yes and again what we've done is we've rewritten parts of our program and whatnot um and we've tested it with the men and it seems to be really working very well so we know that the model that we've created is going to be successful moving forward and we keep tweaking it too like one of the things we learned we needed to do was have a an actual follow-up aftercare program right and what we're doing with the men is as they graduate and go back out and get back acclimated in the world as we're bringing them back in to share what they did and to act as a cheerleader to the people that are just coming in scratching their head saying do i trust this and realize hey this really does work if you put in the effort fantastic kevin and sabra thank you so very much for coming in having and sharing the discussion of all the great work you're doing that's a springfield rescue mission it's springfield rescue mission.org if anybody wants to help so uh kudos to you you're doing great work here in our community so thank you very much for sharing all thanks for having us patrick absolutely stop by for a tour anytime excellent this is 22 news in focus with patrick berry