VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION

Speaker 1:
I feel like it’s half circumstance half choice, and you still have the ability to go out and go to school and go to work if that’s what you really want to do to pull yourself out of poverty. But as far as being born into it, that’s kind of out of our hands.

Speaker 2:
In my opinion, I don’t think it’s usually a choice, but it definitely can be.

Speaker 3:
I think it’s all about your will to work, your determination sometimes.

Speaker 4:
Some people choose to stay in that life form and some people choose to seek help and seek the steps to getting out of it.

Speaker 1:
I think we need a lot more people to lift people up and to walk with them through their situations, to get them out of poverty.

Andrew Green:
What do you guys hear from people about why they don’t engage, or what do you think?

Phil Edward:
I think it’s fear. It’s fear of all of the presuppositions and the assumptions that people make and saying that, well, I’ve been burned by the poor. You experienced that Tim in your community, and they don’t believe that people can change. And that hinders. I think another hindrance would be that they don’t see instant improvement. So if you are walking with someone that’s poor and you’re like, okay, I’ve done this for you. I’ve done all these things that really should have connected with you. And I don’t see any changes, therefore I’m wasting my time, and that’s the problem wasting your time. God calls us to invest in people’s lives. And it’s by His grace and by His spirit that we’re able to stay with them. And it’s the spirit of God that changes hearts, not man. And so we have to believe that’s all lots of prayer. We have to do a lot of praying into the process and we have to be patient, but I think it’s fear. And I think it’s not seeing enough results quick and in a timely fashion.

Tim Streett:
And I think the next piece is that many times people who want to serve, they have a lot of misperceptions. So I think ministries like Shepherd are beginning to figure out that it’s the volunteers that are going to do the real work. And so our ministry has to be about pouring our resources into the volunteers to make them effective.

Phil Edward:
That’s important.

Tim Streett:
And in education and training, and I remember years ago when we implemented a [inaudible 00:02:37] sports, we had an eight hour orientation process for volunteers. And people said we were crazy. That’s too long. People won’t commit to that timeframe. And we also made them pay for their own background checks and things like that. And people said, “Well, they’re not going to do that.” And this was almost 20 years ago.

Tim Streett:
And the reality is we probably saw fewer volunteers go through the orientation than we would have if it had been an hour, but our retention was far, far better. The commitment of the volunteers was, we saw a dramatic improvement of that because they didn’t come in naive. They came in knowing what to expect. And they knew because they had been told this is going to take a really long time. And if you’re going to commit to mentor a child, you have to understand that a mentoring relationship, studies show that if you’re not going to mentor a child for 18 months, you shouldn’t start at all. Because if it’s less than that period of time and you stop, it actually, in the long run, does more damage to the child because it, again, enforces the belief that they can’t trust anybody and they’re going to be abandoned and no one will stick around.

Tim Streett:
So if you’re going to do this, please know, upfront that you’re going to hurt this child, if you quit. And you know, so don’t do it. But those who did it were committed. And I think we saw great improvement. And I think any ministry that, you know, we have to have volunteers. The reality, the economic world, the economic reality of the world we live in today is that there’s never going to be enough money to hire enough people to mentor every poor kid on the east side of Indianapolis. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t enough volunteers out there that could do it, but they need to be trained. So we need to pour our resources into them as well.

Andrew Green:
Yeah. I love that. Yeah, that’s good. I see… Back to a point you made a minute ago, that even the MBA student who might’ve, it would’ve been easy to think, nothing I’m doing is applicable to helping people in this context, but I’ve seen multiple businesses even really grab a hold of the idea of what can we offer, how can we serve right now? Rolls Royce has a group of staff that come over and teach aviation club at Shepherd and afterschool program. And so it might’ve been hard to think about, you know, I’m sure they didn’t, they don’t normally design afterschool clubs in their spare time. And so it would’ve been easy to say my work as a aviation engineer has no applicability to a kid in the inner city of Indianapolis, but they were able to kind of look past that and see, ask themselves even what do I have to give back?

Andrew Green:
How can I contribute and created this club. And there’s been other businesses that invest in a similar way, giving their time, creating relationships and offering a unique skill, which is an asset, it’s asset building for a kid to learn in this perspective, he’s not going to learn he, or she’s not going to learn that otherwise likely. And so they’re building rockets and shooting off rockets in the parking lot, and that wouldn’t have happened without some volunteers from Rolls Royce saying, I’ve got some time and I think I can share something that I’ve learned. And I just love those kind of opportunities, creative solutions, again, to sharing what a skill and an ability that someone has and sharing those with kids.

Tim Streett:
I mean, the old way of thinking would have said to that MBA student, “Well, you obviously have some talent in business. Why don’t you go out and get into the business world and make a lot of money, and then you can contribute to your money.” And we would say, “So, give us your treasure and let us do the work.” And now it is, come and use your talent.

Phil Edward:
Yeah.

Tim Streett:
And I think that’s making all the difference in the world.

Andrew Green:
Yeah.