PPLS May 2015 - CHURCH AND STATE: OKLAHOMA'S FAITH BASED PARTNERSHIP	

Rachel: Ben Nockels is the founder and visionary leader of the 111 Project which had been a wildly successful partnership between DHS and the faith community to recruit foster families for children in child welfare custody. Prior to founding the 111 Project, Ben was a pastor at Skyline Church and the executive director of Oklahoma City's Cornerstone Assistance network. Personally, I've known Ben for years and I've always been impressed by his desire to bring people together, his ability to see the best in people, and his commitment to partner to bring about good in our community. Through large events, like Cue Commons, are city wide discussions on race and faith. Through facilitating discussions like we'll have today or just chats over a cup of coffee. Lots of coffee. Ben uses his relational network to convene groups of people to create space for and elevate the conversation on how we, as a community, can work together and advance the common good. Please join me in welcoming Ben Nockels.

Ben: Good afternoon. My admission on the front end, as Rachel has already indicated, that I would much prefer you and I were a few blocks from here at Tenth and Broadway. Sitting across from one another in a much smaller table and a little bit more quaint venue. Able to exchange stories back and forth, but this is the hand we've been dealt today. We're going to play it to the very best of our ability.

A couple of comments, just to frame the day and the discussion that we'll ensue between and among these five that you see here before you. I remember, as I was thinking about today, I was remembering a time when I was a twenty-three year old young man. Relatively fresh out of school, newly married, I think baby number one of three was on the way. Working for a small oil and gas company. Attempting to flush out what I felt called to be and do in life. As most young men and women do. I think I had a general sense of what that calling was about but I wasn't actively participating in it, if you will.

I remember I read a book by a gentleman by the name of Tim Sanders. Tim Sanders was an early Yahoo executive and he wrote a book called "Love is the Killer App". The subtitle was "How to Influence Friends and Win Business". A little play on Stephen Covey. I remember in that book he put forth this very simple, yet for me, very powerful idea when he said that "each and every one of us have three things to offer the world." He said that "we have our knowledge, our network, and our compassion." For some reason those three ideas and elements, they resonated with me at a very deep and fundamental level. I took them one at a time and I thought okay, if I have knowledge to give to the world, I want to give it. I want to be very diligent and intentional about accruing knowledge that I can then give and share with others as a potential value add. At that point as a young man I became a veracious reader. I very intentionally kept my ear to the ground to be aware of what was happening in the life of our community, our city, social issues, this and that. 

The second thing he talked about, if we not only have our knowledge to give, we also have our network. Again, as a twenty-three year old young man I made a very conscious decision and consorted effort to both build relational equity, to accrue it. I think it is something that can be accrued. To accrue relational equity and to build a relational network. For me, I believe that the world becomes a better place along relational lines. I attempted to begin to not only accrue knowledge, but also to accrue relational equity and build a relational network.

Then lastly, he talked about that we all have compassion to give to the world. To me, compassion is not about human sympathy. Compassion is not something that we manufacture or conjure up. It's really not in us to do that. That's really not the work of our hands is to manufacture compassion. Compassion, Dr. Brene Brown, she talks about this in her book "Daring Greatly". She says that "compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded." She says, "Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It is a relationship among equals, namely the wounded." Right? This word compassion, it's not about human sympathy, it's not about me from a place of, or you for that matter, from a place of privilege or power reaching down to lend a helping hand to somebody who is potentially disadvantaged and powerless. Compassion really is about me being acutely aware of my own pain and my own wounded-ness and in light of that being able to enter into the pain and the wounded-ness of others and remain there a while. This word compassion, it really means that in it's root word form, it means to suffer with. 

Each and every one of us in this room today, we have three things to offer the world. We have our knowledge and yours is unique. You have a network, a relational network that's yours and only yours and it can be leveraged for good and greater good. Each and every one of us have compassion to offer the world. The ability, the desire, the willingness to actually suffer with people for the long haul. If I had to describe who I am and what I do and then we'll get to these men and women. What we hope to accomplish today is to continue to build a relational network that helps make Oklahoma City and the entire state of Oklahoma a better, more equitable, and just place to live for all people. 

With that, I'm actually going to let these men and women introduce themselves through the first question that I have for them. We don't have to go in any particular order. We're not going to do this down the row and back. We're going to give these men and women the freedom to jump in, answer the question that really resonates with them. If they feel like they have something unique to contribute to the dialogue, they have been given the freedom to do so. When we talked about this lecture series date and the subject of church and state, partnerships, public private partnerships, however you would think about it. We thought well somebody could stand up on this platform and talk about partnerships. Or, we could attempt to very naturally put partnership on display for and with you in real time. We may be a little bit informal today, that's by design, so I hope that your able to enter into the conversation with us as a result of that.

This first question, I'd love for each of you to take a crack at it, in one form or fashion. As you do, be sure to make sure you introduce yourself to people here in the room. A little qualifier, most often times, when we meet somebody, within about thirty seconds the conversation turns to this, in my estimation, rather pitiful question of what do you do. As if we're the sum of what we do from nine to five, Monday through Friday. Doesn't even come close to encompassing all of our lives. The question is not what do you do, today. We'll get to that in one form or another. When you strip away who you are professionally and vocationally, who are you? Either as a man, a woman, a son, a daughter, a husband, a wife, a father, a mother. Who are you as it relates to your relationships with others?

Wayland Cubit:Ladies first.

Ben:Ever the gentlemen Wayland Cubit.

Deb Shropshire:That's right. Well, I'll go first. It's better to be first because there's not anybody ahead of you so you can say whatever you want to and then they have to clean up the mess. My name is Deb Shropshire and I grew up in Western Oklahoma in a little bitty town. My dad was a pastor, my mom was a teacher. I grew up understanding that there were people who didn't have as much as we did. We served people and honestly there were times as the pastor of a small church where other people came and served our family. I grew up with that kind of this is how you do life. 

When I was a young adult I ran into kids in the foster care system. The system that's around them and all of the mess of all of that. I mean that just from the standpoint of it's really difficult to try to figure out what the right thing is to do sometimes. I ran into families who took extra kids in their house. I would never do that. I shouldn't say that. I want to send my kids somewhere else on the weekends. On Friday, I'm like, where are you guys going this weekend, instead of here let me have some more. I'm in deep admiration of people who want to take extra kids home.

At the same time I ran into families who were struggling and their kids weren't safe in their homes and I loved those people. Although I didn't have the language of foster care and child welfare when I was growing up, I recognized this is what we were doing back then is helping people and they were helping us. In terms of who I am is, I like to serve people and there's times where I need that from other people and I have seen in the lives of folks, from people who can't take care of their kids today and people who can, a lot of commonality between us all. That's where I spend a lot of my time and energy.

Ben:Thank you Deb.

Kim Bandy:I'm Kim Bandy. I am a wife and a mother of two kids. I'm with Deb on this that it was a little bit of a shocker for me to have children because I'm terrified of them. I'm still learning to not be scared of my own, but they are all safe. They're both safe.

I would say my general makeup, I guess, is that I really like to learn from people that have a different experience than me. I feel like I get to know a lot about the story of life and about people's experiences. It teaches me a lot about truth, and God, and what's going on in the Kingdom of God, so I like to be a learner. In particular, in my life context, my husband and I live in a community that is full of people of different ethnicities, that Julie will talk about probably a little later, international refugees. The goal is just for us to learn about life from our friends. That's probably the most central to our family, is just to say what does it look like to be a good neighbor with people who've had drastically different experiences and let them teach us and let us be, as Ben would say, the wounded with them. 

Julie Lewis:I'm Julie Lewis. You go back on my background a little bit, I grew up in Michigan, go Blue. I was raised by a single mom for most of my life. I had a lot of different experiences. As I grew up, education was really key for me. I was a homeless teen and finished high school and went on to college and began to learn more and want to do more for kids in those similar circumstances. I spent a lot of work doing residential treatment with children that were in facilities. Then I went over to the Dominican Republic and changed things up a little bit, and worked in a bilingual school. Came back and entered into the world of refugee resettlement. This is back in Michigan. I was a refugee foster care case manager. Those, Ben had made the comment earlier, about wow, those two are very different and they are blended together. I was in essence, as some of you may be, had a case load of children that were unaccompanied minors from different parts of the world. I had the opportunity to work with them as a case manager, but to work with the families as well. Just really developed love and passion for that field.

Fast forward three or four years, I came to Oklahoma in 2009 and started with Catholic Charities in 2010 in the refugee resettlement department. A year later, I became the director of the program. One of my first contacts with the Sparrow Project was with Kim's husband, Brad. I was taking a tour of where some of our refugees lived and we got to talking about our backgrounds and I had mentioned my pastor from Michigan and right there that faith connected us and that was the birth of the relationship. Not only professionally with Sparrow, but with Kim and Brad as well and everyone at Sparrow.

Ben:That's great. Thank you Julie. All right gentlemen. We were going to beauty before age, right? Is that what we just did?

Wayland Cubit:I'm Wayland Cubit, no, no, no, see he asked me to separate what I do to it and I'm the only one to have a title in front of my name. The reality is no one's going to let me separate the fact that I'm a police officer. Pastor's don't get to separate either, everybody else does. No matter what I say, everybody, I walk in the room, they know I'm a police officer. That's what they give me. I want to tell them first that that's what I do, that's not who I am. 

It was very much who I was for a very, I've been a police officer for nineteen years, it very much who I was and I think a lot of police officers and maybe a lot of other professions identify themselves by the work that they do. I was afraid that if you take that away, what kind of man would I be? I'm still going to be a son, I'm still going to be a father, I'm still going to be a dad, a foster parent for seven children now. Let me qualify that. It is not by personal choice that I want to do it. To be honest, I have four kids of my own and I wanted to just do that. Now, I'm a black daddy and I stay at home. Right? Okay. That's all right. Anyway, I remember doing the police work, trying to figure out what I wanted out of my career and being overwhelmed by what, I can say in this audience, was truly the spirit of God. Sitting there in my uniform crying to death to just me and that spirit. I said that I would serve You and do whatever You want me to do. Here comes seven kids that are not mine. I said no after the sixth and we are about to adopt our seventh one here in the next month, so it's all good. That's who I am. I am a servant. Whatever doesn't feel right by me, if it doesn't look right, doesn't feel right, and disturbs me that much, I feel like it's my job to dive in and be God's hand and my feet. That usually just puts me in front of youth, that aggravate me so much sometimes, but that's where it puts me at.

Ben:Mr. Dewey.

Dewey:Remind me not to go last. Probably won't get any hand claps but that's okay. It's a terrifying question. I don't know if it is for ladies, I'm not one. For a guy to take away what you do and then what do you have left, that's somewhat terrifying. That's why I stalled as long as possible.

I feel like I'm one of the luckier guys on the planet. I don't know why I've gotten to live such a great life, have tremendous friends, had the best dad in the world for nineteen years and then he passed. I grew up in the leave it to beaver house and was sheltered and blessed. My heart hurts for those that don't get to have the same experience that I did. I would say that's basically it. The rest of my life since my dad passed at nineteen is how can we help as many people have as good of experience as I did growing up.

Ben:Thanks Dew. The next question comes in three parts and I won't ask each of you to answer each of the parts. You don't all have to answer even, for that matter. As I'm a relatively young man, I recognize that. Most of you in the room have a greater, longer body of work than I do. Over the last several years of attempting to lean into some of the most pressing social issues in our city, in our state. I always find myself trying to make sense of my experience, right? It's what we do. To provide some kind of a gross analysis of what's happening and also why is this happening, right?

I'm a rather simple person so I typically break it down in it's most simple form. When I think about the pressing social issues facing our city and our state and you in your mind today can fill in the blank. The one that you are most actively participating in, think of that one. When I think about, not only, how did we arrive at this place but also what is the way forward. Both the description and the prescription are the same, in my mind. We've arrived at this place because I think that we have failed to be human with one another. We have forsaken our citizenship and we have forgotten to love our neighbor as our self. The first question, and whoever wants to tackle this one can, and we'll just have one of you do it, is this: What does it mean to be fully human and be human with one another? Put a slightly different way, how do we help people flourish as human beings?

Julie Lewis:I'm going to try and tackle that one. I think the most important thing to that is stripping away the titles and meeting everyone where they're at despite culture, despite socioeconomic status. Where are you at and how can I help you meet your needs? I think that's key to what we do and what I do as a Christian. As a provider is where can I help you and I'm going to meet you where you're at and provide you with my knowledge and my compassion and my network in order for you to succeed.

Ben:Thank you. The second part of that question, the statement first, is we've not only failed to be human with one another, but we have forsaken our citizenship. The question to one of you, whoever would like to take it, what does it look like to actively participate in the life of our community as true and contributing citizens?

Wayland Cubit:Who's best with that?

Ben:It's on you guys.

Wayland Cubit:I'm not sure. Say it one more time.

Ben:What does it look like for us to contribute as a true and contributing citizens in the life of our community?

Wayland Cubit:For me, the first thing that comes to mind is that I do have a responsibility to my family, right? Everybody has that responsibility to their family first, but we consistently see families around us failing. Who's responsibility is it to step in when families are failing? You cannot just be focused on your family. It doesn't work. It doesn't work because the next door neighbor and the neighbor across the street are having struggles too. When families fail to be engaged, the community has to pick up for those failures. I have to be sensitive and engaged and I have to toss myself into the environment where suffering is happening. 

Ben:Mm-hmm (affirmative). That's right.

Wayland Cubit:Yes I have to suffer with, yes I have to sacrifice with, and that's that means I have to expose my family, who wouldn't otherwise suffer those kind of ways into that environment, with me. To answer that question, I guess, I have to be fully engaged and fully engaged means my entire family has to be a part of the suffering that I choose to fix. 

Ben:Thank you Wayland. If we have failed to be human with one another, and we have forsaken our citizenship, and we've also forgotten to love our neighbor as our self, the question that is being begged is: Who is our neighbor? 

Kim Bandy:I was waiting for this question. That's why I was... I think that this is something that personally and then organizationally we've been just spent a lot of time talking about. Just on the super quick paraphrasing on the parable related to love your neighbors yourself. I think the question that is posed to Jesus, if I can get this over here, is who is my neighbor? It's kind of [inaudible 00:24:40] life. We've got some answers and then it's love your neighbors yourself and the question is, who is your neighbor?

Which I think we can do in several ways as people we can try to apply it. It's either asking who is my neighbor in terms of exclusivity like so tell me who is my neighbor. Because I can only care about so many people so it's not them or it's not them. Or it can be this kind of cause driven thing that we tend to do so it's like who's my neighbor? Oh, my neighbor's this cause now. Maybe it's anti-trafficking so it's trafficking survivors. Or my neighbor is, maybe it's what's happening in Sudan right now. All those things are good, but it's kind of like toggling among causes and people and it makes them projects. 

I think the answer to that, Jesus' answer to that is what I need to hear because it's the answer to the question, who's my neighbor, is this long elaborate story about who is a good neighbor. Jesus is such a good story teller that we're like, "Yes, that's good." But I think if I was there I maybe would have been like, "Well, You didn't answer my question. I didn't ask You how can I be a good neighbor. I asked who is my neighbor." Really, honestly, I'm just trying to process through in our life as a family and as friends in this community this spare table over here that does this lives this out with us, we're trying to say if you are a good neighbor, everyone is your neighbor so the question gets less confusing. It's how do I become a good neighbor which is entering into community with people, not having to be a fixer, but being real and present with people. If you are a good neighbor then everyone is your neighbor.

Ben:Thank you, Kim. There's a great organization called Christian Community Development Association and they've been doing great community development work for many, many years. They attempt to answer the question, what does it look like to love our neighbor as we love ourselves? They essentially say it like this, "To love your neighbor as you love yourself is desire for others the very same thing that you desire for yourself." I desire quality education for my three daughters, right? It's not enough for my three daughters to have quality education which they fortunately have, right? It's not enough to stop there, like Wayland said. It's not just about me and mine. I not only have to love my neighbor as myself, authentically desire to use the example quality education for others in the same way that I desire it for my children. I would take it a step further and say that we not only have to desire for others what we desire for oneself, but that we have to demand it as well, right? That's that element of justice that kicks in, to love a neighbor as self. Is we don't just get to talk about, oh I wish that predominately poor, disadvantaged, minority communities had better education. I think we have to not only desire it for them, but then we have to go demand it on their behalf.

We've covered the philosophical and the existential, yes? Surprise, surprise. We're going to attempt to put our feet back on the ground and cover some more concrete and practical things. Before you have real partnerships that are being represented so the question to you then is how did the partnership, and I'd like to start with Wayland and Dewey, how did the partnership that you're here representing today, how did it come in to being? As we've already talked about today, think about and think along relational lines. This is a question that's designed really to illicit a story more than anything. How did the partnership that you're here highlighting today, how did that come into being?

Wayland Cubit:Go ahead.

Dewey:For real? 

Wayland Cubit:Yeah.

Dewey:Ben and I happened to serve on a little church staff together since we didn't have any people come into the church we just say around and talked about church an awful lot. That was really fun. That's only partly true. We did enjoy talking about how we could serve the least of these. We spend an awful lot of time, I would say, pontificating about how we could, if there was no box, how might we be able to serve or what avenues might be able to be new and creative that help those that were less fortunate than the leave it to beaver crew. Then I got to meet people who were actually doing it.

To be real honest, Wayland was one of the first people that really had boots on the ground. Again, this is Ben and I's story. There was a part of Oklahoma City through the health department that was identified as it was color coded and this one particular area which happened to be on happened to be on the northeast side of Oklahoma City was dark blue. That meant they had the highest dropout rates, highest crime rates, highest amount of diabetes, lowest number of cars per capita, highest number of pregnancies under 20 and unmarried. Everything you want to be good at, they weren't quite so good. Everything that you want to have low numbers they have really high. We felt drawn and called to that part of town, but didn't know a lot of people who were doing things on that part of town. Wayland was, had a really new creative idea. I'd love for him to tell you about. You've probably heard of the FACT program, but it was and is awesome.

Wayland Cubit:About that time while they were doing, what was that word?

Dewey:Pontificating?

Wayland Cubit:Pontificating. This is on video, I want to go back and-

Ben:I call it the gift of [gab 00:31:04], Dew calls it pontificating.

Wayland Cubit:While they're doing that, I was reassigned from the undercover work that I was doing in Oklahoma City to create a program to engage both youth and volunteers in our city in an effort to combat gang initiation. A gang prevention program. I was given the freedom to run around the city, figure out what the resources are, figure out what it is I actually wanted to do. I traveled to Boston, Chicago, and other places to see what they were doing. I came up with this, I thought, a beautiful idea of taking plainclothes police officers to go visit those youth that have been referred to us that have not gotten in trouble yet, but everybody around them going that way. The system is kind of set up, once you get in trouble we'll put you in probation and then all these programs and all that kind of stuff and you'll have to do it. I thought well why don't we just make relationships with them and have them want to do it and link them up.

The best thing to do is that a police officer in plain clothes could go with a pastor and we could knock on their doors and the police officer could say, "Hey we heard about this stuff that you're doing. I know you're not going to hang out with a cop so you better hang out with a pastor and get down with what they're going to do because the next time you see me it may not be so friendly." That's kind of the idea. It works, but what happens is that we've started caring about these kids and developed relationships with these kids and we didn't want to scare them. We wanted to be their friends letting them know that I'm not going to drop what I do and ignore the behavior that might get you in trouble. We're going to hold you accountable, but we're going to give you an opportunity to develop friendships and stuff like that. When I came back and got this idea, I had this dream that we're going to come back and we're going to take over the city; 640 square miles of it. I think Frank, I was telling Frank about this idea and nobody could stop me. I mean, I was going to get it done. I was hearing nothing negative about what I wanted to get done. He said you got to tell this to some friends of mine, which was Greg and Trent. We go up to the top floor of this building over here downtown, which I want no part of. I want to be in the hood. This [inaudible 00:33:34] I'll never forget it. That map he's talking about is behind us and I am talking about, we're going to change, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. They stand up and look at these colors on this map and said you're all over the place. They didn't say it like this, but this is how I felt it. "You are just all over the place and if you can take these blue colors and change them to these green colors"...

They saw that. Their passion is equally is eager to get involved in that kind of stuff. We worked together and in the meantime, we began to like each other. We hung out with each other and joked with each other and do this. What happens is, I begin to care about what he cares about and he begins to care about what I care about and we use our resources to help each other get those things we care about accomplished.

That's kind of how it works. The problem is, he's a pastor. That's good for me, but it's not necessarily good for all the kids that I serve because they have different beliefs and all that kind of stuff, so the partnership in and on itself is supposed to be rough. The wonderful thing about it is he just wanted to serve and let God do as he does through the service. He wasn't coming in and having his people or people preach or try to transform these kids. They did exactly what you're talking about is meet them where they were at and if they happen to gravitate to our belief system, great, but as long as we give them the opportunity to see and get out of life what we got out of life, then that's good too.

Ben:Yes. Before I pose the same question to the rest of the panel, Wayland, in one or two words, what would you say the FACT program needs most at this current time to continue to be successful and fruitful in engaging these young men and women?

Wayland Cubit:Three, can I give you three?

Ben:You can give me three. [inaudible 00:35:39]

Wayland Cubit:I'll give you three. We definitely need to continue to expand our network of relationship meaning so that we have that person to call when we find a family in need. It's one thing to have the resource book, but it's another thing to know the person that answered the phone. I want to know the person and I want my officers that work with to know the person that answered the phone so the red tape becomes a little less daunting to the people we serve. Then, the obvious; people. Bodies to help do things with the kids; volunteers. Then money, money, money. Right? All the money that we have goes to [inaudible 00:36:25]. The city and our police department pays for our salaries, but we have four officers that are out trying to engage the community and engage kids. To do things with those kids, we want make the gang member and the drug dealers look weak so we got to look like we have deep pockets so when they come to us with a need, we can't say hold on let me see how much money we got. We got to take care of it because somebody in the community is going to take care of it and we don't want them to have that influence.

Ben:Yes, good thank you. Dr. Deb, you're here in an interesting spot because you can speak to both sides of a partnership that has existed over the last several years and a partnership that we hope is continually enhance and strengthened. As it relates to why you're here today, speak to the partnership that you'd like to highlight as it relates to kids and families.

Deb Shropshire:I get to be a split personality a little bit today. For me, personally, in working... I found myself working in and thinking about kids in foster care and all of the different pieces of the system that fit with that. But at some point and when I went to medicine which is where I spend my day job, I guess, sort of. I was interested in emergency medicine from the time I was a little kid so I wanted you to have a broken leg with the bone sticking out before I was going to... We didn't go to the doctor when we were kids unless you had to have stitches. I thought that was the kind of people I would serve. 

Then I started serving kids in foster care and realized this is just a different kind of broken. At some point, you get sick of that. You kind of say what if we can figure out how to keep kids from ever getting to this place. I actually went from being the emergency minded person to more of a prevention minded person. At the same time, I started hanging out with other people who were saying the same thing and became part of a group called Count Me In For Kids about two and a half, three years ago. That was a collaborative in Oklahoma City community collaborative of people saying how can we help kids and families in our community? They were trying to figure out what that looked like too. Did we help foster kids? We help families before the kids get in the foster system? Or what does that look like? At the same time, organizationally, the department of human services is saying the same thing. Like wouldn't it be great if we could figure out how to not have so many kids in foster care. The way you do that is to figure out with the community how do you help families before they ever hit the door. Because that would be really ideal if we could figure out how to help somebody over here before the crisis is such that a child is no longer safe.

I connected with this group Count Me In For Kids around the same time director Lake, our current director of department of human services, came to his position here. He showed up at one of the Count Me In For Kids meetings and said hey, we could use some help from the community over in the space right before people hit the door to child welfare. There's this program, Safe Families, I've heard about it. You guys should check it out. We did and what Safe Families was an effort in Chicago that's now exist in a number in states. To try to serve families who have children and the families in a crisis. Maybe they've lost their housing temporarily, maybe they're going through financial crisis, maybe it's someone who's going through a health challenge, maybe it's a single mom who's got drug abuse issues and she could go get the counseling she needs or the treatment she needs if she just had something safe to do with her children.

Many families that are in that situation don't necessarily have extended family or friend networks who are safe to leave their children with. I have family and friends. If something happened in my house today and I had to go to the hospital or I had to go deal with a crisis, I could call a lot of different folks and send my kids over there and they'd be fine, but there's an awful lot of folks that don't.

I met a young lady one time, I'll never forget. She was young 20's, early 20's, and had a little boy who was two. He was ornery. He was two. He was being ornery and I could tell she was trying to figure out how to parent him and I asked her... I knew that she lived with her elderly grandparents who weren't really very supportive of her and just tolerated her. I asked her, I said, "Do you have friends your own age who have kids or maybe even just a little bit older than you who have kids that you can learn how to deal with a toddler." She said, "Oh, no I don't have any friends my own age." I said, "Why not?" She said, "Because the people my own age all want something from me so I don't make friends with people my own age." It gave me some perspective on the fact that not everybody has what I have in just in terms of relationships.

The program Safe Families, the program is really a movement about how do you engage a community around in a sense serving as extended family members of people who need it. The focus is on how do we, at the same time, keep children safe so that the adults in the family can get to a stable place and then the children can be there safe without ever having to engage the child welfare system.

I wound up starting in that effort on the private side as a partner, as a leader in the organization of Count Me In For Kids. Then somewhere during the middle of the last couple of years, actually now, a deputy director for child welfare. We're, on the state, saying how do we partner with a community organization to provide support for those families that are bumping into us, but we sure really would like to figure out how to do this outside of the child welfare system. 

That's been, for me personally, the journey. I think we're seeing that in terms of the way our community's responding as well as in terms of the way the direction our department's going. We don't want to have all these kids in custody. There's a lot of news and press or whatever about the large number of kids in foster care. There is not one person at that office that wants extra kids in foster care. They don't. The question is, how do you make sure that children are safe in our community. The answer is that for some families, that safety is going to have to happen through community support. It's going to have to happen. We don't have enough of that here.

As a result, families struggle and struggle until things are bad enough. It's kind of like the police. The police don't get involved until there's a crime committed. I'd love to hear what you all are doing because I think we have to do more of that. Figuring out how to make friends before there's a crisis or before there's someone who's done something to a child that's not okay. We've got to hold folks accountable, but at the same time how can we be friends on the front end and hopefully provide those kinds of supports to families.

Ben:Thank you Deb. Quick comment on the safe families initiative and why, I for one, am such a fan of it. Obviously the work that the department's putting in to overhaul and reform and improve child welfare. It's commendable and it is to be applauded certainly, but as I think about child welfare and foster care in particular... That's the space where I partner most of the time in terms of this faith, this church state, public, private, space, and crossovers is in child welfare and foster care. I think about no matter how well we do foster care to your point Deb, no matter how well or how much we improve a child welfare system, at the end of the day it is punitive in nature, right? In my mind, when something is punitive in nature, what you're doing is you're limiting the redemptive potential that could and should exist. At the end of the day, you've done something or not done something that has warranted removal of your children. I mean, talk about an uphill battle from that point, right? Imagine, like you said, if there's the relational network in tact, those safety nets that exist, that long before crisis ever occurs, a mom, a dad, a couple, a family, a guardian, could voluntarily opt in to a community and participate as a full and functioning member within that community that breathes blessing for their children.

To Julie and Kim, just briefly highlight the partnership that you're here representing today if you would.

Kim Bandy:We're both connected to the International Refugee community of Oklahoma City. Just real quickly, that is families that have been resettled here from wartorn countries by the United Nations through a long process. We have Burmese friends, and Iraqi friends, and Congolese friends, and several other communities. Catholic Charities, we're a little unique in that both of us are non-profits, but Catholic Charities is administrating the federal grant to case manage families arriving here. We are a faith-based non-profit that just says that we think loving your neighbor as yourself and wanting for your neighbor what you want for yourself isn't just like food, clothing, shelter, and good education. It's like purpose, and meaning, and friends, and community, and all those things. How do we ask the church of the city to do that well.  Our partnership is really just based on the fact that everyone in both places wants to see the refugee community and not just get here safely, but to thrive here in this community.

Ben:That's right. Go ahead Julie. Will you add to that please?

Julie Lewis:Yes, just say we're lucky in terms of Catholic Charities being a faith based organization. We do have the requirements of the federal grants that are administered by a national resettlement agency in D.C. as well as OK DHS for a couple of our grants. That red tape that we talk about, we still have to deal with that. Our way of making sure that all the needs are met when we can't meet all the needs because of whatever issue, whether it's funding or time or resources, that I can call Kim on her cell phone and tell her this is a need that I have. Trust is so much established that I know that that client or that need is going to be taken care of. That's a priceless resource.

Ben:Real quickly, what's the most pressing issue and need associated or present in the international refugee community right here in our own midst?

Julie Lewis:I think maybe we both agree that just time in terms of giving of time. Whether it's being a community, whether it's volunteering to set up apartments, whether it's spending time in prayer. 

Ben:Thank you for that. I hope you've seen a reoccurring theme. It surfaces rather naturally, aside of relationship. Most of us in the room run programs, administer programs of some kind. Your daily reality, you probably experience both the successes and failures of said program. The inherent limitations of programming. I'll put it real informal and blunt. Programs don't solve squat. They just don't. People within programs and services, that's where the real work gets done, right?

Wayland Cubit: Ben, can I tell a story about relationships?

Ben:You can.

Wayland Cubit:I'm thinking about when she said red tape and stuff. I had a kid that we were mentoring in our program that had missed probably two years of school when we found him, when he was referred to us. We got him back in school. The officers did all of the leg work to get this kid back in school. Driving the paperwork to mom and doing all that work so she don't have to do anything, but she was also working like Taco Bell or something like that. It was rough for her. She wanted her kids to go to school, but the reason he wasn't going to school because he stayed home to babysit the other ones while she worked. It wasn't like he just wasn't going to school. He jumped at the opportunity to go to school. While he was in school and doing good and coming to our program, his lights and things got cut off at his house. Mom was having a problem doing that. He was going to quit school to get a job, to help with the bills. We said no, no, no, no, no. Don't do that. We'll get the lights cut on. I called a church near where he lived, said this is Sergeant Cubit at the time, from the Oklahoma City police department. We have this program, [yada yada yada 00:49:48]. We have this family, it's about 500 bucks if we could get that going at least for a month. I don't know what's going, but we need to keep this kid is school [da da da 00:49:56]. The answer was, "Who is this family? What is it you do? They're not a member of our church? We have a lot of requests like that that comes in." I go, okay thank you, boom. I call [Greg's 00:50:09] church. I need $500 to get the lights on. Boom, it gets taken care of. It's not that I don't think that that church would not have done it. They didn't know me. They have to question what I would do with that money. There was no question what I was going to do with that money, not because of who the kid was. They didn't care. It was because I requested it and he trusts me. The value of that is just huge. The officers that apply, I got an opening in my unit right now, I want them to be able to say your job is to get to know the people in this community. I want you to know the people that runs the programs because that $500, they needed that on today! We can fill out the paperwork later, you need to know who that person is or somebody you can call to get what you need. It's not always money. It's not always money. To have the relationships so that when we have a need, you know who to call.

Ben:I hate that we're out of time, but we are. I can pick the brains of these five individuals who I consider friends. I think about it a lot. I'm very, very fortunate. My heroes are my friends and my friends are my heroes. That's a pretty blessed life to live. Thank you Wayland and Dew and Deb and Kim and Julie for your contribution here today. One word of challenge and maybe encouragement and then I'll turn it back over to Connie and she'll kick you out of here. Is when I first entered into a partnership with the Department of Human Services, my experience was that they were not used to help. They'd been operating at such a relational efficiency, if you will, that they weren't used to help and didn't know what to do with help and in some respects were actually suspect of said help, right? Fundamental to meaningful partnerships is a willingness to show up, to posture yourself very humbly, and repeat that over and over and over again. Show up, posture yourself real humbly, seek to serve as opposed to be served.

It's funny. I have a friend in New York City. He's a pastor and he said this. He said, "Never once has a non-profit called me and asked what I need." They always call, they look at the church, the look at the organization or the governor or fill in the blank. You have one entity looking at another entity. Saying, well I'm at a resource poor environment be it relational, financial, influence, fill in the blank. I'm operating this resource poor environment. You clearly are in this very resource rich environment, so I'm going to strike up a relationship with you for the sake of extracting value out of your organization, out of your entity, out of your community of faith, and into mine. I was just thinking, he's pastored in a city for a decade now and never once has he been approached by a non-profit and said, how can we help you? What might you need? At the core of meaningful partnerships is relationship and I hope that you've seen that today. I know it sounds like so keep it simple stupid you're probably prone to dismiss it, but it's actually quite revolutionary. It's just one of those deals. At the core of healthy, meaningful, fruitful partnership is relationship and at the core of healthy, fruitful, productive relationship, is mutuality. Where you don't have a giver and a receiver. It's not about taking from one and giving to the other. It has to be mutual in nature. Otherwise it's just this transaction that's meaningless. If there's mutuality where as you can see in the nature of these relationships, there's this free flowing, I won't even call it give and take, it's give and receive. Give and receive, give and receive. One partner isn't any more important than the other partner. There's mutuality. 

Last thing I just want to remind you where we started. Each one of you today have three things to offer the world. You've got knowledge, give it away. Accrue it and give it away. Amass it. You got knowledge. You've got a network. You have relationships, you have families, you have friends, you have neighbors. Hate to use this word, but leverage your relational network on behalf on those who don't have one. It's been talked about from this very stage before. That typically we define poverty in material terms, but fundamentally, poverty is relational in nature. You've got knowledge, you've got network, and you've got compassion to offer the world. I would just encourage you suffer well. Suffer well and suffer with. Okay, Connie.

Connie:Thank you guys so much. That was a wonderful panel and I really appreciate Ben and Rachel for putting the panel together and the lecture today and all of you for coming. It's been a great Spring series. Lots of very provocative. This is a very different way of presenting this information and I really enjoyed it. Again, join me in thanking these guys one more time.