SCRC takes action to close resource gaps

By DAVID GUNTER

Feature correspondent

SANDPOINT — What is the sound of compassion in action?

Last Thursday, it sounded much like a beehive, as some 75 voices buzzed in excitement about the prospect of making life better for local citizens. They were gathered at the Ponderay Events Center for a daylong brainstorming and planning session hosted, for the second year in a row, by the Sandpoint Community Resource Center.

At the 2016, symposium, the participants still were engaged in determining which organizations were fielding specific needs in the community and finalizing a database from those findings. This year, it was time to put that knowledge into gear.

“We’ve reached a point where we’ve identified where our community has gaps in services,” said Jack Dyck, SCRC board member and acting director who helped facilitate the group’s symposium.

“We’ve talked about it ad nauseum — now it’s time to do something.”

A quick scan of the conference room was all it took to realize that — if anyone in Bonner County was going to get anything done — most of the right people were already at the table.

The symposium included representatives from about 50 local organizations, including health care, veterans’ services, early childhood education, mental health, community service and local churches.

The gaps, as Dyck sees them, fall into a few, key areas. Housing for women and children tops his list, he explained, since men can find emergency shelter fairly readily through groups such as the Bonner Gospel Mission, but a mom with kids faces a steep, uphill climb to get her family into a safe and secure place when the chips are down.

Another missing piece falls under the transportation category, whether for a family member trying to get to work or a patient in need of a ride to the doctor or other medical treatment.

“And then there’s financial assistance — the need for emergency cash,” said Dyck. “This is the one that’s the most gut-wrenching for me.

“For instance,” he added, “if a person had $30 for gas, they could get to a job interview that might help their family turn the corner.”

According to the director, SCRC plans to turn to the faith-based community for assistance in those cases, depending on churches as the primary source of cash. In their own parishes and congregations, it’s something churches have been doing separately for years.

“We’re hoping to see our church community get together and organize their benevolence,” he said.

Rounding out the list of service gaps is a lack of mental health professionals in the immediate area, Dyck pointed out. While powerful strides have been made in community awareness through the efforts of groups such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness to form a coalition between health care and law enforcement, the needs for handling crises and assisting in suicide prevention still outstrip available resources.

Thursday’s session was designed to elicit answers to these hanging questions and implement a solution-oriented approach to filling the gaps.

“If we don’t do something,” Dyck said, looking around the packed room, “nothing’s going to happen.”

It was a little more than three years ago when founding volunteers Dave Pietz and Rich Crettol began to pull together the early version of the SCRC team, tasked with figuring out how many non-profits and service groups were active in the community and, from there, compiling a database of who did what. That mission fell to Dyck when he joined the organization about two years ago.

“Dave and Rich are the grandfathers of this program — this is their baby,” the acting director said, adding that the 2017 goal is to move beyond the codification of resources and begin to ramp up the SCRC website to handle a spike in user visits.

Year-over-year, the group has seen a more than 200-percent increase in the number of inquiries for services, most of the growth coming from online interaction.

“The number of phone calls we field has stabilized, but our website hits are way up,” said Dyck, admitting that the challenge now is to learn if those web visitors are managing to find their way through to actually linking up with the right services. “It’s a work in progress, but it’s a good problem for us to have. Before, we were just trying to let people know we existed.”

Becca Orchard, another SCRC board member who has been leading the group’s web testing efforts, now believes that the number of users accessing the “self help” option on the site could be as much as twice the 300 clients the organization currently sees face-to-face over the course of a year. One of her jobs has been to move from anecdotal evidence to actionable statistics, further improving the site along the way.

Behind the scenes, Orchard’s background in organizational development has manifested as a strategic plan aimed at taking the group to the next level. In the world of community service, such a planning process can fall by the wayside as volunteers hustle to keep up with demand for their time.

“Strategic planning is often undervalued when people are just trying to get the work done and help people,” Orchard said. “They have great heart and great vision, but limited tactics on how to get there.”

The SCRC mission — stated as “Bridging the gap between people in need and those who serve” — is heavily dependent on having a ready pool of volunteers to keep things moving forward. A cornerstone of the planning process has been for the organization to seek out some resources of its own to help pay for volunteer training and ensure that, even though they work for free, those individuals have the skills they need to get the job done.

A huge step in that direction has been the recent partnership with United Way and its web-based program, Volunteer United, which matches volunteers and organizations needing particular skills.

“We’re in the business of connecting people to services, so we thought, ‘Why can’t we do the same with volunteers?’” said Orchard. “It’s an evolution. We learned that it takes a village — and it takes volunteers.”

Along with that, the group also has learned that the very concept of helping others might be most effective when it entails handing over the keys and, after some initial guidance, having them take the driver’s seat.

“We’re here to help people help themselves — Number 1,” Orchard said. “Our job is to make the opportunity to change and improve their life accessible.

“We’re changing our mindset from ‘We are going to rescue people’ to ‘We are going to empower people,” she went on. “Together, we can have broad, dramatic systemic change.”

No matter if it’s the person searching for assistance on one side or the person guiding them in the right direction on the other, awareness in both camps will be the glue that holds things together, according to Orchard.

“One of our focuses now is, ‘How do we make all of this known to the people who need to know?’” she said. “It’s exciting to be part of an organization that’s actually doing something to make that happen.”

As he prepared to steer the symposium participants into another planning exercise, Dyck was hopeful that the daylong session would deliver action steps and answers for what comes next.

“We’ve reached a point where the question is ‘How do we grow from here? How do we help even more people?’” he said. “I can’t wait to see the results from this symposium.”

To learn more about Sandpoint Community Resource Center, find out how to volunteer or access community resources, visit online at: www.sandpointcommunityresource.com or call 208-920-1840