Welcome, everybody, to Midday Magazine for this April 9, 2025.
Have your host, James, with you, and we are joined right now by our great friends
from Encourage.
We have Kim Shields with us, donor services manager, over at Encourage.
Kim, good to see you.
Great to see you.
Thanks for being here, and thanks for bringing a friend as you always do.
A good friend of ours here at the station and the community, Mary Schultz is with us
from Focus.
Mary, always good to see you.
Great to be back.
Thanks.
Thanks for being here.
We appreciate the time.
Right out the gate, always like to send a big shoutout and appreciation to Encourage, investing
in our community, putting into our community as much as you guys do over there.
And a gigantic thank you to Mary and all the people involved at Focus.
We literally putting into our community and helping the betterment of our community
every day, everything you guys do.
To start off, before we dive into and put the spot on Mary and ask her all these hard
questions.
No.
Kim, we got some exciting news over at Encourage, we wanted to mention.
Absolutely.
We are so pleased to share that we have three new board members.
So Encourage's board has grown from four to seven.
As of yesterday, we had our first board meeting.
So our new board members, our Stephen Hittner, who was just, you know, on air.
That's awesome.
Ben Joestin and Sue Mitchell.
And then they join our current, well, they're all current board members now, but they
join Christopher Gash, who is our board president, Dale Bukowski, who is our treasurer, Donna Anderson
our secretary and Christy Eggy.
So we are just thrilled to have them join the Encourage family to see their commitment
and dedication to not only our organization, but our community as a whole is just incredible.
And we are so appreciate their service.
I know we have a lot to talk about today, but we're going to bring up board membership
a little bit later with Mary as well.
And I think it's no worthy for those that may not understand or know much about this
stuff and everything.
And I understand that because I came into it and I know a whole lot about it.
This is a positive for our community.
Not only is it positive for encourage bringing more different opinions and different angles
on things, but it shows that the work being done over there.
You don't add members if you're not doing good work.
I think that is the most simple way I can put it in everything.
So that is a positive for our community and for encourage.
That's really cool to hear.
Absolutely.
We're so thrilled to have them join us.
Kim, you know how much I love that zoo over there.
I kind of love the zoo and I've been spending all winter just staring over there waiting
for the animals, waiting for my friends to get on over there.
Let's talk a little bit about the zoo and the programs involved over there.
Sure.
So our programs are scheduled for the summer already.
And we are really excited to partner with the City of Wisconsin Rapids during Blossom Fest.
So we will be hosting a whale program the first day of Blossom Fest.
So Thursday, June 19th, from 10.30 in the morning to 4.30 in the afternoon, forest whales
will be here.
We will have a 65 foot life size inflatable whale.
People can walk through the whale, learn about the inner workings of the whale.
And then in addition to that, there will be hands-on exhibits for children, animal lovers,
zoo lovers to touch and feel experience.
So we're really excited about that opportunity.
One of the top five things on my bucket list is seeing a whale in real life.
I can get a little closer to this, a little closer to it with this one.
I will be there.
Absolutely.
Yeah, and I'll be there all day.
I'm super excited.
So this is great.
Yeah.
And then a zoo's art is coming, no well from zoo's art.
We'll be back on July 23rd.
She's always a favorite.
She makes sure to bring different animals all the time, tracks them.
She's just a wonderful educator.
She's so amazing.
She is.
So she'll be here on Wednesday, July 23rd at programs at 11 and 1.
And then David Stokes, crowd favorite.
Yes.
We'll be back Wednesday, August 20th, 11 and 3 o'clock.
We are so pleased to continue to have him come to our community, share
his songs and jokes and, you know, some of those dad jokes, but the kids love
them.
And so do we.
Yeah.
And, you know, until he retires, we are thrilled to be able to have him back.
And like before, all of these programs are supported by the Helen Mead Fund at Encourage.
And so we will have some PR materials that will be going out to the schools and their
funny folders and may like we always do.
But since we've been getting calls and since we had the information, I thought, great
time to share with your listeners.
Yeah, I appreciate that.
And certainly, I can't be the only one that got a little warmer from that.
They got a little spring, more spring like a little more from that.
That's a good feeling.
Yeah, absolutely.
Kim, I know that one other thing we wanted to touch on before we put the focus to marry
here and no pun intended.
I couldn't help myself, but I'm talking about dad jokes.
Yeah.
What did they talk about a little bit of the support over the years for Encourage?
Yes, yes.
So we are so privileged to be able to have, you know, different funds available in our
community through Encourage to support all of the different organizations.
And you know, people that have an affinity for people in need and providing food have
either allocated grants to support them.
We have provided a lot of unrestricted grants over the years.
And so since 2003, almost $80,000 has been granted from Encourage.
So you know, if you look at the first grant in 2003, it was to help support the planning
of what was then called the soup kitchen, just kind of starting things out.
So over the years, we've helped support purchase of the commercial freezer, a commercial
range, a part-time employee, the Rapids Family Backpack program, community meals, the focus
on the future campaign, which is their new location, neighborhood table, even the tables
and chairs.
Now, this would have been 2022, so, you know, right after they received their, or started
their new location, even helping to process a special gift that focus had received with
some buffalo meat.
And there was some additional inspection that was needed.
And so we were able to provide grant funding to help with that, general unrestricted support,
so that the focus can direct it to whichever program and services need to help the most
at that time, which is so important.
And so it's truly an honor for us to be able to help facilitate that giving.
And if we look back to early days, but you know, starting with 2002, 2003, there was
a hunger coalition that had started in our community.
One of my former colleagues served on that and, you know, helped advise work through
different programs and services needed with the goal of having a one-stop shop.
That was always like the ultimate goal of we could only have everything under one roof.
So it's amazing to see that from beginning to where we are today.
It's so exciting.
I want to get into that a little bit with you.
If you don't mind, Mary, and thank you, Ken, we appreciate that.
So Mary, we'll get into new board members in a moment.
I think that's too good of a segue to not jugged.
I've run into the history of this program by a focus.
So we, in 2019, with the help of Mike Bovy, who is in charge of the Legacy Foundation,
we met with him and said, you know, we have three programs that all basically are trying
to do the same thing, provide food for families that need it.
And his idea was, okay, first of all, why don't you guys try to join forces?
So that was our first goal, was to combine three separate 501-C3s into one.
And so what we merged was Swaps, which was the original Southwood County Emergency Pantry
Self.
And then the family backpacks, the Rabbits Family Backpack Program, which was really run
by the school system, by I was on that board when it first started.
And we had about three or four of us that were trying to run the program, but it was
pretty small at that point, and we'll talk about how that grew.
And then the third one was our neighborhood table, which ran out of a church for many
years.
And so those were all three programs that were meeting the needs of people here in the
community for food insecurity.
And so we did.
We took us about a year, but we worked through all the heartaches and having to get passed,
but this is how we've always done it.
And these are people that have been here since the beginning, and now we're changing,
and change is hard for people that have been invested for a long time.
But we were able to do that.
And then Mike said, OK, now that you are one organization, you need to be in one place.
So then we started trying to find a place in Wisconsin Rapids that would hold all three
programs.
That took us a while.
We looked at a number of different places in town.
And thank goodness, Mark Sparhawk came along and said, I'm buying the old Renaissance
building.
Why don't we work together?
And so we actually rent from Mark.
And we got a great grant from the Legacy Foundation at that time to go ahead and transform
half of that building.
So that was a huge undertaking, but it's been great.
We are at the old building when that became official.
And I said it on the ear there, and I will say it forever, whether Sparhawk advertises
with us or not, I will shout them out every chance I get because of that move.
That is everything we do around here, and we talk about around here about buying local
supporting local, investing in your community.
That is one of the greater things that I've heard of a business doing, like period.
I've been in this chair a long time, and I haven't heard of something like that before.
Big shout out to Sparhawk and Mark and the gang over there.
And they're very good at what they do by the way, too.
They don't need my shout out.
They don't need it.
But they have been wonderful because that's an old building.
And so when you talk about moving a food pantry and there's one thing, but then you talk
about moving a meal program, which requires a lot of upgrading and the restaurant had
to be upgraded.
The plumbing had to be upgraded.
It was a huge undertaking.
And Mark has been so helpful in anything that he could do as the owner of the building to
also be able to assist when we needed help with those big, big projects that weren't always
in our budget.
I mean, we had sewer backups, we had to cancel a few meals and do handout pizzas because
of some sewer backups a couple of times.
So, you know, we've had issues, but we've worked through all of them, and it's, so the location
may not be the best for everybody in town because it's not centrally located.
It is on the west side, but most of our people seem to have still been able to find us,
which is great.
So we now have, and we also move the backpack program over.
So instead of it being at East Junior High, it is now, it's own little room in the back
of the pantry.
I shouldn't say little because we have a storage room where they put the backpacks together,
but we also have a lot of shelving for them to be able to keep their supplies.
So it's been great.
And we'll talk a little bit more later as you get into it, but the advantages of having
all three under one roof.
That's right where I want to go coming up here, but I do want to just add real quickly.
And I haven't been honest with the audience very, from the very beginning and everything.
This is one of the more older and more passionate causes for me and how what this means to me
from a young age and where I grew up, this was an issue.
And I saw it very every day, dealt with it, my family and I.
When it comes to one of the things that comes with this with this building and some of
those factors that you mentioned there, Mary, dignity, which is something that I think
that gets a little lost in the shuffle and understandably because there's a lot of
important things to talk about and cover with this subject wherever you're coming to
it, whether you need food or hunger or you're somebody that wants to help people with
that issue.
But I think it needs to be said because there's a dignity that Mark that you, Mary, that
even encourage have really helped our community with when it comes to this subject.
The idea of it's rough enough to ask for something and anybody, all of us Midwesterners
know how hard it is for us to ask for anything.
It's hard for us to ask what time it is for somebody to let them know and ask me for food.
To be able to add dignity to this, to be able to keep your head up when you're accepting
these things and stuff, which you should.
There's no reason to have your head down.
Exactly.
And I'm so proud of this community to work that's being done on this subject when it
comes to that.
It wasn't always the case.
I can't speak for around here, but where I came from, it wasn't always the case.
Yeah, here's your food, but you better have your head down when you're taking it kind
of thing.
I am appreciative of where we have come with this on society and honestly, it kind of
had to get this way because whether we're talking to the United Way about the ALS
report or whatever, I think it's very common knowledge now or becoming more common knowledge
of how thin of a line it is between people that need help and don't.
Oh, exactly.
And I'm glad you brought that up because we really do consider ourselves a family and
focus.
When we have our meals on Thursday night, we celebrate birthdays.
We just had one of our fellows who turned 96 and I mean, we put a birthday cake with
a candle.
I mean, we try to really recognize that we are part of a family.
If somebody's having surgery, we take them in to just pray for them a little bit or just
think about them.
And as people come in, I mean, that is part of our mission statement is that we want
to provide these things, but we provide them with dignity and respect.
That is definitely on the forefront of our mission statement.
We are speaking with Mary Schultz from Focus and Kim from Encourage and Mary, when it comes
to the programs, the services available over there, we're going to touch on that a little
bit.
Okay.
So we do have the three programs under our roof.
So I'll talk about each one a little bit because I think the numbers are staggering when
we look at what we've been able to do in this community.
So even if we just start with the pantry, we typically serve, and this number is really
amazing.
It's about 18,909 families last year or individuals were served last year.
We average about 600 households a month and so that averages out to, on a typical day
we run anywhere between 30 and 50 families typically.
Our highest was 72 in one day.
So that's approximately 1,600 individuals every month that are coming for the mobile
pantry.
And as you can probably guess, the number keeps rising.
We continue to have new families coming in all the time.
We do lose a few.
We have a lot of people that come to the area for work, and then they may be leave.
But those people have nothing when they come here.
They come specifically for a job.
They may be the place they're working, maybe gives them a place to live.
But then they're on their own for everything else.
So they will come in sometimes like we have nothing.
We don't have anything.
So we are able to help those kinds of families.
So they may not stay long, but while they're here, they are under our roof and we try to
help those people.
So we did drop our hours a little bit because we've cut our employee numbers, based a lot
of it because of budget, and we needed to do some changing.
So we are now open only four days a week.
We were open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.
And we were worried that that might affect our numbers, but so far the people have adjusted
well.
And it's helped us out to be able to use Wednesdays as a stocking day, Wednesday to have things
like the hygiene drive brought in where we can use time when clients are not there, and
we can get some of those big projects done.
So that's been a huge, I think, advantage to us.
So while we cut a few hours out of the week, it really hasn't affected our numbers and
people are still coming.
And on that stocking day, is it true that everything is the shelves are being emptied?
So it is so vital to have that full day for stocking now, right?
There are things that we run out of.
Yeah.
I wouldn't say we lose everything, but we definitely have things that we do run out of.
And we hate to do that.
So we try to look at what our numbers are at the beginning of the day to adjust so that
we know how much to give to everybody because we don't want that last family to not have
things.
But there are times when we do run out of things and we have to wait till the next day to
stack up again.
So our pantry, we have some great donors.
There are a number of the organizations in town that do support us.
A lot of the feeding America commodities like Walmart and a lot of the even quick trips
and Metro and pick and save and all those organizations we do pick up daily from all
those places where we can get day-old and close to expiration dates so we can get those
foods.
Without them, we would have a hard time and those numbers, unfortunately, are dwindling.
I think those businesses are also feeling a hit and so the number of things that we're
getting from different businesses has gone down.
We did pick up a great new sponsor though five below has agreed to help us which is great.
And we're working with some of the dollar stores although I'm worried about them right
now with some of the tariffs on that's going to work.
So we have picked up a few new sponsors in town so that's been helpful but it is constantly
in need of what we need to keep that pantry up there.
Something for all of us to keep in mind.
Mary, are there any upcoming mobile food pantries?
Well, that's a good question.
We were just working on that.
So the mobile food pantries are actually established through feeding America.
And as you can guess, feeding America has gotten some hits and so at this point of time
we are not sure if we're going to be able to have one typically we try to hold one in
September and we're hoping to but it all depends on different commodities because we just
found out that T-FAP will not be getting us their second delivery for this year and that's
going to affect things like milk and eggs, cheese, pork, chicken and turkey and that's
a huge hit for us.
Absolutely.
So we're hoping maybe that the ideas are turned around and that we will still get it
but as of right now we will not be getting our second big supply from them.
Here's hoping we'll be keeping an eye on that.
Mary, we had two other programs wanted to touch on.
So our other one that really is pretty self-sufficient to be honest thanks to our 52 sponsors
that we have, is our neighborhood meal program.
And last year we served, believe it or not, 7,477 meals.
And again it's like a restaurant type atmosphere, we are a family, we love having the people
come, we greet them as they come in, we know most of them by name.
So it's an awesome, awesome experience and without our 52 sponsors in this town, we
couldn't keep that going and really that is a self-sufficient program.
Other than the sponsors will give us $300 for each meal.
So we don't rely on a lot of grant money for the neighborhood meals because we have such
great sponsors.
Our third one is the backpack program and to be honest that's one of the programs that's
really needing some additional support from the community because when we took the program
over, we started with about 35 backpacks a week, we hit this year 192 backpacks per week.
And so we are service, it's seen a huge impact on our budget because we have to buy a lot
of that food, we used to be able to get tuna for 19 cents, we can't do that anymore.
So our backpacks have gone to use to cost us about $5 a backpack to now running about
$13 a backpack.
And then we also give them a quick trip voucher which was allowed them to get eggs, milk
or two vegetables.
Well, if you can imagine the cost of eggs right now and milk, we've had to make some adjustments
to that.
So we definitely could use things like pastas, rice, potatoes, stuffing, cereals, soups,
vegetables, any canned vegetables, pasta sauces.
So those kinds of things that are used on a regular basis that are huge, always huge
needs at the pantry and at the backpacks.
And I hope everybody keeps in mind as well throughout this conversation and things we've
been talking about.
There are a few things you can make a bigger impact or make a greater investment in
the future when it comes to hunger.
We've talked about every age range, every personality type.
Hunger doesn't care about politics or the sports team you root for or any of these things.
And when we're able to help with this, we are making a true investment in our future.
Especially with the last one we were talking about with the backpacks, there is no kid
that will ask for any of this.
There's no kid that wants to be in this situation.
And when you're able to help with that, their brains are working that much better.
What it means, they're that much better and engaged in school and becoming better citizens
as they get older and putting in their communities.
I would say that my brother and sister are living proof of this, you know, that this is
a thing.
I know what I'm talking about.
I've got the data to back it up on this one.
It's an important investment to make as well.
Whatever it comes to focus and the work that's being done over there, we really cannot
appreciate the time enough and everything you guys are doing, your individual non-profits
in our community appreciate it.
If people would like to know more Mary or they'd like to be able to reach out to you and find
out ways they can volunteer or they can help or donate, how can they do that?
So we could definitely use volunteers, that's because we run on a volunteer basis.
So whether it's sorting vegetables in the morning or stacking the breads or helping
push a cart, you know, you could call 715-422-2050 and talk to volunteers or our staff that's
over there and they could definitely tell you when they could use them help.
Thank you Mary.
Kim, for encourage if people want to reach out to you guys, how can they do that?
Absolutely.
They give us a call at 715-423-3863 or send an email to hello at encouragecf.org.
And keep in mind that webpage is encouragecf.org.
Be sure to bookmark that, check that out for any questions you have or any research you
want to do on encourage encourage you to do that.
They're doing some great work over there.
Be sure to follow these groups on social media as well, share their posts on your page.
You just never know who might see it that wouldn't otherwise.
And again, from not just from me but from the community, we appreciate you guys.
Thank you so much for the time today and for everything you do.
Thank you.
Thank you for the time as well.
We appreciate you guys listening.
Thanks out there.
We're back with more Midday Magazine for you right here at 97-5 FM 13-20 AM.
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