March 4, 2025 • 44 mins
Charles L. Bender III is the founding CEO of Place of Hope, a faith-based and state-licensed family-style residential child-caring agency for abused and neglected children, located in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Program host Dr. Chris Meek is thrilled to welcome Mr. Bender to a conversation exploring the organization’s mission to support at-risk youth, foster children, and families facing adversity. With a heart for creating lasting change, Mr. Bender and his fellow team members at Place of Hope offer a variety of programs designed to promote emotional, physical and spiritual well-being. Mr. Bender will share insights into the work being done at Place of Hope from their foster care initiatives to the restoration services that help individuals rebuild their lives, including an emphasis on those who have been victims of human trafficking. The audience will hear inspiring stories of resilience, learn the positive impacts of community support, and the importance of offering hope in times of uncertainty. Whether you’re interested in learning more about how to get involved with Place of Hope and similar organizations or you simply want to hear about the difference one group can make, this episode is sure to leave you inspired and motivated to take action. Tune in to discover how Place of Hope is building brighter futures, one life at a time.
About Charles L. Bender III: Charles L. Bender III is the Founding CEO of Place of Hope, a faith-based and state-licensed family-style residential child-caring agency for abused and neglected children, located in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. He earned his B.A. degree in Sociology from Florida Atlantic University and also studied at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. Charles came to Place of Hope in 1999 following many years of work with various housing, social, and human services organizations throughout Palm Beach County. He has participated in numerous community committees, task forces, special initiatives, and boards. He has been a team member of several other local leading organizations including: Palm Beach County Housing and Community Development, Adopt-A-Family of the Palm Beaches, Inc., the City of Delray Beach Community Development Division. The majority of Charles’ work has involved low-income individuals and families, homeless and substance abusing populations, and at-risk/dependent children and youth. Prior to spearheading implementation of Place of Hope, Charles was a primary volunteer in the multi-year visioning and development processes while still a “vision” of Christ Fellowship (founding church). Charles has significant experience developing and administering social programs and low-income housing initiatives, executing growth plans, implementing federal, state, and local funding programs, building organizational capacity and community coalitions, enhancing service delivery systems, raising capital and annual operating funds, and managing overall non-profit operations.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
There are few things that make people successful.
(00:08):
Taking a step forward to change their lives is one successful trait, but it takes some
time to get there.
How do you move forward to greet the success that awaits you?
Welcome to Next Steps Forward with host Chris Meek.
Each week, Chris brings on another guest who has successfully taken the next steps forward.
(00:30):
Now here is Chris Meek.
Hello.
Welcome to this week's episode of Next Steps Forward, and I'm your host, Chris Meek.
As always, it's a pleasure to have you with us.
Next Steps Forward is committed to helping others achieve more than ever while experiencing
greater personal empowerment and wellbeing.
Our guest today is Charles Bender III.
Charles is the founding CEO and a board member of Place of Hope, which is a Palm Beach Gardens,
(00:51):
Florida, faith-based, and state-licensed family-style residential child-caring agency
for abused and neglected children.
Charles had many years of work with various housing, social, and human services organizations
throughout Palm Beach County before launching Place of Hope in 1999.
The majority of Charles' work has involved low-income individuals and families, homeless
and substance-abusing populations, and at-risk dependent children and youth.
(01:14):
Charles Bender, welcome to Next Steps Forward.
Thanks so much.
Thanks for having me.
It's exciting.
I appreciate your time and certainly appreciate the work that you're doing.
So, Charles, let's start off.
What inspired you to dedicate your career to helping vulnerable children and families?
Well, you know, there was a longer story, but when I really, when I came to Place of
Hope, well, I guess in college before Place of Hope, I really felt like I wanted to be
(01:37):
in the, lack of a better term, the people-helping business.
I wanted to do something with purpose.
I wanted to do something to help people out, but I'm not really much of a social worker.
I'm more of a social entrepreneur, and so I did a few things out there that were never
great, and I really enjoyed it and learned a lot, learned what I didn't like as well.
But when I had the opportunity to kind of co-launch Place of Hope, for me, that became
(01:59):
really a spiritual calling for me.
So it was a large church in the area of Christ Fellowship that actually had the idea and
the launching, and then they selected me to be their lead guy on a committee for a lot
of years to just kind of shape it, and then one day the board was formed, and they hired
me, and here I am 25 years later.
Be careful what you wish for, right?
Right.
We all benefit from mentors and role models.
(02:21):
Tell us about the people who influenced your thinking or mentored you along the journey
to helping others.
I'd say, you know, so much of it goes back to my parents, and it has to do with the way
I like to help people.
Like I said, I'm not a great social worker.
I'm probably not the most patient guy on the planet.
I have a certain set of values that I go by, and I feel like, you know, there's ways to
get ahead and certain principles to live by, and so my approach was oftentimes different
(02:44):
than, you know, what's typically out there in the human services world, but I would say
I think my parents had a lot to do with it.
They were both small business entrepreneurs, and I just learned a lot about work ethic
and launching things and sticking with it, working outside the nine to five, you know,
all those kinds of things, and that's what it took to get this thing off the ground.
(03:07):
Not just me.
There were other great people as well, but yeah, I'd say, and there's been great mentors
ever since, board members, donors who are involved, people who just help take it to
the next level, a lot of them even to this day, so there's quite a few.
You worked for many years with various organizations dedicated to helping others.
What inspired you to start Place of Hope instead of continuing to do what you were doing?
(03:30):
Yeah, I was working when the opportunity came to help the church, and it was volunteer-based,
so I actually did that for a little over four years while it was just a planning cycle before
the church spun us off separately as a non-profit.
We bought land and then kind of envisioned where we were going, how we were going to
do it, getting state licensure, raising money, all of it.
(03:52):
So I would say, you know, it was the folks that really had the original vision that really
encouraged me, and then just seeing how people, and I see this to this day, and it's actually
one of my favorite things about what we do, and that is that people step up and go way
beyond themselves to help in so many ways.
It could be little kids with a lemonade stand, or it could be somebody who can pay to build
(04:15):
a building.
You know, it really doesn't matter.
It's just that we see such greatness out of people, and it just completely keeps me pumped
up for what we do.
Well, you talked about, you know, volunteering for the church before you were spun off.
Was there a specific moment or an experience that prompted you to say, I'm going to do
this?
So the board was formed, and they came to me and said, we want you to run this after
these years.
(04:35):
And I thought, you know what?
I have a career going in something else.
I thought I had a great opportunity, and I thought, yeah, I don't really want to do that
because I ran homeless shelters before, and I've had some really crazy stories.
And I thought, eh, 24-7 care of having people in your residential care is a lot.
So I said, look, they're like, we need an answer out of you in a week, and I said, well,
I can't give that to you in a week.
I need to go home.
I need to pray about it.
I need to talk to my wife, and I just need to really think this through.
(04:57):
And there was actually a day about 30 days later, and one of the board members called
kind of impatient, like, hey, we need an answer.
And I said, well, I'm just not there yet.
And it was literally like a day later.
My wife came to me, and we had both that day separately felt like God was telling us, go
do it.
So that's why I say, you know, the spiritual thing, and then the timing of that was just
(05:18):
amazing.
And to be honest with you, there's been some tough days, but man, I can't envision doing
something else with my life all these years.
Yeah.
There's an old saying, do what you love and call it work.
Exactly.
No, it's true.
That's fantastic.
So let's take a step back, so we have a better understanding of your community and the people
who live there.
Now, I'm sure when some people hear Palm Beach Gardens, they largely Beach and the super
(05:38):
rich people live in them.
Describe Palm Beach Gardens and why there's even a need for housing, social and human
services organizations.
Well, interestingly, we're regional now.
We have a campus in Boca Raton, so I'm sure you've heard the same things about Boca Raton.
We have one in West Palm Beach directly off of the island of Palm Beach, and we have two
in Palm Beach Gardens and now one in Martin County, one county north of here, which everything
(05:59):
you just described is true about all those communities.
There's so much wealth here.
There is so much prosperity.
There's so many people doing great things.
It's getting more by the day down here, as you know.
But we also have a huge divide in this community in terms of not that all socioeconomic things
drive abuse of children because they don't, because we see stories coming out of every
neighborhood you can imagine.
(06:20):
But there is a tremendous amount of poverty here, and it's really hard to make it.
And when you factor those things into lifestyle and stress and the other things, oftentimes
these poor kids are in the way.
And so I don't think people really realize, like you just described, what just a community
just minutes from here or 30 miles west of here, what it looks like and how people are
living and the things that are taking place to kids that should never take place.
(06:46):
You launched Place of Hope in 1999.
When did you have your very first vision of Place of Hope, and what did it take for you
to get started?
I can't take credit for that.
That was Christ Fellowship Church.
The pastor and his wife, they had come back from a trip to Romania.
They were there during war-torn Romania when they had stopped US families from being able
to adopt.
They were warehousing these kids in these horrific hospital-type scenarios.
(07:09):
These kids were not growing in their developmental steps, etc.
But while they were there, they saw another group from the States in a much smaller home-like,
faith-based, family-friendly environment where the kids really were a focus, and they felt
that God put it on their hearts to come back to the States, figure out what the heck's
going on down here, because it was bad at the time here.
That piece, like you said, that was probably, that was 94, 5, 6, 7, 8.
(07:32):
We hit the road saying, what are we going to do?
How are we going to do it?
We're going to do it with excellence, or we're just not going to do it at all.
I remember them saying that to me.
I caught the vision as a result of the vision they had, and then they needed a front guy
to go do it.
I built an amazing team since that day.
My key people have been with me over 20 years.
(07:53):
What did Place of Hope look like at the end of its first year?
We had a couple of homes on one of, we now have five campus locations.
We also do statewide programmings.
We do a lot of different things.
From the residential perspective, it was one 10-acre campus here in Palm Beach Gardens,
a beautiful place, but we had to grow slow because we needed to learn what the heck we
were doing, honestly.
(08:13):
These are kids that come from the worst scenarios, by far.
I always say in today's day and age, they wouldn't like this if I said it out loud to
them, but it's the truth.
The Department of Children and Families in any state does not want to remove kids.
They will go out of their way to redefine things and what's an acceptable level of what
takes place in these poor kids' lives.
(08:34):
By the time we get them, it's a mess.
It's really, really, really tough.
We started seeing these kids heal up fast, really find a trajectory for their lives and
find hope.
By the way, it wasn't rocket science.
It was really just a traditional, organic family model with all the kind of accoutrements
that go with it, a nice place to live, chores, going places on weekends, playing after-school
(08:58):
sports, all that stuff and having it in a family milieu.
It just works fantastically.
That's amazing.
What were some of your biggest challenges early on in growing Place of Hope?
It always comes down to finances, but in some ways, you look back and you're like, okay,
maybe it's good that we did grow a little slower in some ways.
I've had people that have left town and come back and been like, whoa, I can't believe
(09:20):
how big this thing is now.
That actually just happened this past weekend.
The hardest really is finding the right people with the right mindset to really, really care
for these kids.
It's not just a charity scene scenario where people show up at an event and they give.
That's fine, too.
I get that because daily caring for these kids is not everybody's thing.
(09:41):
Just to have a better understanding of what these kids, these human trafficking survivors
that are in our care, to know why it just doesn't change like this overnight, getting
the community to understand how tough it really is on these kids and how much trauma has affected
their lives.
That's still probably one of the hardest things to this day.
What was it like going through COVID?
That was tough.
(10:02):
I still feel like there's little things that survive as a result of COVID.
There's little things I see and I'm like, oh, I remember when that happened during COVID.
We went through the 08 downturn because I've been here so long.
That was a tough scenario.
Even COVID was just crazy.
It's like you didn't really know what was true or right.
These kids, not everything we do, but the kids that are under 18 in our care, they're
(10:23):
in state custody.
You had the federal government and the state government setting down their edicts as to
what's okay, what's not.
Then you've got the school districts and then you've got just everybody else not knowing
what was going on.
It was a tough time for sure and then financially that was burdensome because everybody was
scared.
You're not going to give away a bunch of money if you don't know what's happening to your
own finances.
It was a slower time, but I really feel like we survived that God provided for us.
(10:47):
I feel like we could weather just about anything when it comes to that.
How do kids find their way to Places of Hope?
The ones that are under 18 for the foster care side of what we do, they all come de
facto through the state of Florida.
The states involved locally through this judicial circuit with Department of Children and Families,
the court system, lawyers, they'll remove for eminent danger, oftentimes with the police.
(11:12):
Then what they'll do is the local agency that spearheads placement, they'll call us and
they say, and typically they know because we report back.
We have two open beds in this home or whatever.
We have one.
They just refer.
They refer from other counties as well, not just from here.
You said you have five campuses now?
We do.
How many kids do you house?
(11:33):
Our residential capacity is about 180, so it's quite a bit from a 24-7 perspective,
but we're also in a massive campaign right now to raise enough money over the next few
years to actually build out our campuses.
We always knew what we had, but we didn't actually have a concrete plan to get there
and get done.
We only build debt-free.
We have no debt as an organization, so we have to keep that in mind when we're trying
(11:57):
to do what we're doing.
Now we have this plan, and it's absolutely amazing because we're going to have hundreds
more beds by the time we're done because we have the land.
Unlike most charities, we own land that's buildable and we're building.
Perfect segue.
You're under a big fundraising campaign right now.
Where can people find you?
Placehope.com, and it's called God's Children, Our Future.
(12:18):
It's a comprehensive plan on the side of an annual fund because obviously we have to pay
our bills every month.
That's why we do events and so forth and people give.
The next is to build out the physical campuses, debt-free, so there's opportunities.
People want to do that in multiple locations.
The third is to build an endowment for the future because we're all going to be gone
one day and we're trying to build something super strong.
(12:40):
This isn't just about us doing something nice for a little bit of time.
We want this thing to last.
My whole board is like that, all of our founders.
I'm like that.
My team's like that.
We want to build an endowment too so that it's maybe a little bit of an easier sell
one day when we all move out of the way to get somebody in here with the right mindset
to run a very healthy organization, which is what we have.
(13:01):
What were some of the pivotal moments that shaped Place of Hope's direction for growth?
Yeah, you know, it's interesting when we first opened and we had this one campus where I'm
located now, the first one, there was a lot of fervor for let's just build it all now.
Let's raise the money and do it.
I had to temper the board even back then just with my experience in homeless shelters and
so forth that this isn't something you grow fast.
(13:23):
You have to really know what you're doing and then you take it to the next level and
the next level.
I think we've always had an entrepreneurial spirit, all of us, with the eye toward let's
keep doing more but not like overnight.
Let's just do it as we feel it's appropriate.
We can find the great people because it's one thing to build housing.
It's a whole nother to make sure we have the right staff because for the over 18ers, we
(13:46):
don't just provide affordable housing.
It's transitional affordable housing when we have a lot of rules and a lot of programmatic
pieces that you have to be a part of in order to have that housing.
We have to have people that are in their business and making sure that they're moving along.
Place of Hope provides a range of services from intervention and maternity care for young
single mothers to safety, recovery and restoration for human trafficking victims and survivors.
(14:11):
Would you walk us through each of your various programs, how they came and how they've evolved
over time?
Yes.
The enrichment and education side falls over everything that we do.
I always call it the non-organic family good stuff.
The families do that, but just making sure that we have the outside resources to show
the kids what's possible in their lives.
(14:32):
It could be job mentoring.
It could be playing sports.
We have the police that'll come in here and bring their dogs and their horses and show
the kids that we'll bring in therapy animals.
Whatever it is, that all falls under that.
The affordable housing side really started transitional when we realized we had kids
that were in foster care that were going to start aging out of foster care.
(14:54):
What do you do?
All the stats show these kids don't make it.
They end up incarcerated.
The females are pregnant right away, and it's just a big mess.
Jails are full of kids that used to be in foster care, or close to the system at least.
We just said, we've got to do it differently, and we have to have a place for them when
they leave here.
Again, with rules, it's the next level.
It's a bridge.
By the way, we have our sixth youth right now who is becoming a habitat for a humanity
(15:17):
homeowner.
That's the next layer after we've stabilized, maybe brought out of foster care, put them
into transitional housing, and now all of a sudden they're owning a home.
That's the ultimate.
I love it.
I want to do more and more of that.
The human trafficking survivors, we've actually been doing that for over 20 years, taking
care of them.
Before people started talking about human trafficking and all the scourge that belongs
(15:40):
to all that and what people do to people for control and money, we just didn't know what
we were dealing with.
We were dealing with abused children that had really horrible things done to them.
Once the country and other people woke up to this is human trafficking, they just recodified
everything.
We've got stories from 20-something years ago of just really bad stories of young people,
(16:01):
but now what we've done is we've actually put some wraparound services and very specific
therapy and targeted case management for those survivors, stuff they need because they've
seen so much trauma in their lives, and all of it.
We have a maternity home for pregnant teenagers.
We've seen 10 and 12-year-olds pregnant, rape victims, you name it, and they need a place
(16:22):
to go.
Most are in state custody.
Some have just been referred to us over the years by families.
What we've done over the years is we've really just responded to needs as they pop up.
Being entrepreneurial, this is one of the things I love the most that my board is in
agreement with, and that is just because you do something today in any business doesn't
mean you're going to be in it forever.
(16:43):
Charities have a real problem with getting out of their own way.
They don't look from the business perspective a lot, and so I'm always looking at our numbers.
I'm always looking at what's going on, but I'm also looking at how effective is something
because people in the community are giving me their money.
Yeah, they trust me, but we have to keep transparent on are we having that big impact.
Sometimes we'll close out of things and go in a different direction just based on the
(17:03):
community's need, but thankfully we've been able to respond and just do more, not less.
Human trafficking has been an issue that was never on my radar until I started doing this
podcast, and so now it's one of the biggest things that I focus on.
We're coming up on the one-year anniversary of a sting operation called March Sadness
in South Florida where 33 people were arrested, and it was teachers, clergy, sports coaches,
(17:28):
everyone who you trust your kid with.
Can you share some of the biggest misconceptions the public has about human trafficking?
For us, what I'd say that most people can't even imagine this is that most of the human
trafficking that we see by definition is familial human trafficking.
You got a mom who is down on her luck financially, might have drug addiction or whatever, has
(17:50):
deadbeat boyfriend in the house, and basically he's paying some of the bills and having sex
with the daughter, and she feels like things are taken care of.
Well, that's disgusting, one, and two, it's highly illegal at the same time.
We see a lot of that.
Now, we do see, especially in the last couple of years, a lot of border-crossing situations.
We have a lot of non-English-speaking kids that come in, but they end up in the actual
(18:14):
system, so they end up in foster care.
They might have come here with an adult or not, but they ended up in the system.
We just see more that's on the family end than gang stuff.
We have seen the gang stuff, and we've actually had some very high-profile placements here
over the years.
I've had DCF secretaries themselves call me and say, we need you to give us a shot here
(18:34):
because this girl's been in 50 foster placements.
Can you try it?
We've had that as well.
It's really a sad scenario when you see what people do to children, what they do to other
adults too, by the way.
When people have trauma in their lives, I always say, I doubt there's anybody that walks
the streets as a prostitute who wants to be a prostitute.
(18:57):
Something happened in their lives, and there's trauma involved.
Imagine these kids who've had this trauma.
Sometimes it's not even ever brought forward.
Nobody even knows about it.
We've had plenty of kids placed here.
HT is not codified in their file.
It's supposed to be if they know, a human trafficking victim or survivor.
We get them in here, and then we find it out a year later, and it all comes out because
they're stabilized.
(19:18):
They feel safe, and they feel like they can open up.
But it's very, very common, and we see mainly in the familial side.
One thing I like to highlight to our viewers and listeners is that people typically say,
not in my neighborhood, not in my backyard.
At the beginning of the show about the affluent communities that you're serving right now,
I had a guest on about two, two and a half years ago.
(19:38):
She was trafficked by her best friend's dad throughout West Palm Beach.
So you talk about the familiar thing.
Here's a 17, 18-year-old girl in high school who all the dads in the neighborhood in West
Palm, and so it's disgusting, and that's why I appreciate folks like you and the work that
you do, and that's why I stand on the top of the mountain and scream from my lungs.
People need to open their eyes to this because you mentioned the border crossing.
(20:00):
The cartels in Mexico and Latin America are sending them over, and that's it.
We got missing kids all over this country, and we do end up with some of them in care
because when they do surface, the state takes them in and so forth.
Thankfully, Florida's kind of ahead of the curve on that kind of thing legislatively.
Some Florida laws, which is a good thing, it kind of identifies them a little bit differently
and at least pulls them into the system.
(20:22):
So we've gotten them where there's pimps involved, and then all of a sudden, because they're
now legally in the system, the pimp disappears.
So that's been good.
But we've had families, gun runners and drug runners and all kinds of stuff, and then there's
usually human trafficking tied to that as well.
But unfortunately, we see the long-term effects, and it is not an easy scenario to get these
(20:43):
kids toward healing, but it is possible.
You work in so many challenging areas of human needs.
Which one is the most challenging, or are they all from the category of most challenging?
I mean, it's all challenging because you just don't really know who's coming into your residential
life until they do, right?
But I'm also a big believer that even if through an outreach program where we might just be
(21:05):
providing someone with diapers and clothing, there's a part of me that really wants people
to understand that you have to show some gratitude in life, and we're surrounded by people who
just think they deserve everything.
It's not true.
Nobody should walk through life like that.
I'm not trying to say that I know what they've walked through, but at the same time, we try
(21:26):
to do a lot of teaching in our model that, hey, these are people that don't even know
you that have given because they understand your plight, and they want to make life better
for you.
So I make that a part of it because I feel like otherwise, we're just handing stuff out.
But yeah, it is, yeah, there's a lot to that, but.
How do you measure the long-term success of your programs?
(21:48):
Honestly, the number one thing, because I'm thankfully being mainly private funded, I've
never felt like we had to get into all these consultants coming in and building this, that,
and the other.
And my thing is, we have a lot of kids who come back after they turn 18.
They might move away.
They might move into our housing.
They might go somewhere else.
They might get married.
They might have their own children.
They come back.
(22:09):
So a lot of them will tell their story.
They'll speak at our events.
You can't make people do that.
That's because they want to do that, and they really feel like they've been impacted.
We have a young lady right now who's going out in our quarterly or our annual direct
mail piece that she was here years ago.
And she kind of resurfaced and she's around.
She's doing great.
A lot of trauma.
It's a bad situation, very bad.
(22:29):
But she stepped up and said, I want to do this.
I want to be a part of this.
And what she wrote out for our donors to hear is just, it's just spectacular.
It's unbelievable.
So that's kind of one of those things that really keeps you going, knowing that they
do have that resilience and they can heal up and she's doing great.
Well, and to your point, it's those personal stories that really put a spotlight on in
(22:50):
terms of what we're doing does work and your donors make a difference.
Yeah.
And so if I can tell those stories or they can tell their stories, for me, that's enough.
You know, obviously we look at other stats as well.
We have funders that want to know certain things, but I mean, we look at their grades.
We definitely look at how are they doing in school, how are they doing in their social
relationships?
How are they doing?
You know, we get kids in here that have never once been to a dentist and they might be 15
years old.
(23:11):
So you got to look at the simplest of things.
We have kids that have come in here.
I'm not exaggerating.
These kids have gone off and been star college athletes, but they never even picked up a
ball before they got here.
So just to show you that they've got these skills and they're resilient and you just
got to tap into it.
You know?
And so to me, that's some of the ways we measure it, you know, through the simplest of ways.
(23:34):
And what distinguishes Place of Hope from other social services organizations in your
part of Florida?
I definitely, like I said, I like to remain entrepreneurial.
First, I'd be bored out of my skull if I was just always running the same thing.
And so it's not even just about expansion.
It's really just being about critically looking at everything that you're in and you're doing
(23:54):
and what's the impact and can you do it less expensively and serve more people and still
have the greatest impact?
I just like all those pieces, organizational structure, bringing in the right people.
And honestly, I love to be in the realm of fundraising, not for the purpose of raising
money, but more for the purpose of meeting great people who have a kindred spirit in
the sense that they want to be a part of something, they want to co-own it.
(24:16):
That's my favorite thing by far.
I love seeing the kids.
I love hanging out with them.
But I love that part as well because we're just surrounded by great people and you're
doing this for us today.
I mean, I love that because you're helping us tell a story and you have an audience that
gets to hear what's going on, especially for those that don't understand it.
Are there any specific stories you'd like to share about a child or a family?
(24:36):
There's a ton.
Even the young lady I just mentioned to you that's coming back now and she's living in
our affordable housing.
But all the kids that have gone on to get college degrees or get tech degrees in air
conditioning or electrical, there's a lot of them.
But we have a young man that was at our Hope Bash big dinner this weekend at Trump Jupiter.
Hundreds of people in the room and his family, we presented them an award and they adopted
(24:59):
him after he turned 18.
So they wanted that just to show him that he's forever part of that family.
And that kid was there with a big smile on his face.
Now we have we have several young people that work for us and we've had a lot over the years.
You know, again, just just seeing them with their resilience, even when there's high levels
of trauma, just seeing them make it.
And look, I've always said, you know, people say, well, how do you spell success?
(25:22):
I mean, honestly, with with the kids we're dealing with and the stats that surround them
in their lives, you know, honestly, if some of these kids, if we can keep them from hurting
or killing somebody based on what they've been through, we all win.
So it's not all, hey, I got a degree at University of Florida or whatever.
It's it's it's all of it.
But some of it's just getting these kids to kind of take a deep look inside and try to
move toward healing, you know, and know that they're loved because we do.
(25:45):
We really do love them.
You mentioned that you're mostly privately funded.
You know, we don't talk much about politics on here for various reasons, from obvious
reasons, I should say.
But given the current administration and what Elon Musk is doing, you know, is there any
concern from a federal budget perspective?
No, I'm not concerned because a lot of what comes down from federal HHS that goes to I
(26:09):
guess it's kind of block granted to states, it's based on some formula of need, which
changes all the time. But they usually the legislatures have to match it at least at
50 percent. What could happen is you could because you can't not you cannot not take
kids in if they need to have safety.
Right. If they're in imminent danger, they have to be removed.
Now, I have seen them where they move the bar of what's acceptable.
(26:31):
I've seen it over 20 something years.
It's terrible. But like I'll look and say, well, two years ago they would have removed
that kid and now they haven't. And look what's happened, you know, so they will play
around a little bit. But overall, I think, you know, they're going to have to fund at
least partially what the need is.
What I like is we've built an organization.
There are a lot of groups like us out there that are, you know, they could be 80, 85
(26:52):
percent government finance.
You should never have that in any kind of charity, if you ask me, because all it takes
is one switch and you're closing your doors.
And so we were somewhere down at like 32 percent right now, you know, with government
funds. And so I like it that way.
And that's not going to that's not going to impact us.
And we just have generous donors.
And like I said, we're trying to build an endowment to hedge against some of those
(27:13):
things as well, because, you know, that day may come in this.
And this I mean, I guess it could have an impact.
I just don't think it's going to hit us real hard.
And from your perspective, what would be the long term consequences of reducing social
programs and low income housing initiatives on communities like those of Places of
Hope? Tell me that one more time.
You know, what do you think the long term consequences of reducing social programs and
(27:34):
low income housing initiatives, how would that would affect you?
Well, it's definitely not happening in Florida right now.
Every well, South Florida, everybody's talking about affordable housing and the crisis
and the need. Now, when we talk about it, we always say that it's affordable
transitional because what we don't need is a lineup of people saying, I want affordable
housing because ours is a program.
But if you think about it, ours is of the greatest need because we have the young people
(27:57):
who are slipping through the cracks otherwise that have been through these traumatic life
experiences. I would say there's more of a need for what we do, but there's also just a
need for truly affordable housing.
I mean, people are being squashed out of here.
I mean, my own children are having one one owns and two are trying to own homes.
And it's tough right now.
I mean, in the same areas that were almost affordable not that long ago.
(28:20):
So that affects everybody.
But I think it really affects young people who have been through the system and
traumatized and or homeless and those kinds of things.
And so we're kind of addressing as much as we can at that at that level.
But just the general workforce population needs needs some help.
So I hope to see it keep going in a good direction.
The work that you do exacts such a heavy emotional and physical toll.
(28:43):
You've had a time when you were ready to just throw your hands up in the air and walk
away. I have such a great team.
And, you know, I have a clinical director and a CEO that they've both been with me
over 20 years. And, you know, they're on the front line of dealing with a lot of
that stuff. And I'm aware of everything that's going on.
And it is tough on the team from time to time, especially our foster families.
I mean, they are on the front line.
(29:03):
And then even with those that help run our transitional housing, you know, not not
every young person is showing a lot of gratitude for what they're having handed to
them and so forth. And so the team struggles with that at times.
But at times, you know, I've never, never once felt like I wanted to throw up my
hands. I've had some tough days and there were, you know, probably a couple of times
over the years that I've looked at opportunities that have come my way to do
(29:25):
something different. And each of those times I walked away from it feeling like I'm
right where I'm supposed to be.
Like I said, it's tough, but I love it at the same time.
Well, I guess to that point, what's the most rewarding part of your job?
I think it's two things. I think it really is seeing these young kids that have gone
through so much be resilient, learn to show gratitude, learn to actually become
(29:47):
self-sustaining.
And then the flip side over here is bringing in those people that can afford to help us
do those things, you know, like they're giving their time, whatever, whatever they
give and just and they could be doing, you know, diaper drives for us or they could be
giving money that they did, kids raising money through a lemonade stand.
It could be all that.
(30:07):
That's probably my second favorite part, where I just love to see the community get
together and want to make something great happen.
So it's probably those two things.
How do you stay motivated and avoid burning out?
I mean, you see such traumatic life experiences.
I mean, that's going to take its toll on you.
I get woken up a lot in the middle of the night, so I spend a lot of time in prayer.
(30:27):
I really do, because I think that's the number one thing.
I mean, I really feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be.
And I also feel like if God's called us to something, we're going to he's going to
provide for it. And I really I know that might sound overly simplistic, but it's the
truth. And thankfully, also, you know, I've had the team that I have around me for so
long, even my board members that have just been so long term and all in.
(30:48):
And we're super transparent.
You know, we've taken over two charities that failed.
And in both circumstances, there were problems with the board of directors and the
leadership and they're fighting with each other.
We don't have that. We don't do that because we're open with each other about
everything, the good, the bad, the ugly.
I tell the board everything.
They get involved where they need to.
And so because of those strong characters around us on the team, as well as the board
(31:11):
and the volunteers, just keeps me motivated.
I do like to go to the Keys every once in a while and veg out.
I'm a little jealous of that.
So you're hearing that you've mentioned the word resilient a few times in our
conversation. What's the most important lesson you've learned about resilience
through your years of work?
I mean, honestly, seeing some of these kids that there's just so many stories I can
(31:36):
describe to you, but some of the ones that I guess sort of bother me the most is when
you've seen like a lot of bullying with kids who maybe are in foster care and maybe
they don't look quite like the kids around them in certain circumstances.
And to see those kids get bullied, boy, there's a part of me that wants to just come
out of my skin on that. But obviously, I'm an adult, I can't do that.
(31:57):
But that's hard to watch at times.
And then sometimes, you know, looking back at like, you know, you have families who
probably were healthy enough to do something in their case to get their child back and
just decided to put themselves first and not do it.
And to see what a kid goes through in that is really hard to ever, ever get used to.
(32:19):
You know, it's one thing if you know mom's completely drugged out and you haven't seen
her and she doesn't show up for her case, you know, for reviews or her visitations,
any of that. But when you know one is kind of there and then just decides, I'd rather
go smoke some weed or crack or whatever, and then doesn't show up and you see this
kid just melt, that's hard.
You know, and I just, I don't know if I answered your question correctly, but it's just those
(32:41):
kinds of things that you never get used to.
No, I totally understand.
And that's just awful to think about as a parent.
It is.
You know, Place of Hope and other organizations are performing triage and people are already
injured. I mean, investing time, money and other resources prevent the people you serve
from being injured in the first place.
Yeah, no, that's a great point.
We're not, as an organization, in the super front side of the system where there's shaky
(33:08):
family situations and we've been asked to come in with services.
We just haven't been asked to do that.
We are on the next level where in the United States, a lot of kids that are removed for
imminent danger, instead of going into licensed foster homes, they go with relatives.
They call it relative, non-relative caregiving.
There's a lot of that. And so it's somewhat formal, but not as much.
(33:28):
But a lot of those families don't have the resources that they need as well.
It's just somebody doing a good thing.
It's grandma, like, I'm not going to let my kids and my grandkids go into foster care.
So they step up. So one of the things we've done about that to kind of address that and
do something big is help those folks, is to step up with diapers and car seats and
cribs and everything they would need to receive that child that they really want to
(33:51):
receive. That's one of the things we've launched into that we're really grateful to be a
part of that. And we're serving thousands to this.
This happens to a lot of people.
So and they just need some help to make it happen and make it work and keep those kids
safe. It's no secret that the foster care system has its shortcomings.
What systemic changes would you like to see in the system to support children?
(34:15):
Yeah, I think that it's like everything else.
Things get political from time to time.
So you got this group that thinks, oh, hey, you know, residential care is bad.
Or you have these people that say, well, traditional foster care is bad.
And by the way, nothing's perfect.
Right. So bad things happen.
You know, one of the things we see is that the insurance industry that we have no choice
but to have a lot of insurance doesn't line up with the priorities of the child welfare
(34:38):
system and the child welfare system is not watching what the insurance industry is doing.
So we're caught in this vortex in between of like, no, no, we have to do it this way.
But you guys don't want to insure it or vice versa.
You know, I'd love to see some of that stuff straightened out.
I'd also love to see some of the politics of how the system, you know, there's a lot of
people that don't believe you should ever remove a child.
I totally disagree with that.
(34:58):
I get what they're trying to say.
I get that there's a tremendous upside to keep families together if you can.
But there's been a lot of bad stories where that hasn't worked out and it's the child
that gets hurt the worst or worse.
And so I'd love to see the politics get out of that.
And I'd also love to see some things where people just agree, whether it's legislatively
or whatever, there's something happening in Florida right now with a possible bill in
(35:20):
rural communities to do a certain level of care.
It's very similar to ours.
And I may go up and speak to this issue with the Senate.
And that is that, you know, put the politics aside.
If a model works and it's good for these kids, let's just try it.
Let's do it. Let's get the private sector involved.
So also more encouraging in the private sector.
I'm a big believer in that.
(35:41):
When you sit down with the policymakers that you're talking about, you know, what's your
message to them? Yeah, I mean, results.
I want them to oftentimes I'll bring kids along or they'll already know them.
A lot of the folks that are elected down here know us and know us well.
And also, you know, we, you know, I've got some guys that are tremendous marketers in
their past careers and so forth.
And they remind you, you always tell that the really good business parts, like we have
(36:01):
the highest ratings from Charity Navigator and Candid, you know, so and when we go and
ask for something, we typically match it dollar for dollar.
So we're not just going, oh, we need money.
We will say if you if you will give us this, we will go to these folks to give us this
or vice versa. So we look at everything more like a partnership as opposed to give, give,
and I think legislators and just people in decision making sides of things have a real
(36:23):
hard time just constantly just forking it over.
You know, you got to you got to do your part, you know, and so I'm a big believer if a if
a foundation wants to give you money, but they've got a couple strings attached to it
like, hey, we want you over here in our golf tournament.
OK, then I'm going to go find some guys to play golf in your tournament.
You know, just simple stuff like that that I think shows that it's it's not just us going
like this, but it's all of us in this thing together.
So if you're unlimited resources or even better yet, if you're a king for a day, what
(36:48):
changes would you make in government policy laws and investments on the way to where the
way society operates?
Wow. Yeah, I do believe in in like what you talked about.
I mean, when you look at the amount of waste in our country, especially at the federal
government level, and now I know there's a lot of states starting to look at themselves
even a little bit differently now because of what you mentioned has happened at the
federal level. I think, you know, if we can send gazillions of dollars overseas like it's
(37:13):
nothing, I think we could do a little bit more investing in in the side of the system
that you just mentioned, like when when families are really starting to have some rough
times, they shouldn't have to pay two hundred fifty dollars for therapy.
And by the way, they don't they just don't go, you know, or, you know, the system comes
around and create some substandard subpar system to provide this kind of stuff for them.
(37:34):
And there's no there's no healing in that.
It's not good enough. So why don't we just scrap that whole thing and say, and I don't
mean forever, you know, hand up, not a handout, this idea that you you you wrap around
these folks when things are starting to get shaky and just try to keep the family
together, you know, because, look, I'd like to see no kids in foster care, too, but for
the right reasons in the right way.
Now, when you're talking a few minutes ago about like the grandmother taking in the
(37:57):
grandchild and you would give them cribs and diapers, that exact phrase was in my head
is give them a hand up, not a handout.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's, you know, words to live by.
Because they're already stepping up to do a very tough thing.
Imagine getting that call at midnight.
Oh, we got your grandkids and they're, you know, will you take them?
Yeah, of course. You know, but it's going to be tough.
It's going to change my life overnight, you know, and and a lot of the people just they
(38:20):
just need the help financially, too.
And, you know, you somewhat answer this, but how do you inspire others, whether it's
colleagues, donors or volunteers, for folks to get involved and stay involved?
That's a great question. On the donor side, we definitely pride ourselves in the fact
that we have a lot of long term donors.
We have a lot of people that have been with us years.
I mean, my board chair alone has been with me over as board chair for more than 20
(38:41):
years. I've got board members, others that have been since the founding.
So even with donors, you know, again, like I said, speaking to them about things that
matter in everyday business, like we're debt free, you know, we're not going to go
crashing down after you make an investment here.
We've done something like forty five capital campaigns already.
So, you know, in a lot of charities, they mess up in capital campaigns.
(39:01):
They raise money and they don't get the job done and all that money gets squandered, you
know, and people are weary about that.
Well, I can take them all around and say, no, no, no.
Here's what we did. Here's what we did.
By the way, we've done like forty five of them.
We would never do that. In fact, we won't even start typically building until we're
80 to 85 percent funded.
So maybe we could be in a position to have to short term borrow something, but it's a
good, healthy borrow.
(39:23):
But we can point to those things for people.
And so that's that's one of the ways we definitely encourage and just letting them
know the results, too, when they see the young people around and they see the the
pictures in our collaterals, they know it's real deal.
And it's local to an extra place of hope.
So this campaign we're in is really to build out our current footprint.
We're doing a lot more in the human, anti-human trafficking space on the educational
(39:46):
side as well, and also doing some some some big believer
in the right kind of collaborations.
So, for instance, we're dealing with a company right now that's building an app and
it's going to be a way to teach parents about what their kids are looking at on their
cell phones, on these these, you know, egregious apps that are out there and these
(40:07):
things that are, you know, working against their children.
A lot of kids are falling into sextortion where they're convinced, as you know, to send
pictures of themselves. And then all of a sudden you find out that these are gangs from
like Nigeria and stuff that do this stuff.
But people get scared and freaked out.
They send more. And all of a sudden you're in a firestorm.
Well, if kids better understood what they're about to enter into and older, you know,
(40:29):
their parents as well. That's one level.
We're doing another thing with a statewide Florida fund where we're working with the
Florida Sheriff's Association all over on some of these busts, like the one you
mentioned earlier. We have a lot of them in the center of the state, too, in Polk County
and Orange County. And what we're doing is we're saying to them, if there's if there's
a bust where this fund that we're a part of as well, we'll actually give some of that
(40:52):
reimburse some of the police organizations for the money they put out in order to stage
a sting, because otherwise sometimes they won't stage the sting because they don't have
the money. Or if they get people, the survivors in, they don't have the money to put
them in in the places that they need to be.
And so we're part of that as well.
And then we're part of Crimestoppers throughout Florida right now where we have our
group. One of my board members in particular has provided some of the money to up the
(41:14):
amount of reward for tips, bonafide tips, but specific to human trafficking, which was
all new. We just we started that with them about a year and a half ago.
So just doing a lot more that way.
But on the residential, just building out the footprint we have from Martin down to
Boca. You just mentioned sextortion and that some folks also don't think about or don't
know about. And literally just yesterday I was reading an article about that, and I
(41:37):
think there were 17 kids that they highlighted committed suicide because of that.
And so that's a big deal that parents need to just to be aware of to your point about
seeing what's on their phone and what's happening.
And this collective app that we're a part of with this group, really brilliant people
that put this thing together here in West Palm.
It's just it's it's a way to just give tools to these families.
(41:57):
And it's actually a collection of people who can communicate with each other.
Hey, my son got this strange text.
Anybody know about this? Or I found this app on my son's phone or this is happening.
What do I do now? And so it's they're learning from each other.
But then they also have the professionals that have created the app to provide insight.
And it's really kind of a neat thing.
But yeah, the more we can I don't want to just say it's all about just educating people
(42:19):
that this happens because there's a lot of groups out there doing that.
And we do some of that as well in schools and so forth.
But really getting down into the nitty gritty about here's what it really looks like.
It's not always the white van that pulls up and snatches your kid.
It's the white van that happened to come up.
But he's been talking to your kid on the Internet for six weeks or whatever.
So kind of scary stuff.
And I think the more people know, the more vigilant they'll be.
(42:41):
Charles, we've got about 90 seconds left.
Any parting words of wisdom?
Well, thank you for highlighting what we do and for your people that follow you.
Appreciate that very much.
Like I said earlier on, a lot of people just don't know the depth of it, especially when it comes to trafficking.
And again, just the results of trauma and trafficking and getting people to understand that there is a way to get these kids and young people toward healing.
(43:03):
But if we don't stop these cycles, we're going to have the same problems forever.
I think the Bible says there's always going to be people in poverty.
We get that. But some of this other stuff we could cut out.
I really think we could.
But it's all about you got to raise the funds to do it.
You got to put something good together.
And then you got to you got to get people to listen, you know, and I think people are starting to listen.
I think people are scared of what's out there.
(43:25):
We see some crazy stuff, that's for sure.
And you're at the front lines.
And so thank you for the work that you do.
Well, thank you as well.
Appreciate you. It's great to meet you.
Likewise, Charles Bender, founding CEO of Place of Hope.
Again, thank you so much for being here.
I'm Chris Meek. We're out of time.
We'll see you next week. Same time, same place.
Until then, stay safe and keep taking your next steps forward.
(43:48):
Thanks for tuning in to Next Steps Forward.
Be sure to join Chris Meek for another great show next Tuesday at 10 a.m.
Pacific Time and 1 p.m.
Eastern Time on The Voice America Empowerment Channel.
This week, make things happen in your life.
(44:18):
Next Steps Forward.
There are few things that make people successful.
(00:08):
Taking a step forward to change their lives is one successful trait, but it takes some
time to get there.
How do you move forward to greet the success that awaits you?
Welcome to Next Steps Forward with host Chris Meek.
Each week, Chris brings on another guest who has successfully taken the next steps forward.
(00:30):
Now here is Chris Meek.
Hello.
Welcome to this week's episode of Next Steps Forward, and I'm your host, Chris Meek.
As always, it's a pleasure to have you with us.
Next Steps Forward is committed to helping others achieve more than ever while experiencing
greater personal empowerment and wellbeing.
Our guest today is Charles Bender III.
Charles is the founding CEO and a board member of Place of Hope, which is a Palm Beach Gardens,
(00:51):
Florida, faith-based, and state-licensed family-style residential child-caring agency
for abused and neglected children.
Charles had many years of work with various housing, social, and human services organizations
throughout Palm Beach County before launching Place of Hope in 1999.
The majority of Charles' work has involved low-income individuals and families, homeless
and substance-abusing populations, and at-risk dependent children and youth.
(01:14):
Charles Bender, welcome to Next Steps Forward.
Thanks so much.
Thanks for having me.
It's exciting.
I appreciate your time and certainly appreciate the work that you're doing.
So, Charles, let's start off.
What inspired you to dedicate your career to helping vulnerable children and families?
Well, you know, there was a longer story, but when I really, when I came to Place of
Hope, well, I guess in college before Place of Hope, I really felt like I wanted to be
(01:37):
in the, lack of a better term, the people-helping business.
I wanted to do something with purpose.
I wanted to do something to help people out, but I'm not really much of a social worker.
I'm more of a social entrepreneur, and so I did a few things out there that were never
great, and I really enjoyed it and learned a lot, learned what I didn't like as well.
But when I had the opportunity to kind of co-launch Place of Hope, for me, that became
(01:59):
really a spiritual calling for me.
So it was a large church in the area of Christ Fellowship that actually had the idea and
the launching, and then they selected me to be their lead guy on a committee for a lot
of years to just kind of shape it, and then one day the board was formed, and they hired
me, and here I am 25 years later.
Be careful what you wish for, right?
Right.
We all benefit from mentors and role models.
(02:21):
Tell us about the people who influenced your thinking or mentored you along the journey
to helping others.
I'd say, you know, so much of it goes back to my parents, and it has to do with the way
I like to help people.
Like I said, I'm not a great social worker.
I'm probably not the most patient guy on the planet.
I have a certain set of values that I go by, and I feel like, you know, there's ways to
get ahead and certain principles to live by, and so my approach was oftentimes different
(02:44):
than, you know, what's typically out there in the human services world, but I would say
I think my parents had a lot to do with it.
They were both small business entrepreneurs, and I just learned a lot about work ethic
and launching things and sticking with it, working outside the nine to five, you know,
all those kinds of things, and that's what it took to get this thing off the ground.
(03:07):
Not just me.
There were other great people as well, but yeah, I'd say, and there's been great mentors
ever since, board members, donors who are involved, people who just help take it to
the next level, a lot of them even to this day, so there's quite a few.
You worked for many years with various organizations dedicated to helping others.
What inspired you to start Place of Hope instead of continuing to do what you were doing?
(03:30):
Yeah, I was working when the opportunity came to help the church, and it was volunteer-based,
so I actually did that for a little over four years while it was just a planning cycle before
the church spun us off separately as a non-profit.
We bought land and then kind of envisioned where we were going, how we were going to
do it, getting state licensure, raising money, all of it.
(03:52):
So I would say, you know, it was the folks that really had the original vision that really
encouraged me, and then just seeing how people, and I see this to this day, and it's actually
one of my favorite things about what we do, and that is that people step up and go way
beyond themselves to help in so many ways.
It could be little kids with a lemonade stand, or it could be somebody who can pay to build
(04:15):
a building.
You know, it really doesn't matter.
It's just that we see such greatness out of people, and it just completely keeps me pumped
up for what we do.
Well, you talked about, you know, volunteering for the church before you were spun off.
Was there a specific moment or an experience that prompted you to say, I'm going to do
this?
So the board was formed, and they came to me and said, we want you to run this after
these years.
(04:35):
And I thought, you know what?
I have a career going in something else.
I thought I had a great opportunity, and I thought, yeah, I don't really want to do that
because I ran homeless shelters before, and I've had some really crazy stories.
And I thought, eh, 24-7 care of having people in your residential care is a lot.
So I said, look, they're like, we need an answer out of you in a week, and I said, well,
I can't give that to you in a week.
I need to go home.
I need to pray about it.
I need to talk to my wife, and I just need to really think this through.
(04:57):
And there was actually a day about 30 days later, and one of the board members called
kind of impatient, like, hey, we need an answer.
And I said, well, I'm just not there yet.
And it was literally like a day later.
My wife came to me, and we had both that day separately felt like God was telling us, go
do it.
So that's why I say, you know, the spiritual thing, and then the timing of that was just
(05:18):
amazing.
And to be honest with you, there's been some tough days, but man, I can't envision doing
something else with my life all these years.
Yeah.
There's an old saying, do what you love and call it work.
Exactly.
No, it's true.
That's fantastic.
So let's take a step back, so we have a better understanding of your community and the people
who live there.
Now, I'm sure when some people hear Palm Beach Gardens, they largely Beach and the super
(05:38):
rich people live in them.
Describe Palm Beach Gardens and why there's even a need for housing, social and human
services organizations.
Well, interestingly, we're regional now.
We have a campus in Boca Raton, so I'm sure you've heard the same things about Boca Raton.
We have one in West Palm Beach directly off of the island of Palm Beach, and we have two
in Palm Beach Gardens and now one in Martin County, one county north of here, which everything
(05:59):
you just described is true about all those communities.
There's so much wealth here.
There is so much prosperity.
There's so many people doing great things.
It's getting more by the day down here, as you know.
But we also have a huge divide in this community in terms of not that all socioeconomic things
drive abuse of children because they don't, because we see stories coming out of every
neighborhood you can imagine.
(06:20):
But there is a tremendous amount of poverty here, and it's really hard to make it.
And when you factor those things into lifestyle and stress and the other things, oftentimes
these poor kids are in the way.
And so I don't think people really realize, like you just described, what just a community
just minutes from here or 30 miles west of here, what it looks like and how people are
living and the things that are taking place to kids that should never take place.
(06:46):
You launched Place of Hope in 1999.
When did you have your very first vision of Place of Hope, and what did it take for you
to get started?
I can't take credit for that.
That was Christ Fellowship Church.
The pastor and his wife, they had come back from a trip to Romania.
They were there during war-torn Romania when they had stopped US families from being able
to adopt.
They were warehousing these kids in these horrific hospital-type scenarios.
(07:09):
These kids were not growing in their developmental steps, etc.
But while they were there, they saw another group from the States in a much smaller home-like,
faith-based, family-friendly environment where the kids really were a focus, and they felt
that God put it on their hearts to come back to the States, figure out what the heck's
going on down here, because it was bad at the time here.
That piece, like you said, that was probably, that was 94, 5, 6, 7, 8.
(07:32):
We hit the road saying, what are we going to do?
How are we going to do it?
We're going to do it with excellence, or we're just not going to do it at all.
I remember them saying that to me.
I caught the vision as a result of the vision they had, and then they needed a front guy
to go do it.
I built an amazing team since that day.
My key people have been with me over 20 years.
(07:53):
What did Place of Hope look like at the end of its first year?
We had a couple of homes on one of, we now have five campus locations.
We also do statewide programmings.
We do a lot of different things.
From the residential perspective, it was one 10-acre campus here in Palm Beach Gardens,
a beautiful place, but we had to grow slow because we needed to learn what the heck we
were doing, honestly.
(08:13):
These are kids that come from the worst scenarios, by far.
I always say in today's day and age, they wouldn't like this if I said it out loud to
them, but it's the truth.
The Department of Children and Families in any state does not want to remove kids.
They will go out of their way to redefine things and what's an acceptable level of what
takes place in these poor kids' lives.
(08:34):
By the time we get them, it's a mess.
It's really, really, really tough.
We started seeing these kids heal up fast, really find a trajectory for their lives and
find hope.
By the way, it wasn't rocket science.
It was really just a traditional, organic family model with all the kind of accoutrements
that go with it, a nice place to live, chores, going places on weekends, playing after-school
(08:58):
sports, all that stuff and having it in a family milieu.
It just works fantastically.
That's amazing.
What were some of your biggest challenges early on in growing Place of Hope?
It always comes down to finances, but in some ways, you look back and you're like, okay,
maybe it's good that we did grow a little slower in some ways.
I've had people that have left town and come back and been like, whoa, I can't believe
(09:20):
how big this thing is now.
That actually just happened this past weekend.
The hardest really is finding the right people with the right mindset to really, really care
for these kids.
It's not just a charity scene scenario where people show up at an event and they give.
That's fine, too.
I get that because daily caring for these kids is not everybody's thing.
(09:41):
Just to have a better understanding of what these kids, these human trafficking survivors
that are in our care, to know why it just doesn't change like this overnight, getting
the community to understand how tough it really is on these kids and how much trauma has affected
their lives.
That's still probably one of the hardest things to this day.
What was it like going through COVID?
That was tough.
(10:02):
I still feel like there's little things that survive as a result of COVID.
There's little things I see and I'm like, oh, I remember when that happened during COVID.
We went through the 08 downturn because I've been here so long.
That was a tough scenario.
Even COVID was just crazy.
It's like you didn't really know what was true or right.
These kids, not everything we do, but the kids that are under 18 in our care, they're
(10:23):
in state custody.
You had the federal government and the state government setting down their edicts as to
what's okay, what's not.
Then you've got the school districts and then you've got just everybody else not knowing
what was going on.
It was a tough time for sure and then financially that was burdensome because everybody was
scared.
You're not going to give away a bunch of money if you don't know what's happening to your
own finances.
It was a slower time, but I really feel like we survived that God provided for us.
(10:47):
I feel like we could weather just about anything when it comes to that.
How do kids find their way to Places of Hope?
The ones that are under 18 for the foster care side of what we do, they all come de
facto through the state of Florida.
The states involved locally through this judicial circuit with Department of Children and Families,
the court system, lawyers, they'll remove for eminent danger, oftentimes with the police.
(11:12):
Then what they'll do is the local agency that spearheads placement, they'll call us and
they say, and typically they know because we report back.
We have two open beds in this home or whatever.
We have one.
They just refer.
They refer from other counties as well, not just from here.
You said you have five campuses now?
We do.
How many kids do you house?
(11:33):
Our residential capacity is about 180, so it's quite a bit from a 24-7 perspective,
but we're also in a massive campaign right now to raise enough money over the next few
years to actually build out our campuses.
We always knew what we had, but we didn't actually have a concrete plan to get there
and get done.
We only build debt-free.
We have no debt as an organization, so we have to keep that in mind when we're trying
(11:57):
to do what we're doing.
Now we have this plan, and it's absolutely amazing because we're going to have hundreds
more beds by the time we're done because we have the land.
Unlike most charities, we own land that's buildable and we're building.
Perfect segue.
You're under a big fundraising campaign right now.
Where can people find you?
Placehope.com, and it's called God's Children, Our Future.
(12:18):
It's a comprehensive plan on the side of an annual fund because obviously we have to pay
our bills every month.
That's why we do events and so forth and people give.
The next is to build out the physical campuses, debt-free, so there's opportunities.
People want to do that in multiple locations.
The third is to build an endowment for the future because we're all going to be gone
one day and we're trying to build something super strong.
(12:40):
This isn't just about us doing something nice for a little bit of time.
We want this thing to last.
My whole board is like that, all of our founders.
I'm like that.
My team's like that.
We want to build an endowment too so that it's maybe a little bit of an easier sell
one day when we all move out of the way to get somebody in here with the right mindset
to run a very healthy organization, which is what we have.
(13:01):
What were some of the pivotal moments that shaped Place of Hope's direction for growth?
Yeah, you know, it's interesting when we first opened and we had this one campus where I'm
located now, the first one, there was a lot of fervor for let's just build it all now.
Let's raise the money and do it.
I had to temper the board even back then just with my experience in homeless shelters and
so forth that this isn't something you grow fast.
(13:23):
You have to really know what you're doing and then you take it to the next level and
the next level.
I think we've always had an entrepreneurial spirit, all of us, with the eye toward let's
keep doing more but not like overnight.
Let's just do it as we feel it's appropriate.
We can find the great people because it's one thing to build housing.
It's a whole nother to make sure we have the right staff because for the over 18ers, we
(13:46):
don't just provide affordable housing.
It's transitional affordable housing when we have a lot of rules and a lot of programmatic
pieces that you have to be a part of in order to have that housing.
We have to have people that are in their business and making sure that they're moving along.
Place of Hope provides a range of services from intervention and maternity care for young
single mothers to safety, recovery and restoration for human trafficking victims and survivors.
(14:11):
Would you walk us through each of your various programs, how they came and how they've evolved
over time?
Yes.
The enrichment and education side falls over everything that we do.
I always call it the non-organic family good stuff.
The families do that, but just making sure that we have the outside resources to show
the kids what's possible in their lives.
(14:32):
It could be job mentoring.
It could be playing sports.
We have the police that'll come in here and bring their dogs and their horses and show
the kids that we'll bring in therapy animals.
Whatever it is, that all falls under that.
The affordable housing side really started transitional when we realized we had kids
that were in foster care that were going to start aging out of foster care.
(14:54):
What do you do?
All the stats show these kids don't make it.
They end up incarcerated.
The females are pregnant right away, and it's just a big mess.
Jails are full of kids that used to be in foster care, or close to the system at least.
We just said, we've got to do it differently, and we have to have a place for them when
they leave here.
Again, with rules, it's the next level.
It's a bridge.
By the way, we have our sixth youth right now who is becoming a habitat for a humanity
(15:17):
homeowner.
That's the next layer after we've stabilized, maybe brought out of foster care, put them
into transitional housing, and now all of a sudden they're owning a home.
That's the ultimate.
I love it.
I want to do more and more of that.
The human trafficking survivors, we've actually been doing that for over 20 years, taking
care of them.
Before people started talking about human trafficking and all the scourge that belongs
(15:40):
to all that and what people do to people for control and money, we just didn't know what
we were dealing with.
We were dealing with abused children that had really horrible things done to them.
Once the country and other people woke up to this is human trafficking, they just recodified
everything.
We've got stories from 20-something years ago of just really bad stories of young people,
(16:01):
but now what we've done is we've actually put some wraparound services and very specific
therapy and targeted case management for those survivors, stuff they need because they've
seen so much trauma in their lives, and all of it.
We have a maternity home for pregnant teenagers.
We've seen 10 and 12-year-olds pregnant, rape victims, you name it, and they need a place
(16:22):
to go.
Most are in state custody.
Some have just been referred to us over the years by families.
What we've done over the years is we've really just responded to needs as they pop up.
Being entrepreneurial, this is one of the things I love the most that my board is in
agreement with, and that is just because you do something today in any business doesn't
mean you're going to be in it forever.
(16:43):
Charities have a real problem with getting out of their own way.
They don't look from the business perspective a lot, and so I'm always looking at our numbers.
I'm always looking at what's going on, but I'm also looking at how effective is something
because people in the community are giving me their money.
Yeah, they trust me, but we have to keep transparent on are we having that big impact.
Sometimes we'll close out of things and go in a different direction just based on the
(17:03):
community's need, but thankfully we've been able to respond and just do more, not less.
Human trafficking has been an issue that was never on my radar until I started doing this
podcast, and so now it's one of the biggest things that I focus on.
We're coming up on the one-year anniversary of a sting operation called March Sadness
in South Florida where 33 people were arrested, and it was teachers, clergy, sports coaches,
(17:28):
everyone who you trust your kid with.
Can you share some of the biggest misconceptions the public has about human trafficking?
For us, what I'd say that most people can't even imagine this is that most of the human
trafficking that we see by definition is familial human trafficking.
You got a mom who is down on her luck financially, might have drug addiction or whatever, has
(17:50):
deadbeat boyfriend in the house, and basically he's paying some of the bills and having sex
with the daughter, and she feels like things are taken care of.
Well, that's disgusting, one, and two, it's highly illegal at the same time.
We see a lot of that.
Now, we do see, especially in the last couple of years, a lot of border-crossing situations.
We have a lot of non-English-speaking kids that come in, but they end up in the actual
(18:14):
system, so they end up in foster care.
They might have come here with an adult or not, but they ended up in the system.
We just see more that's on the family end than gang stuff.
We have seen the gang stuff, and we've actually had some very high-profile placements here
over the years.
I've had DCF secretaries themselves call me and say, we need you to give us a shot here
(18:34):
because this girl's been in 50 foster placements.
Can you try it?
We've had that as well.
It's really a sad scenario when you see what people do to children, what they do to other
adults too, by the way.
When people have trauma in their lives, I always say, I doubt there's anybody that walks
the streets as a prostitute who wants to be a prostitute.
(18:57):
Something happened in their lives, and there's trauma involved.
Imagine these kids who've had this trauma.
Sometimes it's not even ever brought forward.
Nobody even knows about it.
We've had plenty of kids placed here.
HT is not codified in their file.
It's supposed to be if they know, a human trafficking victim or survivor.
We get them in here, and then we find it out a year later, and it all comes out because
they're stabilized.
(19:18):
They feel safe, and they feel like they can open up.
But it's very, very common, and we see mainly in the familial side.
One thing I like to highlight to our viewers and listeners is that people typically say,
not in my neighborhood, not in my backyard.
At the beginning of the show about the affluent communities that you're serving right now,
I had a guest on about two, two and a half years ago.
(19:38):
She was trafficked by her best friend's dad throughout West Palm Beach.
So you talk about the familiar thing.
Here's a 17, 18-year-old girl in high school who all the dads in the neighborhood in West
Palm, and so it's disgusting, and that's why I appreciate folks like you and the work that
you do, and that's why I stand on the top of the mountain and scream from my lungs.
People need to open their eyes to this because you mentioned the border crossing.
(20:00):
The cartels in Mexico and Latin America are sending them over, and that's it.
We got missing kids all over this country, and we do end up with some of them in care
because when they do surface, the state takes them in and so forth.
Thankfully, Florida's kind of ahead of the curve on that kind of thing legislatively.
Some Florida laws, which is a good thing, it kind of identifies them a little bit differently
and at least pulls them into the system.
(20:22):
So we've gotten them where there's pimps involved, and then all of a sudden, because they're
now legally in the system, the pimp disappears.
So that's been good.
But we've had families, gun runners and drug runners and all kinds of stuff, and then there's
usually human trafficking tied to that as well.
But unfortunately, we see the long-term effects, and it is not an easy scenario to get these
(20:43):
kids toward healing, but it is possible.
You work in so many challenging areas of human needs.
Which one is the most challenging, or are they all from the category of most challenging?
I mean, it's all challenging because you just don't really know who's coming into your residential
life until they do, right?
But I'm also a big believer that even if through an outreach program where we might just be
(21:05):
providing someone with diapers and clothing, there's a part of me that really wants people
to understand that you have to show some gratitude in life, and we're surrounded by people who
just think they deserve everything.
It's not true.
Nobody should walk through life like that.
I'm not trying to say that I know what they've walked through, but at the same time, we try
(21:26):
to do a lot of teaching in our model that, hey, these are people that don't even know
you that have given because they understand your plight, and they want to make life better
for you.
So I make that a part of it because I feel like otherwise, we're just handing stuff out.
But yeah, it is, yeah, there's a lot to that, but.
How do you measure the long-term success of your programs?
(21:48):
Honestly, the number one thing, because I'm thankfully being mainly private funded, I've
never felt like we had to get into all these consultants coming in and building this, that,
and the other.
And my thing is, we have a lot of kids who come back after they turn 18.
They might move away.
They might move into our housing.
They might go somewhere else.
They might get married.
They might have their own children.
They come back.
(22:09):
So a lot of them will tell their story.
They'll speak at our events.
You can't make people do that.
That's because they want to do that, and they really feel like they've been impacted.
We have a young lady right now who's going out in our quarterly or our annual direct
mail piece that she was here years ago.
And she kind of resurfaced and she's around.
She's doing great.
A lot of trauma.
It's a bad situation, very bad.
(22:29):
But she stepped up and said, I want to do this.
I want to be a part of this.
And what she wrote out for our donors to hear is just, it's just spectacular.
It's unbelievable.
So that's kind of one of those things that really keeps you going, knowing that they
do have that resilience and they can heal up and she's doing great.
Well, and to your point, it's those personal stories that really put a spotlight on in
(22:50):
terms of what we're doing does work and your donors make a difference.
Yeah.
And so if I can tell those stories or they can tell their stories, for me, that's enough.
You know, obviously we look at other stats as well.
We have funders that want to know certain things, but I mean, we look at their grades.
We definitely look at how are they doing in school, how are they doing in their social
relationships?
How are they doing?
You know, we get kids in here that have never once been to a dentist and they might be 15
years old.
(23:11):
So you got to look at the simplest of things.
We have kids that have come in here.
I'm not exaggerating.
These kids have gone off and been star college athletes, but they never even picked up a
ball before they got here.
So just to show you that they've got these skills and they're resilient and you just
got to tap into it.
You know?
And so to me, that's some of the ways we measure it, you know, through the simplest of ways.
(23:34):
And what distinguishes Place of Hope from other social services organizations in your
part of Florida?
I definitely, like I said, I like to remain entrepreneurial.
First, I'd be bored out of my skull if I was just always running the same thing.
And so it's not even just about expansion.
It's really just being about critically looking at everything that you're in and you're doing
(23:54):
and what's the impact and can you do it less expensively and serve more people and still
have the greatest impact?
I just like all those pieces, organizational structure, bringing in the right people.
And honestly, I love to be in the realm of fundraising, not for the purpose of raising
money, but more for the purpose of meeting great people who have a kindred spirit in
the sense that they want to be a part of something, they want to co-own it.
(24:16):
That's my favorite thing by far.
I love seeing the kids.
I love hanging out with them.
But I love that part as well because we're just surrounded by great people and you're
doing this for us today.
I mean, I love that because you're helping us tell a story and you have an audience that
gets to hear what's going on, especially for those that don't understand it.
Are there any specific stories you'd like to share about a child or a family?
(24:36):
There's a ton.
Even the young lady I just mentioned to you that's coming back now and she's living in
our affordable housing.
But all the kids that have gone on to get college degrees or get tech degrees in air
conditioning or electrical, there's a lot of them.
But we have a young man that was at our Hope Bash big dinner this weekend at Trump Jupiter.
Hundreds of people in the room and his family, we presented them an award and they adopted
(24:59):
him after he turned 18.
So they wanted that just to show him that he's forever part of that family.
And that kid was there with a big smile on his face.
Now we have we have several young people that work for us and we've had a lot over the years.
You know, again, just just seeing them with their resilience, even when there's high levels
of trauma, just seeing them make it.
And look, I've always said, you know, people say, well, how do you spell success?
(25:22):
I mean, honestly, with with the kids we're dealing with and the stats that surround them
in their lives, you know, honestly, if some of these kids, if we can keep them from hurting
or killing somebody based on what they've been through, we all win.
So it's not all, hey, I got a degree at University of Florida or whatever.
It's it's it's all of it.
But some of it's just getting these kids to kind of take a deep look inside and try to
move toward healing, you know, and know that they're loved because we do.
(25:45):
We really do love them.
You mentioned that you're mostly privately funded.
You know, we don't talk much about politics on here for various reasons, from obvious
reasons, I should say.
But given the current administration and what Elon Musk is doing, you know, is there any
concern from a federal budget perspective?
No, I'm not concerned because a lot of what comes down from federal HHS that goes to I
(26:09):
guess it's kind of block granted to states, it's based on some formula of need, which
changes all the time. But they usually the legislatures have to match it at least at
50 percent. What could happen is you could because you can't not you cannot not take
kids in if they need to have safety.
Right. If they're in imminent danger, they have to be removed.
Now, I have seen them where they move the bar of what's acceptable.
(26:31):
I've seen it over 20 something years.
It's terrible. But like I'll look and say, well, two years ago they would have removed
that kid and now they haven't. And look what's happened, you know, so they will play
around a little bit. But overall, I think, you know, they're going to have to fund at
least partially what the need is.
What I like is we've built an organization.
There are a lot of groups like us out there that are, you know, they could be 80, 85
(26:52):
percent government finance.
You should never have that in any kind of charity, if you ask me, because all it takes
is one switch and you're closing your doors.
And so we were somewhere down at like 32 percent right now, you know, with government
funds. And so I like it that way.
And that's not going to that's not going to impact us.
And we just have generous donors.
And like I said, we're trying to build an endowment to hedge against some of those
(27:13):
things as well, because, you know, that day may come in this.
And this I mean, I guess it could have an impact.
I just don't think it's going to hit us real hard.
And from your perspective, what would be the long term consequences of reducing social
programs and low income housing initiatives on communities like those of Places of
Hope? Tell me that one more time.
You know, what do you think the long term consequences of reducing social programs and
(27:34):
low income housing initiatives, how would that would affect you?
Well, it's definitely not happening in Florida right now.
Every well, South Florida, everybody's talking about affordable housing and the crisis
and the need. Now, when we talk about it, we always say that it's affordable
transitional because what we don't need is a lineup of people saying, I want affordable
housing because ours is a program.
But if you think about it, ours is of the greatest need because we have the young people
(27:57):
who are slipping through the cracks otherwise that have been through these traumatic life
experiences. I would say there's more of a need for what we do, but there's also just a
need for truly affordable housing.
I mean, people are being squashed out of here.
I mean, my own children are having one one owns and two are trying to own homes.
And it's tough right now.
I mean, in the same areas that were almost affordable not that long ago.
(28:20):
So that affects everybody.
But I think it really affects young people who have been through the system and
traumatized and or homeless and those kinds of things.
And so we're kind of addressing as much as we can at that at that level.
But just the general workforce population needs needs some help.
So I hope to see it keep going in a good direction.
The work that you do exacts such a heavy emotional and physical toll.
(28:43):
You've had a time when you were ready to just throw your hands up in the air and walk
away. I have such a great team.
And, you know, I have a clinical director and a CEO that they've both been with me
over 20 years. And, you know, they're on the front line of dealing with a lot of
that stuff. And I'm aware of everything that's going on.
And it is tough on the team from time to time, especially our foster families.
I mean, they are on the front line.
(29:03):
And then even with those that help run our transitional housing, you know, not not
every young person is showing a lot of gratitude for what they're having handed to
them and so forth. And so the team struggles with that at times.
But at times, you know, I've never, never once felt like I wanted to throw up my
hands. I've had some tough days and there were, you know, probably a couple of times
over the years that I've looked at opportunities that have come my way to do
(29:25):
something different. And each of those times I walked away from it feeling like I'm
right where I'm supposed to be.
Like I said, it's tough, but I love it at the same time.
Well, I guess to that point, what's the most rewarding part of your job?
I think it's two things. I think it really is seeing these young kids that have gone
through so much be resilient, learn to show gratitude, learn to actually become
(29:47):
self-sustaining.
And then the flip side over here is bringing in those people that can afford to help us
do those things, you know, like they're giving their time, whatever, whatever they
give and just and they could be doing, you know, diaper drives for us or they could be
giving money that they did, kids raising money through a lemonade stand.
It could be all that.
(30:07):
That's probably my second favorite part, where I just love to see the community get
together and want to make something great happen.
So it's probably those two things.
How do you stay motivated and avoid burning out?
I mean, you see such traumatic life experiences.
I mean, that's going to take its toll on you.
I get woken up a lot in the middle of the night, so I spend a lot of time in prayer.
(30:27):
I really do, because I think that's the number one thing.
I mean, I really feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be.
And I also feel like if God's called us to something, we're going to he's going to
provide for it. And I really I know that might sound overly simplistic, but it's the
truth. And thankfully, also, you know, I've had the team that I have around me for so
long, even my board members that have just been so long term and all in.
(30:48):
And we're super transparent.
You know, we've taken over two charities that failed.
And in both circumstances, there were problems with the board of directors and the
leadership and they're fighting with each other.
We don't have that. We don't do that because we're open with each other about
everything, the good, the bad, the ugly.
I tell the board everything.
They get involved where they need to.
And so because of those strong characters around us on the team, as well as the board
(31:11):
and the volunteers, just keeps me motivated.
I do like to go to the Keys every once in a while and veg out.
I'm a little jealous of that.
So you're hearing that you've mentioned the word resilient a few times in our
conversation. What's the most important lesson you've learned about resilience
through your years of work?
I mean, honestly, seeing some of these kids that there's just so many stories I can
(31:36):
describe to you, but some of the ones that I guess sort of bother me the most is when
you've seen like a lot of bullying with kids who maybe are in foster care and maybe
they don't look quite like the kids around them in certain circumstances.
And to see those kids get bullied, boy, there's a part of me that wants to just come
out of my skin on that. But obviously, I'm an adult, I can't do that.
(31:57):
But that's hard to watch at times.
And then sometimes, you know, looking back at like, you know, you have families who
probably were healthy enough to do something in their case to get their child back and
just decided to put themselves first and not do it.
And to see what a kid goes through in that is really hard to ever, ever get used to.
(32:19):
You know, it's one thing if you know mom's completely drugged out and you haven't seen
her and she doesn't show up for her case, you know, for reviews or her visitations,
any of that. But when you know one is kind of there and then just decides, I'd rather
go smoke some weed or crack or whatever, and then doesn't show up and you see this
kid just melt, that's hard.
You know, and I just, I don't know if I answered your question correctly, but it's just those
(32:41):
kinds of things that you never get used to.
No, I totally understand.
And that's just awful to think about as a parent.
It is.
You know, Place of Hope and other organizations are performing triage and people are already
injured. I mean, investing time, money and other resources prevent the people you serve
from being injured in the first place.
Yeah, no, that's a great point.
We're not, as an organization, in the super front side of the system where there's shaky
(33:08):
family situations and we've been asked to come in with services.
We just haven't been asked to do that.
We are on the next level where in the United States, a lot of kids that are removed for
imminent danger, instead of going into licensed foster homes, they go with relatives.
They call it relative, non-relative caregiving.
There's a lot of that. And so it's somewhat formal, but not as much.
(33:28):
But a lot of those families don't have the resources that they need as well.
It's just somebody doing a good thing.
It's grandma, like, I'm not going to let my kids and my grandkids go into foster care.
So they step up. So one of the things we've done about that to kind of address that and
do something big is help those folks, is to step up with diapers and car seats and
cribs and everything they would need to receive that child that they really want to
(33:51):
receive. That's one of the things we've launched into that we're really grateful to be a
part of that. And we're serving thousands to this.
This happens to a lot of people.
So and they just need some help to make it happen and make it work and keep those kids
safe. It's no secret that the foster care system has its shortcomings.
What systemic changes would you like to see in the system to support children?
(34:15):
Yeah, I think that it's like everything else.
Things get political from time to time.
So you got this group that thinks, oh, hey, you know, residential care is bad.
Or you have these people that say, well, traditional foster care is bad.
And by the way, nothing's perfect.
Right. So bad things happen.
You know, one of the things we see is that the insurance industry that we have no choice
but to have a lot of insurance doesn't line up with the priorities of the child welfare
(34:38):
system and the child welfare system is not watching what the insurance industry is doing.
So we're caught in this vortex in between of like, no, no, we have to do it this way.
But you guys don't want to insure it or vice versa.
You know, I'd love to see some of that stuff straightened out.
I'd also love to see some of the politics of how the system, you know, there's a lot of
people that don't believe you should ever remove a child.
I totally disagree with that.
(34:58):
I get what they're trying to say.
I get that there's a tremendous upside to keep families together if you can.
But there's been a lot of bad stories where that hasn't worked out and it's the child
that gets hurt the worst or worse.
And so I'd love to see the politics get out of that.
And I'd also love to see some things where people just agree, whether it's legislatively
or whatever, there's something happening in Florida right now with a possible bill in
(35:20):
rural communities to do a certain level of care.
It's very similar to ours.
And I may go up and speak to this issue with the Senate.
And that is that, you know, put the politics aside.
If a model works and it's good for these kids, let's just try it.
Let's do it. Let's get the private sector involved.
So also more encouraging in the private sector.
I'm a big believer in that.
(35:41):
When you sit down with the policymakers that you're talking about, you know, what's your
message to them? Yeah, I mean, results.
I want them to oftentimes I'll bring kids along or they'll already know them.
A lot of the folks that are elected down here know us and know us well.
And also, you know, we, you know, I've got some guys that are tremendous marketers in
their past careers and so forth.
And they remind you, you always tell that the really good business parts, like we have
(36:01):
the highest ratings from Charity Navigator and Candid, you know, so and when we go and
ask for something, we typically match it dollar for dollar.
So we're not just going, oh, we need money.
We will say if you if you will give us this, we will go to these folks to give us this
or vice versa. So we look at everything more like a partnership as opposed to give, give,
and I think legislators and just people in decision making sides of things have a real
(36:23):
hard time just constantly just forking it over.
You know, you got to you got to do your part, you know, and so I'm a big believer if a if
a foundation wants to give you money, but they've got a couple strings attached to it
like, hey, we want you over here in our golf tournament.
OK, then I'm going to go find some guys to play golf in your tournament.
You know, just simple stuff like that that I think shows that it's it's not just us going
like this, but it's all of us in this thing together.
So if you're unlimited resources or even better yet, if you're a king for a day, what
(36:48):
changes would you make in government policy laws and investments on the way to where the
way society operates?
Wow. Yeah, I do believe in in like what you talked about.
I mean, when you look at the amount of waste in our country, especially at the federal
government level, and now I know there's a lot of states starting to look at themselves
even a little bit differently now because of what you mentioned has happened at the
federal level. I think, you know, if we can send gazillions of dollars overseas like it's
(37:13):
nothing, I think we could do a little bit more investing in in the side of the system
that you just mentioned, like when when families are really starting to have some rough
times, they shouldn't have to pay two hundred fifty dollars for therapy.
And by the way, they don't they just don't go, you know, or, you know, the system comes
around and create some substandard subpar system to provide this kind of stuff for them.
(37:34):
And there's no there's no healing in that.
It's not good enough. So why don't we just scrap that whole thing and say, and I don't
mean forever, you know, hand up, not a handout, this idea that you you you wrap around
these folks when things are starting to get shaky and just try to keep the family
together, you know, because, look, I'd like to see no kids in foster care, too, but for
the right reasons in the right way.
Now, when you're talking a few minutes ago about like the grandmother taking in the
(37:57):
grandchild and you would give them cribs and diapers, that exact phrase was in my head
is give them a hand up, not a handout.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's, you know, words to live by.
Because they're already stepping up to do a very tough thing.
Imagine getting that call at midnight.
Oh, we got your grandkids and they're, you know, will you take them?
Yeah, of course. You know, but it's going to be tough.
It's going to change my life overnight, you know, and and a lot of the people just they
(38:20):
just need the help financially, too.
And, you know, you somewhat answer this, but how do you inspire others, whether it's
colleagues, donors or volunteers, for folks to get involved and stay involved?
That's a great question. On the donor side, we definitely pride ourselves in the fact
that we have a lot of long term donors.
We have a lot of people that have been with us years.
I mean, my board chair alone has been with me over as board chair for more than 20
(38:41):
years. I've got board members, others that have been since the founding.
So even with donors, you know, again, like I said, speaking to them about things that
matter in everyday business, like we're debt free, you know, we're not going to go
crashing down after you make an investment here.
We've done something like forty five capital campaigns already.
So, you know, in a lot of charities, they mess up in capital campaigns.
(39:01):
They raise money and they don't get the job done and all that money gets squandered, you
know, and people are weary about that.
Well, I can take them all around and say, no, no, no.
Here's what we did. Here's what we did.
By the way, we've done like forty five of them.
We would never do that. In fact, we won't even start typically building until we're
80 to 85 percent funded.
So maybe we could be in a position to have to short term borrow something, but it's a
good, healthy borrow.
(39:23):
But we can point to those things for people.
And so that's that's one of the ways we definitely encourage and just letting them
know the results, too, when they see the young people around and they see the the
pictures in our collaterals, they know it's real deal.
And it's local to an extra place of hope.
So this campaign we're in is really to build out our current footprint.
We're doing a lot more in the human, anti-human trafficking space on the educational
(39:46):
side as well, and also doing some some some big believer
in the right kind of collaborations.
So, for instance, we're dealing with a company right now that's building an app and
it's going to be a way to teach parents about what their kids are looking at on their
cell phones, on these these, you know, egregious apps that are out there and these
(40:07):
things that are, you know, working against their children.
A lot of kids are falling into sextortion where they're convinced, as you know, to send
pictures of themselves. And then all of a sudden you find out that these are gangs from
like Nigeria and stuff that do this stuff.
But people get scared and freaked out.
They send more. And all of a sudden you're in a firestorm.
Well, if kids better understood what they're about to enter into and older, you know,
(40:29):
their parents as well. That's one level.
We're doing another thing with a statewide Florida fund where we're working with the
Florida Sheriff's Association all over on some of these busts, like the one you
mentioned earlier. We have a lot of them in the center of the state, too, in Polk County
and Orange County. And what we're doing is we're saying to them, if there's if there's
a bust where this fund that we're a part of as well, we'll actually give some of that
(40:52):
reimburse some of the police organizations for the money they put out in order to stage
a sting, because otherwise sometimes they won't stage the sting because they don't have
the money. Or if they get people, the survivors in, they don't have the money to put
them in in the places that they need to be.
And so we're part of that as well.
And then we're part of Crimestoppers throughout Florida right now where we have our
group. One of my board members in particular has provided some of the money to up the
(41:14):
amount of reward for tips, bonafide tips, but specific to human trafficking, which was
all new. We just we started that with them about a year and a half ago.
So just doing a lot more that way.
But on the residential, just building out the footprint we have from Martin down to
Boca. You just mentioned sextortion and that some folks also don't think about or don't
know about. And literally just yesterday I was reading an article about that, and I
(41:37):
think there were 17 kids that they highlighted committed suicide because of that.
And so that's a big deal that parents need to just to be aware of to your point about
seeing what's on their phone and what's happening.
And this collective app that we're a part of with this group, really brilliant people
that put this thing together here in West Palm.
It's just it's it's a way to just give tools to these families.
(41:57):
And it's actually a collection of people who can communicate with each other.
Hey, my son got this strange text.
Anybody know about this? Or I found this app on my son's phone or this is happening.
What do I do now? And so it's they're learning from each other.
But then they also have the professionals that have created the app to provide insight.
And it's really kind of a neat thing.
But yeah, the more we can I don't want to just say it's all about just educating people
(42:19):
that this happens because there's a lot of groups out there doing that.
And we do some of that as well in schools and so forth.
But really getting down into the nitty gritty about here's what it really looks like.
It's not always the white van that pulls up and snatches your kid.
It's the white van that happened to come up.
But he's been talking to your kid on the Internet for six weeks or whatever.
So kind of scary stuff.
And I think the more people know, the more vigilant they'll be.
(42:41):
Charles, we've got about 90 seconds left.
Any parting words of wisdom?
Well, thank you for highlighting what we do and for your people that follow you.
Appreciate that very much.
Like I said earlier on, a lot of people just don't know the depth of it, especially when it comes to trafficking.
And again, just the results of trauma and trafficking and getting people to understand that there is a way to get these kids and young people toward healing.
(43:03):
But if we don't stop these cycles, we're going to have the same problems forever.
I think the Bible says there's always going to be people in poverty.
We get that. But some of this other stuff we could cut out.
I really think we could.
But it's all about you got to raise the funds to do it.
You got to put something good together.
And then you got to you got to get people to listen, you know, and I think people are starting to listen.
I think people are scared of what's out there.
(43:25):
We see some crazy stuff, that's for sure.
And you're at the front lines.
And so thank you for the work that you do.
Well, thank you as well.
Appreciate you. It's great to meet you.
Likewise, Charles Bender, founding CEO of Place of Hope.
Again, thank you so much for being here.
I'm Chris Meek. We're out of time.
We'll see you next week. Same time, same place.
Until then, stay safe and keep taking your next steps forward.
(43:48):
Thanks for tuning in to Next Steps Forward.
Be sure to join Chris Meek for another great show next Tuesday at 10 a.m.
Pacific Time and 1 p.m.
Eastern Time on The Voice America Empowerment Channel.
This week, make things happen in your life.
(44:18):
Next Steps Forward.
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