The Services of Mel Trotter Ministries

Chris Palusky, CEO of Mel Trotter Ministries joins us to discuss the services offered by Mel Trotter Ministries and how events like today help support their mission. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, we have six drop off location seven if you
consider Turkey drop dot org. You'll find that link at
Woodradio dot com, whichever is easier for you to remember.
They all end up at the same place and all
of that goes to help Meltrotter Ministries and our friends
that Feeding America West Michigan send these birds to families

(00:21):
that wouldn't be having a Thanksgiving without him. Chris Puluski
back on the live line, CEO of Meltrotter, Chris, thanks
for doing this again today. I wanted to talk a
little bit about and we're going to in the next
couple of hours do an expanded live broadcast justin Barclay
will be part of it, and then from ten to
noon we're all back again to be part of it.

(00:42):
Then from five to six again tonight. If you're new
to West Michigan, Meltrotter Ministries helps those who are experiencing
homelessness and who are hungry in West Michigan. So, Chris,
from the perspective of somebody that might be hearing this
broadcast for the first time, give us your thirty second
pitch on Meltrotter and go so Meltrotter.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
We try to keep people from becoming homeless with diversion
and prevention. If they do become homeless, we have a
five hundred and fifty bed shelter and we take care
of people, but we also try to help them to
launch with our workforce developments and our affordable housing.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
It's less than thirty seconds.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, that was good.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
Wait a minute, you at a nonprofit, at a ministry
do something upstream to help people from becoming homelessness. How
does something like that work?

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Absolutely, it's so In so many instances, it's a speed bump.
Somebody has a difficult month or two, so maybe they
can't pay their rent, maybe they need to fine childcare.
So sometimes we'll negotiate with a landlord to either will
pay their rents or help to delay the rents. We'll
look for childcare if somebody needs just childcare for one

(01:51):
of the children. So we try to go upstream. We
don't want people to become homeless because if they do,
they get stuck in the system and it's hard to
get out. We all also there to help them to
get out of that because, you know what, we don't
believe anybody should have to stay in a shelter. It's
a needed necessity, but I wish it wasn't so needy.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
Well, and Chris, I know that you know this all
too well, as does your team. I mean, so many
people are a medical bill or a surprise bill away
from finding themselves in these situations. And if someone's listening
right now to our turkey drop coverage and think they're
pretty close to that, reaching out is a big part
of this to you guys, and then it leads these
people coming back to volunteer in the future.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Absolutely, this is so if you're listening today, I just
would say, you know, if you need help, go to
meltrotter dot org and we are there to help you
if you need shelter, if you need help, we want
to be able to help out. If you want to
help out Meltrotter and we want to help out with
the mission. I want to encourage people to go to
meltroter dot org and you can do something. So today

(02:55):
we're encouraging people to drop off turkeys for our turkey shop.
We have a five thousand goals to feed westness into
the turkeys. But also there's also wonderful opportunities for people
to go and volunteer at the shelter they can volunteer
in our kitchen one of our thrift stores. There's so
many different opportunities and people are like, you know what,

(03:15):
I can't do that. Well, we ask We're a faith
based organization, so we ask people to pray for us.
So people can pray for us, they can volunteer, they
can donate, and today they can drop off a turkey.

Speaker 4 (03:24):
Chris, I wanted to quickly just go to because it
is one of our drop off locations. But I know
you're so proud. And this continues to grow across West Michigan.
The thrift stores you just mentioned, the Jennison location which
is on Cottwood Drive, is a place that you can
go see Melchwater working in that community and drop off
your turkey. But talk about the expansion of these s
thrift stores all across West Miskean and what that means

(03:46):
for people.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
So we look at a couple a couple of different words.
So we are training people to go into the workforce.
So we train people how to build houses from the
ground up with our arm in the world West Michigan.
We also train people to work in retail so they
have the opportunity to learn the hard skills and the
soft skills and then go into our thrift stores and

(04:10):
actually work there, so they're gaining those skills. At the
same time, we encourage people to donate to those thrift
stores so that we're able to sell those goods, and
all the profit that we make off of a thrift
store helps to pay for our mission Downtouse.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
You'll find out more wood radio dot com. The Turkey
Drop is just getting underway. We will have a new
total for you. We'll talk to Chris Pulaski, the CEO
of Meltrodter Ministries, in again about half an hour from now.
So get back out and start lugging turkeys back into
those big buckets. Thanks Chris, Thank you.