New Vision, New Voices: Student Leaders on Breaking the Cycle of Homelessness

This episode of Chamber Amplified from the Findlay-Hancock County Chamber of Commerce features a conversation with Hank Walters, a recent graduate of the Hancock Youth Leadership program and a senior at Cory-Rawson High School. Hank shares the inspiring story of Findlay Fresh Start, a new nonprofit he co-founded with fellow students to help combat homelessness in the Findlay and Hancock County area.

Born out of an initial setback from a national program, Findlay Fresh Start is a testament to the power of resilience and vision. Hank and his team are tackling the issue of homelessness by focusing on a unique, proactive approach—providing crucial life skills like financial literacy and home maintenance to help people break the cycle of housing instability. The discussion also touches on the importance of mentorship, the group’s plans for future projects, and their forward-thinking strategy for passing the organization on to the next generation of student leaders.

Key Points

• A New Nonprofit is Born: Findlay Fresh Start was created by a group of local high school students who were part of the Hancock Youth Leadership program. The group decided to continue their project idea even after their initial application to a national program was rejected.
• Focus on Foundational Skills: The organization's mission is to help combat homelessness by equipping people with essential life skills. They are currently distributing personal hygiene kits that include a guide on home maintenance and financial literacy to help individuals budget and maintain their living spaces.
• Mentorship is Key: The student leaders work closely with Zach Thomas, who provides valuable guidance and helps them avoid duplicating services already offered by other local organizations.
• Sustainability Plan: The high school seniors have a plan to ensure the nonprofit continues after they graduate. They are already recruiting and mentoring younger high school students to take over leadership roles in the future.
• Get Involved: Learn more about Findlay Fresh Start and how you can get involved by visiting their website, findlayfreshstart.org. The organization is seeking donations and volunteers for upcoming projects, including assembling kits and building garden boxes.

Music and sound effects obtained from https://www.zapsplat.com

Transcript

0:00:03 - (Doug Jenkins): Hello and welcome to the show. I'm Doug Jenkins from the Findlay Hancock County Chamber of Commerce. On each episode of Chamber Amplified, we're examining issues that impact the local business community. Anything from recruitment and retention, marketing, it issues. It's really anything that can impact your business or the business community as a whole. Our goal is to give you tips each week on how you can operate in the current business climate and give you updates on things happening in the local business community.

0:00:28 - (Doug Jenkins): Today we're talking about a new nonprofit born out of Hancock Youth Leadership, which we run through the Chamber of Commerce here. It's a really great story and illustrates how sometimes one idea has an initial setback but can actually get you pointed in the right direction. It also highlights what our area kids can do when given the chance to shine. Our guest is Hank Walters, who just graduated from Hancock Youth Leadership last school year. He's currently a senior at Corey Rawson High School.

0:00:54 - (Doug Jenkins): He and some friends have really taken the initiative in finding a way to help combat homelessness in Findlay and in a really interesting and unique way. You're going to be interested in finding out more about what he has to say. We'll get into that in a moment. But also a reminder, you can rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify or wherever you download your podcast from. If you can, leave us a review and rate the show. That does go a long way in spreading the word.

0:01:18 - (Doug Jenkins): Now let's get into it. Welcoming into the podcast. He is a graduate of Hancock Youth Leadership, and we're here to talk about the next project. Hank Walters, thanks for joining us today.

0:01:29 - (Hank Walters): Yeah, no problem. I'm, I'm. I really appreciate you inviting me on here today.

0:01:33 - (Doug Jenkins): Glad to have you on here. Let's. I guess let's talk a little bit about first. We'll talk about Findlay Fresh Start in a moment, but let's get into just maybe how that got started and what you took away from it from Hancock Youth Leadership through the Chamber and how you got involved that way.

0:01:52 - (Hank Walters): Yeah. So like you just mentioned, I recently graduated Hyl, and I remember actually you sent out a text around early March about a nationwide program called Carnegie Young Leaders that was just encouraging young adults, like high school students to go out in their community and find a way to make an impact or volunteer. And I found the program really interesting. And you were asked to assemble a team of five people. So I asked some other Hyl kids and some kids from my school, and we started preparing a project to.

0:02:22 - (Hank Walters): Or. Yeah, a project to submit as an application for the program. And we worked on that really hard for a couple months, kind of set out an outline of what we would do, but we unfortunately did not get into the program. But we all kind of decided before that that that was a possibility, and if that did happen, we would continue on with this and create it into an organization.

0:02:44 - (Doug Jenkins): So you opted to continue forward, which I think is really cool, and we'll talk a little bit about that in a little bit. But you opted that you wanted to focus on homelessness in region. What made that an issue that stuck out to you?

0:02:56 - (Hank Walters): Yeah. So as we were preparing our original application to submit for that program, we had meetings with City Mission, Hope House, and a good point. They brought up. Something we should focus on was educating these values to these individuals, that. These skills that would help them break their cycle of homelessness. Because a lot of times, even if they're. They're moving through the shelters into a transitional shelter, and then they actually will sometimes actually move to their own apartment, but most of the time they will get back into that shelter system just because they're not familiar.

0:03:30 - (Hank Walters): Familiar with some of the skills needed to, like, own a home or, you know, budget their income. So there's just. That's what kind of inspired us to really target that so we could kind of help break that cycle.

0:03:42 - (Doug Jenkins): It's a. It's a really good idea. It's a really good jumping off point for everything. And you've had good guidance along the way. Tell us about Zach Thomas's role with this.

0:03:51 - (Hank Walters): Yeah, so Zach's been a huge help. He's not only has he provided amazing guidance, he's kind of directed us on what we could do for our projects and how we could go about doing them. But he's also connected us with so many people, and that's been vital to this organization starting and continuing forward. He's truly played a really big role of this coming of this organization.

0:04:14 - (Doug Jenkins): And I think what's great about having Zach on board with this is it gives you somebody with a lot of knowledge of all of the things that are already available in the community. So that Findlay Fresh Start doesn't just merely duplicate a service that's already available. It actually fills a hole or fills a need in the community. What has that back and forth been like, how. How often do you go and, hey, we've got this idea. Do you hear? Well, there's already kind of a thing like this. What if we did that? And how do you start shaping the. The goal of the organization?

0:04:42 - (Doug Jenkins): Through those conversations.

0:04:44 - (Hank Walters): Yeah, that's actually, that's what a lot of this summer was. Because originally, I mean, we had ideas flying all over the place, but obviously Zach and even some of the other organizations we met with, like Habitat for Humanity, helped a lot with that, too. Is that, oh, an organization around here already does that or just some other ideas we were throwing around? And I know with Zach's help and like I mentioned, the Habitat for Humanity, Dylan or Dustin and Phil, they gave me some amazing feedback on finding a certain project that we could really make sort of our niche and really focus on that and then differentiate it from there, from other organizations. And that was. It was a very long process.

0:05:23 - (Hank Walters): But I think we have found that now what we want to focus on.

0:05:27 - (Doug Jenkins): Before we get too much further into it. You had already mentioned that you and some others from the HYL class and some of your classmates there at Corey Ross and are involved. Tell us who else is involved with putting this together.

0:05:39 - (Hank Walters): Yeah. So there's three other kids from Corey Rawson, Carson Reese, Jason Davis and Ray or Jalen Patterson from Corey Ralston, and then Rayana Cap from Findlay High School.

0:05:50 - (Doug Jenkins): So you were an HYL last year when this started coming together. You're now a high school senior. And I imagine those of you in this group have plans to go and do things after you get out of high school this year because you're all high school seniors, correct?

0:06:04 - (Hank Walters): Yeah.

0:06:05 - (Doug Jenkins): So you all have plans to go on. You all have had the foresight to realize that. All right, we want somebody else to carry on after we go into college and do whatever. That's one impressive for a group of teenagers to have that foresight, but two also requires another degree of planning. How do you plan to continue moving this forward when. When you guys graduate?

0:06:28 - (Hank Walters): Yeah. So that's something we've really. I've really been focusing on a lot lately because there's been a lot of work going into this, getting this organization started. I really would hate to see it, you know, kind of fade away here in a year. So what we've already started doing is reaching out to some individuals and some individuals. Other high school students in the area actually reached out to us about joining, and we've been kind of starting to have them attend some meetings to learn more about what it takes to know, like, run a nonprofit and how we structure our meetings and what we. You need to go about for fundraising, all these kind of ideas that I think would really help them to learn now.

0:07:01 - (Hank Walters): So when we leave, like, next fall, that they're Ready to fill in our shoes. So that way they're prepared to kind of, you know, take, take on this initiative. It's not as intimidating as it might have been for us just starting it out of the blue. And yeah, so that's, that's one thing we definitely been focusing on a lot lately is really prepping them so that they're ready when we do move off. And I know I've already talked to other members of our group. We still want to stay involved. I mean that could look different in many ways, like zooming in just like once a month to kind of, you know, provide feedback, give our direction, just whatever they need. Because like I said, it could be a very intimidating process.

0:07:39 - (Hank Walters): We're trying to make it as smooth as possible for them.

0:07:41 - (Doug Jenkins): So we've talked a little bit about the structure and the mission of the organization. Obviously you want to help people avoid homelessness in Hancock County. Let's talk about how you go about doing that. You talked about helping people learn how to budget, helping people with those types of gap filling type of programs. How does somebody get enrolled? How many said it? How does somebody get in contact with you? And once they do, then what happens?

0:08:05 - (Hank Walters): Yeah, so the way we're going about teaching those skills is actually right now through personal hygiene kits and we're distributing those through City Mission, Hope House, Appetite for Humanity. We actually have an upcoming project. We'll distribute out them in a trailer park community called Riverview Terrace and in those cases has personal toiletry items such as like shampoo, body wash, toothpaste.

0:08:26 - (Hank Walters): And also we have a home maintenance slash financial literacy guide that we've created. Just go, just goes over simple, like home tasks that might be kind of new to a person that's never owned a home before. And also outline some simple budgeting tips and about making sure you're putting your money where like most matters, like your rent, utilities, like that, where it needs to be going and saving it some too.

0:08:50 - (Hank Walters): So that's kind of how we're reaching out to get our those skills taught. For now, we have discussed possibly doing workshops at these shelters here in Findlay that might be maybe, possibly in the spring. But again, for now, I think this is just a good starting point of really teaching those skills. And along with the magazine I just described, we have a civic engagement handout that just encourages people to go out and vote. And if they're not registered to vote, we'll come meet with them one on one, help them register, because that can be very difficult for some if they don't have proper identification. If there's questions about your address.

0:09:27 - (Hank Walters): And we just want to be with their. Tell them as much as we can so they can have that ability to vote.

0:09:33 - (Doug Jenkins): I really like that. And it's a. It's a good offshoot of what you're going to be doing with the organization. I know a lot of times in the. Around the nation and around the community when we talk about voting rights and things like that. I've often thought that if nonprofits really stepped in and just help people to get registered and help get people to the polls, that would eliminate a lot of consternation. So the fact that you are doing something in that regard as well, I think one is a huge help to the community and one speaks to the foresight of your group.

0:10:03 - (Doug Jenkins): Again, I think people would be really surprised. This is coming from area high school seniors. It's. It's something you should all be very proud of. So I hope you are. But also knowing that you're younger and you dealt with that initial rejection from Carnegie Institute, that got the whole ball rolling on that. You said you had already decided you were moving forward one way or not. But just talk about dealing with that rejection and. And how you decided to move forward, because that can be very tough for anybody, but especially for kids.

0:10:33 - (Hank Walters): Yeah. So obviously when we were first rejected, we were a little disappointed. We. At the time, I mean, I was really confident in our project proposal. But looking back, as of now, I don't think it. It's. I wish we could take the insight we have now back to when we were applying because I do think we would have made it to the program. But again, I'm honestly really thankful we didn't because the program we would have been applying to, it only lasts a year.

0:11:01 - (Hank Walters): And there's a very strict guideline of what you have to follow for projects and when. How you go about doing them. Having this as our own individual organization now allows us the freedom to do whatever we want and how much of we want. And it doesn't have to only last for a year. It can continue on for as long as it. As long as it does. So that's where I'm at least seeing it right now. It was more of a blessing than anything.

0:11:25 - (Hank Walters): I know at the time it was obviously a little hard for us, but I'm happy how we. We all moved on so quick. We were all so determined to see this through that it honestly just kind of. We just put it behind us relatively quickly.

0:11:38 - (Doug Jenkins): Yeah, that's an important life lesson in itself, is Sometimes when things don't go your way, it leads to the thing you wanted to do anyway, which is great to hear. So, as you mentioned, you're looking to hand this off, or at least bring other people in, so that when you all head to college and do whatever you're going to do after you graduate, don't drop the ball. If people who are listening to the podcast know of anybody who might be interested, is it just limited? Are you limiting it to, uh, area high school students or how can people get involved?

0:12:10 - (Hank Walters): Yeah, well, anyone can come out and help. Actually, some high school students, former HYL graduates of my class, already came up and asked, how can we get involved? And, I mean, I know with, like, the assembling of the kits I mentioned earlier, the Riverview Terrace project, our goal is to make 250 kits, and it's easiest if we set them up all in, like, what, one day? Just because we have everything set out, like, that's, for example, that's something we need volunteers for.

0:12:34 - (Hank Walters): When we distribute the kids at the event, that's something we need volunteers for. So more people we could have come out. That'd be amazing. And also in the spring, something I mentioned earlier is we're going to be building garden boxes at Hope House and possibly some of the homes Habitat for Humanity builds. Now, I don't know if we'll need as many volunteers for that, because just a couple weeks ago, we were. We decided we're going to work with the children's mentoring connection to connect with some local elementary kids or middle school kids here in Findlay and work with them together on building a garden box just so they can see, you know, what it takes to build a garden. Like, how do you maintain a garden and just kind of teach them at a young age, like, some of those construction values.

0:13:15 - (Doug Jenkins): So I think this is an awesome project. I'm really glad that you and everybody involved have gotten so deeply involved with it. It's a lot, though. How do you have time to just be a senior in high school?

0:13:29 - (Hank Walters): Well, it's.

0:13:30 - (Doug Jenkins): It is a lot.

0:13:33 - (Hank Walters): It just takes a lot of planning ahead, and I think accountability, especially on my end, to make sure I'm getting okay, what I need done for school, what I need to get done for preparation in college. But truthfully, when it all boils down to it, I can make enough time for it. And I think anyone in my shoes, after they see how rewarding it is to be a part of something like this and know that you're making an impact like this in your community, that inspires you in itself to make time for it.

0:14:00 - (Doug Jenkins): As we wrap up here, let's remind people how they can learn more about the organization and get involved. Website's been launched, right?

0:14:07 - (Hank Walters): Oh, yeah, Sorry, Findlay. Fresh Start.org is our website we just recently created. It kind of goes through about who we are, our mission, and lists all of our projects we're doing and kind of goes into greater detail about some of our future projects as well as that also includes a donation page about how people can contribute to us. And it also has my contact information in case anyone has any further questions.

0:14:32 - (Doug Jenkins): It's great to see you guys working so hard on this. We're real proud of you. And anytime something like this pops up out of a group like Hancock Youth Leadership, we certainly want to provide some highlights for it. So thank you for joining us today.

0:14:45 - (Hank Walters): Hank, thank you. I really appreciate you having me on.

0:14:49 - (Doug Jenkins): My favorite part about that story is how the initial vision with Carnegie failed. They could have given up at that point, but instead they realized that they had a good idea and actually had a better opportunity without it. I think that's really important. It's important for everybody to learn, but especially for kids to learn that resilience and how to pivot when something doesn't go quite your way and becomes a huge learning opportunity. I'm really happy to see they took the ball and ran with it and are developing something that I think the community is going to be proud of and certainly they should be very proud of.

0:15:19 - (Doug Jenkins): Well, that'll do it for this week's episode. Chamber Amplified is a free podcast for the community, thanks to the investment of members from the Findlay Hancock County Chamber of Commerce. Because of our robust membership, we're able to focus on things like providing timely information to the Findlay and Hancock county business community, run leadership programs for adults and teenagers, and be an advocate for the area. That's all while providing tools to help local businesses succeed. And if that sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, just let me know and we can talk about how an investment in the Chamber not only helps strengthen your business, but but the community as a whole. If you have any ideas for topics you'd like to hear covered in future episodes, send me an email.

0:15:55 - (Doug Jenkins): Djenkinsindleyhancockchamber.com thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time on Chamber Amplified from the Findlay Hancock County Chamber of Commerce.