Aileac Deegan on navigating grief

Navigating the tumultuous sea of grief is a journey that necessitates empathy, understanding, and profound support, especially when dealing with children. On this podcast episode of "Aileac Deegan on Navigating Grief", we delve into the transformative journey of Aileac Deegan, the CEO of Ryan's Place, a children's grief support center in Goshen. Aliyak's story is not just about passion and dedication, but a life mission born out of personal experiences with grief and the identified lack of specialized support for grieving children.

Over the years, the significance and impact of Ryan's Place have transcended beyond Goshen, touching lives regionally and serving as a blueprint for grief support nationally. With its unique approach of integrating volunteers’ deep-seated empathy and understanding of grief with professional social work, the center has become a pivotal resource during community tragedies. The journey not only highlights the power of community and dedicated support for grieving children but underscores the transformative effect of empathy and care navigates complex loss.

00:00:19: Introduction of guest

00:00:23: About Aileac Deegan, her work, and her journey

00:01:13: Welcoming the guest

00:01:24: Talk about growth, experiences, and challenges

00:01:42: Discussion about migration and experiences

00:03:28: Experiences in the field of Education and journey into grief counseling

00:04:39: Aileac's introduction to Ryan's Place

00:07:23: Mission of Ryan's Place

00:08:56: Importance and impact of Ryan's Place in the community

00:09:42: Challenges faced and services offered

00:13:03: Personal grief experiences and learning

00:17:53: Broadening understanding of grief beyond death

00:21:17: Activities for children to understand their grief journey

00:22:45: Children's experience of grief

00:23:10: Use of artwork in grief therapy

00:24:08: Advice on interacting with grieving people

00:26:50: Importance of truth in difficult circumstances

00:27:24: Succession planning and the future of the organization

00:29:39: Service costs and sustainability

00:30:12: Retirement and future personal plans

00:31:20: What gives hope in grief counseling

This show is a production of the Community Foundation of Elkhart County. It is powered by equipment from Sweetwater and recorded in The Riverbend building in Elkhart's River District. Editing is done by the award-winning communication students at Goshen College, home of one of the best college radio stations in the nation. Listen to Globe Radio at 91.1 FM. Learn more about the Community Foundation of Elkhart County at inspiringgood.org You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Music is provided by Sensational Sounds. Thanks for listening. We hope you are inspired and inspire good and your community.

Transcript

Marshall King:
Our guest is Aileac Deegan, who is president and CEO of Ryan's Place. Ryan's Place is a children's grief support center located in Goshen. Aileac was the first employee at Ryan's Place and from the onset, realized this was more than a job. Ryan's Place has become her life's mission. 

Marshall King:
She moved to the United States with her husband Willie, and four children in August 1995. Her family had talked about moving to the States and entering the diversity lottery, a program for visas to work in the United States. And they won the right to come from Ireland and live and work in the US. One of her goals in coming here was to complete her degree in social work. And in 2000, she began her educational journey at Goshen College and then went on to complete her master's degree at Indiana University South Bend. 

Marshall King:
Welcome. 

Aileac Deegan:
Thank you. Thanks very much for having me today. 

Kevin Deary:
What a privilege to have my friend Aileac here. She's been around for a long time. I have watched you grow. I have watched you take Ryan's Place from just starting, and you have moved Iliac, your Ryan's Place mission, into one of the premier organizations. 

Aileac Deegan:
Thank you, Kevin. 

Kevin Deary:
And you're just wrapping up a capital campaign, which we're really excited about. 

Aileac Deegan:
Very excited. Yeah. 

Kevin Deary:
And I'm very excited for you. But before we jump into Ryan's Place, I want to talk a little bit more, knowing I'm an Irish-American. I love your brogue. 

Aileac Deegan:
Well, thanks, Kevin. 

Kevin Deary:
Let's start with Ireland and how you got here. 

Aileac Deegan:
Sure. So, Willie, my husband and myself had, you know, we had thought about moving quite a bit. I was the one really the one to move, and the opportunity came up with this diversity lottery, and quite a number of irish people were getting them at the time, and there's 50,000 of them given out worldwide. And we got one of them and which meant and then turned into six because it was six of us. And so we came here. 

Aileac Deegan:
We were able to start work right away, and we bought a house by fax because there was no Internet back in those days. So we bought a house that we still live in on 8th Street in Goshen, and were just settled in and assimilated into the community, as did our children. And they took part in lots of different, you know, sports and different things. And three of them still live and work in the community. And so it's been wonderful. 

Aileac Deegan:
Our grandchildren are Irish-American and Kenyan. There was kind of an international mixture there, so. 

Kevin Deary:
And truth be told, our children grew up together. They did sports together. We watched them play soccer, play baseball, play football, run track. We have been good friends watching our children grow and have been so blessed to be part of this community. And then we both follow the same education track, both going to Goshen College, both getting our degrees, moving on later to get our masters, and then to give back into the community. 

Kevin Deary:
And let's talk a little bit of how you ended up at Ryan's Place. 

Aileac Deegan:
So after I moved here, I got a part time job working for a computer company. And then I heard about a job at Campfire USA, which used to be campfire boys and girls. And it was this program director, and I had worked a lot in Ireland, and I had started, and helped start multi-denominational, co-ed schools because all of the schools in Ireland are religious based and tend to be single-sex. Now, that has changed since we left in 95, but with a friend of mine who's from this area, how we ended up here, the Linda Liechty, the two of us got involved in this school. So I used my experience from there and applied for a job at Campfire. 

Aileac Deegan:
And so I was there for about nine years, and I wanted to go and finish my degree. And I had started at that stage, and I needed to work part-time, so I left the campfire. And then almost immediately, the opportunity came up for Ryan's Place. And I will be perfectly honest with you, I didn't think a lot of it about the mission at the time. I had had a lot of different grief experiences in my life, so it appealed to me, but I didn't even know what I was getting into in terms of the mission and what it meant. 

Aileac Deegan:
And so that became apparent right away. And I've just loved being there. You know, I've loved going to work every day. 

Kevin Deary:
And there were founders that came together through their own grief process. 

Aileac Deegan:
Yes. 

Kevin Deary:
Why don't you talk a little bit about. 

Aileac Deegan:
Yeah. Rex and Nancy Gleim's son Ryan was killed in a car accident, and they took their grief, and they were looking for something for themselves and for their surviving son in terms of help out there. And they found a counselor, a therapist, who they worked with, but their son just, it didn't fit for him at all. And so that couple, who were their therapist and themselves, just started looking around to see if there was anything for him, and there really wasn't a lot. And so the idea, it was a seed that started, and they eventually got in contact with other children's grief support centers around the United States. 

Aileac Deegan:
And decided to open one in Elkhart County, which was great. There's a similar organization in Fort Wayne that had been established before ours. 

Kevin Deary:
So you had to hire staff and volunteers, make sure they were very carefully trained in grief counseling. 

Aileac Deegan:
Yeah. 

Kevin Deary:
Can you talk a little bit about what that is? 

Aileac Deegan:
Yeah. So Ryan's Place had been in operation three years before I started. It was purely volunteer-led. They didn't have any paid employees. And so when I moved into the position, they had already been through training Rex and Nancy, through training out in Portland, Oregon, at another center. 

Aileac Deegan:
So they kind of knew how to do the training with the volunteers. So kind of I took that, and then I went to Portland and went through the same training and learned an awful lot. So, you know, what we do is if somebody is interested, we look for volunteers and we talk with them carefully and see what their strengths are and whether this would be a good fit for them, because grief is hard for people. We've had people that start, and they actually realize that they have some unresolved grief issues and they can't continue until they get help themselves. 

Marshall King:
So tell us specifically the mission then. I mean, you've described it a little bit. 

Aileac Deegan:
Yeah. 

Marshall King:
And who are you serving and how many a year? 

Aileac Deegan:
Sure. So the mission of Ryan's Place is to provide support in a safe environment for children, teens, and their families who are moving through the grief process. And so over the years since they opened in 2002, we've served over 19,000 individuals, mainly in Elkhart County. Some in St. Joe and quite a few in Kosciusko County. And then we have some people come down from the lower counties in Michigan. 

Aileac Deegan:
So we're very volunteer driven. And what we do is that we get, we train these volunteers to go through a kind of pretty rigorous process, and then they're mentored in groups by others. And they don't have to have a degree to do this work. They just have to have. They just have to care enough. 

Aileac Deegan:
And most of them, at some stage, will have had their own grief experience, so they use that as part of what they do. So we've had some volunteers since I started in 2005, but we also have others that'll start new. And we have a thriving internship program where we have social work and counseling students and psychology students who go through the training and do their hours required for their degree at Ryan's Place. Within any given year, we could have twelve to 15 students working with us. 

Kevin Deary:
One of the things I'm most impressed with with Ryan's Place, it's really become regionally known, not just Elkhart County, but around our area, with the school shootings and some of the tragedies that have happened around the country, how quickly our schools turn to Ryan's Place, whether a child passes away in any way or a teacher or a loved one. Yeah, but any place where there is grief, Ryan's Place is seen as the go-to place, working in partnership with mental health facilities like Oaklawn, but really specifically for children and families. 

Aileac Deegan:
Yeah. 

Kevin Deary:
Tell me how you be. How can you keep all those borders in place, not just be spread all over the country? 

Aileac Deegan:
Yeah, sometimes it's difficult because we literally have five staffs, but with our volunteers and our interns. So I'll give you an example. Just this past weekend, I got a phone call on Sunday night to say that there was a student who had died in one of the schools in our community and they wanted to know, could we have a team of people out there at 730 on Monday morning? And so we did. You know, I phone around, we have a group of people that we've trained for this and I phone around and we get people that will be there firstly to talk to the teaching staff and then the principal, and then we talk to the kids in the classrooms, or we make it. 

Aileac Deegan:
A lot of times the schools will make space available for us in the library or something like that, where we can meet with the kids. We bring in very simple things like paper hearts, and the kids get to write a message to the child who died or the teacher who died. And if it's a child, they'll stick it to their locker and they keep all their messages, or they may put them in the desk that the child sits at. And at some stage they all get to go to the family, all those little paper hearts with loving messages on them. Get to go to their families, which is really nice. 

Kevin Deary:
You know, when you're working with staff and volunteers and they are constantly surrounded by others grief, how do you check on them to make sure that they're doing okay, that they're moderating themselves and regulating their own buttons and challenges? 

Aileac Deegan:
Sure. You know, that's part of our self care piece that we do with our volunteers and staff. And we'll meet and staff some issues that have come up during this or some ways that may have made them feel overwhelmed or uncomfortable. And like I had someone say to me, please dont send me out any more suicide related crisis calls. I just cant do it because they had had a family member die by suicide. 

Aileac Deegan:
So we make sure to do that and to keep, because we want our people to help. We dont want them to be a hindrance when theyre going out to a crisis called, but they do so well. And we get asked to come back a lot. Sometimes we go in with one school here in particular. We went in initially for a day and then became two. 

Aileac Deegan:
And then what happened was that one of our staff and one of our volunteers actually went to the school every week to meet with the staff to help them through what was going on, because they had had several deaths, one after the other, of students in the school. So, yeah, it's difficult. But, you know, I think every, when they go out, and I used to do them a lot, I don't now. Sometimes I will. But if we're short of people. 

Aileac Deegan:
But the one thing that when you're there, it's just a kind of a relief for the staff and the teachers, the principal, to know that there's someone else that can help them. Guide with this. And we recently did a training with the social workers at Elkhart schools on grief response and how to do that so that we have a plan to offer that to all the other school systems around. 

Kevin Deary:
So as a youth development professional for 40 years before I retired, there were very few of these services available. And the overwhelming desire or need for mental health services and grief can get washed into mental health. 

Aileac Deegan:
Sure. 

Kevin Deary:
And there's many different phases of mental health and phases of grief, and to see that it is an organization that really acts as a first responder, like fire, police, medical, they're right there. And how many people who are also professionals, like teachers and principals, also find the gratitude and the need for to take a breath? Because before there was rise place, there were very few these around the country. And many of us who worked with children and dealt with grief, many of us were untrained. We were social workers, but we didn't understand the true depths and reach of grief and how it would bubble up later on in life. 

Kevin Deary:
Do you keep track of your clients or your families and tell us how that works? 

Aileac Deegan:
So we have a database that we use for keeping track of that way. And then if we have, like, just in the last few weeks, we've had some of our interns and staff call families that would normally come. We have a program for children and adults on a Monday night and then another night. We've got a program for adults only because they were filling up all the spaces that we needed for the kids. And so we noticed that some people didn't come back. 

Aileac Deegan:
And so we follow up with them and to make sure everything is okay. Is there something getting in the way of them being there? Is there any way that we can help them? Do they need more individual counseling that they would need group, you know, so we just see where we can offer that and. And help them. 

Aileac Deegan:
Sometimes it's because people don't have the gas money to get there. So we, you know, give them a gas card or something. 

Kevin Deary:
And you can do this in Spanish as well. 

Aileac Deegan:
Oh, we do. Yeah, we do. We have one of our staff, Chris, is a native Spanish speaker, so she's doing a lot of the spanish language groups, particularly with the adults, because their English skills are where they might be okay for everyday things. It's hard for them to express emotion in English, you know, and Spanish is their first language. And then we have others that come that don't have any English. 

Aileac Deegan:
So the children seem to know, you know, they have a command of the english language that they can use. But it's tough for the parents. 

Marshall King:
You referenced early on that you had experienced some personal loss and then came to this work not really fully understanding it. What are some of the big things you've learned about grief and loss and how to cope with those that you have become central to how you do this work? 

Aileac Deegan:
Well, you know, my dad died before I left Ireland. My kids, three of my kids have been born at that stage. And he had been sick for a while. And when he died, he was, you know, it wasn't a shock, but it was devastating for us as a family. But I never honestly thought to get my kids help. 

Aileac Deegan:
You know, it didn't dawn on me that they needed more than us just sitting around talking about there might be other things. And my dad died on one of my son's birthdays. And, you know, he was upset because his birthday was kind of canceled and then felt terrible about it afterwards because he was very, very close to my dad. And it was just. It really was. 

Aileac Deegan:
He was just so upset about my dad dying, so it was. But I, you know, I realized I didn't have the tools or, you know, or the skills to help them at the time, and I. But it never dawned on me to look for help outside. And the same happened in the early nineties. My brother-in-law, who was 30 at the time, he died by suicide, Sean was the kindest, nicest person you could ever meet. 

Aileac Deegan:
And my kids loved him, and he was my husband's brother, and we were all very, very close to him, and we were devastated with his death again, but I didn't think that, you know, what do my kids need or what did. He had two sons. How could I have helped them? It never dawned on me that was something that I would do. So when I came to Ryan's Place, it made me reflect on the things that I didn't know and how seeing these children that come to Ryan's Place and are getting help, how they do a lot better than children who don't get any help, you know, so. 

Aileac Deegan:
And I know some families handle it themselves, and it's, you know, that's fine. That's the way to do it, but. But we're here if they need them. 

Kevin Deary:
One of the things I appreciate about Ryan's Place, and I know that in my previous career, that was such a blessing and an advantage for us, is grief is not just death. Grief, it can be any kind of loss. It can be addiction to the household. It can be abandonment, abandonment, all sorts of grief. Plus, there's different cultures look at grief differently, how men and women look at grief. 

Kevin Deary:
I think it was so pointed when you talked about you didn't know how to help your children lost to the grandfather. You didn't even know that you needed to. 

Aileac Deegan:
Or even for myself. 

Kevin Deary:
Even for yourself. 

Aileac Deegan:
Yeah. 

Kevin Deary:
So can you talk a little bit about grief is so deep, and how do you look at the. Not just the death of a person, but also the other things of divorce? 

Aileac Deegan:
Well, so what we have learned down through the years, there are multiple issues of loss. And we actually do a group at the juvenile detention center here in Alkar county, and they meet every other week. And I used to do that group, and I tell you, it was one of my favorite groups I ever did. The kids were so vulnerable, but yet so open in a lot of ways. And they knew they were in a bad situation, but when they were to recount their stories, so many of them had multiple issues of loss. 

Aileac Deegan:
And one of their fears was going back to the situation they were in before because they knew if they went back to wherever they had come from, that they'd end up back in the system again. And. And that made me realize just how many other things that kids are dealing with and where our focus is death of a person. Children bring all sorts of issues to our groups and the work that we do, and we just make it happen that we can provide that with the JDC group. We don't say it. 

Aileac Deegan:
They can only be there if a person died. But most of them actually significantly, like, probably the highest demographic for children who've had someone who died, whether it was a relative or a friend, or they saw someone being killed or just a lot of different things they've suffered, and they then find that, well, maybe they have parents who are incarcerated and they were separated from them or divorce or, you know, just abandonment issues a lot of times. So, yeah, that all comes out in all of our groups. 

Kevin Deary:
I've often found working with children is always really where I spent. Yeah, it was with children, teenagers, particularly, when they don't understand how to deal with their grief and someone cannot help them out of that fog of grief. What ends up happening is the abandonment or the loss of hope. They just don't see any hope. And what I love about Ryan's Place is the reestablishment of coming through the fog that it's okay, and then to see a future for themselves. 

Aileac Deegan:
Yeah. One of the activities that we do with the kids, we get them to, they can either do it on their own or with a group. And I think they really seem to like to do it as a group, but we give them a big sheet of butcher paper and they write, they draw a grief path and what their path looks like and where kind of the cul de sacs are on it and the stopping blocks and, you know, the things that have helped them, just different things for them to visualize what their journey has been like through their grief. It's just fascinating to see kids realize that they've come a long way in a lot of ways since they started working on their grief. And also, there are other things that they could be doing, and there are stumbling blocks on the way. 

Aileac Deegan:
And it doesn't mean a year down the road, everything is solved, because grief is always with you. You learn to live with it in some ways, but healthily if possible. And you're never going to forget the person who died, and you're going to be sad sometimes. I have a sister, I had a nephew die 13 years ago from melanoma, and he was a young father. But my sister often talks about the fact where she thinks, okay, I'm okay. 

Aileac Deegan:
And then she realizes she hears a song on the radio or she smells some sort of scent or something like that, and it brings her right back, and it's like it happened that day. And I think the same goes for children. It's not just adults. You know, children kind of feel these things, but don't even know how to relate that to other children. And so that's the magic of the group. 

Aileac Deegan:
When they're in there together, they're with other children who've been through that same thing. 

Kevin Deary:
The use of artwork to communicate grief is so important for children and also for those who are providing the grief support, because things they can't say, they can color or draw. 

Aileac Deegan:
Yeah. 

Kevin Deary:
Can you talk a little bit about that? 

Aileac Deegan:
Yeah. I mean, art. Art is so necessary to be available. Like some. Sometimes you get, like the twelve year olds who don't want to do it, or particularly the boys, you know, or whatever, but once they start seeing other kids in the group, they join in and they do it too. 

Aileac Deegan:
But it's really, you know, a great visual for them and even just making memories. So we'll have children sometimes write a letter to themselves from the person who has died. And it's just looking at it a different way. What would your dad want you to know now that it's two years out and you're two years old? Or what do you think your dad would want you to know? 

Aileac Deegan:
And the kids just write this, the most profound stuff, and oftentimes it will be about, stop blaming yourself. And they hear their dad's voice telling them that, stop blaming yourself. This was not your fault, because kids, they take on all the worries of the world. 

Marshall King:
So most of us will not be grief counselors. Most of us will not be experts on grief like you and your team. But we all encounter people who have, who are dealing with loss. I know that there's, there. There are better things and worse things to say to people in those situations. 

Marshall King:
Yeah, it's a little bit off. Off course, maybe. But did you have any counsel for us on that? Like what? 

Aileac Deegan:
Yeah, what. 

Marshall King:
What if I'm encountering someone who just lost a loved one? What is something that I can offer them? 

Aileac Deegan:
So what we would say to people is, you can be practical about it. A lot of people like to share food and that kind of thing and bring it to the house or a gift certificate or something. But it's really, at the end of the day, it's being kind and just not putting your own personal stance on something. Like, I know of someone whose son died by suicide, and some very well meaning person said to them, I feel really bad for you because now, you know, your son is in hell. But they meant it because they really feared that, you know what I mean? 

Aileac Deegan:
But that was very, very difficult for the parents to hear, and that was a long time ago and they still think about it, you know? And so a lot of times with the adult groups in particular, they hear, you know, people will say stuff to them, but also with children, and we think it. So it's so important for children to know the truth, even though sometimes that's hard. And we will often, people will often bring their children into us if it's been a suicide or a homicide or something like that, for us to help them, you know, explain to the child, because if they don't tell them on the outset, the kids are going to find out, but it won't be your story or the proper story. So we would always say, you know, tell them and we'll help you if you want or, you know, if you have a pastor that wants to help you or a family member, but just sit with them and talk to them. 

Aileac Deegan:
If it's about a suicide, you can say, some people get sick and their heart doesn't work properly and they die. Some people get sick and their brain isn't working properly, so they do something that affects that and then they die. And it can be a simple language like that. And then as they get older and they understand more, you can develop that. But it is really important for them to know because time and again we've seen families where the children are told at the playground or, or something, you know, and we had one family call us to say, a mother call us, she had to pull into the side of the road and phone us after she'd picked the kids up from school because somebody in the playground, you know, as they were leaving, said to them, so why did your dad kill himself? 

Aileac Deegan:
You know, and so the mother had to pull inside of the road and call us and say, what do I tell them? And we said, just bring them in. Just come now, bring the kids in and we'll sit down and we'll explain to them because you want them to know your truth about it. And, you know, not having the kids feel as if they were lied to. Yeah. 

Kevin Deary:
You know, as we have moving towards end of our careers, and I know that someday after you build the building and you have brought Ryan's place to the place where it's all time for us to tear over to somewhere else, retirement looms. And I can tell you there is life after retirement. I know I have plans, but obviously creating a secession plan inside rise place is important. Can you talk a little bit about how you and the border addressed? 

Aileac Deegan:
So we're actually getting very near. We got some really good news recently, and we're getting a one and a half million dollar grant from the Lilly endowment through and United Way is the are for administering the grant. And so we got a preliminary approval. We just have to, we have a few ducks that we need to get it, you know, get in a row and get them done. But we're, we're good. 

Aileac Deegan:
And so we hope to break ground this summer. And in that we will be, you know, the building, if that all happens, we will be in the building in the spring. And, you know, people are saying, are you going to retire? Then I said, yeah, I'd like to be able to walk the halls for a little while. I want to be able to see what this looks like and see families come in, and so I'll do that and then I will retire. 

Aileac Deegan:
So the board and myself have had endless discussions about this, and Kevin, I had talked to you about it. We need to do some sort of training or something. It doesn't necessarily have to be a training, but something with the board on how to go about succession planning so that we can get the right person to come in and I can spend a bit of time with them and help them through that time, but I won't hang around. And I've always said, like, when I go, I go because it's going to be hard to leave. And if I don't do it right, it won't be fair on anybody else that's left behind. 

Aileac Deegan:
So. Yeah, but our good news is this building is getting built. It's been a long process for getting there. 

Marshall King:
You've been sharing space with people for a long time. 

Aileac Deegan:
Yeah, we've been renting space, a lot of space. And, you know, the churches in Goshen have been very good to us. We've been in three different churches over the years and giving a space, but it's also shared space where we set up and we tear down. And there's things that we are going to do in this new building that we haven't been able to do. And we're going to hire a couple of child and adolescent therapists that will work one on one with kids as well. 

Aileac Deegan:
That'd be the plan. And the one thing I didn't say was, there's no cost for our services. We don't charge. You know, there's that little bit of a worry, how are you going to be able to sustain this? So we're going to hire these therapists and do a sliding fee with them, or if people can't pay, they can't pay. 

Aileac Deegan:
I don't even like the thought of that. But, you know, we know that funders have wanted to see that because they want to make sure we're going to be, we're not going to build this building and then fall apart. You know, so it's exciting. 

Marshall King:
Do you want to say any more about your plans after you retire? 

Aileac Deegan:
So in 2026, Willie and myself are hoping to go to Ireland for an extended period of time. And during that time, we just decided the other day because I heard my niece is doing it this summer. We're going to interrate around Europe and visit different countries and use Ireland as our base and just to kind of, you know, because when I go home, it's like, you know, the golden girl is back for a couple of weeks and helping my brother and helping this and helping that, and then I disappear again. So this way I'll just be part of the thing I'm willing to for his family and just having a good time and hoping our kids will come over and visit us there for a while. We had always dreamed of ending up buying a place in Ireland so that we could go back to it. 

Aileac Deegan:
But housing is like ridiculous over there, so that won't happen, but we'll make it work. 

Marshall King:
Well, thank you for all the work you do. You and your family have been a deep gift to this community and continue to be. 

Aileac Deegan:
Thank you. 

Marshall King:
You do this hard work and you do it well. But what gives you hope? 

Aileac Deegan:
So what gives me hope is that I so often see, you know, bump into these children later on and you can see them, they're doing well. They're doing well in school and even after school, like, we're around a long time now. So you see these children later. And the one thing that, you know, I say we recruit volunteers, but a lot of places that we get our volunteers from are the adults who've gone through our groups and we tell them they have to take a gap over time and then come back and do the training and they make the best facilitators. But we've also had kids who are, you know, we've also got now volunteers who are children when they came through and they're now volunteering as adults. 

Aileac Deegan:
And it just gives you so much, you know, that you've done something right and that you've affected children in a really positive way and their families. And so it just, it gives me hope that, you know, these children are walking around with a lot of complicated issues because they didn't get help. And im not saying that every child that comes through Ryans Place goes out afterwards and is this perfect life doesnt work like that, but that we might have been able to help. I know weve helped a lot of children and adults down through the years. 

Marshall King:
Thank you so much for being here today. This show is a production of the Community foundation of Elkhart county. It is powered by equipment from Sweetwater and recorded at the Viaggio studios at we impact in Elkharts river district, where there's a bit of construction going on. Today, editing is done by the award winning communication students at Goshen College, home of one of the best college radio stations in the nation. Listen to Globe radio at 91.1 fm. 

Marshall King:
Learn more about the Community foundation of Elkhart county@inspiringgood.org. dot. You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Music is by sound sensations. Thanks for listening. 

Marshall King:
We hope you're inspired and inspire good in your community.