Communities Grow Together on Elevate Springfield featuring Brandy Stabler with Compass for Kids

Summary

In this conversation, Brandy Stabler from Compass for Kids shares insights about the organization's mission to provide academic and social emotional support to underserved children and families in the community. Brandy discusses her personal journey, the evolution of Compass for Kids, and the various programs they offer, including Club Compass and Camp Compass. The conversation highlights the importance of community involvement, volunteer opportunities, and the impact of their programs on children's success. Brandy emphasizes the need for everyone to contribute to the community in their own way, whether through volunteering or financial support, to help elevate the lives of children and families in need.

Takeaways

• Compass for Kids provides essential support for underserved children.
• Brandy's journey reflects a passion for community service.
• The organization has evolved to meet the needs of the community.
• Club Compass focuses on social emotional learning during the school year.
• Camp Compass helps prevent summer learning loss for kids.
• Volunteers play a crucial role in mentoring and supporting children.
• Community partnerships enhance the effectiveness of their programs.
• Success stories demonstrate the positive impact on children's lives.
• Everyone can contribute to the community in meaningful ways.
• Engagement in local nonprofits boosts faith in humanity.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Elevate Springfield, where we will dive into strategies and stories that help you rise to your full potential. Each episode, we'll talk about how you can take intentional steps to elevate your life and your business while making a meaningful impact on those around you. Along the way, we're gonna bring in the change makers from our community that are already elevating. We'll bring the actionable strategies, you bring the discipline and follow through, and together we can elevate Springfield. Alright, let's go, Springfield. Time to 10X your day, y'all. Time to level up, time to crush it. Hey, you are listening to the Elevate Springfield podcast. Robert Farrell here, certified 10x coach, speaker, and mentor. Here to bring you actionable strategies. You bring the discipline and follow through. And together, we're gonna Elevate Springfield. Well, you are listening to another segment of Communities Grow Together on the Elevate Springfield podcast. As you know, we drop these segments each week. The Communities Grow Together segment will touch on all things nonprofit associations and how we as a community are working together so we can all grow together. This segment is brought to you by David Hilst, American Family Insurance Agency over on West Wabash. Whatever you need insurance-wise, whether that's business, life, home, auto, or anything in between. Hey, David and his team can take care of you. Give them a shout, or hey, stop by and visit them over on West Wabash. These segments are quick hits of actionable strategies and what's going on in our hair area to help you level up and grow together. Be right back after the break. Looking for personalized insurance with hometown care, David Hilst, American Family Insurance Agent is here to help you protect what matters most: your family, your home, and your dreams. Whether it's auto, home, life, business, David and his team are proud to serve the Springfield community with trusted advice and reliable coverage. Local service, real relationships, peace of mind. Call today or stop by their office. They can build your dream protection plan together. Call 217-726-6343. And we are back for another edition of Communities Grow Together, brought to you by David Hilst, American Family Insurance Agency. Hey, anything you need insurance-wise, personal or commercial, David and his team will take care of you. Give them a shout, or just stop by their agency over on West Wabash. In the studio with me today, Brandy Stabler from Compass for Kids. How are you doing today, Brandon?

SPEAKER_01 3:00

I'm good. I'm so excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

I'm excited to have you.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

It's gonna be fun. It will.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

I'll tell you, Compass for Kids has come up on the show probably a dozen times. And we've never had you or anybody from Compass actually in. So we've talked about different events that, like Jeff Dillman, when he's in, we talked to him, you know, he's done some things with you guys in terms of meals and different stuff. It's come up multiple times, but we haven't heard it from you guys before. So I'm excited.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Yeah, I am too. Yeah, honestly, the the community involvement that we've had with our organization, which is so essential, has been awesome. And through, you know, the networking groups that you and I are in, some of the people that have really stepped forward, like Jeff and done meals for our kids and things like that, it's awesome. So I'm I'm glad to have the opportunity to talk to your audience about what it is that we do and the good we can do for our community as a whole.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Absolutely. So before we get into that though, let's just learn a little bit more about brandy. Tell us a little bit about you.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

So I am totally a central Illinois girl. I grew up in the Bloomington normal area, a little town called Downs, and lived there my whole life until I went to college. And then I went to Milliken in Decatur. Um, I started out as a theater major. That only lasted about a semester before I was like, this is not my intended career. Uh switched to a communication major with an emphasis in broadcasting. Um, thought I was gonna go and be on the radio and that that's what I wanted to do. And ended up my first job that I got out of college was in radio advertising sales because I had also um taken marketing classes and had a real interest in that um here in Springfield. Okay. And so that's why I moved to Springfield and I've been here ever since. So that was in 1996. So however many years that's been, my heart is with my hometown as well, but Springfield is a hundred percent um my home. Right. So uh I love this community. So I started out in radio advertising sales, and then I left there and I went to the public radio station out at UIS, WUIS, was there for a while, left there to stay home with my kids and stayed home, then decided I wanted to go back to work part-time and ended up going back to UIS and was in fundraising for the UIS Performing Arts Center. And I did that for 11 and a half years. And it was perfect because it was experience that I had and interest that I had, but because it was part-time, it was a perfect schedule for being there for my kids when they got home from school and all of that. But it was a professional position. So that was great. Then I had a kid go to college and decided might be time to go back to work full-time.

SPEAKER_02 5:59

Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Um, and I went to work for the Boy Scouts, and that's where I really discovered that I loved working for a youth serving organization and started to feel passion for my career that I hadn't felt before. And then after Boy Scouts is when I came to Compass for Kids. So I've been with Compass, it'll be four years in this past April. And it's my spot for sure. I have so much passion for the mission. I love the fact that my job is getting to be out in the community just talking about the amazing things our programming team is doing and how much it's helping kids in this community, and um, you know, building relationships and connections and knowing that I can use those skills that I have to help out the kids that are in our programs.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Love it. So UIS, didn't they just finish uh remodel there? Or in the process of it or something?

SPEAKER_01 6:59

I think they're totally finished. So I'm a little out of touch other than just following, you know, them on Facebook.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Yeah, I just seem to see it on Facebook here recently. I remember talking about it on the show once that it was about to start, but I didn't know when it was gonna be finished.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

Having worked there for so long, I think it is amazing that they are putting in extra aisles. I will just say that. I can't wait to go back to a show there because those big long aisles where you had to walk past like felt like 50 million people to get to your seat. Yeah, I'm excited to see it when it's done.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Yeah, that's very cool to be able to put that investment into it.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

So Compass for Kids. Yeah. Tell us about it, the mission and what you guys do.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Sure. So the Compass for Kids mission is to provide academic and social emotional support for children and families who are underserved by our community. We, our vision is that all kids in the community have the opportunity to experience success and to live out their dreams and to be their best. So a little bit of the history of Compass. Compass was founded by Molly Barrent Grogan. Um, she is still our CEO and she had been living in Cincinnati and was doing volunteer work for an organization that served children experiencing homelessness. So when she moved to Springfield, she decided that she wanted to get involved in something like that again and started asking questions about where she could do that. And she couldn't find anything. So she had a conversation with her pastor. Um, she uh still attends Douglas Avenue United Methodist. Um, and her pastor at that time said, Well, why don't you start one?

SPEAKER_03 8:48

There you go.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

And she did. And um, it started out as a ministry of Douglas Avenue United Methodist.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Okay, I didn't realize that.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Yeah. So what's super cool is we consider Wouldn't It Be Lovely to be kind of our sister organization because both Compass and Wouldn't It Be Lovely were birthed out of Douglas Avenue United Methodist. So she started it as a ministry of the church. She started with Club Compass, which is our school year program with like seven kids. And it was specifically children who were experiencing homelessness. And she was doing, you know, some academic help and social emotional work and life skills and enrichment and sending them home with food for the weekends. And it continued to grow because it was so successful. She ended up becoming a program under the Family Service Center for a while. And then it continued to grow. And she started sort of shopping it around, like, you know, who would like to adopt this program and take it on. And she wasn't finding a place to land. So she launched into her own not-for-profit. Here we are today. Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

I didn't I never knew that. I mean, the family service center part and the whole thing. I didn't realize that.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Yeah. So that was 2011, is when it began. 2016 is when we launched into our own not-for-profit. So this year we're celebrating the 10th 10th anniversary of becoming our own 501c3.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Very cool.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

And it's great how she was looking for something.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Wasn't here. So she just did it herself. And that's what a that's like a great entrepreneur story. A lot of business owners are like that. Well, I want to do we don't have anything like that. I'm just going to do that.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Yeah. And here's the thing, Robert, she was like 24 years old at the time. And so I find that incredibly inspiring because it really doesn't matter how old you are, if you really have passion and drive for something and you just start talking to people about it, you can usually make it happen.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

That's awesome. Yeah. So how have the programs changed over the years?

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Sure. So she started out with just one program, Club Compass. We still have Club Compass, but eventually she added a second program, a summer program, Camp Compass. So the difference between those two programs, still have both. We're gearing up for Camp Compass right now. So all of our programs do academic help. All of our programs do social emotional work. All of them do life skills and enrichment. And all of them send home bags of shelf stable food for the weekend with the kids. The difference, though, is Club Compass, the school year program, focuses most heavily on social emotional work and the life skills and enrichment. Because what we're trying to do is help the kids with those skills that are going to make them more successful in the classroom. And also we we like to say that we serve the whole child and recognizing that if a kid is hungry, they're not going to be a successful student in the classroom. Because if you're hungry, you're not thinking about math problems. So that's why we do the backpack feeding program. And just trying to give extra support to the families to make sure that the kids can be as successful as they possibly can.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

That whole hierarchy of needs. If you don't feel safe or if you're hungry, you've got to have those things taken care of before you can get those higher up.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

So Club has, you know, our it is primarily volunteer driven. Um, and our volunteers are there to be mentors for the kids and be a good, consistent um person in their lives and feeding positivity into them and just giving them a good, safe, friendly faces that they see. So that's Club Compass. Camp Compass, it was added as a summer camp to help kids maintain and build their math and literacy skills because all kids experience that summer slide when they're not in school during the summer, meaning, you know, you're not working on math every day. So you're losing a little bit of those skills over the summer. But children from low-income households lose those skills at a higher rate because they're not necessarily going on the vacations that their higher income peers are going on, you know, or going to the museum, or maybe they have parents who have to work a lot to be able to pay their bills. And so they're not necessarily there to sit and read a book. So she added the camp program to, you know what? I realized I do need to back up just a little bit. Because what we haven't talked about is the criteria that we use for kids to be in our programs.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Be in either program. Okay, yeah. Let's hear it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

And I think we kind of need to talk about that for some of this to make sense. Um, so the criteria for a child to be recommended for our program, and we work closely with district 186. So all of the kids are referred to us by the school district. And it's based on being from a low-income household and then also having at least one additional risk factor. And those can be things like homelessness, food insecurity, suspected neglect or abuse. Maybe they're in foster care. Maybe they haven't have a parent who's incarcerated or a parent who's deceased, any number of things. So Molly started Camp Compass and was working with kids from the district, created just a really fun atmosphere for kids to come and work on those math and literacy skills, but then in the afternoons, be able to like go swimming at the Nelson Center, um, to go bowling or roller skating or go to the museum and some of those enriching activities as well. They get breakfast and lunch when they're there, and they go home with a bag of shelf stable food for the weekend. So it was very successful. At the same time, the school district did have a um like half-day elementary summer school that was going on, which wasn't wildly successful because it felt very punitive. And so we were working with kids from the school district. And so the school district approached Molly and said, Hey, how about we pool our resources and we really build this summer program? And you can hire, you know, the certified district 186 teachers and principals. You can use our buildings, you know, and we can help in that way. And you can run this camp program that you've been doing. So it was, it was magic, honestly. So we do hire District 186 teachers, administrators, school nurses, secretaries, and all of the things. That's awesome. Yeah. And so the mornings at Camp Compass are all in the classroom, building those math and literacy skills, but doing it in a really up and engaging, fun way with, you know, camp decorations and they get camp t-shirts and all of that. They may work on literacy skills by doing karaoke or by doing a reader's theater or playing a math game. So it's kind of like they're learning, but they don't realize that they're learning.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

A very fun and engaging way of learning, yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

And they can't wait to get on the bus to get there because they are getting to go swimming at the Nelson Center and to do all these other fun things. I like to tell people with the enrichment part, it's not only magical because the kids get so excited about being there, which makes them more successful in their learning if they're engaged. But it's also that if you think about when you were in elementary school, even middle school, probably, what was one of the first assignments that you got when you went back to school?

SPEAKER_00 16:59

What'd you do over the summer?

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Write about, write a paragraph about what you did for the summer.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

So we want to give the kids those fun things that they can write about that they did. I went swimming and I went to the museum and I went to the Dana Thomas house and I went bullet. Yeah, all those things. So those are just as important, especially for a kid's confidence when they go to school. So that's what summer camp is. What has been incredibly impressive to me is that we have all these wonderful stories about successes with kids, but we also have the data to back it up. We do pre and post assessments on the kids in our programs. And camp, for example, last summer, 99% of the kids maintained or improved their math skills, and 98% improved or maintained their literacy skills. So what we're doing is working.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

No doubt about it. So the during the school year program, the club compass, is that how many locations is that at? Is that at one building or is that at multiple 186 buildings? What's that?

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Sure. It is at multiple buildings. We have five different sites. And the school year program sites all happen at partner churches. So one thing that is crucial for our programming is that we are trying to serve the kids who may have so many barriers working against them that they struggle to get to other beneficial youth programs. So we have to remove the barriers that they have. So our programs are always free. We don't have complicated paperwork involved. We provide all of the supplies that they need in the summer. That's even swimsuits and flip-flops and towels and school supplies and all of that. But we also provide transportation to and from our programs because the families may or may not have transportation to get the kids there. Our school year programs happen at churches that are within walking distance of the elementary schools that we're serving. Yeah. Also, you know, the churches are gracious enough to let us use their facilities. You know, it's a way for them to do additional good for the community, but we walk the kids there from their elementary school to the church, unless it's bad weather. We now have vans that we can use, which is awesome. So that we can transport them that way if we need to. And then we also will give them a ride home at the end of the night if they need it.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

And I know these can be very impactful because when I lived in Decatur, our church over there was First Christian Church at the time when we lived over there. And my wife was a teacher at Parsons Elementary, which was right down the road.

SPEAKER_03 19:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

And we had a very similar program called it Club 305. Oh, interesting. We would bring the kids over from Parsons Elementary. It was just for that one elementary school, and we'd take them over to First Christian and house a very similar program. And then they'd stay, they'd eat dinner, and we had a bus that the church used, so we'd bus them home at the at the end of the night. So very, very similar. Yeah, so impactful.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

Who are some of the partner churches?

SPEAKER_01 20:09

So we use First Church of the Brethren, Westminster Presbyterian, Southside Christian, Douglas Avenue United Methodist, First Church of the Brethren, and Third Presbyterian.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

No, it's it's so cool that they're gracious enough to let you host them there and everything. That's just an awesome partnership.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Yeah, absolutely. They have perfect facilities for it too, because they have a full kitchen. So our dinner providers, you know, have all the facilities they need to cook dinner and serve dinner to the kids, and they have classrooms and they have a big gathering room. So yeah, it's perfect.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

So you mentioned that you guys hire some of the 186 teachers and staff administrators, but for volunteers, you mentioned that you have some volunteers too. What are some ways that people can get involved volunteer-wise and what kind of requirements are there there?

SPEAKER_01 20:59

So if you are someone who really feels the pull to be a mentor for children, um, our club compass program, our school year program, is great for that. We need weekly volunteers to be there. Each site meets once a week. So you can pick one site or you can pick multiple sites and be there to kind of help guide the kids from activity to activity, to greet them when they come there after school, sit and have a snack with them, talk about their day, and just let them talk about life, and to, you know, be there to give them a hug when they want to get a hug and sit and eat dinner with them, and also kind of give them that experience of sitting around the family table and you know, talking and um and sharing a meal together.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

So And those times can be powerful too, there. Cause like I was mentioned, that's our program there. I was a mentor there for years and that those times right there where you're just hanging out and talking and going through the soap. Powerful.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

It's huge. Yeah. So we have opportunities to do that. That's a heavier commitment, obviously, but we would do a background check on you. You have a short uh volunteer training that you have to do. And then you can start serving as a mentor at one of our sites. For people who are looking for something that isn't that much of a commitment, honestly, I would say when I'm talking to people in the community who have volunteered, the favored volunteer activity is being a dinner provider. You can do it once, you could do it once a month, you could do it once a quarter, you know, really whatever works for you. It's an amazing bonding activity for a group of friends, for a family, for a staff. You can, you can cater it in if that's what you prefer, but you can also plan it and shop it and come in and cook it and then serve it for the kids. And I like that as an option because if you're thinking about like a staff bonding sort of thing, everybody has different skill sets. So you may have someone who's really good at the budgeting and planning who can, you know, do the shopping. You have someone who loves to cook who can come in and, you know, lead the cooking of the meal. But it's so rewarding for everybody to be there to serve the kids and to sit and have dinner with them. I hear over and over and over again people who do it say, Oh my gosh, those kids are so polite and they were so grateful. And it's it's a lot, and of course, they're excited about that part of the night coming eating.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

I'll tell you, I mentioned that we've it's been brought up on the show probably a dozen times. A lot of times it's because, hey, we just cooked for Compass the other night or we did the meal for Compass the other night.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

We also need enrichment and life skills providers. So, for example, we might have bankers who come in and do financial literacy on an elementary school level. We have had engineering firms come in and do a STEM activity with the kids. We had someone come in and teach them how to decorate cupcakes, or someone come in and teach them how to do build a healthy plate, or any number yoga. Someone came in and did yoga with them. We have someone bring in exotic animals. It could be anything. It's just that's the time when they have the opportunity to have new experiences, which help you discover passions you have, new interests, talents you didn't realize that you had, and just kind of broadens their worldview.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Nice. So, what are some of the events you guys have, like fundraising type events?

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Yeah. Well, our next one is Back to School Brunch, which is on September 19th. It starts at 10 a.m. out at Aaron's Pavilion. Tickets are on sale now, so people can go ahead and grab their tickets. It's a fun event. Um, we have a wonderful breakfast buffet. We usually do some kind of program updates or um, you know, fun videos about things that are going on at the programs. We had an amazing success story that we got to highlight last year because we have finally been around long enough that some of the kids in our programs have graduated from high school.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

And are adults now.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Yeah. And it was a story of a child who had been in the elementary program, done a STEM activity with Crawford Murphy Tilly, and was introduced to engineering. And flash forward, he ended up doing an internship at Crawford Murphy and Tilly. So that one gives me chills. So we had a video about that highlighting that story. We have Compass Kid artwork for sale. We have a blind date with a book, book sale. We have some other compass merch. We may have some auction items available. Like that event is still kind of in the works. And we usually do some kind of fun activity at the end that shows you one of the enrichment activities that our kids get to do. So one year we had a petting zoo out in the yard that people could go and there was a miniature cow and you know, miniature horse and things like that. It's just a fun morning, kind of celebrating our community and our kids. And I see that event as friend raising too. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

You mentioned blind date with a book. So for those that don't know what that is, isn't that where you you wrap up the book? You might have a couple extra little goodies in there.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

There's so you're buying the book just based on a description or a clue that is written on the front. Yeah, it's fun.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Yeah, I just bought one of those not too long ago. One of the I was judging the Sangaman CEO competition a couple weeks ago, and one of the girls there had that was her business was the blind date with the books. So that's fine. So I bought one from her.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Okay, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

Very cool.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

I will say, with our summer camp program going on, we are always open to hosting tours of our programs. We really like to open up our doors and let people come in and see firsthand what's going on at our programs because we can talk about it all day, but it's so much more impactful for you to come in and actually get to meet some of the kids and see what's going on. So people are always welcome to reach out if they would like to come on a tour of our camp program.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

Well, and then on the flip side, maybe somebody's out there and they say, Hey, my facility would be cool to bring the campers out to us today. Do you ever do you do tours like that? Field trips. I do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

I we just had some kids yesterday take a field trip out to Shields. So yeah, absolutely. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Very cool. Yeah. Well, I'll just put it out there for Springfield. Any business owners out there, whoever, you got some cool ideas, let compass know. They might be able to do a field trip this summer. Absolutely. So and I would imagine if somebody just wants to donate, make a monetary donation to you guys, they could do that at any time, maybe through the website or something.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Absolutely. Compassforkids.org. And it is compassforkids.org. And they're there multiple donate buttons that you can find on the website. They're always welcome to reach out to me as well. You know, some people aren't comfortable making a gift online. If you really just want to drop off a check or something, you can come visit us at 1201 South Fourth Street. That's our administrative office. And uh stop by and visit with us if you'd like to drop off a check.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

Well, Brandy, so much great stuff today. So much impact you guys are making over at Compass. And I'd like to end with these last couple of things.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Let's give the audience a piece of advice, one on the personal side, one on the professional side to help them elevate their life or business.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Okay. Um I believe very strongly that every single person in this community has God-given gifts. And I think that the most fulfillment that you'll find from your life is finding a way to use those gifts and especially to use them to do good for your community. Even if it is that maybe you're good with numbers. And so go join a not-for-profit board and you know, join their finance committee, or go help your kids band boosters and help, you know, figure out the budget for a trip. Or maybe you're good at cooking and you can come and you can cook at Ronald McDonald's house, or you can provide a meal at Compass, or you can go help with the St. John's breadline. Maybe you aren't incredibly mobile, but you can go sit at Midwest Mission and you can pack layout kits or bags that everybody can do something. And you can find a lot of opportunities that take very little time. So there are commitments that you can make to go and elevate your community somehow that are a big time commitment, but you can also find things that aren't. For example, we have one volunteer activity where people just go and pick up our backpack feeding bags from where they're packed and drive them over to the church where they need to be delivered to the kids. And that's it. And that takes so little time, but it is such a vital resource for the kids that we serve and having that food for the weekend. And that's a piece of it that you can help with. I absolutely love this community. I get the benefit of working for a not-for-profit. Not everybody does, but you can certainly go help some not for profit, whether it's that you care about senior citizens or animals or children or people experiencing homelessness or whatever it is that you feel passionate about, go and help out somewhere. You are going to meet some of the most generous, kind, genuine, wonderful people. I am so inspired every day at my job because of the amazing people that I meet, just being involved with a not-for-profit. So go get involved somewhere. I'm telling you, it boosts your faith and humanity. When there's craziness going on in the world, you just will meet some of the most incredible people. I think as a business person, it also can help, you know, getting connected with other people and just knowing the needs that are in your community and how you can help. Um, and again, just meeting people. But I think that if every single person did one small thing somewhere, think about how that would improve our community. I think with working with kids, they're the future of our community. So that's why the work we're doing is so important, is they're someday the the people who are going to be taking care of us and that are going to be running the businesses and gonna be in charge in this town. So we want to make them as successful as they can be.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

Love it. Yeah. Love it. That's right, Springfield. If you have the capacity to volunteer, give that time. If you have the capacity to give monetarily, give, right?

SPEAKER_03 32:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

If we all do that, we can make a huge difference right here in Springfield. So well, Brandy, appreciate you spending some time with me today. Yeah, it was great learning more about Compass.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

I loved it. I really appreciate you having me here.

SPEAKER_00 32:22

Absolutely. We're gonna let Brandy get back to elevating Springfield, but for the rest of you, we'll be right back. Hey, Springfield, when it comes to reliable, high-quality roofing, you don't want to leave things to chance. That's why you should reach out to Acosta Angeli Roofing, your local roofing expert serving Springfield and surrounding communities, from quick, dependable repairs to full replacement, from residential to commercial, they are your trusted pros. Call them today at 217-993-2748 or visit their website to book your free quote and inspection. Don't wait. A little leak now could lead to major damage later. Trust the local experts, protect your home, and get peace of mind with Acosta Angeli Roofing. Well, thank you for joining us today, everybody, on another segment of Communities Grow Together on the Elevate Springfield Podcast. Thank you again to David Hilst, American Family Insurance Agency, for partnering with us on this segment. A take what you learn today. You bring the discipline and follow through, and together, that's right, y'all. We're gonna Elevate Springfield. Be great. Looking for expert tree care with hometown integrity, look no further than Sangamon Tree Service. They're your trusted local pros, delivering quality workmanship, exceptional customer service, and fair, honest pricing. Every time. Whether it's trimming, removal, or storm cleanup, their team brings professionalism and care to every job, big or small. Call the name your neighbors trust, Sangman Tree Service, or visit them today at SangamanTreeService.com. Sangamon Tree Service, rooted in quality, built on trust.