The Homeward Podcast
This Podcast is brought to you by Knox Area Rescue Ministries. Our mission is to illuminate the human stories behind homelessness, redefining what 'home' truly means through real voices, honest conversations, and education that fosters empathy, awareness, and action.
The Homeward Podcast
Episode 18: Two CEOs with Perry Hines and Danita McCartney
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- Wheeler Mission
- Wheeler History
- KARM
- Matthew 26:11
- Homelessness on a National Level
- Homelessness Trends 2025
- KARM Garden
- Prayer: EBED Cards
- CityGate DC Forum 2026
- Emmy Award Winning Documentary
- Take a Tour of KARM
- Programs Overview at KARM
- Click “What We Do” then click each program
Sticky Notes:
- It's about Education. You have to know more about what is going on in the community and what homelessness is. It's too easy to sit in comfort to not know, but we need to know so we can be apart of the solution. Look at what rescue missions in your area are actually doing.
- Homelessness can happen to anybody, we should understand that and recognize that.
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Interested in learning more about us? Please visit karm.org or reach out to Celia at clively@karm.org today!
Welcome to the Homeword Podcast, the show where we illuminate the human stories behind homelessness, redefine what home truly means through real voices, honest conversations, and education that fosters empathy, awareness, and action. Carm is highly rated by Charity Navigator, recognized as the best Christian workplace, and accredited by the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. We are one of 30 rescue missions in the country rated as excellent and distinguished from Citigate. And most recently, we are an Emmy Award-winning organization with our documentary. You can click the link in the show notes to watch it today. I'm Celia Lively, the host of the Homework Podcast. And today we're joined by two rescue mission CEOs, which is really cool. For all you millennials out there, this is like a Disney Channel crossover episode that I used to love. So Danita McCartney is here with us today. She was most recently on our Ask Us Anything episode, and she is the president and CEO of Knox Area Rescue Ministries. And Perry Hines is the president and CEO of Wheeler Mission in Indianapolis, Indiana. Perry and Danita, welcome to the show. Can you introduce yourself for our listeners?
SPEAKER_03Danita, we'll start with you. So Danita McCartney, and I have been serving at CARM for about 17 years now. And so I've held various roles. And my most recent role as president and CEO, I'll celebrate four years of doing that this October. So love what I get to do. I tell people that this is this is my last stop. This is where I will retire and just kind of work out my days. Love it.
SPEAKER_02Well, thank you, Celia. I am up in Indianapolis. I'm not down here in the warm weather that Danita and the rest of the folks are enjoying, but I did hear 75 degrees back home. But it's it's so I'm so happy to join you. Um well my background is I uh am president CEO of Wheeler Mission, like you said. Um Wheeler Mission is a 132-year-old organization, and so I'm the only like seventh president CEO in the history of that. So I came to Wheeler, I mean, uh kind of a security route. I'm a business guy, I'm not a pastor. Uh all the other CEOs have been pastors of some type. Interesting. And so I'm a bit more of I'm a business guy, um, but have been more what my my uh my pastor calls me a lay pastor the last 25 or so years in the community. And so I've come to to Wheeler to love it. I had been involved with uh it for about 17, 18 years, but as a volunteer, uh when I was in the corporate world, we used to volunteer at Wheeler and that's really cool. We used to host a suite, a corporate suite, and all the leftover food back in the day with all these restrictions with COVID and stuff. We could just give up give Wheeler the leftover food. We can't do that in this environment. So so I've been a volunteer and uh I've been there for four years and now I've been CEO for three years.
SPEAKER_04Very cool. Well, thanks for being here. Thank you today. Okay, let's dive in. We're gonna start with some fun, rapid fire questions just to loosen y'all up.
SPEAKER_03Great.
SPEAKER_04So summer or winter?
SPEAKER_03Oh winter, all day. Summer, summer. Winter winter.
SPEAKER_02Winter. Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_03That surprises me.
SPEAKER_02Tell me why winter? Why winter, Danita?
SPEAKER_03Because it's better to be cold than hot. And plus, winter clothing, I think, is so much more fashionable. Right? We do, but winter all day long. And it's someone from Philadelphia, and I'm used to a lot of snowfall. Yeah. And I miss that. And so winter all year round.
SPEAKER_04All right. Texting your collie. I'm a caller.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I'm a caller. When my it it bugs me to no end when I say, Hey, honey, have you talked to one of our boys? And she'll say, Yeah, I've talked to him. I said, Did you call her text? And she will have text. I said, that's not talking to him. When I say talk, I mean talk. So I just I just want to hear the person's voice. It's just so much you can get from the inflection and kind of the emphasis on certain words that a text, you know, for me, text often is like misleading. You you can and people aren't good spellers in texting. You can get the wrong word and get the wrong meaning, but if you're talking to somebody, so and and yeah, that means you're gonna have less contact because not everybody's just so busy, right? Right. Whereas texting, you can get them anywhere. But so I'm I'm a caller.
SPEAKER_03Nice. I would agree. Yeah, calling it mountains or beach. Oh, mountains.
SPEAKER_02Beach. See? Again, you know, the mountains go with winter and the beach goes with summer. That's true.
SPEAKER_04That's true. Okay, my last one. What's your favorite silly movie of all time? I'm not looking for prestigious. It's not gonna win an Oscar. I want somebody silly. Mine is Dodgeball.
SPEAKER_01That is silly.
SPEAKER_02It's just that's very silly.
SPEAKER_03I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's not silly, but it's like it's a stupid little movie. Yeah. It was a long time ago, a movie called The World According to Garp. And it was Robin Williams. It was right when he was doing Mork and Mindy. You know, I used to love him and work in Mindy, and but he then he did this movie, and and I just loved it. It was a serious movie. Uh-huh. It wasn't silly, but it was a stupid movie. It was really stupid. So World According to Garp.
SPEAKER_03Love it. I would have to say I was never a big fan of the whole Christmas vacation and a lot of those, but my husband would watch them a lot. And so as I started watching, it is silly and it's goofy, but I've come to maybe appreciate that humor in that movie a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Okay, let's get into the real stuff here. Can you each tell us about the missions that you lead? Sure. So Carm was founded in 1960, and it started out as a homeless shelter for alcoholic men who are residing in downtown Knoxville. And so it has one of the things I love most about Carm is just its history and just learning about how it's evolved and how it just constantly has to evolve and change to meet the ever-changing needs of homelessness. And so it's one of the things I love about CARM and how they've been able to adapt. And so now from going to serving a handful of men in the early days to over 5,000 men, women, and children today. And so we offer a variety of programs. And so what we like to say it's rescue plus relationships equals restoration. And so on the rescue side, we're meeting those immediate needs of food and shelter, start building relationships through our programs and then getting to celebrate long-term restoration. Love it.
SPEAKER_02Well, Wheeler Mission is in Indianapolis, and much like Danita, you know, it's kind of the same story basically. Although instead of being 60 years, we're 123 years. I'm sorry, 132 years. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_02Back in 1893. And so we were founded by a group of women led by Mary Wheeler. Four women and children. So it's kind of interesting. So an organization that's founded by women, a group of ladies, Mary Wheeler. They saw that in Indianapolis, uh downtown, they had a railroad station called Union Station, and they saw women and children being abandoned. They called them the abandoned women and children. And so because of husbands or whatever, they would just drop them off and leave them. So back in 1893, they had nowhere to go. And so Mary Wheeler and a group of uh like-minded women uh started uh doing uh taking those women and children into their homes. And then eventually her husband, William Wheeler, who was a pastor at a local church, saw and heard and caught the spirit and understanding what his wife and those women were doing, and then they opened up Wheeler Mission ten years later. But it started as uh Indianapolis Rescue Mission and morphed into Wheeler Mission after William Wheeler in 1893. Um Wheeler uh is an organization that does much of the same that Danita said. Um we provide emergency shelter servicing, we provide um uh drug and addiction counseling and services, drive readiness training programs. Um we we we provide services to um eight to nine hundred men, women, and children every night. And when it gets cold, about 1100 to 1200 men and women a night. Last year we we uh serviced about 13,000 individuals. And um, yeah, I I say it it none of that would be possible without the 18,000 volunteers that I had last year. Wow, and so that's you know, that's phenomenal. Uh so what we do, we could not do without the volunteers. And so our staff is a fantastic staff. I've got a staff of about 220. 40 percent of my staff have gone through one of my programs.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_02Forty percent. And so who better to know what the men, women, and children who are coming through the doors every night are experiencing, other than for them to say, Hey, brother, or hey sister, I was there last year. Wow and now look at me. How about that? So go through the programs and uh and have to have people on the front lines who are who are able to say, I know what you're going through, and and be more than just words, right? It'd be a lived experience. And so I'm so proud of what what we do. We also serve Bloomington, Indiana, so in central Indiana. So we are the largest shelter provider down there as well.
SPEAKER_04Fascinating. Very cool. Thanks for sharing. So if you guys had to pick, what is your favorite thing about Knoxville and your favorite thing about Indianapolis?
SPEAKER_03It's I feel, well, of course, we're the backdrop of the great smoky mountains. I think it's a beautiful place to live. It's a beautiful place to raise children. I feel it's just gorgeous. And so I love just our backdrop. Again, the mountains. And so I think that's um just beautiful. I would have to say it's just it's kind of like they call us the scruffy city, which um I don't know the history or behind that. I don't know if you do, Celia, but I think it's just very it's so unique, yeah, and uh just a great community of people. I love our size. We're not too small, we're not too big. But I think it's just I don't know. The backdrop, it is a special place, and of course, home to the University of Tennessee. And so being married to someone who is an avid UT fan. Love college love college sports, uh, not fond of the color of our college team, but not everybody can wear orange, right? And so we've learned to wear orange, but it's just a really special place. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, I love Indianapolis, and so unlike Knoxville, we don't have natural topography. So what we did was we we built it. We built things like a racetrack. Yes that it at at when it started, it was a test track for the automotive industry.
SPEAKER_04I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_02And then it eventually became the Indianapolis 500 Motor Speedway, and so now we host that race every instead of just uh you know the weekend race, we call it the month of May. And so the whole month of May is all about Indianapolis 500. So I but we have something called Hoosier Hospitality. First of all, kind of what is a Hoosier? Nobody knows. Nobody knows what a Hoosier is. But we're ready, uh go IU, woo-hoo! You know, IU football. Um, but uh the thing I love about Indianapolis is the Hoosier Hospitality, and uh it's it's just uh uh a a welcoming environment. And um Indianapolis was built um in a really unique design, kind of like Washington, D.C. But back when, back back in the day, the the um founding fathers of the city said we want a we want a center point to the city. And they built uh called uh Monument Circle. It's a monument there, basically, it's a monument. And then all the roads are jutting off and leading from that that's that that uh beginning point, and we're nicknamed Indianapolis nicknamed the Crossroads of America for that reason. We're three hours east or three hours east of Chicago, three hours south of Detroit, we're three hours west of Columbus, Ohio, you know, five hours north of St. Louis and Kansas City. So it is really the crossroads of America. So we have a lot of trucking and logistics companies and Federal Express and all those places, they come there as a hub, and then they could sprint out to different parts of the country uh, you know, in a very short amount of time. And so so I I I like that, and you're in the you and when you think of a Midwest, you really should be thinking of uh most people think of Chicago, but you really should be thinking of Indianapolis.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, love that. So we joke all the time at CARM of nothing prepares you for this work, and you are never bored at work. So, what made you get into this line of work?
SPEAKER_03Totally by accident, and it found me. Yeah, I wasn't seeking out CARM and I had uh got to know someone who was serving at CARM, and she and I became quick friends, and she reached out to me one day and said, I have this opening on my team, and I think you'd be a great fit. And I'm like, I I was so ignorant of what CARM did. I lived out west, CARM is downtown, never ventured downtown. And so I thought, well, I'm gonna go and see what this is all about. And I was blown away. I just I left there different. Yeah, I did, I left that interview different, and it was, I think it's just when you know you think about God's timing, and sometimes you can never really appreciate it until you're actually been in it for a while, and then you think back, and that was totally God's timing placing me there. And like I said, so I don't see myself leaving. And it was just totally in nonprofit work is not in my background, had no experience in that, and I've just I've learned so much through the different roles that I've had there. And I think you and I were similar, weren't you in development, Perry?
SPEAKER_02Yes, I was.
SPEAKER_03So right, both coming from the development side of things, which was so helpful for it.
SPEAKER_02It's prepared you, right?
SPEAKER_03It's prepared you for the the role we're in now. But I I like to say that Carm found me and rescued me, really. So I love you.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm from a small town in Kentucky originally. Um, one stoplight, one mailbox, 64 of my graduating class in high school. Two of us went to college, two four of us went to college, two of us graduated. But I come from a family of six boys, right? And uh my mom and dad had nothing more than a high school education. My dad was an alcoholic. Uh and so I I am a product of an alcoholic abusive family relationship. My mother, my wife, the same thing with her mother and and her father. Um, and so I've always had a soft spot for people and kids who've been put in situations beyond their control, no fault of their own, but have to deal with the circumstances and have to grow up really, really fast. So having said that as a backdrop, so when I uh went through my career in corporate America and, you know, for-profit companies, I was always volunteering for different organizations, never, you know, uh working for one, you know, for paycheck, you know, more or less. But I was always volunteering and doing things because I had that soft spot for those who are usually downtrodden and forgotten and invisible in society. You know, when you're in a small town and you're the your house, uh your dad abuse physically and mentally abuses your mother and uh the rest of the family, you hide it. It is it is the unspoken rule that you don't speak about it. It is like what stays in this house, what goes on in this house stays in this house. So many of the people we see every single night grew up in that same kind of environment. Uh, and they are in the shadows, they are in the visible folks of the community. And so I just love uh uh serving, being having the privilege of serving at Wheeler uh for the last three, four years. And like Danita, this is my last stop. I I I I didn't ask for this. I mean, God called me to this. It's got to be a calling. This is not a job, right? Because if it was a job, you'd quit in a day, in a week. Because it's so hard. Yeah, it it is uh it on one hand, you you can you are seeing some of the hardest issues and problems of society every day. You got a front row seat to that, yeah. But at the same time, you get a front row seat to God's grace and mercy and his restoration. And you we celebrate and we love that. Yeah, problem is it's not enough of that. It's not as much of that as we the the misery and the broken lives that we see every day, right? And so my goal, I tell my folks all the time, I don't want a job. I want to work outside of a job. I I I want there to not be a need for a carm down here in Knoxville or a wheeler in Indianapolis, and that would be a glorious day. Unfortunately, uh silly, I don't think it's gonna come anytime soon.
SPEAKER_04So we're gonna do the work while we're here, we're gonna do it. Yeah, yeah. Wow, that's really special. Thanks for sharing.
SPEAKER_00Thank you.
SPEAKER_03What would you guys say is the best part about your job? Oh goodness, it's the stories. Yeah, what other job will you ever have where you get to hear so many stories and meet, I mean, just really get to know people. And I think with the people that we serve, they're they've grown so accustomed to the people just passing them by, the people not looking in their eye, the people not taking the time to get to know, introduce yourself. And so I never grow tired of the stories. So many people have said to me when we talk about what I do, and they have jobs maybe in you know the prop for profit world or corporate, and they're like, I'm so jealous that you get to have that opportunity and to get to just know people and see people and get to see total transformation when you can see like we just heard uh it came from an event right before I came over here and got to hear this amazing story of restoration. And so this young woman um has now been restored as a daughter, as a sister, as probably an aunt, a granddaughter. And so people just I think sometimes think in this in rescue work, it's just that person. Oh man, just but yet when you can see them restored and you see all those people behind them also having a chance for redemption and getting to know that father, mother, daughter, sister again. That never I never grow tired of that. Never insolved.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, same thing too. It's a story. Yeah, that's why we do what we do, right? Um, I mean, why else would we do it? It's definitely not for the money, right? It's not for the glamour of it all.
SPEAKER_00It's not a shiny, flashy.
SPEAKER_02It is not, and we are not uh out there beating our chests, and I'm sure Danita is the same way down here is is we are thrust into the spotlight, but we don't want to be in the spotlight. Right, right. I would we want to meet our people where they are, and they're in the shadows, they're in the corners. And so we learned, and Danita sure has learned over the years, very calm, that the best way to meet them where they are is to be there right beside them. And so that means you are not out there beating your chest and being flashy, but because of the issues and the problems and the concerns, people want solutions. Yeah, everybody wants to know how they can solve homelessness. And I unfortunately say, We're not we're never gonna solve it. And they are always up in arms. I say it's biblical. God said that the poor will always be among us. And what is a better representation of the poor and the widows and orphans than our folks every night, every single night. So I get to see that, and Danita gets the front of the road to it. I love that. That's that's the great part about what we do.
SPEAKER_04So on the flip side of that, what's the worst part of your job? Might be hard to answer, I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it the worst part for me is when I see somebody we we could we couldn't help, or somebody who came to us, yeah, and we got them back on track and stabilized and sent them back out in the world and and they and they fail and they relapse again and they come and they and they knock on our door again. Um that's the hardest part, is to kind of cause you question yourself, you doubt what you do.
SPEAKER_00Right. Did I do enough?
SPEAKER_02Did we do enough? Yeah, and so to me that's the hardest part. It's because I I I think the hardest part in general is um everybody's story is uh constantly being read rewritten by God. And you never know where it's gonna end up. And so sometimes it's in a good place, sometimes it's not. And so that's the hardest part is is is uh when we see um that God is just um not ready right now for that they're they're not ready for that particular part of their lives. So that's that's the hardest part.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. I I appreciate you saying that, Perry, because you you kind of talked about when maybe they leave and you feel like, oh, did we do everything we could? I think too, because it happens every day when we drive into the parking lot at CARM, our respective campuses. But the thing that just breaks my heart are like the service resistance. Those, you know, and that's our prayer every morning as a leadership team when we start our day. It's like Lord, let today be the day that someone really makes that first move.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Because it's hard to see the same faces just remaining on the street, because I just want to just say, Oh, help is just within that door. But you can't make someone walk through the door.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_03And we get a lot of criticism sometimes, you know, from people who say, Well, you're you're carm and people are still standing outside.
SPEAKER_02And I'm like, we have beds inside that they're available, but right they won't if they don't come in and access the services, right? You can't make them do that, right? And it's only gonna be a certain percent in the
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02That that is always service resistance.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. And that that's heartbreaking because you just want to say help help help us help us help you. Yeah, come on in today. And so that that's hard. That's hard to see people just languish. And it goes far beyond what we do in the mission work and shelter work. There's so many layers, you know. I think I don't know about in Indianapolis, but there's not enough mental health opportunities. And so there's housing, affordable housing.
SPEAKER_02Right. And so the rest goes on.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and it's just there's so many reasons why people can be held captive to the streets. And it's not just maybe seeking out karm, it's other needs. But that that's heartbreaking. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But you know, Sue and Danita, it's incumbent upon us to understand. Understand why you're service resistant. I mean, to have relationships with them and talk, talk to them. And sometimes we we we find service gaps, right? We'd uncover trends and uh, you know, uh uh patterns, and so we can then go back to our great brilliant teams and you know, group of uh the continuum of care community that we have there in Indianapolis uh and say, we found some trends. Oh, we're starting to see people with pets. They're service resistant because we don't, we're not able to shelter their pet. So let's talk about that. You know, we actually had multiple conversations, you know, throughout the city as well as within within Wheeler about, you know, uh uh a pet ministry. Our our fellow colleague in Denver, they have a big, you know, uh carn uh kennel uh and uh but we're we decided that's not gonna be what we do, right? But but that maybe that's why some people are service resistant, right? So but it's incumbent upon us to try to understand and figure out that and then figure out are there gaps in our services?
SPEAKER_04Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, I want you guys to put your advice hats on. Okay, okay, because I have two CEOs here, and so a lot of people are looking for better.
SPEAKER_02Are you sure you want advice? I mean, I mean, come on, Danita and I both give advice all day long. So we're not short on this this topic.
SPEAKER_04I have four different categories. Okay, you're gonna make it tough. I am that's right. So what advice would you give to a fellow CEO who works in the same kind of work that we do?
SPEAKER_01I hang in there. I'm gonna say hang in there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, good. I think too, just make sure you're practicing really good work-life balance. Yeah. And so that would be I've had to work at that. Yeah. And I think I'm in a really good place. But there have been times when it's been off kilter. And so I think just to make sure that you are really feeding yourself as much as you feed the ministry.
SPEAKER_02It's easy to take this work home. Oh, for sure. It is. I mean, it's very very personal. Yeah. Right? When you know, I think we had 17 people who died in our shelters last year. And we take that very staff takes it very personal and they get attached. So they've got to learn that, you know, that that we we we're there to help as many as we can, but we can't help everybody if certain people don't want to be helped.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good. The second category, what would you say to an up-and-coming leader at your specific mission?
SPEAKER_02Um, an up-and-coming leader at at Wheeler, we typically, first of all, try to make sure that they have the opportunities to advance, and a lot of what we try to imbue in them is we are helping you you have it within you if you are able to stick it out to make a huge impact. You know, so the ability to make a lasting impact, a big impact uh on other people's lives uh is here if you want it. And so we I we usually tell emerging leaders that uh if you stick it out, we we we guarantee the reward will be there in the end. But if if you uh understand, if you want to make an impact, stay in this kind of work, stay in social work, you know, casework and and programmatic work, and and you will see you will see that.
SPEAKER_03That's good. That's good. I would pretty much um echo what Perry said, but I think it's real important for us as leaders too to make sure we're always trying to recognize emerging leaders. And I think and when you do, it's just that engagement and making sure, hey, let's work out a development plan for you. Let's really sit down and I think it's just important to hear what their aspirations are and how can we work towards that with you. And I think it's just real important not to just get a plan in place. And so maybe it's tuition reimbursement. It's like, how are you gonna further yourself? And let's make that a let's make that a real good plan. Yeah. And so I would just but you know, always be on the hunt for them. Yeah, have your eyes peeled for those emerging leaders.
SPEAKER_02They don't come along, they don't come all around often, right? They don't come along uh at just every day. But when you do find it and that God is uh uh prick their heart for this kind of work, man, you want to just make sure you develop them and keep them, even if not at Wheeler, you know, at at another ministry or another rescue mission around the country.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, right. Good, good. So, what would you say to someone who wants to volunteer or work in homeless ministry, but maybe they're a little nervous?
SPEAKER_03Don't be. Yeah, yeah, don't be nervous. Yes, and so I we need you.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_03How many volunteers do you have?
SPEAKER_02We had 18,000 volunteers last year that did about 35,000 volunteer hours.
SPEAKER_03That is spectacular.
SPEAKER_02That's amazing. It is amazing. And for any uh reluctant volunteers, I I say, whatever it is, we have a role for you. You know, we had a in whether it's nothing more than taking one of our two-hour blocks to serve a lunch or a dinner, um, or uh even in our thrift store, for instance, we had a gentleman who has retired, and uh his daughter was a big supporter of Wheeler. Uh, she happened to be the prison of the Indiana fever, uh, and her father was retiring, and she said, I really want Pops to be able to do something, and I know I love Wheeler. And we said, What can he do? And we had talking to her, the man loved to shine shoes. He loved, he was of that school, that age, less shiny shoes. So we said, I tell you what, we have a lot of shoes that are donated at our thrift store. Why don't he just come in one day, two days a week, and shine shoes before we put them on sale?
SPEAKER_00Love that in our thrift store.
SPEAKER_02That's what he did.
SPEAKER_00That's awesome.
SPEAKER_02And what's so specially unique about that volunteer story is that he passed away about a year ago. Uh, and he had he was very meticulous about a day planner. And he had put in there the last thing, the last activity was he had come to Wheeler and shined shoes the day before he went, uh he died in his sleep. That he had shined shoes at Wheeler that afternoon. He was so proud he shone 22 shoes. Oh, because it was always like how many shoes can you shine, and you know, in your shift and things like that, he shone 22 shoes. And his daughter told us about that because it was in his diary. That's one of his last activities on earth. And so we love that story.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And I think to learn, I think people might have a perception in their mind that, oh, to serve to volunteer at CARM, I'm gonna have to serve a meal, or they might have a misconception. And I love what you just said about the shining the shoes because there are so many areas. Yes, you know, CARM has a garden, yes, a beautiful garden. And if you have a green thumb, come on, come on, come on in. And people are just surprised, I think, at the all the different capacities. That's right. You can come in as a family and pray over our beds with our e-bed program. If you're unable to come down to Carm, you can in the comfort of your home make you know encouragement cards that get laid on everybody um each bed every night. Just don't think maybe what you think it is, and and learn more about what those opportunities are.
SPEAKER_00Even in the parking lot, you know, just call them.
SPEAKER_02There's just so many opportunities to to to volunteer. I mean, if you uh like to do hair, if you're a stylist, if you're a barber, you know, we could use all of those things. Now, of course, we use doctors and dentists and all of those nurses and things like that. But even if you don't have some big high fancy profession like that, I mean that gentleman shine shoes. Yeah, I love it. If you have a green thumb, come and work and volunteer in the garden that Denise's talking about. It's just uh sorry, if anybody's hesitant about volunteering, please don't be because there's so many things that you can do.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely, absolutely. My fourth category for this, what would you say to someone who works at your homeless ministry but they're burnt out?
SPEAKER_03Again, we talk a lot about work-life balance and self-care at CARM. That's so important because the work is hard. Yeah. I mean, and every we talk about it like most times. I don't know if that's is what you experience, Perry, but every spring, there's a little bit of turnover. It's burnout from a really hard winter season. And it's hard when you think about opening your doors. We're less, I think, nightly than you are. But what if you were at home and you opened your front door and there were 450 of your community on your front doorstep, and you're greeting them on probably what's been maybe the worst day of their life. A really bad day. And so it's it's our frontline team, our people who are on the front lines, oh my, they're unsung heroes in my book. They it's hard and it's weary. And so anything you can do, you know, we're thinking about, you know, exploring what would that look like to do alter our hours. Maybe it's like a four tens or three twelves, you know, something that would allow people to have more time away, like an extended weekend. And so, you know, just thinking about things like that that could maybe you know help help our staff have a better work-life balance because it it's hard. It's hard, it's hard, it's hard, it's heavy work.
SPEAKER_02Burnout is a real thing. It is not an imaginary thing. You know, burnout does happen. We tell our folks if you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of others.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02And if you can't take care of others, why are you working here? Right? Right. And so therefore, it begins with you. So we we really try to emphasize you need to practice self-care because if you burn out or if you get disillusioned, or you if you uh just going before the burnout, there's a period of time, that's kind of all these psychological studies about it, there's a period of time where um you become um immune to the suffering that you're dealing with every day, and then you become probably less gracious and less kind leading up to the burnout, and that's not good either. So if you had recognized that you that's what you're starting to do, and you're starting to get numb to the suffering you're seeing every night, then we we we we say it's it's almost like any disease or cancer or in any kind of disease, the earlier you catch it, the better. And so the early earlier you catch burnout, the better. Don't wait until you just have a meltdown.
SPEAKER_00Right. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02You know, that's probably uh been preceded by months and months, uh maybe even years, of leading up to it, and where you probably am not treating the guests the way they need to be treated, and or you're not uh uh taking your job as seriously uh as you probably should. And so so yeah, it it's it's uh self-care is very important. If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of other people.
SPEAKER_04Right, right, absolutely. So, one thing that I do on this podcast every episode is I ask our listeners for a sticky note. So if somebody forgets all of the things we said, what is one thing you want them to walk away with on a sticky note today?
SPEAKER_03I'm I'm gonna repeat what I did last time with you, Celia. It's so critical, it's about education. Yes, you have to educate yourself about what's going on in your community. Yeah, and homelessness is a big part of what's going on in every community across the country. You have to know more about it and um be aware, uh, maybe put away some of those preconceived um thoughts you have about why people are homeless and what's um why they're in that situation. Please educate yourself on, hey, how many homeless are in our area? What are the resources? Um it's just I think too easy to sit in the comfort of your home and maybe just not know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And you need to know. And you need to know how you can play a part and be a part of the community solution. And so really educate yourself about what your local missions do. And because it's so critical. And I think you know, Perry, one of the things I love to say most when I meet people and talk about rescue work, they don't understand the depth of programming that is within rescue missions. So many people think we're three hots in a cot or a soup kitchen. And I want people to know like if you live in Denver, if you live anywhere, Chicago, and you have a family member who is really struggling and needs help, maybe needs recovery, you can say, go to Denver Rescue Mission. They have amazing programming. Go to Wheeler. I mean, and we've sent people to Wheeler who had to get out of Noxhill. That was the best option for them at the time. And it goes both ways. It's reciprocal. And so I want people to know the depth of programming and quality programming that is happening within rescue missions all over the world, country.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think that's a good question. So I I'm glad you took the question first, Denise. So I can sit here and think. So I can sit here and think. And so I guess my my sticky note would be homelessness can happen to anybody.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Homelessness can happen to anybody. And uh that's such a true statement. And I mean, I I I I tell people quite often is that if you ever see a car in a corner lot of a Walmart parking lot, way back from everything else, somebody's probably living in that car. It's not just parked there for days and days, uh weeks at a time. It's probably somebody's home.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So homelessness can happen to anyone, and so we should just understand that and recognize that. So yeah, uh, it just uh I'm I'm I'm I echo every single thing that Danita just said. That's why she's amazing. That's why she's she's fantastic down here and and CARM or in Knoxville could not be more blessed to have Danita and her husband uh and their entire family who is behind the the work that she does every day. And so uh we learned so much from her.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh and and and I'm glad we can at least return the favor, at least somewhat, yeah, and try to to give them whatever they need.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, love it. Okay, my very last question for both of you. This is called the homeward podcast. So, what does home mean to you?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I think just when I think of home, I think of comfort and consistency. I just think of comfort, and whatever that means, you know, that could just be opening your front door after a long day, and you're like, oh, home. Right. I'm home. This is my my happy place. Yeah. This is where I've cultivated things I love and things that make me happy and feel comfortable. I I think of comfort. I think that word comes to mind. Um, you know, family and what's better than when you think of home as open the door and maybe your grandbabies have stopped by for a visit. It's just things that make me happy and comfort. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Home to me is uh a place where I don't have to explain myself. No explanations are needed. They know me. Right, they love me. Uh, and I don't have to explain anything. I mean, and if I don't want to talk, I don't have to talk. But if I want to talk, I can talk, right? So to me, home is that place where uh above all else and and any other place that you have you can experience outside in the outside world, home, you don't have to explain yourself. Don't explain anything.
SPEAKER_04That's good. I like that. I love it. Well, thank you both so much for joining us today. Remember to check the show notes for any relevant links, and you can find us on all socials at Knox Area Rescue Ministries. Be sure to follow along so you never miss an episode, and I'll see y'all at home.
