The Business of Giving

Unknown Speaker 0:00
You're listening to locally produced programming created in KU NV studios on public radio K, u and v 91.5.

Speaker 1 0:11
You're listening to special programming sponsored by the cars marketing Chamber of Commerce. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions and 91.5 jobs and more the University of Nevada Las Vegas or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Speaker 2 0:37
People live in the whole world. Hello, everyone. And welcome to the business of giving podcast. My name is Guy Dawson and I am the executive director and founder of the cause marketing Chamber of Commerce. And we created this show to highlight cause marketing and the impact that it has on our community. The cause marketing Chamber of Commerce brings nonprofit and for profit businesses together to create synergistic relationships that benefit the community. For more information about what we do at the cause marketing Chamber of Commerce, we can be reached at cause marketing chamber.com. This valuable show is made possible through the generosity of our series sponsor solar up an energy solution and conservation company specializing in solar and battery storage systems, including solar panels. I actually I had the opportunity to go on a field trip a couple of days ago over at Seoul up. It was really, really an interesting experience just seeing the way that things work. And yeah, I thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed my my field trip that I had with the staff over at Seoul up a few days ago. As usual, Maria Perez, the cars marketing coach is my co hostess with the mostest. As they say, how are you Maria?

Unknown Speaker 1:55
I'm great. How are you doing today? Guy?

Speaker 2 1:57
I am wonderful. We hosted our event last Thursday. And we are on the other side of it. It was a lot of fun. But it is really nice to be on the other side. Yeah, it was really a lot of fun, a great gathering. We really appreciate those in the community, by the way, who showed up to support the business of giving event that we did over at the space. And it was just an excellent opportunity to network and connect with old friends meet new friends. We had nonprofit MVP in the house doing some filming. It was just a really enjoyable event. And we're looking forward to putting on our next businesses with heart. And I know you Maria has I'm constantly commenting on these excellent guests that you bring onto the show. And you certainly have provided a lot of great content for us at the time that you've been co hosting the show excellent nonprofit organizations and for profit businesses. And you have another esteem guest today. Would you like to talk about our guest for today?

Speaker 3 3:05
Yes, we have in the house today. Lynette Rivera. She does an incredible service to our community in leading the leading the fight to end youth homelessness. She's here with us today to shed some light on the gravity of the situation, and the impact that her organization is having on on making it presumably go away at some point. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to limit and limit tell us a little bit about your organization's.

Unknown Speaker 3:41
Well, hello, thank you. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for inviting me to be on the show today, I'm really excited to tell you all about Nevada partnership for homeless youth and or aka mph why and what we're doing to end youth homelessness here in Southern Nevada. So just to dive right in Nevada partnership for homeless youth, we're the most comprehensive service provider working with exclusively with youth experiencing homelessness here in Southern Nevada, we work with youth between the ages of 12 and 24 years old and provide all kinds of services to get youth off of this, to meet them where they're at to get them critical supplies to get them off of the streets and then to work with them on that pathway to self sufficiency. And that's always the number one goal is really getting us to a place of self sufficiency and ensuring that they're not going back into homelessness, but they're you know, empowered and have all the tools needed to go on and accomplish their goals and live their best life. So that's, you know, kind of a snippet of what we're doing, but I can dive more into our programs and kind of what that looks like. If you'd like me to

Speaker 3 4:58
Yes, absolutely. I mean I was shocked when I went to your website and saw that there are 14,000 homeless youth and in Southern Nevada. I mean, it's a social issue that that people don't talk about a lot. And it's it's really, it's astounding. The numbers. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 5:19
Yeah. I mean, you're right. Yeah. So that number that we that 14,000 numbers, so that number came directly from Clark County Schools, title onehope office, which counts, you know, youth enrolled in Clark County Schools. And we often think, you know, a lot of these numbers are undercounted, you know, because it's hard to reach youth who are experiencing homelessness, especially those of you who are on the streets, and who are experiencing homelessness unaccompanied, and without families or anybody to look after them. So it's, it's a scary number 14,000 in our schools, but we often think that's an undercount. But yeah, I mean, over the years, Las Vegas, Southern Nevada and Nevada, we've, you know, ranked in the top 10, of having one of the worst instances of youth homelessness in the country. It's terrifying to know that that is such a big issue. It's a it's an issue across the country. You know, there's millions of young people who experience homelessness every single year throughout the United States. But here in Southern Nevada, particularly, and you know, and also throughout the, the, throughout the nation, you know, youth often go unnoticed, because when you think about somebody who's experiencing homelessness, what do we think about, we think about, you know, the person on the corner who has a sign, you know, somebody with tattered clothes, somebody who is who has, you know, who gives us that visualization of homelessness. But that's often what you don't, you often don't see that with youth experiencing homelessness, youth experiencing homelessness, are also often called the invisible population, because they're doing whatever they could possibly do to hide their incidence of homelessness. You know, they're making sure that they that they're not telling friends and family or people around them, because they're afraid of being ostracized, they're afraid of what might happen to their parents, they're afraid that if they, you know, they tell people that they're going to be turned over to the foster system are so many other things. So you have a lot of youth who are couchsurfing Who are you know, stage, which is going from friend to friend, a friend's house, youth who are, you know, figuring out how to get clothes and, and shoes until, to really still be able to fit in with their peers. That's something that we already know is is huge among teenagers is you know, that's already a time that you're developing socially and mentally, and you're trying to fit in amongst your, you know, your peers. So to come out and say that you're experiencing homelessness is something that would ostracize you. So a lot of us are not telling people about it. So again, yeah, it's a huge issue. I'm not sure if you had any other anything else you'd like me to talk about with the issue? You

Speaker 3 8:14
I think that I also noticed that you have since the, you know, this, this show is about causing social issues, parodies and affinities. Can you talk a little bit about some of your partners and the support they provide you for your programs and services? And, and, and how you work with some of them? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 8:34
yeah. I mean, we, you know, we could not do what we do without partners partners is having partners in the community is so important. And that's partners in corporate spaces, that's partners and, you know, community partners that support us. So you know, corporate spaces, churches, affinity groups, you know, people that are rallying behind the issue of youth homelessness and really being a voice for an often voiceless population. You know, those community partners are really, really important. But also, you know, on the other side is is the service partners that we work with? You know, there are a lot of issues in our community that are really heavily correlated to youth homelessness. When we talk about human trafficking. One of the number one risk factors for a youth becoming a human trafficking victim is youth homelessness, LGBTQ youth across the country, they it's estimated that between 20 and 40% of youth experiencing homeless homelessness are LGBTQ youth who are coming out to their families and being ostracized because of that. If you look at immigration, you you know, there are our youth, young people who have come to us because their entire families have been deported. And they've been left here, you know, and they are our citizens and they were born here but they've been left here experiencing and of the experience homelessness because of that, because of that system. So there are a lot of systems and other social issues that are heavily correlated to youth homelessness. Right now, you know, we're seeing a, in, you know, just thinking about COVID In the last few years, and, you know, how youth have been disconnected from support systems, schools, and different things, you know, that really are a part of their developmental years, you know, sports and, and all the different things that we saw over those those few years of that we were in the midst of COVID. Now, you know, we're seeing a really a spike in mental health crisis. That is something that, you know, we're seeing across the board, but for young people experiencing homelessness, you know, it, we're seeing it at just elevated levels. So working with community partners in the mental health space is really, really important because of that, you know, there's stigmas around youth experiencing homelessness, that a lot of them are, you know, running away, or they're punks, or they're, you know, they're on drugs. And that's the complete opposite of what we see. But you know, that substance abuse that we we do see, you know, a lot of youth come to mph why or experience homelessness, and I've never touched a drug, but they're using substances in order to deal with or cope with their homelessness. So, you know, we work with substance abuse, service agencies in the community to deal with those issues. Community Health Partners, you know, we have community health partners, whether it be health, dental, vision that come to mph, why and help provide those services to young people here. So, you know, there's tons of community partners that work to support us not just in, you know, the advocacy and the, the in monetary and volunteer way, but also just through the partnerships that we have to get youth all of the support that they need in order to get to that place of self sufficiency. So I think I think I answered your question. I know I could talk about this all day, and I'll go on and on, I'm going to stop myself, I

Speaker 2 12:19
really love your passion. It just oozes out of you. It's just just fantastic. But I did have one question for you. As you had mentioned, teen homelessness is an epidemic. It's it's a huge problem all over the country. But specifically in I know, in Vegas, and in Nevada, we really have a lot of lot of issues with teens not having homes. As you know, when a person becomes homeless. There's a whole lot of things behind that. But at a systematic level, how is your organization working to, to help change things for the youth and to put them in positions where they can have a home again? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 13:00
that's a great question. So I'm gonna, I'm going to take a step back. And I want to tell you guys really, really quickly about, you know, all of our services, and then I definitely want to jump into systems level work and all of that that we're doing, but just really quickly, just to go over, you know, mph wise programming. So we have a really comprehensive array of programming to work to get youth off of the streets. So you know, one of so we start with outreach, and one of the things that's most important is us getting the word out and making sure that we not only make youth and community and adults informed about what we do, but it's also building rapport with youth out in the community, because youth who come to our youth who experience homelessness are often their service resistance, they're in survival mode, they've often been failed by systems that are in place to care for them. So whether that's family, whether that's foster systems, you know, they've had some, you know, they've all often lost, you know, hope in adults, because the adults around them have failed them. So, you know, one of our jobs is to get out into the community and ensure that they trust us, they know who we are, and they feel safe coming to us. So that starts with us going into schools, we go into community centers, we go out into the streets every single week, we host events where we give out food and hygiene supplies and and build rapport with us out in the streets to make sure that they feel safe coming to us and they know who we are. So outreach is a big part of our program. We also mph y facilitates a program here in Southern Nevada. It's a national program but it's run by mph y here in the community. It's called Safe Place. If you haven't ever seen it's a yellow diamond is that every terrible hurts gas station. It's on every RTC bus Las Vegas City Fire Station, Henderson library in Las Vegas Clark County Library a youth can go to one of those locations and say, I need help and we'll send somebody out there 24 hours is a day 365. That's a really important program because youth who are in need of immediate help who are kicked out in the middle of the night who find themselves running away from an abusive or, you know, scary situation, they can go to one of those locations and get immediate help. But the other really amazing thing about that program is it's not just for homeless youth, it's for all youth in crisis. So any young person, up to 18 can access safe place. So that's our crisis intervention, we have emergency shelter, where if a youth were to come to us right now and say I need a place to go, we can place them in one of our emergency shelter beds, and we can house them up to 21 days, in order to figure out their situation. The really important thing about emergency shelter is that Clark County does not have any other emergency shelter that will serve a minor and mph, why does we can serve minors and we can again, hold a house them up to 21 days in order to figure out a permanent solution. We have family reunification, we have a house, a 50 bed housing program where you live with us full time. So you know that's kind of that is our mediate, like programmatic services, those are the things that, you know, our youth are working with case managers, all of our case managers are licensed social workers. One other thing I forgot to mention is we also have a drop in center, which is right across the street from UNLV. It's a place where youth can come and they can get food and hygiene supplies and food and take showers and we have classes and a basketball court. And we have all kinds of different things going on here. where youth can get that help that they need immediately. And then we'll figure out you know, what are the next steps. So that's our programming to get us off of the streets and to make sure that we get them all the critical supplies that they need in order to get to that self sufficiency.

Speaker 2 16:54
So that's powerful. Could you Could you sit tight really quickly in that because I've got to take care of a little business here. And then I want you to talk about the systems. Yeah, so for those of you who just tuned in, you are listening to the business of giving podcast brought to you by the cause marketing Chamber of Commerce. I also want to talk with you about our title sponsor sold up, sold up and its channel partners are providing complimentary solar to local charities supporting for Hope link transitional housing properties, solar to feed pets of the homeless Volunteers of America and opportunity village. Their founder sits on the board of Nevada Conservation League. And we have been speaking with Lynette Rivera, she's with the Nevada partnership for homeless youth. Okay, Lynette. Now, we're ready to hear about the systematic way that you're helping a teens to rise above homelessness.

Unknown Speaker 17:50
Yeah, so yeah. So you know, the one really amazing thing about, you know, Nevada partnership for homeless youth. And something that is really that I'm very, very passionate about and my whole team is really passionate about is our system level work. And to dive into that, in 2017, Nevada partnership for homeless youth in partnership with Las Vegas Sands, las launched the movement to end youth homelessness. So that was a, you know, a system level campaign to really work towards ending youth homelessness in our community. And it was the first of its kind with that in 2018, we launched the first ever Southern Nevada plan to end youth homelessness, which was a, you know, we brought together over 50 Community entities to create that plan to discuss, you know, how do we really work towards ending youth homelessness? What are the goals? What are the the barriers, what are the things that we need to work towards, in order to make that happen? You know, we've held a yearly summit ever, ever since 2017, where we bring together we've brought together 1000s of community members to discuss the issue of youth homelessness, we've brought together partners we've brought to brought national leaders to talk about the issue of youth homelessness, and really what we can do to resolve it here in Southern Nevada. With that, with the movement, we've also passed two laws that were, you know, really again, the goal is to remove barriers to make sure that youth are getting access to the things that they need, and they don't have all these barriers. One of the laws was to remove barriers that were in place. And that allowed you to get identification. So you know, we remove fees for youth who are experiencing homelessness so that they were able to get IDs and birth certificates and social security cards and you know, other things like that that are needed for them to really you know, function in society. and get to that point of self sufficiency. The other thing, the other law that was passed was in 2021, where we, you know, previously, so youth were having issues with accessing medical care. If they were to go to a medical provider, they had to wait a four month waiting period in order to prove their homelessness before that medical provider could, you know, could serve them. And that was a huge barrier, because we have a lot of youth who come to us with asthma and diabetes, and different things that, you know, use of, you know, any youth is encountering, but if they're not able to provide or to get that service, then you know, it could be life threatening. So we were able to pass a law that remove that four month waiting period that allowed us to access not just doctors, but dentists, mental health providers, and other people within the medical community if they needed that support. And then, you know, the other thing is, you know, we've worked on education, we've worked with the education sector, we've worked with other intersectional partners throughout this, this movement to end youth homelessness to really figure out you know, what can we do as a community again, to end youth homelessness and, and this year, we're actually really excited we're hosting our summit is on November 8, it's at the Smith Center for Performing Arts. And we're really excited because this year, we are actually taking the summit statewide, it has been a Southern Nevada focus in previous years. But we know that this is not just a Southern Nevada issue. It's a state issue. It's a national issue. So this year, we're actually working to take the summit statewide, and we're working with partners from the north, we're working with partners from rural locations, and we're also working with partners from the tribal lands to discuss the issue of youth homelessness at a state level. So we're really, really excited to take it statewide this year. And that's, you know, that's really that's a our system level work. In a nutshell, I know, there's so much more I could go into, but we don't have all day. Yeah,

Speaker 2 22:10
we've only got a couple a few minutes left, but I'm sure Maria has at least one more question that she'd like to ask you.

Speaker 3 22:17
Yeah, I, you know, it's amazing, the depth and the breadth of what has to occur to resolve this. I mean, I'm just floored by what you've just imparted to us on that. But I do want to ask you on a personal basis, you know, you could burn out very easily with this level of anxiety and challenge, but what have you personally seen or encountered? That's kept you motivated to continue to work?

Unknown Speaker 22:45
Yeah, I think one of the most important things is knowing that we're working with young people. So, you know, we see an average of, you know, we see youth between the ages of 12 and 24 years old, but we have youth who are graduating from high school who are going off to college who are really accomplishing incredible things. And, you know, it is all it takes is us, investing in young people to see what they're capable of, to, you know, for us to show the young people that the community is behind them, even if they've been failed by all the systems in place to take care of them, you know, giving, providing them that support, providing them the tools that they need to be self sufficient. It's just incredible. I mean, we've seen youth go off to Ivy League schools go off the military go off, you know, graduate from high school after not being in school for years. I mean, there's so many incredible stories that we see and so much, you know, just so many successful ending in their homelessness, like if we can end homelessness at 1516, if we can work with them to get them off of the streets, like their entire, the entire trajectory of their life is changed. So I think that's really what keeps us motivated and keeps. You know, I've been here for nine years. I know, my CEO has been here for 12 years, a few member of a lot of our leadership has been here for you know, over 10 years. And I think that's what keeps us all going is just seeing the potential in young people and making it in knowing that, you know, it's community invest in them that we can do so much. And I experienced homelessness when I was young. And you know, if people would have been and people did invest in me, but if I would have had an organization like this, I always think like, wow, I could have gotten a lot done as a young person. It took me a long time, but I did have a lot of people behind me and invested in me and that's why I'm here today working towards ending homelessness. So I think that's what keeps me going and keeps all of us going in here.

Speaker 2 25:02
Yeah, just fantastic information that you shared with us today about, again, something that is reached epidemic levels. Maria, do you have anything else that you'd like to speak with Lynette about related to her amazing organization, Nevada partnership for homeless youth?

Speaker 3 25:20
The only the only thing I would like to end with is can you tell people how they can support your organization? Or listeners?

Unknown Speaker 25:27
Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, you know, there's a lot of different ways. It's everything from monetary donations to in kind donations, anything that you could imagine, if you have a teenager or a young child living in your home, anything that they would need, we are always in need of, especially during the holidays, we host a huge holiday giving campaign. So we're always in need of support. During that time, our summit is coming up, which again, is going to be held at the Smith Center for Performing Arts on November 8. So that's going to be a great event anybody interested in in in really becoming an advocate for youth homelessness, you can find more information on our website. And yeah, anything else, you know, if you're wanting to get more involved, learn more volunteer, you can go to www.mptv.org. And reach out to us we love to get people, you know, motivated and passionate about youth homelessness in the way that we all are. The

Speaker 2 26:28
net what I really appreciated about this interview, I mean, there were quite a things that a few things that I appreciated, but I love the fact that you talked about creating options, and showing young people who are homeless, they're in a very, very difficult place in life as teenagers, not as adults, and just showing them that there are options and that this doesn't have to be the way that your life always is. You're in this particular situation. But there are options. And so I think that an organization like yours is so valuable for our youth just to show them there is a way out.

Unknown Speaker 27:06
Thank you so, so much for saying that. Yeah, it is important for youth to see that and to know that, you know, beyond their circumstance, there are so many different things that they can accomplish. And just again, with us support that we can provide or that other community partners can provide. You can see a young person's entire life change. So it's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 2 27:28
And one more time will you share the website where our listeners can go to learn more about your organization? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 27:34
so our website is www.np HY dot o RG and you can find all information on there and you can find us on LinkedIn and Instagram we're really we are really active on Instagram and Facebook as well so you can find us on all of those different platforms. Thank

Speaker 2 27:55
you for all the valuable information that you shared today and Maria the cause marketing coach how can people connect with you to get coached into success in the realm of cause marketing

Speaker 3 28:07
Sure, if you want to chat about causes social issues marketing and and how you can partner and find parody and affinity and alignment you can reach me at Maria at cause marketing consultant.com

Speaker 2 28:20
Thank you so much again and outstanding interview today Lynette and as usual, you knocked it out of the park Maria with the with the guests that you brought on and just looking forward to learning more about this organization that is really providing a lot of value to the community. To connect with cause marketing Chamber of Commerce We can be reached at cause marketing chamber.com You can also follow us on our social media sites. And we encourage you to continue to tune in to this show we've got great shows in the works lots of topics of interest in both the cause marketing and business worlds to show you how we blend the two together to make the community a better place. The business of giving podcast was brought to you by sole UPS underwriting of our series. Again thank you Maria for CO hosting this show. And I always want to share with you a thought that I have and that is it is so important to give and do business for good. See you next week

Unknown Speaker 29:33
whereas

Unknown Speaker 29:40
the weight of the world on my shoulder as I'm getting older your people gets older. Most of us only care about money.

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