Memphis is a Hope-Driven City

[MUSIC] This week's episode is made possible by our friends at Independent Bank. You can learn more about them at i-bankonline.com. [MUSIC] You're listening to Meanwhile in Memphis, where we explore the ways change makers in Memphis are thinking out of the box, leading by example and building the brightest possible future for our community. Your host today are Anna Thompson and Rebecca Ham. The challenges of daily life aren't organized by a single department or eligibility category, so it stands to reason that the resources shouldn't be siloed either. Today's conversation digs into a statewide initiative to create an easily accessible solution for Tennesseeans. Here to share more about the Human Flourishing Initiative are David Jordan and Jeff Piker. David Jordan is the president and CEO of a Goppe Memphis and Jeff Piker is the community success manager with Restore Hope. Welcome. So good to be here, thank you. Yeah, we're excited. Thank you for the opportunity. Yes. Awesome. So David, you work with an organization here in Memphis called a Goppe Memphis. Will you tell us a little bit about your organization's mission and what it does here in the city of Memphis? Yes, yes, thank you and we are excited to be here, so thank you again. So a Goppe is 56 years old this year. This is actually, I'm coming up on my 31st year as the CEO, I'm becoming that guy. We fight poverty through God for families to flourish. That's our mission. Have a history that has brought us to that place, but that's what we do and think about every day. Very exciting. And so there are a myriad of services that fall under that umbrella heading. That's right. And so some of those focus areas are school-based support, workforce readiness, counseling, adoption services, homeless services, spiritual health and more. Yes, that's right. That's right. So we, first 25 years was given just for a little quick background. First 25 years for a Goppe was given to child welfare, foster care adoption, maternity care services back about 20 years or so ago when public housing began going down here in Memphis. We had a movement and kind of the scattering of the poor. So significant movement that happened here. We as an organization began looking at yes, there's a need for foster care, yes, there's a need for adoption. That's true. And the numbers in the system, the foster care system, apartment, apartment children services, they kept going up. And so we said, what if we go upstream and begin serving those kids and families before they come into any system, whether it's DCS or any other kind of system. So we went and taught the neighbors in Frazier, White Haven, Hickory Hill, Riley, and neighbor said, man, we need, if you really want to help us, you need to help us with safety. You need to help us with school and my youth, my kids being in school doing well. Need to help us with a job or more of a job. Need to help us with our family in terms of those within the household, family dynamics, relationships. And is there any hope? Can I believe that there's any hope for me and my family, especially if we've seen generation of this? And so that led us to a place-based strategy that we call power lines community network. So go to the place where families live, hear their voice, walk alongside, and bring evidence-based evidence-informed practices, practices to show. Yeah, they work. And so we do early childhood. We have focus there. We're embedded in schools. We have a team working on jobs and workforce. Have a team working around mental health and trauma. Have a team around housing. Have a team around faith. We're a faith-based organization. It's engaging churches in the neighborhoods and communities. And so we've been doing that for over 17 years. And then we came to know about this initiative that you met. So this was just perfect for us as we've been deep in the neighborhoods for 17 years, walking alongside, seeing the need to move, a poverty move. Like in the last few years, we've seen it 21% move economically outside of poverty. That's great and it's not enough. And so that's some of our backstory. Awesome. Very exciting. Thank you for that context. It's very helpful. So Jeff, can you share more about Restore Hope and the mission there? Sure. Restore Hope. We are based in Little Rock, Arkansas. And we're a software and service organization that we work at the communities and are goal is to see transformational change on a community level. A little bit of the history Restore Hope started about 10 years ago. The first county that we had this initiative in was Sebastian County. And Sebastian County in Arkansas, the For Smith area. After some globalization, several of the manufacturing plants shut down. A lot of unemployment, a lot of drug abuse, highest number of kids in foster care in the state. At that point, the average in Arkansas per county is five kids per thousand. In Sebastian County, that number was 28 kids per thousand. So there was just a community in crisis. And to combat that crisis, a group from the state had a lot of meetings. What can we do? How do we fix it? And initially it was these are the things that we have to have for a family to be successful. And initially the thought was we've got to develop all of these different things for communities to be successful. But as we dove into it, we realized that all of those assets and all of those things are already in the community. The issue is that our families in crisis either one don't know about those things or those of us who are in this whole do good or world, you know, where we try to help families and people. We do a very poor job for the most part of working together. And so we realized that if we could work together and we had some way to be able to track the progress of our families, as a community, we could pull help people pull themselves out of crisis. So we have a case management platform called HOPE UP, which is really the secret sauce to how all of this works. But we've seen incredible, incredible success in Arkansas and through our counties, our work there. And because of that, Lance Villio from the governor's faith base and community initiative office came to Arkansas almost two years ago now and started doing some research and finally last year decided that this is something that we want in Tennessee. So we're piloting the human flourishing initiative in three counties here and we're excited that Shelby is one of those. And what are those other two counties? They are Williamson, which is Franklin, and then NOx, which is Knoxville. That's great. And I think, you know, hearing a lot of what you're talking about and scaling across states are there similar experiences and root causes for the crisis, folks are experiencing in rural communities and urban communities as they're an overlap there. Do they experience similar types of challenges that you're trying to solve for or are there entirely different things that you're trying to use this software to solve in cities versus more rural spaces? Well, I think the families that are in crisis are in crisis regardless of where they are. And they usually have the same, there's a lot of common denominators, education, poverty, drug and alcohol abuse. We see a lot of those things run in cycles. The mental health issues that so many of our families struggle with. And those issues are across the board if they are in, if they're in inner city Memphis or I have a county that I oversee across the river in Blive, Arkansas, which is very rural area. People are the same and the crisises are the same. It's just scale and population. Yeah. Yeah. So my experience is exactly what Jeff said, what you're talking about, Jeff. And it's almost a paradox. In Memphis or in urban community, you do have lots of resources. And so how do they work together as you're talking about? And can you sequence and come up with a plan? In a rural community, my experience is it's a, you don't have the plethora of resources. And so you're having to get real creative about what's available and what might that look like, but the needs are very common, but there are some differences in that kind of way. Awesome. So as you both alluded to and as I shared earlier, we brought you both together here today to talk about the human flourishing initiative in piloted in Tennessee. Yes. So I would love to know what each of you, what your roles are with the initiative. So Jeff, we can start with you. Okay. So the human flourishing initiative is a community led initiative to help participants move from crisis to career to flourishing. And there's really three things that we do to help that happen. First of all, is every community creates an alliance. What we realize is that no one organization, no one organization can do everything. I and learning and getting to know David and his team at a gopeh, they do incredible things and and they do a lot. And what I love about agape is the same heart and passion. flows from David down to the person that you meet when you walk through the front door. Just a kindness and a love for people. But as great as their organization is, they can't do everything. And so what we want to do is we want to create an alliance, a partnership with these community partners, where we're not asking somebody to do all of the things. We want you to do what you're really, really good at. I have organizations that are really good at helping people find a job. So I want to connect with those people that are good at that. People that are really good at mental health or recovery or housing. All of those resources are out there. So what we want to do is we want to create just a network of community partners and ecosystem, where every need that a family could have is represented by somebody in that alliance. Then we connect all of those through our Hope Hub system. And that is a collaborative case management system. And it's completely free to everybody that gets on board. And we use that to be able to connect our families and crisis to the existing community resources. And it really expediates the process of helping a family move from crisis to stability to career and unto flourishing. And what makes it a little bit different is that it all works around relationship. We have a, what we call a family advocate, case manager, navigator, however you want to call it. We like the word family advocate. And that family advocate establishes a relationship with the family that's in crisis. And we go through a pretty extensive assessment with those families, centered around 13 social determinants of health. And then our case management system will put together an action plan. And from there we simply connect those families in crisis to those community partners. What makes it a little bit different is a lot of people want to help and are really good like at doing what they do best. A lot of churches will do food pantries because they want to do something. They want to help. They want to be involved. They don't know what to do. So they're like, well, let's collect food and we'll give out food. I work with a lot of churches, a lot of nonprofits that do that. What makes it a little bit different is once they pick up the food box, that family leaves and there's no conversation. There's no in depth look at, hey, why are you here? What are your other needs? They're going to handle the food box and they're going to do it with joy in their heart. And it's going to be a blessing. But there's nothing that follows that family after you give them the food box. What our advocates do is they have the relationship. They're finding out, hey, why are you here? What are the factors that have contributed to you needing food? Maybe you don't have a job. Okay, well, let's look at that. Why don't you have a job? Well, you can't pass a drug test. Oh, well, we probably need to start with that or you don't have an ID or a birth certificate. It's really taking a holistic approach to the family or the individual and establish your relationship where then we're just going to use those community connections to help that family move from crisis to stability. So we are excited in this partnership. Receive a call about a year ago. There are four state departments through the governor's office. They're engaged and Sue, as Jeff was talking, you're talking about Lance Villio, Lance's executive director for governor's faith based and commuted initiatives. Commissioner Carter with the Department of Human Services, DHS, they are really the key leaders around what's the state's role of kind of helping stabilize families or if they're in crisis, you know, address that. But as Jeff says it, and Commissioner Carter is very clear, the state role is not to do transformation. They're far more transactional, but we're not about transformation and that's not even our role. And so they're engaging nonprofits and churches and other entities within the community. And so they came to me a year ago and said, hey, would a copy be one of the three pilots in the state of Tennessee and be what's called a backbone organization. And so for those not familiar with that kind of language, it's an entity that gives leadership but with many collaborative partners connected that backbone that have an agreed upon vision. Here's what we're trying to accomplish. Here are the goals and the steps to be able to do that. We have a common metrics. We're going to measure and say, are we moving the needle and do we have commonality? And that's where the hope of is so critical in this. We have ongoing communication and then we keep family centered and that is critical in the conversations. And so there's families voice and their experience. And so going through, how are you doing with food? How are you doing with housing? What about job? What about childcare? What about transportation? All the areas that we know and are you at crisis? Are you near stability? Are you flourishing? And if you're not near the stability and flourishing, then what is it you want? And what makes sense for you in terms of sequencing these? And so part of what I like about this is we've all done lots of collaboration. That's not new. But doing it in a way that there are agreements and accountability to each other, sequenced in ways that are most helpful for families and bring those resources to the table. And then this system really is about outcomes. And so it's not just, how do you serve and how do you refer all the kind of thing? Is this family moving towards stability? To stability? Toward flourishing? To flourishing? And we have data to show that. And so you'll be out, you could pull this up and say, hey, I'd like just to get on and see how we're doing on the Tennessee human flourishing in Shelby County and see the data. It's hip-hung, FERPA compliant for those who are worrying about ethics. And that means, if you ain't got a right to see somebody's family information, you can't get in. But you could see, oh, we're serving 100 families, 500 families, 1,000 families, our goal could we get to 10 to 20,000 individuals and families that we're serving annually. That's down the road. But being able to see how are we doing? The mayor could pull this up and say, how Shelby County, how's the city of Memphis doing? So I'm excited about that part. And so in the state saying, we're going to bring the faith-based and community initiatives department, department human services, department of children services. That's where foster care and adoption, department of labor and workforce development. And so those four state departments saying, we're bringing our resources in. And this is a community-led, community-solve kind of problem in the neighborhood. So we're not coming in telling you what to do, but we're bringing the resources. And as you put this plan together and as you execute the plan. So David, how do you define stability and how do you define flourishing and then how do you measure someone moving between the two? Yeah, that's a great question. And there are very specific definitions around, you know, if I'm in housing and I'm about to be up and out, or I've got 30 days left and I'm renting right now, you're clear. Either at your crisis or you're at risk, you're clearly not at stability or nearing stability. So and one of the things that we know and I'm an old social worker that became administrator one day, if you do not stabilize housing, then you probably can't anything else to stick to the wall. And so that would be an example of, okay, we have stable housing. We know we're going to be there. We're good for at least six to 12 months and we have a place where, okay, this is stable so that we can begin talking about the other matters. What about food? Well, if I don't have food today, I don't have it tomorrow, then I'm at crisis clearly. If I don't have it for a week, I'm at least at risk. If I don't have a plan for the next month, three months, six months, then I'm not moving to stability at all. And so and then once that's stable, what about workforce? I've got a little job, but I'm really trying to get to a career. Okay, what do you have a pathway to get to that? That's part of the hope. Do you have a goal with pathways in what's your agency, your willpower to stay at it? So as you're walking that out. Oh, I need to get training because I want to have an IT job and here's the training. And so I'll go see, I'll go to work with the organization to be able to move down that road. So I'm getting to a job. You know what? This is wearing me out. Do you have a community around you to help keep your willpower and your agency at it so that you can see this through? Well, once you get to that, then you get to stability and you're getting to flourishing back to your question about definition. Some of the things I love about the the Hope Hub system that we use, a minimum of every 30 days, the participants redo the assessment. And it's not a self assessment. It's one that the family advocates will sit down, ask the questions and go through those 13 different care areas, those social determinants of health. And one thing I love is that all the definitions are so clearly defined. A lot of times when you are in crisis, you get so used to being in crisis that it becomes normal. And so you don't ask the question, hey, are you homeless or unhoused? Oh, no, I'm not. I'm living on M.M. I grandma's house laying in the floor or on a couch. Well, technically you are homeless. And so the thriving scale that we use through all of those different care areas takes a subjectivity out of it. So we know when someone lists and they are at work. risk or they are in crisis or they are stable, everybody that's involved with that family, we're able to see and know what that means and where they're trying to go. So that's a big part of it is that it helps us all speak the same language because when we were talking a little bit earlier, Anna, you said, "Hey, watch the acronyms." Because we all do. We all have that inner language and sometimes feel like we need Rosetta Stone, you know, to be able to figure out what everybody's talking about. But this helps us to all speak a common language and we all know if it's at risk, then we all understand what at risk really means. Okay, interesting. And those definitions are not specific just to the human flourishing initiative. It would be in kind of this area of work regarding social determinants of health generally are those terms that our user are the definitions that you are using specific for this. Definitely, it's that we're using our specific to the Hope Hub case management system. So when our advocates do the assessment on the families, they're able to, every time that they meet, we'll redo this assessment and they're able to see where they are, where they're going. But the great thing is you can actually track the progress. And one thing that's really tough in this whole social work kind of field is, hey, how do we know that we're being successful? Like David said, we count food boxes or we count referrals. But can we watch a family move from crisis to career and have the data to back that up? And through this case management system, we've got that. Yeah, yeah. And with that, I think it's really important that you have common language because that's also creates kind of culture. And because we throw words around, families are crisis, they're at risk. So having some commonality about that and then what does that mean with organizations you're working with. So I think that's a really critical part to this process of creating kind of a culture around not only how do we serve families, their voices centered, but are we having input kind of outcomes and impacts of that kind of way? Right. That was one of our main questions. It's like, well, what does crisis look like? Well, what does flourishing look like? And if everybody defines it differently, then how do you get that data? And so I asked the question early on, I said, this is great. So what's it? What's it done? What was it? And so one of the areas in my world is kind of a no wrong door. You could come through, say, child welfare, you're a foster care. You come through the workforce. I need more of a job. You could come through reentry and I'm coming out of prison. I'm coming back home. So you could come through that door. And come through any kind of door in terms of kind of life matters going on. So one of the doors that Hope Hub has been doing, and Jeff, just you just mentioned just a moment ago in Arkansas, I was, it's like, okay, this is real because they said, you know, Arkansas had whatever number of kids in foster care as a state that has come down by 25% in some number of years recently. And so that's like, okay, that's outcome. That's the kind of impact we're talking about. That's what Memphis needs in terms of kind of this collective impact that we're working together with this focus goal, focus outcomes. We have measurements and it helps organizations do their work even better. And so for them, from the nonprofit side is, and if I do food or I do workforce or I do job, you know, whatever I might be, you know that your families also have multiple other needs. So it's going to make your organization even better in terms of what you're doing so that you can go get more money and bring that to the table. Can you share some of the local organizations here in Memphis, Shelby County that are partnering to be a part of this Hope Hub with the Tennessee Flushing, what is it? Human Flushing initiative there. Yes, there you go. Yeah, yeah. So we are developing and putting all that together. And so we had a launch event back in June. We had over 200 people there, 125 organizations and that's nonprofits, that's churches, that's public agencies, that was even philanthropic. And so you get organizations like Families Matter that says, yeah, we work with men and we want to be a part of this. We have organizations like one by one ministries. We work with single moms and their children and provide mentoring and we want to be a part of this because we see kind of a holistic, you know, need. We have large organizations like the YMCA who says, man, you know, we're a, yes, they are a mega organization and we can't do everything and so we want to bring that, you know, to the table. We have churches who come to the table, partners that we work with, abundant grace church in White Haven, for example, you know, they focus on art and engaging in the community and they have like Jeff just mentioned, they'll have somebody come together and come and say, man, I can't meet my MLGNW bill. We're about to be up and out with our rent issues and many churches get those calls all the time. What do we do now? Pass that. And so it gives options and opportunities for churches to be able to engage for nonprofits, the small nonprofit in the neighborhoods that don't have, you know, they just don't have the money to be able to have, you know, the evidence based or the evaluation, but they may know the community better than anybody and they bring huge assets. So they have a seat at the table to be able to engage in that kind of way. And so we anticipate to your question 100, 200, 300 or more nonprofits, churches, governmental groups coming together, we were with the joint office for public safety. Yes, we want it. We're going to be in. We're going to be a part of this. And so that being another part of those who are most likely or most at risk of being engaged in some kind of activity that we wouldn't want to see, but giving opportunity have other choices. So working with the child care and early childhood, quarterly, for example. And so those in the child care space, that's another organization you're working deeply with. We work deeply with what's called the workforce board here. So federal dollars that flow into Memphis for helping get jobs for those whether you're in school, out of school, I mean wherever you might be. And so Melody, who's executive director. Yes, we're in. We love this. We've been with the homeless coalition. Copy has been working in the homeless population for over 25 years. Met with them and they say, yes, we want to be a part of this. That's another portal to go through. So basically any of the collaborative groups as well as organization to report small churches, small nonprofits, the big ones saying, yes, we want to be a part of this. And not only that, anyone who, any organization or business or entity or government agency that can offer a direct service to families or individuals, we want them to have a part. The model works on two levels. It works on a community level where there is a coordinator and the coordinator is a Renee Stevenson from Agape and her job is to make those community connections. Everybody in the community that can offer help to our families. And she's going to build this alliance and she's doing a great job of that already. And I've just been amazed at the relationships that Agape already has. But pulling all those together and getting these resources in a bucket if you want to, if you will. And then when the family advocates sit down with the family and they go through this assessment and they're realizing, okay, this family needs recovery resources. Then this advocate is able to reach into that bucket of resources that Renee has put together and say, okay, this is the best fit. This is a great fit. Some may want a faith-based organization. Some may not. Some may need residential. You may need outpatient. You may just need to celebrate recovery from one of your local churches. So regardless of what those needs are, we want those resources to be in the bucket so we can connect those families in crisis to those people in our community that are already doing this really, really well. A word that has come up quite a bit in this conversation is hope. Yeah. And before we got on the microphones, we started talking about how hope is more than a feeling. David, can you talk to us about that? Yeah, no, thank you. Well, I mentioned, so I appreciate that families have asked us directly and indirectly, is there any hope? Is there any possibility for my future being different, maybe for my kids? Maybe I've given up on myself. So we came to know about what's called the science of hope. And if listeners want to Google that, the University of Oklahoma, there's a Dr. Chan Helman that leads that. It's been doing it for over 20 years. So in 2017, 18, we became aware, we got, they became aware of the science of hope. And you're exactly right. It's more than just a feeling. The definition is, do you have a goal? If you have a goal, do you have multiple pathways to get to that goal? And if you do, what are the barriers and what stands in the way for you to be able to get there? Do you have a plan around that? And then third is, do you have the agency and the willpower? Do you have the gumption, the stick to it and what you need to stay at it? Research shows over and over. 2,500 bodies of research that says hope is one of the, if not the most likely indicator of someone getting to well-being and flourishing. And so we, Vimbray, we have got to even brace the science of hope of, yes, I have a future I desire. And tomorrow can be better than today. I have some. something to do to make that true. And so I mean, actually engaged with the community to be able to do that. And so I brought that to Mary Young a year ago and said, "What if Mary I've been hearing you talk about hope or hearing you talk about wanting to change the narrative of our city? What if hope might become our new narrative? Hope to flourishing." And he quickly said, "I love it. What do you need?" I said, "Mir, would you drive this?" And a copy would be glad to be your backbone, be your right arm to move this and see this through. So we've embraced it as an organization, but we also said, "What does it look like for the city?" So last year in 2025, we had the very first Memphis Hope Summit. Had 500 people from all across the Memphis Shelby County area come and be a part of that, we launched it and then created a pathway for how do we create Memphis as more of a hope-centered city. And so we've got 34 nonprofits, churches, organizations who said, "Yes, we want to do that." And we want to use this framework of goals, pathways, and agency. And so we have a second Memphis Hope Summit coming up in November. And again, it directly connects to hope leads to well-being and flourishing. And so as we were asked to do the Tennessee Human flourishing, we said, "This just fit. It's hand in glove together." And so we're saying, "What does Memphis look like as a hope-centered city that leads to flourishing?" And so we've gone head down and partnering. There's a steering committee that's led by Penelope Houston, who's mayor Young's Chief Communications Officer, Dorcas Young-Griffin, with Shelby County. So they're the two co-chairs with a 24-person, a steering body made up of leaders across the city. And so we're leading this effort of hope to flourishing. What does it mean for Memphis to have that civic sentiment and investment and investment coming from the state that maybe hasn't existed before, it's such a collaborative scale? Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. I think the state is and has always been very important for Memphis and other communities, but especially Memphis. And so through the governor's office and have four state departments say we're making this kind of commitment to Memphis is I think really critical and to recognize and say, "And we don't want this to be Nashville-driven." And so we're going to ask a local entity, Agape, to partner with many nonprofits and churches and public entities and philanthropic to lead this effort. And we're going to keep family centered because also another part of this that gets missed, where's the family's voice? Where's the community voice? And is this something being done to them or with them? And they give really direction and saying, "This what means most." So I think the Nashville engagement and how they're engaging is really good and important and it being led here locally because this is our community. Doesn't mean Nashville can't have a part to it, but this is our neighborhood. This is our community. And ultimately it's the families and their voice. And so I think the question is really critical to what does this look like in that kind of partnership, but really led by the community. David, I think that's vital to the success of human flourishing is that it is community led. Now it is, you know, state supported and they're helping in any way possible, but it's a local initiative. And what's amazing is if you look through the through Arkansas and we're in Iowa Michigan and even in Canada somehow, we have every one of those alliances, every one of those counties looks a little bit different because each of those counties are different. So even here in Tennessee, between Shelby, Williamson and Knox, there's a lot of similarities, but there's also some differences because the communities are different. The people are different. The environment is a little bit different. But one thing that is the common denominator, as you mentioned, is hope. And the backbone organizations are all very different. But there is a commonality of loving their community, loving people and giving people an avenue and the possibility to hope and dream again. One of the things that our advocates do when they have that initial, initial assessment, is there's a place in that where you ask the question, hey, where do you want to go? What do you want to do? Because we believe in an phrase that we use all the time is hope is fuel for action. Yes. Yes. And so many of our families that are in crisis and so burdened down, when you ask that question, they have to stop because they're so focused on just surviving or worried about how am I going to pay my light bill that the idea of being able to dream again, or what can you be or what can you do? That takes a moment. And they have to stop and wait a minute, that's possible. Beyond surviving, it's possible. Even to the point of, we ask about, hey, what kind of support system do you have? And a lot of our families, nobody walks into our offices because they've made good decisions or everything's worked out well for them. They're in crisis. Things are not good. That's why they're here. And a lot of those families have have burnt bridges. And there's not anybody that's there or there is no support or the people that do support are in the same position they're in. So it gives us an opportunity to build community around those families and those individuals, people that will believe in them, people that will pat them on the back, people that will love them and encourage them. Sometimes put a foot up their backside if they need it. You know, whatever it is, to help those families move from crisis to flourishing, but it all does start with hope. The opportunity that things can be better than they are now. That's good. That's exactly right. Are there any misconceptions about the human flourishing initiative pilot that you'd like to address? Misconceptions. Interesting. I would say kind of what we just talked about is that it's not a government program. It's not a government program. It's not it's it's not led by somebody in Nashville. It's a local initiative. They're supporting their encouraging. They have orchestrated, but it's a local initiative. I think that is the most important thing. There's the autonomy for it to be a local initiative. Yeah. Yeah. You know, in Memphis, some folks would say, yeah, we've tried this before, or we've tried something like this, or it wouldn't say it's exactly this at all, but I've been here for a number of years. I don't know that it's a misconception. I would say it's there's level of skepticism. Can we fight through skepticism while being able to ask the hard questions? What makes this different? Why do you really think this could be different? The needle of poverty has not moved in Memphis in over 50 years at levels anyone would expect. In some way, some would say it's backed up. There needs to be a level of healthy skepticism, but is this a moment with many organizations coming together that maybe this is and could be different. I think our Mayor Young is a great asset. We'll have the Shelby County Mayor coming in with MSCS and with the school system. We've got all these system matters. This also is not recognizing the systemic nature in impacts around poverty. We've talked a lot at the individual level and coalescing organizations and it's going to have impact. I have no doubt. We're going to hit some of the glass ceilings that we all know about. I think it also gives opportunity to say there's a place of advocacy. We'll have data and information that we'll say, okay, we've been able to go to this level and we've hit some ceilings. Now with this information with data and family voice, what if we could eliminate some of the other systemic matters that would help families even go to a next level. It's not directly to your question, but I think those are some of the key matters that for me are really important. The individual, the coalescence, the collective impact, and the systemic matters that are very real. What does success look like for the Human and Flourishing Initiative in this pilot for the first three counties and specifically in Shelby County? Yeah, in terms of, for me, it's outcomes. And so have families, have we had a significant number of families moved to stability and to flourishing and to find, you know, might we be as brass in this maybe 10 years out, but could we might than need to move by at least 25% or more in neighborhoods and communities in terms of poverty and the complexity of poverty, economics part of it, but it's not all of it. And so might might even move beyond that. Could we come together in a way that maybe is a little unusual in Shelby County? And all the key systems and all the dynamics going on around that even now. Could we come together around a common vision with a common kind of working tool and working effort together that really could see impact at deeper levels? I think there's a couple of. A factor is that are part of that that I think are very very interesting and very encouraging. Across the initiative overall, and this is all of our counties, multiple states, their unification rate for families that work through the initiative. Those are families that have had foster care involvement. Their kids are in foster care working with those bio families. Across the board, the states that we work with, the reunification rate is right around 40%. So that's without our involvement, just the state averages around 40%. That means chances are if you go into foster care, you're going to stay in foster care. Right. Right. Now those that work through our initiative, that those bio families, as of this morning, that is almost a 70% reunification rate. And then on top of that, there's an 18% of those families where those kids have been placed with a relative. So you're looking at almost, you know, what is that? Almost 90% of those families have been, those kids have been taken care of in a way that they're either going back home or they're placed with somebody that they have a relationship with. And to me, that's one of the biggest factors is that you're going to be able to watch that rate decrease because the families are getting the help that they need. And that obviously is going to help long-term with the trauma that those kids go through and all of that. So that's a big one. Another one that we look at is employment. We know that many would be great if we didn't have to have a job. And we just had money and could, you know, do whatever. But since my power ball didn't hit last week, then I'm still here working. And employment is such a powerful thing because that's going to give our families the ability to to crawl out of out of crisis. 86% of the families that we work with that we've helped to get a full-time 40-hour a week job where they can sustain their family. 86% of those families have retained that employment. So it's not just helping people get a job. It's helping them have the stability that week after week, month after month, they're able to see their lives change little by little. So there's a lot of factors, a lot of things that you can look at. Those are two of the big ones for me. Well, Jeff, David, thank you so much for taking time to share with us the ways that you are helping Memphis and Shelby County move toward a flourishing, hope-centered community. Thank you. Thank you. This is very good. Thank you. We appreciate it. Support for Meanwhile in Memphis comes from Independent Bank, marking 25 years of service in the community. More at i-bank-online.com. Independent Bank, member FDIC.