00:00:11,400	S1:
Welcome to Bismarck Insights with mayor Mike Schmitz, a transparent and engaging conversational dive into meaningful topics impacting local government and Bismarck, North Dakota Bismarck Insights is dedicated to removing barriers between the city of Bismarck and the citizens we serve every day.

00:00:31,839	S2:
Hello and welcome to Bismarck insights on Bismarck Mayor Mike Schmitz. Today, we're focusing on a community partner that we have in the city of Bismarck Youth Works. And with us is Mark Heiner, who has spent a lot of time with Youth Works. And so your current role as executive director. Correct, yes. Let's talk about, you know, what got you to your role and what you're doing now and how you got to youth works. Yeah, because people get a little bit of background on you.

00:00:58,240	S3:
Sure. Um, I actually am on my 30th year now at Youth Works and our organization has reached 40 years. So three quarters of the time that youth work has existed. I've been able to be a part of that. And I began way back in 1996 as a I'm a social worker by trade. And so I, I began as a case manager working with homeless young adults 1819, 20, 21 years of age, providing them housing case management and supports. And I've had an opportunity to be a part of many of the other projects that we've had at Youth Works. Um, and worked worked alongside our team doing emergency shelter, offering services for human trafficking. Um, we've also done some creative projects within communities to do prevention, early intervention work as well. But I've I've found a way, as I've worked through my career to continue to grow. Our organisation is really continue to grow. A Melanie Heitkamp, our our executive director for nearly three decades had a lot to do with that, really bringing us into more of a statewide presence as well. And we started our services right here in Bismarck, and we're now serving all of North Dakota. And we've just got a new project that we're venturing into, west central Minnesota. We're going to do some services in Moorhead also.

00:02:19,539	S2:
Sure. So let's share with the listeners. Um, you know, kind of what how you what youth works just purely started out with and you probably described a little bit about that, but, you know, those offerings have been enhanced and increased. So let's, let's talk about those offerings are and, and how it really is important to our community.

00:02:38,259	S3:
Yeah, I think the real key when you think about youth works, we just get back to our core mission. So our mission is that all young people should have a safe place that they can feel like they can belong, and they can feel like they can be heard. And so it often ends up looking at the basics like shelter and food and clothing, you know, and that's literally having that safe place to be. But where we think we really shine is not just providing that roof over the head. Not just helping someone with basic needs, food and clothing, but really being relational and listening to young people. We specialize in working with teens and very young adults. And so for us, we've developed this niche where we're we're expert in getting to know who the young people are, what their desire is. And then there's a big part of this, too, which is us leaning in more on positive youth development, which is a philosophical approach that focuses more on looking at young people as assets that are just needing some help being developed, versus sometimes our society might look at youth who are making poor choices and saying, oh man, their problems. You know, we need to fix problems. And so we try to have a different perspective on that and do our best to focus on those strengths and just look to say, well, okay, what is it that you really want to do for yourself. And so almost any time, even if a youth, maybe, um, I'll give you a good example. We have an emergency shelter, and in that emergency shelter, we might have youth that have run away from home. They might be young people who came into contact with law enforcement for one reason or the other, and they're brought to our shelter, and we offer that basic food, clothing, shelter that they're talking about. But it gives us an opportunity to kind of say, like, what's going on? What's really happening in your life? What do you really want to have happen? And sometimes there's bad situations where they're they took off because they're not being treated well, and we'll have to work with our systems and look to see if there's a more permanent place that's better for them. And there's other times where it might be about us just offering family counseling or other types of services and supports to try to help that family work through that together.

00:04:47,759	S2:
So. So I think you describe basically what it means to me anyway, is making sure this young person, um, has a safe place for my just a housing standpoint, but also kind of a safe environment so that if if there's been something going on that has caused stress in their life or maybe even driven them to do something that we think is not appropriate for anyone, maybe, and it might be an infraction that that has law enforcement involved. But just to give them that support, they know that they're safe and they don't have to go and perform those activities.

00:05:21,019	S3:
Yeah. And a part of what we really emphasize, you know, even when we're training our staff to be there and to be supportive of young people is to make sure that we're understanding and have more information, even about some of the potential trauma that they've experienced and be sensitive to not re traumatize. You know, there's there's there's plenty of opportunities unwittingly, where some people might fumble up upon something and trigger an event for a young person. So if we happen to know, well, this is a unique situation that they've experienced and we can be more sensitive to that with our knowledge, then that also contributes to that being a safe place. Versus coming in and then going. Someone maybe at home has been. Or maybe not even at home, but someone in their life has been controlling them, for example. And they come into an emergency shelter with us, or they come to reside in our transitional housing if they're older than 18 or they're a victim of trafficking and we're providing case management, all of it kind of fits in that same conversation, which is, well, so I don't want to then be this person who's going to be authoritative or who's going to be dominating, or who's going to insist on things being done certain ways. And so that's part of it too, is like, how do we how do we walk beside young people and support them in their goals versus kind of coming at it from a, here's what you need to do, and I need you to do this, this or this.

00:06:44,970	S2:
So you mentioned a couple of things that I want to make sure we touched on. And it's all within the scope of what youth work is doing, specifically in our communities of Bismarck, Mandan Borough and Martin County. But so there's the the emergency sheltering. And then you mentioned transitional sheltering. Um, let's break that down so people understand what it is and how many how many beds so to speak. Or spaces do we have.

Yeah. 00:07:10,399	S3:
And good question. The emergency shelter that's for 12 to 17 year olds. So those are teens, almost all teens. Um, and that is a five bed facility. It's pretty small. It's emergency. So most of the youth are just staying one night, two nights, three nights. It's short. They can stay up to seven days. And with approval from the state, if the situation warrants, that could be up to 14 days. But it's very short term. And so our whole goal in that particular project is to assess the situation, figure out what's going on, and then try to help reunify or or get to that next place that's safe. Um, usually young people are going back to their family of origin. They're usually going back to their mom and dad's. Roughly 70 to 80% of the youth that stay in our shelter are able to go back to that family of origin. And why that matters for us is because it's a huge opportunity for prevention and early intervention. Before there was such a thing as an emergency shelter. It wouldn't it wouldn't be uncommon that if there was friction or challenges within the home with teens, that that custody would then be removed and they'd be placed in a foster care. So what we provide is an alternative. So there's a youth that might just be in need of some type of services or support. So the families might need some supports. And instead of saying, hey, they're in a major crisis tonight, we're going to remove them and put them into foster care. We just say we're going to temporarily have them have a safe place to be, and then work so that they can reintegrate back with the family. Okay, so that's the emergency shelter. Transitional housing is for young adults. So that's that 18 to 24 year old population. And that is for individuals who do not have housing, so they're without a place to stay. We've been a part in this community of lots of coordination with other providers of homeless services, but our specialty area is working with those very young adults. So if you think of the college age youth who don't have someone to help them out, who've happened upon some difficult times, they're looking for that support. And so for that one, believe it or not, right here in Bismarck, we have 20 beds at any one point in time. Oh, sorry, 22, 22 beds at any one point in time that we are housing young people. And so that's not emergency shelter. It's transitional. The state can be up to 18 months. The average state usually has about five or 6 or 7 months. And so it's a young person coming to us. They may have finished high school. They might not have they might have plans for higher education, might be employed, might not be. Those aren't necessarily as material as it is us meeting them where they're at and then helping them sort out their goals. So like this is what I want to do. I want to be a welder. Okay. What does it take to be a welder? How do we help you get signed up for that? How do we help you get to that next phase of your life? You know, so we'll have young people that go on to college. They might be joined in the military, they might be interested in entering the workforce. And so we let that be their their plan and how they are looking to make that happen for themselves. So those are two real significant aspects of what we do. But we have a couple of of of other complementary services, one that's really significant and has grown a lot in the last ten years as there's become heightened awareness for human trafficking. And so, unfortunately, what we have learned and we didn't necessarily know way back in my first year, back in 96, we didn't have as much insight. Yeah, we saw young people, though, that were finding themselves in scary, dangerous situations where they weren't safe and they were staying because they didn't have another place to be. So they would go, for example, to a party where there's alcohol, drugs being served and maybe end up being with someone that they didn't intend to be with just so they could have a safe place to be or a place unsafe, I should say place to be. And so as we started to learn more about those dynamics, we started realizing that there's actually a lot of people who are being forced and they're they're being put in situations where they're being manipulated and taken advantage of. And so oftentimes it might be a youth that might be in our homeless program, who then we identify, my goodness, these people have been trafficked. They might be coming to us in our shelter. And who are identifying, oh, they're being trafficked. And so we've got this other component of services where we have some specialized staff who know more, understand more about how to provide those services, how to get them connected to the right level of care. And then we even have some specialized housing that's just for individuals that have experienced that.

00:11:54,070	S2:
So help them escape that trap that they turn themselves into. It's been forced upon them. And, you know, that's that's just such a disheartening thing. I mean, it's disheartening for anybody who has been trafficked, but especially, I think, you know, youth that could send them down a life, a life pattern that they can never recover from.

00:12:15,389	S3:
Well, and a complicating factor is that many times they're not seeing themselves as a victim because of that manipulation. And so it's really complicated. It can be really challenging where someone is coming to you feeling like they've got, um, I'll give you a good example. We had a case a few years ago, a few years back before we were as aware of like what was going on, where our staff felt like that this person had a controlling boyfriend, and the boyfriend seemed to always be parked down the street. And it's like, hmm, is he Jealous? What's going on here? And so our staff had heightened awareness. You know that we need to watch out. And this might be a safety concern. Um. But didn't. We struggled. This is probably about 15 years ago, so I'm dating it. But it's just to show maybe how we've grown over that time. Um, we saw that they did have frequent visitors and didn't quite put two and two together, and it was right around the time where we were gaining more insight to what human trafficking is, that we went, oh, this is a person who's being portrayed as a who's a controlling boyfriend, who actually is the pimp who's actually they're making sure that they've got people coming and that they're going to be able to get paid for that. So it's being and being attuned enough to recognize that and then to know, how do we delicately work with young people who might even not necessarily see that as, as controlling as as we know that that is. And so that that's can be super challenging. We've got a lot of really compassionate, empathetic staff who do a fantastic job helping young people even go through some of those processes. When someone is being prosecuted and they're there to help them through that whole process themselves.

00:14:05,720	S2:
And that's that's good. And I and I think it's a very important thing to be aware of in our community. And eight, also, knowing we have entities, organizations in our community that can help the individuals who are who are put in that terrible situation to help them find their way back to, to a life that, that they should probably have had opportunity for previously. Um, so and you've already mentioned, like, you try to meet people where they're at and then figure out how how they or what they need to kind of get and identify their strengths. Correct. Yeah. I don't know how to explain that, but honoring them as they are. Yeah. The key they how they can move forward.

00:14:51,230	S3:
The key with that is that we. We have young people that come to us from all walks of life. And sadly, many young people that come to us are telling us they're feeling judged by the community. And so a real key component for us is just making sure that we've got all the ability to show and demonstrate as they might walk into our office, as they might meet one of our staff members, because we might go to a school to visit with someone, we might go elsewhere that we're just here to listen first and foremost, and we're just here to hear what it is that that you're feeling and what we can do to support that. We have done a lot of youth panels over the years where we've asked young people to be a part of providing feedback, and one of the things, one of the constant themes that comes back again and again and again is that youth will say, you know what? Regardless of where they might have been with their goals, regardless of maybe what level of success they might have felt like they had, they always felt like they weren't judged, and they always felt like they had somebody who was there to believe in them. And so that's really what our staff is there to do, is to then focus on those strengths, believe in someone and help them reach those goals that they've got for themselves. And they feel more attainable when they've got someone supporting them. And you know, I hate to say it, but there's a lot of young people who have been hurt, even by people that should care for them, you know, family members, etc., who might have said horrible things to them and beat their self-esteem down. And so that opportunity to come somewhere where you're seen as, as as someone who's capable of doing good versus somebody who's a problem.

00:16:28,940	S2:
Sure. So a lot of this, we're focusing on the individuals that are coming in, but they're, you know, what is it that Youth works is trying to help the community understand from a prevention, like, how do we get in front of this? We can, you know, having to having that person come to you with already have experienced trauma. Like how do we how can we start to try to prevent something?

00:16:54,370	S3:
What we love is to not have them have to come to our shelter. We'd love for them to not have been identified as victims of human trafficking. We'd love for them to not have experienced those things. So one of the biggest future plans that we've got going forward is to do more prevention and early intervention. So a good example of that is we just started we previously had run a program, um, kind of it was a coordination with the juvenile justice system, where if a youth got cited by police, there was an opportunity to do an intervention, and that system has evolved and changed a little bit. And so they've refocused their efforts on young people who didn't necessarily commit a delinquent act but might be in need of services. And so we now have a partnership where we're receiving referrals from the community for children that are in need of services. Chins is what they're referred to as. And basically that might be a young person who ran away. They might be unruly. They're having challenges and difficulties, but they haven't stolen a car or done something that that would be against the law for any of us as adults. So we have that opportunity to say, okay, so this is someone who needs an early intervention. What can we do now to prevent them from running away, to prevent them from committing delinquent acts so that we can see them have greater success in the future? So the prevention component of our services is really important for all of us. And in fact, it goes all the way across the board. It's not just that young teenager who might start getting into some difficulty. It might be parents who are calling us saying, you know, we're struggling. We we need help. We don't know how to handle our youth. They seem to be really angry and out of control. So we do anger management classes that involve parents and the youth together so that they can kind of learn through those things together. We found out many, many years ago. This predates me. Melanie and Mark Gomery, two fantastic community leaders, developed this curriculum, and they did it because they found out that if we teach anger management to youth, that's only as good as the environment that they're in, right? So if I teach you how to manage your anger, and then you go home and you've got someone who's really angry and upset, it's like, I can't handle this. And so the whole family being a part of that process to learn and intervene, those are some of the things we're really wanting to do. And then the second, a secondary component to that really is youth leadership. We are we're committing some of our time, money, resources to help build youth leaders. And so that's been a fun and exciting opportunity for us to where we're giving young people who may have some life experiences with homelessness or runaway or things like that, but instead to turn that and ask them, you know, if they're interested in being a part and making a change in.

00:19:50,579	S2:
Which, you know, if we put those chords together that are similar age and like minded, however, they're thinking that always is more successful. I think, you know, even if you think of it in a work environment, it's always more successful to help someone learn or develop a pattern of actions if they've got someone else who's been there close in age, had maybe the same personal outlook in life to kind of guide them, I think. Yeah. Easier than than a 50 year old adult.

00:20:24,740	S3:
That's right. That's it's been really fun to see, uh, you know, and part of the benefit for me being in the same place for a long time is having that opportunity to see that growth. And, um, just this month, just last month, actually, we have one of our, uh, case managers who's been working with us, who's a licensed social worker who is promoted to be one of our program managers overseeing our our housing and homeless services. And. But this is really going to date me. But putting this into perspective, we were just talking yesterday about the time frame. So in 96 I started and I was a case manager in the homeless program in 2003. This person was my client. She was in foster care. She was homeless. She didn't have a place to go. And she said her goals, she reached her goals. She's doing very well for herself. And she's now leading our program of those services that she once received. So it's really kind of a nice opportunity to be able to see how, um, that can come so full circle. It takes time though.

00:21:30,569	S2:
Yeah.

00:21:31,089	S3:
So from 2003, as someone living in the units to 2026, being in charge of that whole program that's overseeing that is is quite an accomplishment, though.

00:21:42,369	S2:
I think it's a great growth, a great growth for both the program and for this individual. So in that, I mean, we're we're kind of covering a lot of topics here. But you know, part of what I'm kind of sensing is, is are barriers for our young individuals, teens and young adults to be heard. Um, what are some of those biggest barriers?

00:22:03,869	S3:
Yeah. Um, I'm going to maybe separate this out with some of the groups that we're working with. Um, believe it or not, for the 18 to 24 year olds that are homeless, one of the biggest barriers is just affordable housing. It's hard when you're that age to have that higher income. Yeah, and many of the units that the apartments within our community that are open and available. You know, we do have a vacancy rate that's healthy enough that you would think we'd be able to meet that. But our vacancy rate is almost zero for units that would be considered more affordable. So I could find a $1,300, a $1,500 apartment fairly easily. But if my income is I'm working. I'm making 12, $15 an hour. There's just not enough to be able to support that. And so that's a big part for that population. The second part that's really significant is that there is an overrepresentation of people who have some behavioral health challenges. So almost two out of every three people that we're working with that are homeless, have depression or anxiety or an addiction or some challenges like that where they're needing some extra services and you can see how that makes sense. It can be more challenging to be independent or to be supporting yourself when you've got some of those barriers. And the other sad fact is that there's unfortunately an overrepresentation racially. Also, you know, we have more black and brown youth that are in that age group, 18 to 24. More than half of the young people were serving our black, indigenous or other people of color. And so those are groups that we we do our best as staff to make sure that we have a culturally aware, responsive and representative staff so that they can provide better assistance because it's easy for me. One of the first lessons I had, boy, and I'm going to date this one too, because I remember it was 911. It was the 911 as in 2001, and we had a young person who lived in our transitional housing program who was indigenous, and she had received a small per cap from her tribe, which is just to make sure we're really clear. That does not happen often. And that's one of the misnomers that that exists. But she did have a small one, and she went and supported her friends, and she helped them buy things. And she she spent the money that she had. And I remember saying to her wrongly, um. Why did you do that? Like that was wrong. Like now you're not going to have money for yourself. Well, that was my dominant culture. My culture says you need to be independent. Take care of yourself. And I even said, well, they're not going to do that for you when the, when, when you need it. And she said, yes, they will. And since then I've grown to learn more and to and to appreciate interdependence. And so some of it is even for, for our projects and programs that we're looking to try to do things like we used to actually say back in the 90s, you know, we would say it's independent living skills. And so we've switched we're trying to do this the right way. And so we have life skills because there are life skills and that is more appropriate versus us trying to teach this. This is the way it has to be done. And so having that cultural sensitivity can make a difference. There is overrepresentation with populations, and we're just doing our best to learn to make sure we're informed and to support that population so that the staff that that we have at our organization doesn't make the same mistakes Mark did in the nine days that we're working forward and we're doing things better.

00:25:53,910	S2:
And that's extremely important. And certainly I mean, I think there's a beauty to the to the description of the culture you just portrayed, because I think sometimes, um, those of us who are not indigenous or of another race who don't have that familial connectivity and that familial connectivity is more than just brother, sister, mother, aunt, uncle, cousin, it's it's the community. And, um, but that's also why it's so important that we learn how to do that, because I think it will help the rest of us also learn how to be community based in that that treat everybody like family.

00:26:33,150	S3:
And we've done we've done some things specifically. We've got some groups, even groups like support groups that are a bit more specialized so that folks are more interested in cultural learning, more about their culture, cooking classes, just other things like that, so that people have an opportunity to grow in different ways. It's not just about like, well, let's make sure you know how to manage your money and, and find an apartment. It's life. And it's it's beyond that.

00:27:01,099	S2:
It's relational and life skills does. It's just like it covers all of that. And every one of us is independent and different and unique, and we need to understand that. And and so I appreciate the work you're doing. So, um, how can the community help youth works.

00:27:19,980	S3:
Step one. Step one is the conversation you and I are having where we're engaging and we're looking each other in the eyes and we're talking too many times adults are looking the other way, and they're not engaging with young people. That doesn't cost anything. How do we engage with young people? How do we see their strengths? How do we take on the role of being a mentor, a support person, offering a job to someone who might need that extra opportunity, that that hand up? I really like to think of the work that we do. As honestly, I've always seen this as even though we're A51 C3 nonprofit organization, I don't see us as much as charity because of who we work with. I see us as an investment. And so I would challenge our community to invest in young people and invest in young people who you might not normally think you would invest. Invest in someone who might be a bit more different than you. So maybe it's someone with different color skin. Maybe it's someone with different religion. Maybe it's someone with a different sexual orientation. Any of them just look to know and learn more about the young people and find ways to support them. Whatever makes sense. You know, there's obvious ways that we've we've had Giving Hearts Day yesterday. Yes. And it was good to see you last night at that event. And so we're fundraising. So we need funds to pay our staff to continue to do the services that we're doing. We have tons of people who have given clothing and blankets and food. And so those matter. So it's it's not just relational, but I will say at the end of the day, the young people are absolutely influenced when someone takes the time out to help them. And I want to give you a real good practical example of this. Um, a friend of ours, Amos Coble. Amos. Amos five. And yeah, Carly loves Amos. Fantastic couple donated his time to help do mock job interviews with our youth and my oh my, When they got done with that job interview, there was just like, I've done a good job.

00:29:42,630	S2:
Like there just.

00:29:43,349	S3:
It was.

00:29:43,670	S2:
Different raised up. There were.

00:29:45,789	S3:
And it was.

00:29:46,190	S2:
Different than if Martin was.

00:29:47,390	S3:
The one. Yeah, right. Like, so if Mark's they're saying, let's kind of help you prepare for this. So, you know, we might be looking for more opportunities, you know, and if there's community members, whether you're a business leader, a member of a church or whatever your walk of life might be, if you're retired and you're thinking, gosh, there's something more I could do, reach out. And I would say this, you know, on behalf of all of our nonprofits, you know, just reach out. And if you've got a passion, you know, maybe you've got a passion to help individuals that have been victimized and and you want to help abuse don't resource center or you're hearing what we're our message is about youth and you're going, gosh, I'd like to do something. And it might not be personal. It might be clothing and goods. It might be dollars to help us. The dollar is matter a lot, you know, not to gloss over that because, um, a lot of the services that we're able to provide do, um, require unrestricted funds for us to be flexible. That's one of the things that's really key. So using our, um, our homeless program is a good example. We do receive some funding from, uh, Housing and Urban Development. HUD and HUD's got some really strict restrictions about what can be spent and what can't be spent, what's allowed, what's not allowed. And being able to have community support gives us the opportunity to say, and I'll give you a really good example. So if we get a young person who's been working for six months to finally graduate school, we want them to celebrate it. Well, we have done open houses at our office where we'll get a cake and we'll invite people to celebrate. Well, HUD doesn't want to pay for that.

00:31:23,250	S4:
No.

00:31:24,690	S2:
But probably rightfully so.

00:31:26,089	S4:
Right, right. And it's not an improper. So what we're doing is we're trying to find.

00:31:31,170	S3:
Ways to make this more human. Right? So because it's like, well, I got to have a party. People were celebrating with me, and it's a small token, but those are great examples, you know. So can we get a donor to give us $50 to help us out, to have some supplies and to really honor someone and give them, you know, that extra step up. And that's a tiny example. But there's just lots of times where we find it even more beneficial to just see what those needs are, and then just meet that need instead of going, okay, well, is this going to be okay or is this going to be okay? It's like, okay, if we have donors that are giving our funds and says, you know what? We we appreciate who you are and what you're doing, and we trust that you're going to make good decisions with those funds. That's been super helpful for us to be able to continue to do that. We do it and we answer to all of our funders. We are we get a full audit every year. I know yourself as an accountant. You're quite familiar with all of that. So we we do go through all of that. But it's also really beneficial to just know that we've just got relationships that matter.

00:32:34,960	S2:
Great. Well, Mark. This has been a very enlightening conversation, and I know you and I have talked off off camera multiple times about this, and I think it is so important that we hold up our youth. Um, because they are they are our future and and all youth are part of that future. And so thank you for what you do. Thank you for what youth works does. And I'm glad we have you as a community partner. And it's been a pleasure.

00:32:59,829	S3:
Yes, it's my pleasure too. And I shout out to not only you, but the city administration. Um, Renee from the public health Department and other city leaders have really also been stepping forward to say, hey, this is a community challenge. We need young people to feel safe. It's just not youth works that's going to take care of it. So I appreciate your leadership, and I appreciate the staff of the city and in our, our communities who are also recognizing the need for us to take care of young people.

00:33:25,950	S2:
Wonderful. Well, thank you again for joining me.

00:33:27,990	S3:
Thank you.

00:33:40,259	S1:
Thank you for watching Bismarck Insights with mayor Mike Schmitz. If you have specific topics or questions you'd like addressed in future episodes. Email em Schmitz at Bismarck and Gov.

00:33:53,819	S1:
For Call the City of Bismarck at (701) 355-1300.

00:33:58,220	S1:
To learn more about the City of Bismarck, visit Bismarck, N.D. gov. Or follow us on a variety of social media channels by searching Bismarck, n.d. gov. Bismarck Insights is a collaboration between Dakota media access and the City of Bismarck. You may find Bismarck Insights episodes on government access channels two and 602, as well as on Roku, Apple TV, and fire TV devices. On radio access 102.5 FM and on demand at free TV talk.