Transcription of Pop for Change #145
Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast show #145, “Pop For Change,” airing for the first time on Sunday June 22nd, 2014. What happens when you combine a great party with helping your neighbors? Pop The Cause and Pop For Change. In 2008 Bettina Doulton of Cellardoor Winery and Lani Stiles of Megunticook Market began hosting the annual Pop The Cork party in Rockport to benefit Mid-Coast organizations such as the Farnsworth Art Museum and the Penobscot Bay YMCA.
Last year they decided to radically revamp Pop The Cork, renaming it Pop The Cause, pledging to give away 160,000 dollars to four local charities. Tickets for this June 26th event sold out in less than two hours. This prompted them to add a second event: Pop For Change on June 28th. Tickets for this event were only available to those who had donated four hours of volunteer work. Today we speak with Bettina Doulton and Devon Salisbury of Cellardoor, as well as representatives of the organizations who will benefit from this years Pops: Joe Curl of Coastal Opportunities, Rusty Brace of United Mid-Coast Opportunities, Lee Karker of Meals on Wheels, and Stephanie Primm and Penny Bee Beebe-Center of the Mid-Coast Hospitality House. We hope you will be inspired to help pop your own changes in your own community. Thank you for listening.
I always really enjoy spending time with people who are dedicated to making the lives of our neighbors and ourselves better. Today I really believe we have a strong and dynamic group of individuals in the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour studio and we’re quite thrilled to have everybody with us. Today we have Joe Curl, who is the executive director of Coastal Opportunities, an organization based in Camden that works with developmentally disabled adults so that they’re able to become active participants in the local community. Joe, thanks for coming in
Joe: Thank you, Dr. Lisa
Lisa: We also have Rusty Brace, the president of United Mid-Coast Charities, an organization that supports non-profits in Knox and Waldo Counties. Thanks for being here.
Rusty: Thank you for inviting me.
Lisa: We have Bettina Doulton, who is the owner of Cellardoor Winery in Lincolnville and Rockport. Bettina is one of the driving forces behind the creation for Pop For Change and Pop The Cause. Thank you for being here.
Bettina: My pleasure.
Lisa: Devon Salisbury is going to chime in. She’s across the room but she’ll chime in at times. She is the director of events at Cellardoor Winery and the volunteer coordinator for Pop For Change. You guys are doing some great work in the Mid-Coast region. It’s really impressive. I spent time looking at each of your organizations and I want to hear, Joe, what you’re working on, what you’re working on, Rusty.
First I want to talk to Bettina. Bettina, you’ve been with Cellardoor; you became the owner in 2007. Cellardoor is a winery in Lincolnville and Rockport that’s been around for 200 years, 68 acres. You’ve done a lot of work in the community but this is a different year for you. After doing Pop The Cork since 2008, this year you decided to do something very different with your summertime events. Why is that?
Bettina: Actually, with Joe and Rusty and Devon here, we’ve all sat at the farmhouse tables talking about why this year really needed to be different. Pop The Cork, since 2008, has always been a fundraiser for a local non-profit, and we’ve been really proud of that. Through the course of it, despite good attentions, the bigness of the event started to matter more than the fact that we were trying to get non-profits, the fundraising for them, and more visibility and to grow their communities.
After last year’s Pop The Cork we really retrenched so that we could put the community and the non-profits more upfront. We retweeked, so that’s kind of an evolution. We’re really proud of it this year. This year it is Pop The Cause, which is the Thursday June 26th celebration. That’s a ticketed event. The key element to that is instead of one non-profit beneficiary we have four: UMCC, Coastal Opportunities, Hospitality House, and Meals on Wheels. There’s a vote element; the community’s invited to vote for one of the four. The winner of that vote will be awarded $100,000 and each of the other three will get $20,000.
Then there’s this volunteer element and a big celebration of volunteerism. Each of the four non-profits have volunteer shifts and over 500 people have volunteered for them. It’s really changed it. We’re still celebrating community and non-profit, doing a lot of fundraising along the way – and the energy’s different. We’re really proud of that but it’s an evolution. It’s the first year we’ve done it this year and it feels good.
Lisa: Some of your original charities were the Farnsworth Museum, the Mid-Coast Habitat, the Penobscot Bay YMCA, and also the United Mid-Coast Charities. You’ve really been supporting that organization for years now.
Bettina: Rusty has been a leader in the Mid-Coast community as far as an incredible face and voice and passion behind non-profits up in that area. When you learn more about what UMCC does, he is absolutely engulfing in the way that he draws you into being a part of this community and supporting it. Yes, UMCC. Yes, he’s fabulous and believes in what he does and you get swept up into it, quite frankly.
Lisa: Rusty, I know that the United Mid-Coast Charities represents or collaborates with organizations like the Red Cross, Hospice Literacy Volunteers, and also the Wayfinder School. That’s just a small piece of what you do. There must be some reason why you’ve been so committed to working amidst your neighbors and bettering the lives of the people around you for a long time.
Rusty: You have to remember that United Mid-Coast Charities is now in its 72nd year of continuous operation, founded in 1942. The real reason for United Mid-Coast Charities is to serve the underserved. About every 30 months we raise a million dollars, we raise it all in Knox County, and we give it away in Knox County. We have three precepts which I particularly like. 100% of all contributions are 100% distributed. We’re an all-volunteer organization, and our modest expenses are paid by a separate endowment. We have a formula there that really works and it’s very attractive to many of our donors.
I can tell you also that the money we raise, 46% of the grants go to organizations serving youth and children, and we’re very proud of that. That’s nearly half of all the money we raise goes to the youth and children, and a lot of people really like that. 24% goes to community organizations, 18% to medical services, and 12% goes to educational organizations. We know where the money is going, we do a good job of communicating where that money is going, and it seems to be attractive.
Overall, we’re a federation of 50 agencies. This year, for example, we’re kind of overloaded. We have 59 organizations that are requesting money from us so we have a big job to do. Why am I doing this? I’m doing it to serve, to raise money for the underserved, raise money for those youth and children agencies. In this day and age it’s very difficult for the agencies to raise money on their own, although that’s one of our criteria. You have to raise money on your own before you get any money from United Mid-Coast Charities.
We look at that very carefully. We have 45 directors; there’s a management challenge for you. They all do a great job. We have a nice team working and I think we make an impact in the community. I know we do in Knox and Waldo Counties. You have to remember we’re just narrow Knox and Waldo Counties. We don’t go outside of that particular area.
Lisa: I’m also wondering what your personal motivation for doing this is. It does sound like it could be a management challenge, and yet it sounds like you’ve been committed to doing this for a number of years.
Rusty: My career has really been in the communications industry and publishing – weekly newspapers, magazines, radio, television and so forth. I’ve been with this organization for about 35 years, president for the last 17. I get a lot of satisfaction out of raising money. A lot of people don’t wake up in the morning, put their feet on the floor, and say “I can’t wait to go out and ask for money.” I like to do that, so I go out and I ask for money for these 50 agencies that we have. I guess that’s part of why I’m doing it, really, is to make sure that these agencies get a little bit, anyway, of the money we raise.
Lisa: That leads me to a question for Joe. Joe, you’re the executive director of Coastal Opportunities. Your organization works with developmentally disabled adults. Rusty’s out there raising money for lots of different organizations but among them yours. These are people who really don’t have a voice; these are people who largely need to have other people work with them in order to become known, in order to find a place.
Joe: I’m obviously one of those voices but their parents and guardians and the other people involved with them are also pretty strong voices, and have been their voice since they were born pretty much.
Lisa: I believe you have 11 facilities and you work with between 90 and 100 developmentally disabled adults.
Joe: Yes.
Lisa: What are some of the types of things that these adults are doing over the course of their days?
Joe: Eight of those facilities are residences so everyone in our residences is expected, if they can, to come to the day program everyday. From day program they do a variety of activities. They do volunteer activities in a lot of the local community agencies that allow volunteers. That’s been a great way to connect with other people in the community for our folks. Some of them work during the day in local businesses for two to four hours a day usually. We also run a business, a bottle redemption center that employs four people consistently. A few years ago we decided to move away. Years ago everyone was paid sub-minimum wage in facility and we decided to go away from the sub-minimum and only employ people in those places, and people employed by ourselves, at a minimum wage or above.
We also use the YMCA a lot for PT, OT, those kinds of things. One our participants works at the YMCA, so that’s a lot of fun. Actually, some of the employees they’ve highlighted at two different times. When they’re highlighted, the Y does a poster of them; they put the pictures around the Y of different participants at the Y. We have their posters in our meeting room as something for other people to work towards. They get a big kick out of it, too.
Lisa: One of the first articles I wrote as the wellness editor with Maine Magazine was on Scotty Wentzel. He’s an individual who’s 13 years old; he’s developmentally disabled. He doesn’t have normal speech and he has required a lot of community services. It really has been amazing to see how well people connect with him. That this is something that everybody gets something out of. He gets something out of it, people around him get something out of it. I suspect that this is true of the people that you’re working with as well.
Joe: Yeah, I think that’s one of the biggest things. Just getting people out there and getting other people used to the folks. I think our generation, the generation I’m from, we never saw people with developmental disabilities in the school. They were just other places or they weren’t served. After the public law went into effect in 1975 that required special education for all students, it became integrated into the schools so the younger generation has had this group of people around since school age.
They’re much more used to the population, but people Rusty’s age and my age didn’t have as much exposure to this population. Initially as we started residences there was a lot of fear that these people were coming in the community. What are they going to do? Are they going to be good neighbors? Over the past 25 or 30 years as they’ve moved into community and become good neighbors, it’s just been a really good transition to see. It’s so gradual that once you get over the initial hump is the hardest and then people just open up and really take our folks in as friends and as participants in the community. I think they do have a lot of value to give to the community.
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Lisa: Bettina, one of the things that visitors to Cellardoor will find out about is the door mark. This is a symbol of acceptance to your purpose and welcome. It strikes me as we’re talking with Rusty and with Joe that all of this is about that – about acceptance, cheer, purpose, and welcome.
Bettina: Hope, safety, all of those things. It is; it’s a safe and welcoming place. Taking care of each other, slowing down a little bit to hear somebody’s story – all of those things matter. I was listening to you talk about your first article and listening to Joe. We talk about this volunteerism effort that we have all put together with Pop For Change for this spring. Devon has really worked the closest with the volunteers to get them coordinated. The emails that come in that say “I’ve been looking for a way to get involved to volunteer. I didn’t know how.” All of a sudden we’ve introduced people to reaching out and getting involved, to help with the community, and with people that need – as Rusty calls – to be served a little bit.
We’ve, hopefully with this, helped the people who needed a little extra help, and actually the people who have volunteered are feeling a little bit better about themselves, too. It’s been good for a whole lot of people all the way around.
Rusty: I’ll tell you a good volunteer story. You want a story?
Lisa: I’d love a story.
Bettina: Rusty owns a good story.
Rusty: Two weeks ago we had a big stuffing operation going on in Belfast at the YMCA in Waldo County. We had to stuff and prepare, really do a good job on 7,000 pieces of mailing. Through Devon we got a lot of volunteers; we had 50 volunteers at the Waldo County YMCA. They stuffed and completed that job in four and a half hours, which is a new world’s record. You can see the value of the volunteers, that they really do go to work. I think they’re all going to come back, too. They want to. It’s a great story of what volunteers can do. There are a lot of volunteer stories but that one just happened within the last two weeks.
Bettina: I always had people at Habitat for Humanity building buildings. We’ve had people delivering food. We’ve got people … Joe, do you want to talk about your event, the cash event?
Joe: Cash For Clothes?
Bettina: Yep.
Joe: We have a clothing sale twice a year and it takes a lot of people to sort the clothes, price the clothes, and then move the clothes over to where the sale is. We’ve had an unbelievable amount of volunteers that have come in for that. The other night there was a big pile of clothes to be sorted and we were having a meeting for Cash For Clothes but the director decided to stay. There so many new volunteers that she had to stay up there to direct them, and she actually just came in at the end of the meeting. She said everything got cleaned out. She was pretty happy.
Lisa: When I think about the evolution from Pop The Cork, which started in 2008, to this year’s Pop The Cause, which from what I understand, the tickets went on sale November 1st of 2013 and were sold out in 10 hours.
Bettina: No, two.
Rusty: Two.
Lisa: Two hours.
Bettina: Two hours.
Lisa: Which is pretty fast for …
Rusty: It’s a world record.
Lisa: I’m sure it’s going to be great because you’ll have The Sultans and the Pointer Sisters and your 400 guests will really enjoy that in Rockport. The next you actually added an event on. This is going to be June 26th. Pop For Change was an add on in which you were asking people to volunteer for four hours so that they could come to the June 28th event and listen to DJ Mark Thrasher and Belinda Carlisle. You got 500 volunteers. You asked for 400 and as of the last count you got 500 volunteers.
Bettina: We did and I think we could have kept going. That’s the thing that we all are going to sit down on June 29th and say “Okay, what are we going to do for next year,” because we’re starting to look at a calendar. Everybody to join us for the celebration of volunteerism on the 28th has to complete their volunteer hours. We’re running out of calendar days to get our volunteers their four hour shifts and done, but the interest has been terrific. We have people talking about it and all those good things. Yes, very exciting. We wanted to limit the ticketed event but we really wanted to then …
This whole volunteer effort and this idea came up as we met back in November. The ticket sales were done and we met with all the charities up at the farmhouse at the winery. We started to talk about we now have seven months until Pop The Cause and the vote is done. What do you all need? What kind of things do you want? It was pretty consistent messages and Joe and Rusty can add, and Devon can add from that discussion, but there were clear message from each of these non-profits, which were we need to get our message out and we need more people engaged. We need the next generation of volunteers and donors to start to hear the stories of these.
To date it really has been the baby boomers who have supported many of the organizations up in the Mid-Coast. We really need the next generation to get involved and engaged financially and time-wise. We needed to get the stories out and then pretty consistently all four of these non-profits said we need volunteers. From that combination we stewed up this idea of let’s see if we can get a volunteer effort out there. Cellar Door has been known throw a decent party and if we can incent it by doing that by the only way to get a ticket is you volunteer four hours … We threw it out there. We had no idea what the response would be. Devon has done a herculean effort to organize the logistics of this. Apparently you can do an event like this on sticky notes and an Excel spreadsheet – and out they came.
We tried something new and I think it’s pretty good that you can get a community trying something new for the right reasons this quickly. That’s the nice thing – we’ve seen this in Maine before. We see it on smaller levels. We see it on this response. Very rarely around here do you see somebody say such and such needs a little bit of help. Whether it is the supper over in Lincolnville coming up this Saturday for somebody who’s had a tough time or whatever. There’s usually somebody out there willing to help if you connect the need and the giver. We’ve done a little bit of that cross-matching with a lot of sticky notes.
Lisa: The quote that is on your website is one from Margaret Meade and it’s actually one that means a lot to me because my Bowdoin College classmate Hanley Denning, who is the founder of Safe Passage who passed a away several years ago after founding Safe Passage, which is an organization that educates Guatemalan children who live outside the Guatemala city dump – this was one of her favorites. This is by Margaret Meade, anthropologist: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
What I’m hearing from each of you is that it really doesn’t matter what you think you have to give. You just give; you start from wherever you are. You could be sorting clothes for a clothes drive or you could be donating four hours at the Tanglewood Camp, or you could be doing Meals on Wheels. You just have to start wherever you are. Bettina, you spent 21 years with Fidelity doing work in the financial field before you owned this winery so you’re a pretty good example of somebody who just said I’m not sure what the next step is but I’m just going to move forward with this.
Bettina: Yes, I came from a high-rise building in Boston with my last career. If I could tell you one anecdote, that would be I remember way back when in my first season owning the winery in the spring of 2007. I had just gotten here. There’s a rotary club in Camden and they invited me to come and speak about the winery. I think they were probably the business community in Camden was a little intrigued by the crazy lady from Boston who bought a winery in Lincolnville, Maine.
Off I went and it was at the YMCA and I honestly don’t remember who spoke or shared this statistic. Back in 2007 the comment was that there are 38% of the children in Knox County need aid every day to eat. From that moment on – I probably should have been more aware in Boston all those things – but as soon as I heard that statistic I realized there is a connectedness up here and it is one degree of separation from doing okay and the 38% of the children who aren’t eating properly everyday.
That statistic has stuck with me ever since. I’m afraid it hasn’t gotten better in the seven years, but when you hear a statistic like that, for me it motivated me to try and figure out how I could help in my little tiny way. I know I am not going to fix the world but you know what, maybe we’ll figure something out between the bunch of us here – and we keep trying.
Lisa: Part of your trying also is that there is $160,000 that is going to go to four charities. $20,000 to each of three and then the fourth will get $100,000. What I want to ask Rusty and Joe is what could you do with $20,000.
Rusty: With $20,000 it gives us an opportunity to give more money to agencies. When you look at another statistic from Bettina’s library, 33% of the people in both Knox and Waldo County are on welfare. There is a great need there. With $20,000 we won’t direct it to one person, one location, one agency; we have a very, very sophisticated way of judging and interviewing each agency to determine the funds that we should give to each one. The 20,000 would be added to our total that we would allocate to the agencies.
Bettina: Rusty, if I can jump in, Lisa. Rusty, what’s your … You say you have 50-some agencies that you support on an annual basis with financial help. What’s your average contribution to each of the 50? Is there a way to look at it that way?
Rusty: That is, I suppose, a way. I’ve never really figured it out because it runs from, say, 40,000 down to 2,000. I would say that an agency will get at least 20,000 but I’ve never figured out an average.
Bettina: Maybe it’s somewhere between one, two, of the agencies will get a donation from this if it’s 20,000, right?
Rusty: Oh yes.
Lisa: One of these agencies I know is Joe’s agency, Coastal Opportunities. Joe, what could your agency do with $20,000 to help the developmentally disabled adults that you work with?
Joe: The timing on this is really good because we’ve been working with Congregational Church in Camden for the last three years to replace housing that three men have lived in for 20 years, three men with intellectual disabilities and one person that lives there sort of as a sympathetic landlord, not as a staff. The building is really choppy with up and down stairs. The church is going to sell us a piece of land in the parking lot beside where this building is right in downtown Camden.
We’re going to build an accessible … All the units on the bottom floor will be handicapped accessible, in floor heat, super-insulated with an apartment for the sympathetic landlord upstairs. We should break ground on that hopefully maybe this month. It’s a really good partnership with the church and we had to go through their whole process with the minister and the congregation. It’s gone back and forth and ended up with them agreeing to sell us the land. It’s been a really good process.
The interesting thing is that the church was also the first site of the school for handicapped children in Camden, in the basement. Two of the three guys went to school in that church basement and then the first Coastal Opportunities workshop was in the building where they’re living now, so it’s been a full circle for them.
Lisa: Devon, I know you do a lot of things with Cellardoor Winery. You’re the director of events for one thing. This seems like a very interesting and special set of events to have worked on. What have you learned from your experience over the last several months?
Devon: It’s been pretty amazing, actually. The public outpouring to us, to be the person that has seen every email for somebody volunteering and then spoken with all the directors and the agencies and being able to connect that. Having simply a gentleman for instance emailed and said “I wash windows. Where can you put me?” I emailed Rusty and I said “51 properties, there’s somebody that wants to wash your windows.” We had another person that came in and said “I own a car wash. I’ll detail some cars.” I called Joe up and said “You have vans that transport people here.”
To be able to be that link connecting everybody has been pretty amazing. We keep joking around because people say to Bettina and I “You guys are doing so much,” and I said “We haven’t even volunteered yet.” It’s the people that are doing the volunteer effort. Yeah, we have set up the system for everyone but we’ve basically just made it accessible for everybody to be able to help the community.
Lisa: I know that people are already thinking about next year. Of course Pop The Cause and Pop For Change are happening this week, June 26th and 28th. If you haven’t already done your volunteering and you haven’t already bought your tickets then for 2014 you’re out of luck, but we will see many people who are listening at these events coming up in the next week. For people who are interested next year, thinking about 2015, what would you tell them, Bettina?
Bettina: Give us a couple days after we finish Pop The Cause and Pop For Change and let us regroup. We’ll probably figure out how to evolve this again next year. We love the volunteer element of all of this. We love the money element of all of this and we, from this effort, are going to figure out how to pick the best pieces of all of this this year and make sure that the community gets to serve its community again next year in some way.
I will admit we have two events with two different titles all this week. I will admit in my effort to do good, I might have made this slightly confusing this year so I won’t let anyone write that in ink, but I will admit we tackled a lot this year. I am fairly sure as Thursday and Saturday’s party come people are going to be at the wrong party and we are going to smile graciously and make it work but you know what, we’ll figure out how to take the best of everything we’ve tried in the last eight months and make it better in 2015.
Lisa: I will also give a shout out to Lani Stiles, who is the owner of Megunticook Market, which is an additional, I guess a co-organizer/sponsor, along with Celladoor Winery, of Pop The Cause and Pop For Change.
Bettina: I don’t do anything without Miss Lani, nope. Absolutely.
Lisa: We have been so fortunate today to spend time with Joe Curl, the executive director of Coastal Opportunities, Rusty Brace, the president of United Mid-Coast Charities, Bettina Doulton, the owner of Cellardoor Winery, and Devon Salisbury, the director of events at Cellardoor Winery. We’ll see you all at Pop The Cause and Pop For Change and thank you for all the work that each of you is doing in your communities. I know that it’s important and I know that your time is valuable so the fact that you’re here now spreading the word, it means a lot to me. Thank you.
Rusty: It’s our pleasure to be here.
Joe: Thanks for the opportunity.
Bettina: Thank you.
Lisa: As a physician and small business owner I rely on Marci Booth from Booth Maine to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marci.
Marci: When asked, most of my clients say the same thing about what keeps them up at night: money. Making certain cash flow is there to meet day to day operational needs. “Oh my gosh, is payroll going to be able to make it?” When we dig deeper we understand that those sleepless nights are symptoms of poor planning and forecasting. More often than not, the reasons for not doing it are a lack of time and a lack of resources. Here’s a suggestion: instead of living in fear of the numbers and losing sleep over them, make peace with them by paying closer attention to the financials and creating positive cash flow. I’m Marci Booth; let’s talk about the changes you need. Boothmaine.com.
Speaker 1: This segment of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is brought to you by the following generous sponsors: Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage in Yarmouth, Maine. Honesty and integrity can take you home. With RE/MAX Heritage, it’s your move. Learn more at rheritage.com.
Lisa: Today’s show is an especially important one because I think we’re doing interesting and different things with bringing health and happiness and wellness to our neighbors, specifically in the Mid-Coast area. As we’ve talked about earlier, we are talking about Pop The Cause and Pop For Change. Today in this segment, we have with us Stephanie Primm, who is the executive director at the Mid-Coast Hospitality House, a program based in Rockport that works to provide housing and rehabilitation to homeless individuals and families in the Knox County.
We also have with us Pinny Beebe-Center, who is on the board of directors for the Knox County Homeless Coalition, and Lee Karker, the executive director of the Methodist Conference Home, which runs a Meals on Wheels program for residents in Knox County. Joining us again, we have Bettina Doulton, the owner of Cellardoor Winery in Lincolnville and Rockport, and one of the driving forces behind the creation of Pop For Change and Pop The Cause, and also Devon Salisbury, the director of events at Cellar Door Winery and the volunteer coordinator for Pop For Change. With all of this brain power and heart power in the room, we can’t really go wrong.
I want to start with Devon. Devon, this event has been something very different than what you’ve worked on before, and it’s been something that’s evolved over time. You’ve ended up working with a lot of different people in the Mid-Coast area to bring this to fruition. What has that been like for you?
Devon: It’s been incredibly rewarding. It’s been really nice to see people come together and to see everybody offer up their unique skill sets to help do things. I think the best part of it has seen the repeat customers. For instance, yesterday I was talking with a woman who now just did her third meal drop, Frida Handlin over at Hospitality House. She said “That was fun. I’m going to go back next week and then I’m scheduled for the week after that.” While we’ve started Pop For Change, and that has a definitive timeline, to see these volunteers who don’t have a definitive timeline and they’re going to continue to give and help these charities.
Lisa: Lee, you are the executive director of the Methodist Conference Home, which runs a Meals On Wheels program. Meals On Wheels is something that many people are familiar with. You in your area are offering a hundred meals a week, 5 days a week. Also you have two community sites. This is a big job.
Lee: We actually are doing 125 meals a day now. The demand for the program has grown so that’s been challenging. We think it’s a great thing to be doing for people. We do have the two community meal sites where people can come in and have a meal, and the 125 people that we’re delivering to. But it’s more than just delivering a meal. We’ve got a number of volunteers that work with us anyway and I think that’s probably at least the equal of the meal itself, is someone coming and stopping by and saying hello on a regular basis. They really get to know each other and feel almost like family.
Lisa: For people who aren’t familiar with Meals On Wheels, this is bringing meals to people who can’t easily get outside of their houses.
Lee: That’s right. The qualifications are they need to be essentially homebound. That doesn’t mean that they can’t ever get out of their house, but they either can’t prepare a meal or they can’t get out and shop for a meal and don’t have anyone else who regularly delivers meals for them.
Lisa: That piece that you are talking about, that human connection, is especially important because if you can’t get out to get your food to cook for yourself then you probably aren’t connecting with as many people as you once did.
Lee: Yes, I think isolation is a problem that a lot of these folks face and I think that this is a great way to break it because, as I said, they develop relationships with the people that bring them food. It’s a contact with the outside community.
Lisa: Bettina, this connection, this community connection, has been so important to you really from the very beginning, not only with Pop The Cork, which you’ve been doing every year since 2008, but also with what you do on a regular basis at Cellardoor. It’s really not just about the wine for you at Cellardoor; it’s about the connections that people make and the joy of being a part of a community.
Bettina: We talked a little bit earlier about what we’re all about, which is providing a gracious, welcoming, relaxing place. It means nothing more to us to see guests walk into our barn and see their shoulders relax just a little bit and get a break from the rat race. For the most part we don’t hear cellphone rings and we don’t hear all those things. People get to relax and feel like they’re welcomed into a home.
Life is busy and that’s even for the people who are driving themselves places and this and that. If they can have 45 minutes or an hour and a half where they get to have a moment – I know it sounds a little simple but if at the end of the day people go home and they have a highlight for the day, I sort of feel like we’ve all won. If they take a bottle of wine home with them, sure, I’m sure that the accountants will be really happy about that, but first and foremost, if they can say at the end of the day as they put their head on the pillow “You know what? The view was great and the people were nice, and it was all just a nice experience,” we’re going to call that a win.
We have a lot of incredible friends and loyal supporters of the winery who come back multiple times every season. They smile and we share stories. I know it sounds a little like the Cheers bar but it matters. People are meant to have a highlight everyday. For the people in the Meals On Wheels program to know that there’s going to be a friendly face walking in the door, that’s good. When you talk to Stephanie and Pinny and you hear about how important it is to have home and safety for these people who are homeless, it’s all the same thing, which is that metaphoric hug that everybody needs everyday to make sure that they know it’s okay. It all matters, and yes, somewhere along the line I sell a bottle of wine or two, but more importantly it’s the highlights, the hugs, and the welcomes, and the it’s okay to let your shoulders drop and let the stress go some place else.
Lisa: Devon, has this been an interesting contrast for you working as the director of events at Cellardoor where food and wine mean one thing, to working with people like Lee and Stephanie and Pinny, where food and home and drink means something very different?
Devon: Absolutely, it’s been both sides of the spectrum doing that. Doing large parties where everyone’s coming out to celebrate and there’s a plethora of food and wine all around you, and nobody’s really for want for anything at a Cellardoor event, to then going to help these people out. But the basics are still there and at the end of the day people just want to be happy, be satiated with their food, feel safe and comfortable. Whether that be at a fun party or at a home, it’s basically the same thing.
Lisa: We’ve been talking with Lee about the Meals On Wheels program, and this is largely for people who have homes that they live in. Stephanie and Pinny, you work with people who don’t’ really have homes, or not the type of homes that many of us think of. Tell us a little bit more about what it is that the Mid-Coast Hospitality House does.
Stephanie: We are quite simply home, help, and hope for our population. What does that mean? That means that we have a new model of really breaking the cycle of homelessness. That includes sometimes shelter when we’re not full, but it most importantly includes wrapping the client in a full and custom program of services that they need, based on their case, to get them out of their situation. Very supportive, very community-oriented, warm, loving, not your typical probably connotation of what a shelter is in most people’s minds. We’re really like a family and three months into it there’s a lot of love there. There’s a tremendous amount of progress happening everyday.
Pinny: We basically are building a community within the shelter. Part of that is about people having respect for each other, people looking out for each other, understanding where each other’s buttons are. It’s not a matter of being divorced from the community and then reentering the community; it’s more a matter of remaining part of the community.
Lisa: That’s in interesting point that you raise. If I think about just living in my house with my children, that’s a community enough, but it’s a bit of a chosen community. I chose to have children; I choose to keep my children. If you’re in a situation where you don’t necessarily get to choose where you are, then that community building is very different.
Pinny: It is and I think it’s very important because we have a lot of our homeless or in-need people that have been demonized by our politics. It’s hard getting through the social service system. It’s hard just being in a place of real need. Having a community is important and allows people to be themselves instead of desperately in need.
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Lisa: There are a lot of different issues associated with homelessness. Stephanie, you eluded to this need for a blanketing, I guess is the word that you used. I know that when I have worked as a medical doctor with individuals who don’t have a permanent home, there’s a lot of emotional things that come up for people, a lot of psychological, social things. The feeling of displacement really does something to individuals that I think most of us can’t really understand.
Stephanie: The feeling of displacement and discouragement is the most prolific, probably, problem that they face, and to varying degrees. What’s been so amazing is when we take somebody into shelter, whether it’s in the physical shelter or some of our virtual shelter. They become part of, again, this family of support. Usually within a few hours of being taken into the shelter, we give them a tour and we show them their lovely room, and it’s very cozy.
They go from being almost ashamed and afraid to coming downstairs and getting a cup of tea and sitting with us and saying “I have not felt hope in years.” That is just so self-motivating, and their program starts the next day and they begin to feel like they’re making progress. We’ve actually housed 22 people have gone into independent housing in the three months that we’ve been open. We have 30 people in shelter and we have 60 people in our program. There’s a lot of progress happening.
Lisa: Lee, you mentioned that you’re now doing 125 as opposed to 100, which I guess I found from an old source. It sounds like the need for Meals On Wheels is unparalleled with the need for homeless resources. That there’s more need than there has been before. What do you think that this is due to?
Lee: I think there’s some real economic issues that we face in our society, particularly with the disparity between the really wealthy and the really poor that make it difficult for people to climb out of poverty. The other thing that we’re seeing, and particularly in Maine, which is the oldest state in the union, is that the population of Maine is aging and there’s been a sharp change in the last 10 years between the censuses. That’s one of the reasons why I think we’re seeing this demand for the Meals On Wheels program.
We’re also looking beyond just delivering food and we’re looking at trying to find other ways to support them so that they can stay in their own homes and do so safely. I think we see a lot of people out there that are hanging on by their fingernails and living in conditions that you and I would not consider safe or healthy. Our hope is to do more than just deliver meals. We’re working on developing some programs to do that, too.
Lisa: That’s interesting because I know that as part of being a doctor I’ve done home visits before. The types of things that you learn from people by actually being in their homes are so different than what you learn just during the course of a regular interview in a medical office. There are some things that are so foundational that doctors, nurses, maybe a lot of us don’t even really understand when it comes to maybe the elderly or maybe people who are displaced. I think maybe it’s important that we’re all working together to try to gain this understanding.
Lee: I think it’s very important and I think that Bettina and Cellardoor Winery have given us a great opportunity here to work together. Just the ability to use these volunteers has been terrific for us because it’s the repeat factor that you heard about earlier. We’ve got people who volunteered temporarily and they’re on our permanent list now. Our core of volunteers has grown and that’s just really exciting because we’re going to need those volunteers for the long term – and they like what they’re doing.
Lisa: What types of things are you asking volunteers to help with when it comes to the Mid-Coast Hospitality House, or when it comes to the Meals On Wheels program?
Lee: The Meals On Wheels program is primarily helping to deliver meals. We have a number of routes and it takes two or three hours in a morning to go out and deliver most of those routes. Some of them are even longer, so what we’re doing is taking people out sometimes with some of our current volunteers so they can learn the routes, and then they come back and they are able to do the routes on their own. We’ve had some help in the kitchen. We had some help, one day we did a special St. Patrick’s Day dinner that we sent out on a Saturday. We don’t normally deliver on a Saturday and we had a great number of volunteers come out for that. That was a terrific, exciting, happy event.
Lisa: What about the Hospitality House? I know that this is a program in evolution. What types of things have the volunteers been working on?
Stephanie: For us, the volunteer piece is critical and it is a full spectrum of need, from the very concrete in terms of basic like food and nutrition – which Cellardoor was essential to our being able to open and get rolling on that front. Then it really moves on into programmatic efforts and reaches into the community and taps into organizations like Cellardoor and like some of the rotaries that are in the area, who have managed to focus on something like education. Then we’ll come in and we had West Bay Rotary set up and entire resource center in the shelter where we provide GED degree training, fiscal education. Programs are coming in from Bangor Savings Bank and other organizations to help these people move forward with their lives.
Lisa: With the volunteers who have come in, Pinny, what types of responses are you seeing?
Pinny: Probably our most consistent response is people are surprised in the environment of the house. I’m not exactly sure what they expect when they come in but they’re pleasantly surprised that people seem happy, the environment is inviting, and they’re glad they could help. They want to know what else they can do to help. It feels like we’re sort of expanding the shelter out into the community. It’s kind of nice. Everyone feels like they belong.
Stephanie: There’s a family meal on Sundays that they cook together. One of the most profound findings for me in the three months that we’ve been open and helping people is the warmth of the environment, the caring of the staff, the caring of the volunteers. Just all those touch points that aren’t so official. They’re not the educational course or the appointment with the mental health clinician. That has had as much impact or more impact on our residents than the rest of it. That’s why this model is so important.
Lisa: Just as important as having a teacher, a doctor, somebody more official, is having the people who aren’t as official, who are human …
Stephanie: Who care.
Lisa: … and who care and connect. Any final thoughts, Bettina?
Bettina: I’m going to share a text message I got from one young lady who went to take food over to Hospitality House. She dropped of things for the pantry and food and she sent me a text as she left. She said “Just left Hospitality House. I get it. This matters.” That was a keeper.
Lisa: I think that what you are doing matters. Pop The Cause, Pop For Change, happening on June 26th, June 28th. Also, what everybody who has been a guest on the show today is doing matters, and all the volunteers who are working with Pop For Change. We’ve been speaking with Lee Karker, the executive director of the Methodist Conference Home, which runs a Meals On Wheels program; Stephanie Prim, the executive director at Mid-Coast Hospitality House; Pinny Beebe-Center, who is on the board of directors for the Knox County Homeless Coalition; with Bettina Doulton, the owner of Cellardoor Winery in Lincolnville and Rockport; and Devon Salisbury, the director or events at Cellardoor Winery and the volunteer coordinator for Pop For Change. Thank you so much for everything that you all are doing on a daily basis and I can’t wait to see what happens in the future.
Bettina: Thanks, Lisa.
Devon: Thank you.
Pinny: It’s been fun.
Lee: Great, thank you.
Lisa: You have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast show number 145: “Pop For Change.” Our guests have included Bettina Doulton, Devon Salisbury, Joe Curl, Rusty Brace, Lee Karker, Stephanie Prim, and Pinny Beebe-Center.
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Dr. Lisa Belisle is a physician trained in family and preventative medicine, acupuncture, and public health. She offers medical care and acupuncture at Brunswick Family Medicine. Read more about her integrative approach to wellness in Maine Magazine.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is recorded in the studio of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street Portland, Maine. Our executive producers are Kevin Thomas, Susan Grisanti, and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Our assistant producer is Leanne Ouimet. Audio production and original music by John C. McCain. Our online producer is Kelly Clinton. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is available for download free on iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details.