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Start Local is focused on helping businesses and non-profits in and around Chester County, Pennsylvania, connect and grow together. Our aim is to bring together the many folks that make up our wonderful community in greater Philadelphia to share and learn from each other.
The Start Local podcast features interviews with business and nonprofit leaders from in and around Chester County, Pennsylvania.
The Southern Chester County Chamber of Commerce partners with the Start Local podcast to promote trade, commerce, industry, and sustainable economic development while supporting a diverse, growing marketplace.
Learn more at the Southern Chester County Chamber of Commerce website, sccccc.com.
Hey, hey, welcome to the Start Local Podcast.
I'm Liam Dempsey, and we are back in the podcast studio today.
Hello, Eric Gudmundson. How are you, friend?
Liam Dempsey, I'm doing well. We're using full names today. Is that the case?
Well, yeah. I mean, I think we were both chatting beforehand about how the morning has not been as smooth or as evenly paced as we'd like.
So I'm just trying to bring a little structure to our late morning conversation here today.
Never a dull moment as we wrap up the summer and get ready for year end.
My goodness.
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Folks, today we are excited to welcome Leigh Anne McKelvey to the show.
Leigh Anne is the Executive Director of CASA of Delaware and Chester Counties.
This local chapter of CASA, Court Appointed Special Advocates, supports children journeying through youth dependency court in both Chester and Delaware Counties.
Welcome, Leigh Anne.
Thanks for joining us today.
Thanks, Leigh Anne.
It's a real pleasure to be here and to have the opportunity to talk about the amazing work that we do at CASA.
Leigh Anne, I'm glad you're here to talk about that because I know I personally would like to learn a little bit more about the organization and hopefully our listeners do as well.
So here we go.
Leigh Anne, let's start by framing what your organization does and how you go about your work.
CASA supports children in, as I shared, in the youth dependency court system in both Chester County and Delaware County.
CASA is a national organization, but you're the executive director of the chapter that works right here, right locally.
Most of our listeners do not have regular interactions with any court system.
So can you unpack for us your organization's work and explain to us what does supports children in the youth dependency court system mean to CASA?
What are you actually doing?
What are your team doing to support our local community?
Sure. I'd love to give you a little bit of background on the work that we do.
First of all, CASA is an acronym, and it stands for Court Appointed Special Advocates.
We are a volunteer-based organization that recruits, trains, and supports community volunteers
who serve as advocates for kids who have been adjudicated dependent in either Delaware or
Chester County. And that is a mouthful, so I'll break it down a little bit. But as you mentioned,
Many of your listeners may not be familiar with any court system, but the reality is
that even in legal circles, the dependency system tends to be a little bit of an unknown
and its own little world within the larger court of common pleas.
But the dependency system deals with families and specifically with situations of abuse
and neglect.
So it's where judges make determinations about abuse allegations, whether children can safely
live with their parents or whether the situation warrants removal of children from their home and
placement in either traditional foster care or a placement with relatives or community caregivers
or in a residential facility if needed. CASA comes in if one of our judges decides that they want an
extra set of eyes and ears on behalf of the child, so someone to get to know that child and their
family, gather records, interview professionals, and ultimately bring recommendations, information,
and recommendations to the court to assist with decision-making on behalf of that child.
That definitely helps you understand what you do. I'd like to understand the scope of the work a
little bit in terms of numbers. How many children are in the youth dependency system in Chester and
Delaware counties? Abuse and neglect is a constant in our communities, but as you might imagine,
the numbers fluctuate from year to year. So, over the last five years, numbers across both counties
It ranged from about 500 children a year to over 800 children in some years.
Last year, CASA, we served 322 children, which was just about 60% of the kids who are eligible for our services.
500 to 800. That's a number to get your head around.
Founded in 1977, CASA is a nonprofit.
You're not a government agency or a department of any local or state or federal government.
So walk us briefly through how CASA was founded and explain how you work with the courts in our two local counties.
So we are a 501c3 nonprofit here locally.
We do work really closely with our partners at the court and our county child protective services agencies,
but we are our own completely independent, mission-driven nonprofit.
We have been here in Delaware County since 1992.
We expanded to Chester County in 2014.
But as you mentioned, we're also a national organization, having been founded in the 1970s in Seattle, Washington.
And CASA was founded by a judge who felt that he needed more information to help guide his decision-making on behalf of children in his courtroom.
So he described lying awake at night, wondering if he made the right decision, understanding really the gravity of the situations that he presided over in his courtroom.
And he had this really revolutionary idea that he could use volunteers, that he could welcome community members into the courtroom, grant them authority to gather information and to advocate on behalf of children.
And, you know, I say it was revolutionary then. I still think it's pretty revolutionary now because the dependency court in most places around the country and certainly here in Delaware and Chester counties is a closed and confidential system.
A member of the public can't just walk into the Justice Center on West Market Street in Westchester and sit in on these cases, on abuse and neglect cases for the day.
You know, obviously, we want to protect the confidentiality of the children that are involved.
So the idea of bringing in volunteers with no special background in law or child development or behavioral health and, you know, bestowing them with this special authority is and was, you know, a really innovative and revolutionary concept.
and one that I think has proven itself time and time again to be effective as we get to know kids.
We write really comprehensive reports about their history and their current status and their needs
and then bring those recommendations for the child's best interest to the court.
You're the executive director at our local CASA, and thank you for doing that.
But before we hit the record button, you joked that your job includes facing whiplash on a daily basis.
So joking aside, walk us through your workday.
What keeps you hustling so much every single day?
Well, whiplash may be a little dramatic.
But, yeah, I mean, I think as probably a lot of nonprofit leaders can relate to,
there's a lot that goes into managing a fairly small nonprofit from, of course, the program work and managing caseloads and record keeping and quality assurance.
For us, recruiting, training, retaining volunteers.
We manage a staff of 19 people currently.
There's all the operational aspects of the organization from IT to HR and facilities management.
And then, of course, fundraising as a nonprofit, right?
Managing government contracts and foundation funding and individual donors.
Luckily for me, we have a really incredible staff of folks, many of whom have a greater
level of expertise in some of these areas than I do personally.
And I'm also very grateful that we have a board of directors who is supportive, always
available for guidance and consultation.
But as the executive director, I have my hands on a lot of pots.
And it is a little bit whiplashy sometimes when, you know, I may be meeting with our marketing
team in the morning, proofreading a grant proposal after that, consulting on a case crisis,
fielding emails on an HR issue, and then having coffee with a donor, you know, all in one day.
But it's the job and it certainly keeps it interesting.
And, you know, I'm always reminding myself that each and every one of those things is critical to helping us achieve our mission of providing high quality advocacy services for more kids in our community who need us.
When you talked about the founding, you made it very clear that CASA relies on a team of volunteers to deliver its mission.
And before we hit the recording button today, you and I had the chance to chat and you shared that volunteers are asked to sign up for an 18-month volunteer period and to spend about on average 10 to 15 hours per month in their role as that volunteer.
But help us understand the role of a volunteer.
What are they doing over the course of those 10 to 15 hours every month for 18 months?
It's a great question and maybe one of my favorites because I get to talk about our CASA volunteers who are my biggest inspiration.
The volunteer role at CASA is a big one.
It's a big commitment for a volunteer gig, especially.
It's not showing up somewhere, you know, one Saturday a month and doing some volunteer work for a couple of hours.
You know, as you said, Liam, we ask people for an 18-month commitment up front.
And the reason for that is because many of the kids that we work with, instability is the only constant in their lives.
You know, unfortunately for a lot of kids in foster care, many of them experience their lives as a revolving door of adults.
You know, foster parents, teachers, caseworkers, therapists, often changing too frequently.
At CASA, we don't want to contribute to that lack of consistency and stability for kids.
We really want to be a constant in the sea of change.
So we want our volunteers to be people that kids come to trust because they keep showing up month after month, sometimes year after year, no matter what.
Time and time again, a child has to move to a new foster home, and their CASA is one of the first people that comes to visit them to check on them to make sure that they are safe and they have what they need.
So we stress that need for consistency to our new volunteers very heavily.
And believe it or not, you know, our average tenure for volunteers right now is just over four years.
Wow.
Even though we're asking for an 18-month commitment, people are staying more than double that with our organization, which is amazing and awe-inspiring to me.
And then as you said, yes, go ahead.
No, those are some big numbers.
And I'm just, you had previously told us that CASA has 145 volunteers.
So I'm just wondering with that length of service and that sheer number of volunteer power that you have,
is that enough volunteers to meet the needs of the children in the youth dependency courts in Chester and Delaware counties?
Or let me ask you another way.
Do you have the resources you need to meet the children's needs as they are today?
We never have enough volunteers is the quick answer.
But the 145 volunteers that we do have actively assigned to cases are phenomenal.
And they are the reason that we as an organization have been able to grow pretty significantly over the last five years and reach more children who need our services.
We've grown our caseload by about 22% over the last five years.
But our volunteer base has remained exactly static during that period of time.
So we've only been able to achieve that growth because of our retention rate for our current
volunteers, because even though our model is one-to-one, meaning one volunteer to one
child or sibling group, right now about 30% of our volunteers are carrying more than one
case.
So that commitment of our volunteers is what has allowed us to reach more kids in need
across our counties.
But we recognize that that's not sustainable.
And so we desperately need more volunteers to come in because our long-term vision is to be able to assign a CASA advocate for every child who needs us.
So we absolutely need to be able to expand our volunteer base in order to do that.
We are always recruiting for new volunteers.
We host volunteer training classes four to five times a year.
So I encourage anybody who's interested in learning more to check out our website.
You can sign up for an information session to learn more about kind of the nuts and bolts of what it takes to be a successful CASA volunteer.
Yeah, so let's keep on this vein here.
You've talked about you're always looking to recruit.
And you shared earlier that when CASA was set up back in Seattle in the 70s, the idea was that volunteers don't need to have experience in the legal system or in the court system or to be social workers or have any kind of professional background in psychology or child.
welfare. So I'm curious and would like to know more about the vetting and training that your
volunteers undergo before they are sent out into their own as volunteers. And I know they're not
sent out into their own. Your team coordinates with them closely. But like at some point, they
go out and do the work as volunteers. Talk about the recruiting, the vetting, and the training,
please. Sure. So because it is such an intensive volunteer position, there is a lot of upfront
screening and training. That having been said, we do work with every potential volunteer to
make it as easy as possible to navigate that process and ultimately get sworn in as a CASA.
But we do require, you know, as you might imagine, a host of background clearances
and an application and references, an in-person interview with our staff.
And then it's about 30 hours of training up front, usually spread out over a few weeks to help
prepare volunteers for the work. But, you know, with the nature of our work, it's also
impossible to prepare for every possible situation that comes up. So, the work is also really meant
to be a partnership. So, there is a really strong partnership between our professional staff of
social workers and human service professionals and our volunteers. We support our volunteers
every step of the way. There's a lot of learning on the job. We always go to court with our
volunteers. We always go with them on their first home visits to meet kids and families.
So it's a lot of training up front, and then it's a lot of support and coaching and guidance
on the job. And you have a relatively small team of paid staff compared to the number of volunteers
that you have. Tell us about the breakdown of those staff. How do they fit in terms of,
are they supporting the organization? Are they training the volunteers? Are they
working with development. I know you personally mentioned you wear a lot of different hats,
but I'm curious what the staff breakdown looks like.
Well, I mentioned that our caseload has grown pretty significantly over the last five years,
so our staff has grown as well. And we're actually at a record all-time high of 19 staff positions
right now. The majority are in our program department. They are people working with kids,
working with families, supporting volunteers. We have 12 people working in our program.
We have three staff members who are running operations, the accounting.
We have an accounting specialist.
We have an office manager.
And then we have three team members who are in our development department, fundraising, organizing events, including our upcoming gala on November 20th.
And then there's me doing a little bit of all of that.
So let me ask you this.
How do you, what do you look for among paid staff?
And what do you look for among volunteers?
Because with so much work going on and the type of work that you're doing, it's not for everybody.
It's very impactful and it has a lot of weight to it.
So what do you look for among your staff and volunteers?
So specifically with our volunteers, there's no required employment or educational background for our CASA volunteers.
Obviously, that's a little bit different for our paid staff who are expected to come in with the expertise that's needed to guide our volunteers.
But as a volunteer, you don't have to have touched anything related to child welfare in your life.
We have volunteers who come from all different walks of life, all different backgrounds.
You do have to be 21.
You do have to pass background clearances.
You do have to successfully complete the training program.
And you have to have that 10 to 15 hours a month to devote to impacting a child's life.
But while we have lots of volunteers who are retired or who are empty nesters, about 50% of our volunteers do work full time and find ways to juggle this commitment while working and raising kids, caring for relatives, other community commitments, everything that they have going on in their lives.
So ultimately, we are looking for people who have a passion for this work, have a passion for kids in need, and who have or figure out how to find the time to make the commitment and step up on behalf of a child.
As far as our staff, our program staff are all social workers or human service professionals.
So we're looking for folks.
Of course, they bring so much passion as well, but they all have educational and employment
backgrounds that allow them to step in and really help volunteers who don't have that
background to navigate what is a really complicated system or multiple systems, really, because
we're navigating the court system and the child welfare system, but we're also navigating
the education system, the mental health system, the medical system, all of these things that
our children, all these systems that our children interact with, we are navigating as well on their
behalf. Leanna, a team of 19 and a volunteer roster of 145 definitely is going to cost money.
What is CASA's funding structure? How do you raise the money to do the work that you all achieve
together? We are a nonprofit. We start out every year with goals to raise the money that we need
to sustain and hopefully ultimately grow our work and our reach. Currently, about 43% of our funding
comes from government contracts, about 23% from individual donors, 21% from foundations and
corporations, and 13% from special events. So we cobble it all together to try to make it work and
meet our expenses and grow our program and grow our reach. So we are always looking for people
and businesses and foundations who are interested in investing in this work and making a real impact
in our community through their financial support. We hear in our conversations that
we have on the show that so many of the needs of our one community cannot be adequately addressed
by any single nonprofit. So there's housing, food insecurity, medical health, mental health,
workforce development, financial literacy, and more. They're all issues where many communities
need support. Tell us about some of the local nonprofits with which CASA regularly collaborates.
Sure. So, first of all, that's absolutely true. Every different type of entity and agency you mentioned, we are interacting with as CASA because of the nature of our work. You know, our mission is to advocate for kids' best interest. And as I mentioned, that crosses their medical needs, their educational needs, their behavioral health needs.
And so we are, collaboration is kind of the name of the game around here in terms of knowing what the resources are in the community, knowing how to access them on behalf of kids.
Connections and referrals is really at the heart of what we do in our partnership.
So certainly too many individual organizations to even begin listing, but all of the things that you mentioned from mental health organizations, schools, drug and alcohol treatment providers, housing assistance providers, these are all of the folks that we get to know.
It's made a little bit more complicated by the fact that sometimes our kids, if they need to be placed in foster care, they end up outside of the county and outside of the area.
So our volunteers and our staff not only get to be experts in the resources in Delaware and Chester counties, but we are constantly Googling and searching and becoming detectives for services in York County and Dauphin County and the Poconos and all of the places that our kids are placed.
So it's one of the things that we're really skilled at is that tenacity and that patience in making phone calls and trying to find the resources that we need in all of these different communities and get kids on wait lists and all of those things.
Yeah, I can only imagine about all the work that that's required to do.
So, again, thank you to you and thank you to your team and your volunteers for that.
I want to talk a little bit about you now and not so much about CASA.
So in addition to your role at CASA, you have taught courses in social work curriculum programs for both undergraduate and graduate students.
As I understand it, you are currently an adjunct faculty member at Widener University in its online Master of Social Work program.
So what courses do you teach?
And what do you find most compelling about teaching graduate students?
You know, you've got a full-time job.
I expect you're putting in more than 40 hours a week at CASA.
and then you're teaching on top of that.
What drives you that?
I was bored and looking for more things to do, I guess.
No, I love teaching.
I love teaching.
Right now I teach a field practicum seminar course
for MSW students in their first field placement
in social work.
I absolutely love it
because I have a variety of students.
Some have been working in the field of social work
for years or decades.
Some are career changers who are leaving a completely unrelated field and coming into
social work.
But for all of them, their first field placement in graduate school can be a nerve-wracking
experience.
It is eye-opening.
And even for those who have done some work in the field, you know, social work is an
incredibly vast and diverse field of work, which is one thing that I absolutely love
about it.
So even if someone has been working in, let's say, substance abuse treatment and recovery,
they might find themselves in a field placement working with kids in foster care or something
like this or in a mental health organization.
And I love walking alongside students when the rubber meets the road and they have the
opportunity to put their classroom learning into action in the field.
And I also have the experience that my very first MSW field placement when I was at graduate
school was at a CASA program.
So I discovered CASA then 22 years ago.
And, you know, here I am today.
So I know how life-changing a field placement can be.
And Widener has a really terrific program.
And I'm really fortunate to be a part of it as an adjunct.
And then I think the other benefit is it really keeps me grounded in the work when, you know,
the nonprofit life can get you down sometimes. I love that connection to the academic foundations
of social work and the energy that I get from students who are just entering the field.
So I know nothing about getting a degree in social work, and I expect Eric probably doesn't
either. He works in managed IT services and cybersecurity, and I make websites and do
marketing for a living. So the course that you're teaching, this field placement and this work,
Is that you're just kind of guiding them as they go through it?
Is there classroom materials?
And really where I'm going with this, Leigh Anne, is if there is classroom and you're nodding your head, so I'm guessing there is.
You have a syllabus and there's probably some reading and there's some in-classroom activities.
Inevitably, there's going to be some papers and some homework and some exams.
So what is the stress, I guess?
Here comes the questions.
The stress of end of term, all the papers that you have to read, and things are exploding at CASA in a whiplash kind of way.
How do you deal with all of that?
I think because that's where teaching gets really stressful.
Grades are due Tuesday.
Are you done yet?
Yes.
It's like you're looking at my calendar, Liam, because that's where I'm at right now.
Grades are due on Tuesday, for the record.
Wow.
So it absolutely all comes to a head.
that sometimes, not to mention that I also, you know, have a family and three little kids. And
there are times where everything's quiet. Those times are not very frequent. And then there are
times that everything is blowing up and it is a matter of really trying to prioritize, of really
trying to tap into all of my supports, both in the workplace and in my professional life,
and trying to piece things together and make it happen. But recognize that, you know,
One of my mantras in life, Liam, is that this feels hard because it is hard.
Not because I'm doing something wrong, not because I, you know, I can't handle it, but because sometimes this work and life is really hard.
And, you know, we do the best and we rely on our supports and somehow we make it on the other side.
Well, I now understand that your professional career has been spent in social work, period.
You spent years on the front lines working with people in genuine need of skilled professional and empathetic assistance, and I really appreciate that.
You've been with CASA for more than 20 years, and you have served as the executive director for eight of those 20 years.
So obviously you're still in social work, but perhaps a bit further back from the front lines than you originally were.
So what about your time directly serving those young people helps you in your current role as executive director?
I'm wondering what you miss the most about serving in the trenches, if you will.
Yeah, it's a great question.
And honestly, one that I think about fairly regularly because I am a social worker first and foremost.
I knew I wanted to spend my career impacting the lives of children specifically in some way.
very fortunately for me I found CASA very early in my career when I was still a graduate student
and I knew it was a good fit for my passions and my skill set and you know here we are 22 years
later but I never thought that I would be an executive director I was a direct services
worker for years I spent years and years going out in and out of people's homes playing games with
kids, getting to know them, talking with their parents, and more hours than I would ever wish
to figure out sitting in courtrooms. So, you know, that's how I've spent a significant amount of my
career. Now, as you mentioned, I'm professionally a step back from all of that most days. But I'm
really grateful that I have all of those years of experience in the direct services work. I think
nonprofit leaders step into director roles with all kinds of different backgrounds and motivations.
But for me, being a mission-first, mission-driven person, having that firsthand experience doing
everything that our staff does, doing everything that our volunteer does, really gives me an
irreplaceable perspective for guiding the organization, for working with our board of
directors on strategizing and visioning for the future. I personally don't think that I would be
sit in this role without having started all those years ago as an intern and working my way through
a whole variety of roles in CASA programs over the years. So I never set out to be an executive
director, but I like to joke that that's somehow sometimes how nonprofit life goes, right? Like
you stick around long enough and all of a sudden you're the ED. You're in charge of things. But I
definitely miss the direct advocacy work sometimes. Like that is where my heart lies. But I also know
the impact that we as an organization can have on kids if we really build the organization that is
an organization that is adaptive, that is sustainable, that is innovative.
And so I find that to be really satisfying in this role.
I wonder if I can ask a related follow-up question. So you've talked about how much you enjoyed
working directly for the community you're serving and how you did it for so long.
And even today, you see yourself as a social worker.
Tell us a little bit about, if you will, the early days of being the executive director,
where your social work staff come and say, here's a challenge that we're facing with
this young person, with this family, with this need.
How hard was it for you to say, well, let me do it kind of thing and say, instead, no,
I'm the executive director.
Have you thought about this?
Think about that.
Consider this.
How did that process go for you as a leader?
Oh, it was terrifying.
And it really took me.
That's a candid answer.
It was terrifying.
You know, I had preparation,
plenty of preparation for stepping into the role.
And yet when you find yourself there,
it's a whole different can of worms.
And it definitely was a journey to find my professional confidence and my professional legs to be able to, you know, there's that whole saying about like, know what you know and know what you don't know.
You know, and to be able to speak with confidence about what I know and to be and to recognize what I don't know and what I need to do to, you know, find the answers and seek the resources that I need.
And it was definitely a journey.
Like it's, you know, I'm in my ninth year at this point.
And, you know, I joke that like, maybe this will be the year that I finally feel like I know what I'm doing.
But, you know, I love it.
And it's really cool to look back on, you know, eight and a half years ago when I stepped into this role and how different we are as an organization, how much further our reach is, like how much more mature of an organization we are.
And I'm so proud of us and our staff and our board for that growth over the years.
You've shared in other online interviews that you and your family have firsthand experience with the youth dependency courts.
So are you willing to share a little bit about your family's journey there and how that experience affected your work as a social worker?
It sounds like you may have eaten a little of your own dog food.
One way to put it.
That's a technical phrase that IT and web people use.
Yeah.
I think everybody else says that, but eating your own dog.
I've never heard that one before.
That's a new one for me.
My parents are the adoptive parents of two teenagers.
So I have two little sisters who I love and am very, very proud of.
Just to brag on them, the oldest one just finished freshman year of college.
So that's very exciting.
But they are both the biological children of my cousin.
So growing up, I watched my cousin, unfortunately, experience significant trauma and challenges.
And she didn't have an advocate at that point.
She didn't have somebody like Akasa in her corner.
And as she grew up, her personal struggles slowly took over.
And when she became a parent at a young age, unfortunately, those struggles were bigger than her love for and her desire to care for her children.
And they were ultimately removed from her care.
And my parents stepped up and they became foster parents, unplanned, unexpected, you know, dedicating their once empty nester lives to young girls with a lot of trauma and a lot of needs.
And they were trying to figure out how to navigate the child welfare system, which is super complicated.
And frankly, foster parents often have a very small voice when it comes to impacting the outcomes for the children that they're caring for.
So I was already really passionate about this work.
I was already in the work.
But through my extended family, I've seen up close what can happen if a child like my cousin, you know, experiences significant trauma, doesn't get the advocacy and the support that they need.
I've seen what it's like for my sisters having experienced that separation from their mother, you know, going through the court system and the adoption process.
And I've seen what it's like for relatives like my parents who find themselves in a position of being foster parents without much, if any, preparation or notice and now have to figure out their role in a really complicated system in addition to meeting the day-to-day needs of kids that are new to their home.
So those experiences definitely inform my work on a daily basis and serve to remind me that everyone involved in the cases that we work with deserve support and compassion, right?
Like the vast majority of parents that we work with, like my cousin, you know, love their kids.
They love them so very much, but their struggles are real and sometimes seem insurmountable and can result in loss of custody of their children, either temporarily or permanently.
But these are not situations with villains most of the time, right?
They can be heartbreaking situations all around.
They can also be heartwarming situations when family is able to be reunited or a child is adopted by a loving family. So we see it all. But having that close experience within my family definitely continues to ground me in that perspective as I continue to work in this field.
Thank you for sharing that powerful experience.
And I have no doubt that that really helps you deliver all the services you do with a level of empathy that's hard to be met.
So thank you for doing that.
In a previous conversation, Leigh Anne, you shared that gardening is your go-to on wind.
It's how you de-stress from all the things we've been talking about.
So I've got two questions for you.
Flowers or vegetables?
And secondly, how did you decide that gardening would be the right choice for you?
It's not just like buying a pair of gym shoes and going for a run or a walk,
or, I don't know, buying a coffee grinder and saying,
I'm going to enjoy a Saturday morning coffee as my unwind.
Talk to us about gardening.
Well, first of all, I don't know flowers.
Maybe someday.
But vegetables and houseplants are my jam right now.
But it's funny.
You say it's different than making a choice to buy sneakers and go for a run,
but it kind of wasn't for me.
You know, it's funny, maybe like five years ago,
I would have told you that somebody gifting me a plant
felt like a burden and would make me start sweating.
I feel that.
I feel that.
I feel that.
But weirdly, it was that reaction that made me decide
to like lean in and conquer what was kind of a little bit
of a fear of plants at the time.
You know, I'm definitely not someone that feels like
I was born with a green thumb, but I've learned a lot.
over the last number of years through kind of trial and error. And I love my little garden where I'm
growing up a whole bunch of vegetables, tomatoes and peppers and eggplants and snap beans and
cucumbers and a whole bunch of herbs. And we do make it a family affair because my kids want to
help also and magically are so much more willing to try new veggies that come from the garden than
ones that come home from the grocery store. So there are a lot of wins and it's brought a lot of
benefits to my household. And then I just love that connection with the dirt and like, you know,
spending time outside. I'm an outdoorsy person. So being in the office all day sometimes makes me a
little bit stir crazy. And I like to get that outside time as much as possible.
Are you always from Chester County or did you hail from somewhere else? I'm wondering if,
you know, if a particular type of vegetables are, you know, align well with where you are right now.
Oh, interesting. So I'm from Central PA initially, and then I went to Pitt, University of Pittsburgh, for school and spent time in Western PA, and now I'm back here.
So, frankly, my vegetable choices are driven by what people in my household like to eat and what I think they will eat.
So there are things that I would dabble a little bit more if I had confidence that things would get eaten.
But, you know, my kids, my daughter made me plant cucumbers again this year because she's a huge cucumber fan, even though those things take over like crazy cucumber vines.
But I can't get out of it.
So I love cucumbers.
So I endorse that product.
That's for sure.
Tell us about a local business or nonprofit that more folks should know about.
So I'm thrilled by this question and want to take the opportunity to talk about TLC Rescue.
If listeners aren't familiar, TLC stands for To Love a Canine, and they are a Chester County-based and volunteer-run dog rescue that's helped more than 8,000 abandoned and stray dogs find safe homes.
But the reason I want to highlight them today is because they absolutely exemplify being a good and collaborative community member and partner.
They host a whole bunch of educational programming and mental health initiatives where they, you know, bring puppies to different community events and things like that.
And we have so many points of overlap with them as an organization because several members of our staff also volunteer with TLC and have fostered puppies.
And TLC has supported CASA by bringing puppy kissing booths to our events.
They host a puppy bowl every year during the Super Bowl, and they offered advertising to CASA to highlight us.
They've highlighted us in their newsletters and e-blasts, and they also do a holiday gift drive for our CASA kids every year.
So they are really an amazing community partner and a reminder that advocacy takes all kinds of forms,
whether it's helping a child to find stability or helping a dog find a forever home.
But we're all working out there together to invest in that community.
And we're honoring TLC this year at our annual CASA gala in November.
So I'm thrilled to have this opportunity to sing their praises and say a few words about them here.
They sure sound like a great organization.
And we'll be sure to link to their website over on the show notes page on our website at startlocal.co.
You've talked about how you're always looking for new volunteers.
But I wonder also if you're hiring.
Viscasa hiring. And can you walk us through again a little bit, if you want to throw in about
volunteers, how folks can learn more about it? It sounds like it's a big commitment, but for the
right person, that it's a real opportunity to make a considerable contribution. So hiring and
volunteers, please. Sure. So to start with hiring, we are hiring. We have one open position right now
that anyone interested in learning more about can find posted on our website.
We are hiring an outreach and training coordinator.
So it relates to your question about finding volunteers
because it is a full-time position
that's dedicated to increasing public awareness about CASA,
recruiting new volunteers, training,
screening new volunteers,
and retaining and engaging current volunteers.
So it's a super important role
given the nature of our work.
And we're really hopeful to find the right person
who brings the needed skills to the table.
And then, like you said,
we are absolutely always recruiting for new volunteers.
We run our training classes four to five times a year and vary the locations and the times and the days to hopefully match everybody's schedules.
But I would encourage anyone who's interested in learning more about what the volunteer role entails, you can visit our website and sign up for an information session right there to learn more about kind of the ins and outs of what it takes.
And what is your website for the record?
You can go to chescocasa.org, delcocasa.org.
They take you to the same spot.
Perfect.
Thank you.
How can the community support CASA in addition to volunteering and encouraging other folks to volunteer?
Yeah, so the best ways to support our work, obviously, are becoming a CASA volunteer or just really sharing the work that we do with other people who might be interested.
So, you know, we don't, as a small nonprofit, we don't have a giant marketing budget.
So we rely a lot on word of mouth.
I'm grateful to be here on this podcast to have that opportunity to share about the work
that we do too.
So just really spreading the word and making sure that people know that we're out there
and they can find us if they're interested in being a volunteer.
We also really greatly appreciate monetary and non-monetary donations to support our work.
So folks can make a donation on our website if they are so inclined, or they can contact
to us about organizing a drive at their workplace or community or school or house of worship.
We regularly solicit donations of hygiene supplies and duffel bags, school supplies,
coats and winter gear, holiday gifts, books, other items that our kids need. So we really
appreciate partnerships with members of the community who are willing to do some of those
drives and make those donations of concrete items that our kids use.
Leigh Anne McKelvey, Executive Director of CASA of Delaware and Chester Counties.
Aside from your website, where can listeners connect with you to learn more about CASA?
Do you have any social media channels or anything like that you maintain?
Yeah, so people can also find us on Facebook, on LinkedIn, and on Instagram.
Leigh Anne, thank you so much for taking all the time to chat with us today.
Really enjoyed learning about the work that you're doing, that your volunteers are doing,
and how you're helping so many children
through a really, really, really tough journey.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's been real fun.
We're grateful for your time today, Leigh Anne.
And thank you also to my co-host, Liam Dempsey.
I'm Eric Gudmundson.
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