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What I believe is common sense, I'm learning is not that common. The public has been left out of so many conversations on community issues, and as a publicly elected official, I want to change this. I want to invite my community in a new space, where you can listen in behind the scenes to the discussions that lead to the decisions that are impacting our lives. In a podcast I named Common Sense, I'm inviting the whole world to see these conversations happening in real time! Subscribe to listen in on these conversations!
What I believe is common sense. I'm learning it's not that common.
It's tradition at the Sedgwick County Commission that the chairman gives out an annual
award to an individual or an organization that does extraordinary
work in our community. At the end of 2024, I chose
to give the Chairman's award to an organization called Stand Together.
It's a philanthropic community doing incredible work all across the
country, but is especially active right here at home with some of our
biggest, most complex challenges. I invited the Wichita director of
operations to sit down and talk about numerous topics and
why Wichita has become ground zero for some rather
sizable community led investments. Sustainable progress
requires bottom up grassroots solutions. And I'm excited
to talk through all that's happening right here at home. I hope you
enjoy my conversation with Stand Together's own Joe Woodward.
Joe Woodward from Stand Together. Welcome man. I'm glad you're joining today.
Great to be with you. Appreciate it. I want to tell a story. I love
to tell the story. You've heard me tell this story. Does it involve an apple?
It does involve an apple. You heard me say this, but this is
indicative of where we've been the last couple of years and my relationship
with you, but also my relationship with
Stand Together. And full disclosure, I gave Stand
Together the Chairman's award from the Sedgwick County Commission in
2024 for all the work you guys are doing in our community, which we're going
to talk a lot about here shortly. But this story sets it up.
Two years ago, I get a call from you and you knew that I'd been
active in the foster care space and advocating for these kids and these families. You
said, hey, I'm flying someone into town. I've rented a room at a
coffee shop. Can you spend about an hour and let's just walk us through foster
care and the challenges and things. And I said, yeah, absolutely right. Jump at that
opportunity. I walk in this room, we say the pleasantries and
who. I cannot remember what her name was, but she was right to business.
And she says, hey, tell me what you know about foster care in
Wichita. And that was like a softball, you know, here's what's going on, here's the
data, here's that. And she said something. You know where I'm going with this.
She said something that I think changed the landscape of what we're doing right now
and set up. And she said one word or one phrase? She said,
that sounds great. What if we want to take a bigger bite of this apple
and for the next hour and a half, you went to a whiteboard and we
whiteboarded ideas and thoughts and continuum of care and all of it.
It was incredible. You remember this meeting? I do. What came of that meeting?
Yeah. Well, it's really a great example of what Stand Together is about
more broadly, which is that taking a bigger bite out of
the apple. It's, you know, oftentimes when people see these big
problems, they typically think that big problems require big
solutions. Expert driven, whether it's DC or Topeka or
your office, like Ryan, fix these problems for us. But one of the things that
Stand Together believes is the best change happens bottom up. It
can't be planned out. It's not an operational issue. Our friends over at
Kansas Leadership Center, these are not technical challenges, technical
problems, they're adaptive challenges. And so from that,
from that conversation, I think we identified some gaps. We identified like
where should we focus our energy? Which was moving the faith community from a child
welfare mindset. Oh, these poor kids. To a child and
family well being mindset, which is how do we support families,
how do we go bottom up in the biggest sense. And I think it really
sparked a. Movement that was a spark. And we'll talk a little bit more about
that here in just a little bit. But because I want people to understand what's
going on in the foster care community. I want people to understand who is
Stand Together, what are they doing, where does it come from. But before we get
there, I want people to know you, you're my friend. You're involved
in a lot of different spaces. Are you a Wichita native? Give us a couple
minutes. Tell us exactly who you are. I've lived the Wichita version of the
American dream, actually. Fourth generation in my family to graduate from
Wichita State. My great-grandmother went there when it was Fairmount
College, my grandpa, it was all different names. It was Wichita University,
then The Wichita State University when my dad went there, and then just WSU when
I was there. So Wichita kid, born and raised,
very involved in my church, involved in school, ran track.
And then pretty early on I learned that this idea didn't have
language for at the time, but this idea of entrepreneurship, solving problems,
win-win situations. I just loved starting new things. And well,
we say this, why are our actions here?
Where's the gap between vision and reality? I just kind of fell in love with
attacking that gap between vision and reality. And it's
led me some interesting places. Yeah, well, we're right out of college. Yeah.
Wichita State grad. What did you do right out of college. And how'd you get
to the point now where you're the, I guess the community director or
regional director for Stand Together, based out of Wichita. So what
was the gap in between? What led you to this point? Yeah, so I started
from Wichita State. I had a recruiter from Koch Industries
come to my class and say, hey, Koch is the land of opportunity
and we're looking for principled people who will come in and, you know,
play center field for a while. You might not love your first job, but get
in, contribute, and then we're going to help you find your right fit.
And 15 years later, I can say I really experienced that. So I started in
accounting and finance, did that for three years, and I moved over to college
recruiting, ran the internship program for a couple of years,
which was just a blast. And it was really this sort of deep
dive into the philosophies of principle based management. Right. And
understanding. You know, when I was, when I was young, I thought, hey, the way
to change the world is being a pastor or a missionary or
something like that, which is amazing. And people should totally do that. But understanding
the way that, like ordinary business is a part of God's work in this
world. I learned that at church. I saw that at Koch, and I've been
there ever since. Yeah, it's a fallacy to believe that ministry only happens and
impact only happens for behind a pulpit. Yeah. And I certainly. That's not the history
of the church. Certainly not the history of the first 300 years of the movement
of Christianity. And I've said this frequently, and we talk about this a lot in
my private businesses. That this is ministry in many regards is that
we are doing ministry. We are serving people, and we should steward this.
Our job, our occupation, our vocation. We should steward it like ministry.
So you have the same background, you have the same worldview, and. And you're doing
it now in a bigger way. Well, it was a blast. 10 years at Koch
and then 5 years at Stand Together now. And seeing those. Those principles of
creating value in business applied to creating value in the social sector
has been a blast. Okay, let's talk Stand Together. Yeah. Because that is really the
heart of what I want to try to take out today. I want so badly.
And you guys are kind of stealthy. I always want to draw it out and
tell the world what you're doing and tell this community
all that you're doing, because I'm grateful the work Stand Together is doing now. So
I want to be able to tell this story in a bigger way. And you
guys, you're so humble in so many ways, and you really play behind the scenes
in so many ways as connectors and conduit. But today, I want people to
understand all that's going on because I'm really proud of some things that are going
on in this community right now. What is Stand Together? What do
you do? Where does it come from? Give us the skinny. Yeah. Well, one
of the reasons you don't see our name a lot is because it's not. It's
not about us. We have the privilege of partnering with some of the best social
entrepreneurs in the country. A lot of them are right here in Wichita.
Former gang leaders who are rebuilding their neighborhoods,
educators who are doing amazing things, business leaders like
yourself who are taking their business expertise and applying it to solve
social problems. So the history of Stand Together is founded by Charles
Koch. Three or four hundred of the most successful business leaders in the country
helped form it. Over 2 million people employed by these
businesses. And it's evolved into a group that includes NFL
athletes and music musicians and philanthropists. And social
entrepreneurs focus on tackling the country's biggest
challenges. And what's interesting is, like, you can look at big challenges
like education and healthcare and generational poverty and all
these things, and you see, well, gosh,
there's this pull between principled approach and
a pragmatic approach. And we think those two can come together because we
really believe what's right also is what works, works, especially over
time. Yeah. I've seen these charts that I've been in several meetings
now, and community meetings. You talk about these principles that you
advocate for and principle based management. And we've always heard, I used to
hear, when I was early in my entrepreneurial career about market based management.
Yeah. And then it's evolved or maybe connected somehow to principle based management.
Talk. What does that mean exactly? And how does that fit what you're trying to
accomplish through Stand Together? Yeah. So let's, let's start big. All right, let's start big.
So it really, like these principles are articulated in the Declaration
of Independence. So every other nation on earth is like,
founded based on like culture and
ethnicity and like people groups. America was
founded on an idea, that idea of universal
human dignity. Right. So you see human dignity called
out in the, in the Declaration, you see freedom and
opportunity and all the rest. And those are those principles. But what's
fun about that is when we internalize those,
applying those in business and personal life and philanthropy, you see how
those principles are cross sector or cross industry in
their nature. I'll give you a quick example. So human
dignity understands that people have value and they have
choice. Right. So honoring their choice in a
business, you have to honor their dignity because if they don't
voluntarily transact with you, you, you will go out of business.
Applying that in the same way in the nonprofit world is a little different though
right? So your customers actually don't have the power to put you out of business.
Only your donors do. So a principled approach to philanthropy is
saying, actually we're here to create value for our customers. How do we
measure success based on what the customer says
is valuable to them? This idea of subjective value.
And so we call it customer first measurement. In the
nonprofit world, we call it principle based management, which is how to run your
organization based on these principles. So. So across the, across the
sector, those same principles apply to public policy
as well. So all over the place. Well, and you have become
a walking, talking machine of these
principles. And in every meeting that we're in, the community meetings,
nonprofit meetings, whether it's on poverty or education or foster
care, on and on and on housing, which we're talking about frequently as of
late, these principles start to manifest and you start
to weave these things through to uplift these social entrepreneurs that you're
trying to empower to make these changes. And what I continue to say
is, particularly with Stand Together, is they have put and they have
rallied resources and relationships and other
business philanthropic individuals from across the country
into saying there is a better way to solve these problems, that government isn't the
solution for all these problems. It is very much congenial with
my worldview in regards to, no, we've got to leverage community.
We've got to empower community to solve some of these really hard
and complex issues. So, yeah, I'm grateful. I'm grateful for the investment. I'm
grateful that they're here in Wichita, Kansas, and that Stand Together is.
And I wouldn't say this is ground zero in as much as there seems to
be a lot of movement with Stand Together right here at home. Yeah. I mean,
it's sort of in the name. Right. So one is we're going to take a
stand. Right. So we believe in these principles. So we're going to take a
stand on these principles, but we're not going to do it alone. We're going to
do it together. And I love your example of Oklahoma City and
Bentonville and places like that. What we need to be
careful of is this idea of like Some billionaire
is going to come down and save us. Right. That's not anybody's mindset.
In the same way, we don't need these big top down solutions. The reason why
staying together is successful is because they recognize that's actually
the people of Wichita, the people of our country, those are going
to be the heroes of this story. And it's just an honor for us to
support these folks. I'll give you a great example. So you
know, gang violence is one of those where you would think that
that is a. Okay, violence is a big problem. There was something like, I don't
know, 2500 cars stolen last year in Wichita. You know, our
crime rates top 1%. I had a dear friend of a friend who actually
spent several nights living in our home who was gunned down because of
gun violence just a few weeks ago. So it's, it hits close to home.
And a lot of people would say, well, this is an issue for you to
solve. Or Chief Sullivan or Mayor Wu, it is a policing
or government issue. Or others would say, hey, you know, we
just need to educate people more. Whatever it is, some expert driven deal.
But we found great success investing in groups like Hope for the Hood. Yes.
Benny Santibanez, all of his guys. And he's coming on this
podcast. Is he really? I love it. I mean those are the guys who have
and they are like the real experts. Like Benny literally puts
his life on the line and his solution to crime is actually
empowerment. You know, typically when people are doing well,
they're less likely to commit crimes. And so Benny's walking with
them, doing incredible people development. The way he builds his team is not some
big complex org chart. He brings in other former gang leaders who have
been reformed, whose lives are changed. He hires them part time and, and
they're just fishing people in. That's great. Used to be he would be called the
plug when he was in the game. So he'd be connecting people to resources. That's
exactly what he's doing now. Okay. So yes, and hope and
Benny will be on and we're gonna talk to the story. Cause his story is
radical, man. And the things they're doing are radical in this community right now.
But talk me through what a relationship looks like with some of these
partner entrepreneurs and partner organizations. So you identify
what a category violence or poverty and then
you go in and find organizations or how does this work to where you're now
partnering and helping and resourcing and assisting and
uplifting someone like Benny in Hope for the Hood. Yeah, so it starts with
understanding what are the biggest challenges. So a combination of what are our
biggest challenges, what are the biggest assets our community has, and then where
areas that stand together can contribute. So you've got the sweet spot of
needs, local resources, and the national
capability. Right. So in this situation, we looked at things like
foster care, neighborhood poverty, addiction,
things like that. So we set out and our belief is that it's, it's a
threefold formula. Transformation happens first with
mindset, second with relationships, and third with
tools. So mindset, learn that from Dr. William Polite
relationships, the power of relationships, and then
tools, innovative tools that people can use to build a life.
Not resources that we just consume or services we consume, but tools to grow.
So we look at that framework and we say, all right, who are those local
leaders who are in that relationship business? They're world
class at this part. And so an example of that would be Hope for the
Hood. Others are organizations like the Phoenix, who take a relationship
based approach to addiction. Recovery, sober living, fitness. It's incredible,
100%. And then we look at saying, okay, cool. So people
are, their mindset is transforming. They're in healthy community,
but they still need a job. They still need affordable housing, they still need access
to fresh and healthy food, they still need transportation. So then we start looking through,
well, who are the innovators who are specializing in these human
essential tools? So we've made investments in groups like Drive and
Thrive, which is sort of like Habitat for Humanity for cars. Yeah. So
people earn a donated vehicle, but then we connect them with
relationship hubs like Hope for the Hood. So there's been great stories of
a, of a young lady who went through a program at Wichita State's business
school, an amazing program there she was being mentored through Hope for
the Hood. She got a car through Drive and Thrive. She got a great job
with one of the largest employers in the city. Wow. So you see this ecosystem
come together. So we're just trying to listen to folks on the ground
fill holes in the ecosystem. And then a lot of those are. We're able to
bring the national capabilities here, here, to which. Okay, two points there. I
asked two questions. Let me the second question first.
We'll talk about the issues and the categories that you're really trying to work in
right now. But tell us a little bit about some of these local organizations you're
working with. I know several and several of these entrepreneurs. Just
a short list. Who are some of the people that you guys are working with
closely and trying to empower here locally? Yeah. So one of my
favorites is a group called Hope CDC. Dr. Kevass. Dr.
Reverend Kevass Harding. Yeah. We actually met Kevass through one of
our neighborhood leaders that we worked with, Dr. William Pollite, who we have just. We
mourn his loss so often, like a big time leader, big
time hero, but he was a leader of leaders. And so there's people filling his
shoes, doing great things. So we meet Kevass through Dr.
Polite, another connection through Kansas Health Foundation. Kansas Health
Foundation is doing some incredible. Aren't they doing great? Oh, amazing
stuff. Long term investments in some of these entrepreneurs. So they made a
10 year commitment to Kevass Harding and Hope
CDC. Yeah. And so we were able to come in and say, okay, hey, you've
got a Runway. How do we help you accelerate your vision? So right now he's
doing a couple of homes per year. And we partnered up with one of, one
of the business leaders in Stand Together and said, hey, what's your
big vision, Kevin? He's like, man, I want to do, you know, dozens, if not
hundreds of homes per year. And so we say, all right, you got the vision,
you've got the local relationships. How can we bring some
complementary capabilities in to help you scale up? Yeah. And so there's
some philanthropic capital that we're able to contribute and then actually some social
impact for profit capital. Right. That one of our partners is
contributing. And so you see this world come together. Yeah. So you talk about Benny,
you talk about. That's one example, Benny. Hope in the hood. You've got Dr.
Harding. What else? There's others out there. Yeah. Care portals. Care
portal is doing amazing work. Absolutely. One of my favorites is Kyle Ellison.
Yeah. I met him when he was leading Heroes Academy. And
as I got to know Kyle, first of all, pure entrepreneur. Yes. He
is super creative, principled guy, like, amazing.
And he was talking about starting a school. And I knew that there
were some conversations with Sal Khan about bringing Khan Academy to
Wichita, first place outside of California. That really, Sal Khan
is the most impactful educator probably in the history of the
world. Certainly the most impactful educator
living today. And he says, hey, I want to, I want to expand to Wichita,
but I need a school leader who really gets
unconventional, innovative, individualized education. So I'm
hearing Kyle's vision for a school, I'm hearing Sal Khan's vision for school.
It's like, man, these, these two things come together in a really impactful way. And
now he's running Khan Lab school inside the learning lab. Yeah. And so there's lots
of stories state. University, or I'm sorry, USD 259. They've got
presence over there too, collaborating multiple organizations. So.
Absolutely. It's incredible. What about Ben French? Yeah. Tell me a little bit about you
guys still working with Ben French. I love Ben French. I talked to him just
a couple days ago. Yeah. So really the work that Shepherd's Way is doing is
a fantastic example. So they see a big time problem.
So when you, if you're a young adult with a disability,
so let's say autism, for example, age 21, you age out
of services. So you've gone through all the, all the services for children.
And then there is, there's a public
solution per se, where you have housing and long
term support. There's a waiting list of like 4,000 people.
You're never going to get to the top of that list. And so what they
said is, all right, so there's a, there's a problem here. We're going to innovate
a private solution here. And what we love about it is it's actually 10
times less expensive than the public option. Right. And 10
times more effective. This is not charity. We're going to keep you alive until you
die. This is a, hey, you're a human being with dignity.
All these young people are working, all of them are engaged in
healthy community. And it's just this beautiful idea of this ecosystem
applied to a specific population. I mean, they are one of the favorite
Nonprofits in the city. I know, one of my favorites, and. Ben French is
that only because he's a baseball guy, though. He's an old baseball guy, but I
love his heart, man. And you know what's so interesting? When I heard Stand Together
was getting involved with Shepherd's Way, the synergy in
principles is. Here you have Ben French saying, I
see individuals with developmental disabilities and they have impact, they have
opportunity. This community, we just got to get them in a space to where we
can help them realize their impact. Meanwhile, we have Stand Together
saying, we believe in the dignity of the individual, that we can maximize outputs
when we maximize the growth of the individual and give them structure and help them.
And it was just a perfect marriage. I know these organizations. I know there
are several organizations. What I want the public to hear and one of the
reasons why I gave Stand Together the Chairman's Award. Thank you, by the way, Ryan.
But why I'm so grateful for you and your staff and
this investment that's happening in the city is there is real movement happening.
There is real. This isn't broken down on party lines or Party,
ideology, politics has nothing to do with any of these things. Government
is very rarely even in the room. I'm only in the room
because I invite myself to hear what's going on. But you're saying no.
If we want to change what's happening in the trajectory, this
painful trajectory in so many areas in this city and in this community,
we have to empower the community. So I'm grateful
and that the leadership is there and this is happening. Why Wichita?
Yeah, like why? Why Wichita? Why is there so much energy
with Stand together right now for Wichita, Kansas? Yeah. Yeah. Well,
you know, changing the country is a big, big task. And Mr.
Koch is Mr. Big. He's always thinking big. And so Stand Together is a national
strategy. All 50 states, hundreds of people we, we're supporting.
But we really believe that cities have an opportunity to show the country
a better way. And what's really unique about Wichita is,
you know, how we're the test market for a lot of restaurant concepts. Our
demographics are, you know, are right on trend with the country.
So we're a great test market. So why not be a great test market
for social change? Right. But not only is are like the demographics
online, but Wichita has an entrepreneurial
culture that I think can go toe to toe with any
city. This idea of, hey, we're going to solve problems in new and
different ways, but we're not going to be sort of this rugged
individualism, like we're going to do things ourselves. But there is a spirit of partnership.
And to your point, it's across ideology. Yeah. You walk into a
room and you've got people who vote Democrat, Republican,
Libertarian, everything in between. And they say, hey, we we care about
our neighbors and we care about this issue, and we all have a role to
play. And so we really believe that Wichita could be a model for the
American dream. That's good, man. What role does government have in this? Yeah, I mean,
we talked specifically about the foster care challenges that we have and some of these
areas and housing and health care and poverty. And
it's fair to say government has to have some sort of role in some of
these things. Right. Am I interpreting that correctly? Yeah, but what role and who
takes the lead here is government? Is it conduit? Is it catalyst? Should we
just stay out of the way and say, hey, you guys handle all these things?
Like, what is the role of government in a role like someone like me, a
county commissioner, that cares deeply about these things? What's our role? Yeah,
I mean, the role of government is really important. And if we had 45
minutes and a bunch of economists here, we could really go deep in this. But
just this understanding of like again, back to the Declaration of
Independence. Rights are not given to us by government,
they are secured by government. So this idea of
the work you're doing in the city, like running the fire department, running all
the EMS and the emergency response and the public safety,
we as humans, we have a right to our self and our
property and our freedom. And so government has a really important role in
preserving framework for that freedom.
But we see that violated all the time. And this is where, this is where
the tension comes in is you see big
problems and the human response is to exercise
power and control over people versus empowering
people from the bottom up. So I'll give you an example. So you see kids
who are living in poverty and the benevolent people out
there say, well, I think that every kid
deserves their own bed in an air conditioned home
with fresh and healthy food and all the rest, which is great, I'm all for
that, I want that for all kids too. But then you start to legislate
that and there are actually states and there are cities where you can actually
remove a child from their home and put them into foster care because of
some of these just poverty related things. And we view
that as an individual liberty issue. And like,
you know, we, we don't want the government to be coming in and taking people's
kids away. And so it's one of those issues where you actually see a fair
amount of agreement with the left and the right. So you see the folks on
the right would be for small government. The people on the left might say, hey,
look at this and look at the adverse impact based on race.
Our view is that oftentimes government actually erects barriers
and if we can just get out of the way and allow people and
communities to solve problems, we'd all be a lot better.
That's a great segue. Let's talk about some of these issues. Let's start with foster
care because this is where you and I have really found our relationship is
under this umbrella of foster care. You had made mention that
many times poverty is a connecting link.
As you begin to look at the system and children that are placed or
removed from the home into out of home placements. I don't
have the numbers off the top of my head at this point in time, but
I believe that 40% of these children are being removed because of issues that can
have a connecting link to poverty. Now let me say this And I
owe this to our district attorney and I owe this to the
courts and those that are working sync cases is this is a very,
very tedious, complex issue. Because if you err and
a child is harmed, if you err because you want to try to keep
children in the home, and when we know there's violence or know there's some
sort of issue there, that's dangerous
and the first goal, and there will be times where government does have
to step in and remove a child from the home, for the child's safety. That's
right. But I think many people that work in this space, this
is certainly my opinion. I believe it's your opinion too. Is the goal should
be to be more preventative instead of reactive
in foster care. Let's try to find ways, particularly with that
40% number that is being removed because of issues
that can be related to poverty in some regards. Are there ways to be
more preventative and get supports where they need to be from the community so that
children never have to enter the system to begin with, that we can
keep families together to begin with? Because when they enter the system,
the trauma is significant. 70% of these kids will end up touching the criminal
justice system. Only 45% will graduate high school. We have
data that suggests that one in four, when they do age out of the system,
if they move through the entire system, will end up homeless within two years. I
mean, it is significant amount of trauma that happens when a child has to
enter care. But if we can keep families together, get the
resources where they need to be in some of these cases, not all in some
of these cases, then we can keep families together. Am I right?
Am I wrong? Is that your guys? You are so right. You are so right.
And let's, let's. Think, let's think kind of high level here quickly.
What you're talking about is getting upstream. I love the way Ed O' Malley talks
about this. So first of all, he's got a big vision for Kansas to lead
the nation, which would be amazing. We've got some similar
ambitions for Wichita to be a model for economic mobility.
So Harvard ranks cities every 10 years. If you're born poor, how likely
are you to stay poor? So there's a bunch of interesting data I can tell
you later where Wichita ranks. But this, this idea of to solve
big issues like homelessness. Well, we have to think, okay, 50%
of the homeless spent time in foster care. So you move upstream
to foster care. You look at foster care to your point, it's something like 28%
of kids in foster care are there because of abuse, which is
100% the role of government. You got to come in with guns, protect the kids.
That's right. Super important. The problem is, you know, 75%
of children or so are not there because of abuse, which
overloads the system and they're not able to provide first class
care to the people who really need it. And to your point, there is a
fine line between extreme neglect and
abuse. And so those are the judgment calls that people way smarter than me will
have to make sure. But what we can all agree on, to your point, is
moving upstream to prevent this stuff. Yeah. Well, if you begin to look at what
just a couple numbers moving a couple numbers in the right direction, what it
does for a community when you. The data I just shared, about 70% touch the
criminal justice system. And this is a cost, not just
a financial cost to a community. That is really not sustainable in my view, but
it's a moral cost that I don't. I think we're too good for this. We're
looking at roughly 1400 kids throughout Sedgwick county right now. Are in the foster care
system, I think we only have 650 or so homes. There's
dashboards now that we can look at that number directly. We'll talk about that.
But this is really, in my view, a moral issue. And it's
an issue that in my view, frankly, Joe, falls squarely at
the feet of the church is the faith communities have a real significant role
to play here. We talked about this. Something was birthed from
that very premise. Tell us a little bit about what that was. Yeah. So
again, you see individuals and families suffering. And so if you're
not for a coercive, top down intervention, well, we can't
just let these folks suffer in silence. And that's really the power of healthy
communities. These intermediary institutions,
neighborhoods, churches, recovery groups,
businesses, family and friends. Like the social fabric of life
hurt. Exactly. So how do we equip and mobilize that
social fabric to solve big problems? So you mentioned local
churches. This is a very motivated, really
just army of caring people in our cities.
So there are actually more local churches in America than kids in foster care,
more local churches. But if you, if you actually move upstream and you think about
actually our target needs to be families and how do we strengthen families to
prevent homelessness? The focus. Exactly. Then the numbers get even
more manageable. In wichita, there are
700 mothers whose children have been removed from their
homes. And there are 350 to 400 churches, so you can do that
math. And this is where it gets back to that kind of entrepreneurial
mindset. So Care for Every family was birthed to say, hey, we want
to inform the church. Most people don't understand what's going on when
they think foster care. They think foster care. Oh, we need more foster families.
But actually, if we think holistically, it's like, no, actually, we need. We need
grandmas who will mentor young moms. We need
business people who will meet physical needs like car
seats and diapers and cribs through
Care Portal. We need folks like my wife, who's the
sweetest, and she, I've sort of
indoctrinated her a little bit. We're not ready to sign up for
foster care forever, but we do sort of junior varsity foster care, which is
called Safe Families for Children. Yes. So when parents say, hey, I'm in trouble,
I don't really want to call the government right now because I know what happens
when I do that. But I'm going to call and call my teacher. I'm going
to call neighborhood leader. And then they get connected with
Safe Families for Children, who provides voluntary, free,
temporary child care. So we'll have kids stay with us for a week or
for a month or a couple of months. And that provides an opportunity to really
encourage the parents along this journey. Yeah. And you're creating not just
organizations like Care for Every Family Network and Safe
Families. Not only are you partnering with these organizations, you're making a safe space where
someone, a mother, a single mother that needs help, that is afraid to make a
call because she's afraid a case is going to get opened up and she's going
to lose her kids, that there are opportunities that she can go and receive some
respite and receive some help. Let me ask another question. Yeah. The
government's agent in foster care is DCF, the Department of Children
and Families. How are you being received with DCF? Well, so we
always look for partners who share vision and values
and bring complementary capabilities. And we have a real gift
here in Wichita with Dee Nighswonger. She believes
in a limited and effective role of the state
in foster care. And she's actually inviting, hey, community leaders, help
us support these families. And so she's. She's inviting people in,
and there is still more work to be done. So DCF is saying, hey, we're
going to collaborate. We're going to partner. They've been phenomenal. I was
this morning, I was talking with Reverend Bishop Martin from Possum
Trot, Texas. And I'm praying for a possum
trot like moment in Wichita where they didn't say
how many can we take? They said, how
many need a place? And they ended up this small, little
impoverished church in the woods of East Texas, took
every foster care kid within 200 miles, adopted a ton
of these kids. And so it's a similar thing. I could imagine as an
entrepreneur, there's some times when you run the math and the math just
doesn't match. And so what do you do then? Well, some would
say, hey, we need to pray and we need to ask God for supernatural
intervention. As a Christian, that's always my first move. But also
we need to innovate. We need to say, okay, well, our approach so far,
it's just not working. What can we do more of? It's sort of the old
joke in the church where it's like you got to pass through the offering plate
again. So imagine, Ryan, imagine, you know,
one church in East Texas. Imagine 10 churches in Witcha
or 50 churches in Wichita. The 80, 20 rule saying like, hey,
we're going to make sure every kid who's wanting to be adopted has a home.
And every single parent who's experiencing homelessness and his kids are
in foster care, we're going to make sure they have a home. Every family that's
struggling with addiction, we're going to set them up with the supportive ecosystem to
help them, help them thrive. Like, you could see a world where the, where
the community says yes and can actually solve this
problem. How biblical. Funny how that works, isn't it? The Christians in the
churches should be called to the orphan and the widow and the poor. We should
be called to those. And I'm grateful that you are involved in these spaces and
you're helping to mobilize the faith community in these regards. And you're not, let
me say this, Joe, is that Stand Together is not a faith based organization.
Koch certainly is not a faith based organization. Mighty stretch. But you're willing to
partner with anybody and everybody that
you can collaborate with and bring resources to that sees
a need and is willing to adapt to these principles to meet this need.
It's unique. I'm watching you guys partner with all kinds of different
organizations and people to meet these needs. So I appreciate that. Yeah, thank you.
Foster care is unique. It's a challenge. I'm very encouraged about where we're at and
where we're heading. Let's talk housing. Yeah. What are you guys doing in housing? This
is a need. You obviously identified this as a need who you
partner with and what are you guys working on? Yeah, well, as you think about
sort of the root causes of a lot of these things, the things
that we care about most are oftentimes the highest
regulated and the least innovative in the world. So you think about
education, super important, health care, super important, housing,
super important, super regulated, which
stifles innovation. And so housing is a great example of that.
And so across the country we see this huge crisis and we always
come at it from a. All right, so if we took a, if we
took an approach that said, all right, this is a technical
problem, right? This is a. How do we get more vouchers into the
hands of people who need them, right? Well, the problem
is there's still not enough supply, right? And so we got to go to the
root and we got to say, all right, well there's an innovation problem here again.
And so how do we have new and different types of housing
concepts? There's, There's a group that we partner with a for profit business who's doing
amazing things in social impact called Pad Split and they're actually
taking multifamily homes and repurposing them for.
Well, sorry, they're taking single family homes and repurposing them for
single families here in Wichita. As we look
at the landscape, there's sort of three pieces here. One is the
connection to the ecosystem. So folks like Kevass Harding who are doing
housing, but they're doing more than housing, connecting people to workforce and all the right.
So there's, there's the relationship side and ecosystem side. There is the
innovation side. So we've got folks who are signing up to put tiny
homes in their backyard, right? Who are, who are solving the community issue
and the housing issue one person at a time. Pause for a second because
this is something that you see across the country that's not as common here. They're
called accessory dwelling units, ADUs. And what I'm working on after
identifying this need and being brought to the attention, what you guys are working on
so government can work together with you in some regards is we've got to make
some adjustments to our zoning laws and regulations and land use to say
no accessory dwelling units should be done by right. You shouldn't have to come get
a conditional use permit from your city council. Your which or your Sedgwick County
Commission is. They should be by right, so we can help impact
the amount of housing supply and safe housing supply we have in this community. So
that's just one example that we're working on right now together to make these things
by rights. Yeah. Well, it's a great point, though. You talk about the role of
government. So often we can use the, the function of
government as a protectionist force to say, like, hey, I've got my nice
neighborhood. I don't want anybody to mess it up. Yeah. So I'm going to put
a bunch of regulations. And what does that do for the person who's climbing up
the economic ladder? Well, it makes it pretty hard on them. And so it's a
freedom issue, it's a liberty issue, it's an empowerment issue, it's a poverty issue. And
so thanks for being a great, great partner. Yeah. There's just, we have to identify
first the need. Right. And you said something in foster care,
we see it in housing. And I want to talk about the Lead Wichita dashboard
because we can't make a case for intervention and for action
and rally a community unless we first are aware of the challenge.
So you and Lead Wichita have had conversations, and there's a dashboard that
been launched. Tell me a little bit about that dashboard. Yeah, it's, it's amazing. So
you talk about sort of this invisible movement that, that, that's happening. Yeah. And we're
a small part of. It's way bigger than us. So it's. I pause.
Listen. Thank you. You're being very humble right now, but I want you
to know, and the reason why I wanted you in this seat to talk about
what you're doing in your team and stand together is so you guys are a
big catalyst. A lot of these things. You, you are bringing resources, you are
bringing a, a, a principled, base approach.
You're doing a lot. So, yes, you're empowering a lot of entrepreneurs and they're in,
they're in the trenches doing the work. But I will say, you don't have to
say a word. You guys are doing a lot to help initiate a lot of
these things. So I am grateful. Well, thank you, Ryan. Thank you. So you think
about, like, these, these movements happening. So I remember three or four
years ago, we're going to Minneapolis with Damon Young when he was leading the
Chamber of Commerce. Right. And one of the big things that came out of that
was the need for dashboards to hold people accountable and elevate problems and all the
rest of the. And so again, you've got a local social entrepreneur who's innovating
here. And then we meet some folks at the national level from,
For Charlotte out of, out of North Carolina. And they're doing,
they developed this really simple tool that is really. Von
Mises talks about the human action model. Like, how do you get people to act?
You got to elevate a sense of unease. Like, there's a problem here. Let's look
at this data. See, there's a problem here. So we've done that with
the dashboard in partnership with Lead Wichita and Damon Young for issues
like affordable housing, foster care, addiction and mental health, things
like that. So you see a problem, all right? And then you got
to move to, like, change is possible. So you got to have a vision for
a better state. So as a part of this dashboard, you'll see stories
of local innovators who are having great success. And then
lastly, you got to show a clear path for what's my role in this? We
got to move people to action. And so on the state of our city
dashboard, there's a, there's a dozen or so opportunities, say, hey, I'm
interested in recidivism, I'm interested in affordable housing. Instead of just
lobbying my elected officials to solve the problem for me, what is
my role in these big issues? And so you can find that on Lead
Wichita's website, Leadwichita.org or directly at, I think it's
Wichita.stateofourcity.com that's right. All right,
Joe, talking poverty, talking housing, talking education,
talking foster care, what's possible
here? Yeah, like, what's the goal here? We're not going to
eliminate any of these challenges, these complex issues. So if I
was to ask you, what's the goal here? What are we looking at 3
years, 5 years, 10 years? Can you qualify that
or quantify that in any way? What's the goal? Yeah, so I think it was
Einstein who said, things that count the most are the hardest to count.
And so that's not an excuse, but some of this stuff's really hard to measure.
Like, the ultimate goal is to see people flourishing. And we know that's
way bigger than how much money you earn and things like that. But I'm really
compelled by a measure of economic mobility. So I think
we've talked about this, Ryan, every year, Harvard,
actually, it's. Every decade, Harvard takes
anonymized census level data literally on every American in
the country. And they say, okay, if you were born poor, they have your, they
have your, your Social Security number. If you're born poor, how much money
do you make when you're, when you're an adult? Okay, so 27 years old, let's
say and then they rank cities based on how good is the
soil here for economic mobility. So on state
of our city with Lead Wichita you can find a little article that that was
written that actually shows the Harvard data from
opportunityatlas.org ranks the cities 1 to
100. Any guess as to where Wichita is Ryan?
Economic mobility today's we'd be bottom, bottom third.
Okay, good, good, good guess, good guess. In terms of
progress over the last decade, you're. You're right. But in terms of like
where we are in the hole, we're slightly above average. So we're
42 out of 100. That was 10 years ago. Over
the last 10 years we basically stayed flat. We're 41 today.
And so I would say like we're a, we're a good city.
Like we should be proud of our city. We're a good city, yes, we're good
city for the poor, but we could be a great city for the poor. And
so the rankings will come out again about nine years from now.
The data came out last summer. We've got nine more years to go
from number 41 to what I'd love to see us be a top 10 city.
So that's the economic mobility. That's one of the best. It's one
of these things are tied together. That's right. Just separate
poverty and housing and foster care and education and say, well if we pull
that lever, we're going to solve. They're all interrelated. This was a tough lesson for
me to learn out of the gate, particularly in this role. I
saw glimpses of it in ministry, certainly saw glimpses of it in business
now in elected offices. I see how all these things are interrelated. You can't
just pull one lever on solve these problems. It's very, very complex. It's
very complex and we need to have the humility to say like we're if
this is a David versus Goliath, we're we're David. Like this is not.
Try harder, get a better factory going. This is
very complex. We don't have the power to change people. That has to
happen inside of them. And our job is to cultivate the soil.
Right. Invest in the soil. Good. It's good. One of the biggest challenges,
what's the biggest one? If you looked at the biggest barrier, I see data,
Joe, obviously crime data. You know, 40% of the
state's violent crime happens here in Sedgwick County.
80% plus of the kids in USD 259 now live under the
federal poverty level. I mean, we've got our work cut out for us. I was
gonna say, what's the biggest barrier to success and moving into the
top 10 of economic mobility? What would you say that is? Yeah,
I actually think it's isolation. I think there's a lot of people
who are isolated. I love this saying. We got this from our friends at Family
Promise who are doing great in the family. They're doing amazing work.
And their founder likes to say, people don't become homeless because
they run out of money. They become homeless because they run out of people.
And we see similar things in foster care. It's like when you have nobody to
call when you're facing a hardship. That's profound. So if we can. If
we can solve for isolation and we can see that we need
each other again, writing checks philanthropically is super
important and volunteering and handing out sandwiches. But if we only
do arm's length and we don't have proximity and
we don't recognize this principle of mutual benefit, that people
experiencing poverty have a lot to offer us, and maybe there's something that we could
offer them. And, oh, by the way, all of us are experiencing some
form of poverty. Sure, sure. And so I think if we can. If we can
solve for relationships, the other stuff is. Is the easier
stuff to solve. All right, Joe, this is. It's great. Thank you for the work.
We stand together. Thanks for what you're doing. I. Last question. So we've talked
about all that the organization is doing. I want to ask about you now.
Why are you doing this? Yeah. Like you. You. You are. You have
great family history in this community. You're well known, you're well liked. Your
family has a wonderful reputation. You're educated.
You, right out of college, got into a great job. You understand
finance. Here you are in the trends, trying to create
these connections on issues that are some would call
impossible. Why are you doing this? Yeah, Yeah.
I mean, a lot of it has just been. So much has been given to
me. You know, you look at our city and how generous our city has
been. Just great parents, great schools, great mentors, great
church. So I've. I've received a lot from our city. And then as
a Christian, like, the why goes back to man. I was laying dead on
the side of the road spiritually. Yeah. And Jesus came and
rescued me. Like, we've been saved by grace. And
being saved by grace makes us, as the Bible says, zealous for good works.
And if I had a little more wisdom to add with my zealousness, I'd probably
be more effective. But really, it's just like, we've been given so much, and, oh,
by the way, you know how this is, Ryan. It's more blessed to give than
to receive. Like, when we get in the game, like, it's the best
way to live. And so it's a. It's a. It's a. It's fun to be
a small part of that. Well, there's more details to come. I want the public
to know all that you're doing, and you're so humble, and your organization is very
humble in all that you're doing. You're very stealthy and all that you're doing as
you empower these social entrepreneurs. But I want to keep telling your story because
it's a. It's a story worth telling. What Stand Together is doing here. We
are grateful. There is big momentum happening. There's big
relationships, big investment, big resources. There are things
happening here that the community really doesn't fully understand because it's
not happening from the government level or the elected leader level. It's happening in the
trench, from the bottom up, the way you've described all along. Joe,
Stand Together. Bless you, man. Thank you. Thank you, brother. Thank
you.