Intro- Jacob Derauf here with Maple Grove Radio, and today our special guest is Elizabeth Johnson-Brown with CROSSservices here to talk about the organization. Elizabeth, thanks for being on. So first things first here.
What is CROSSservices?
Cross is a local nonprofit social service agency. We were put together about forty-three years ago. Local churches came together, created these local food shelves at the time. And so we're one of those that started in the last forty-three years ago. And then our community supported one hundred percent community supported. We provide food, housing support, all kinds of other services as well. The main reason people would come to us is for food, for housing support, children's needs, resources, things like that.
What Programs and Events are going on now and in the near future?
Before we went on, you were kind of going over some of the events and programs that you have going on now and in the near future. Do you want to go over some of those with us? Yes. Well, like so many other organizations, we got sidelined with, the covid-19, CROSS was an essential service. We were open the whole time, but our focus had to move away from more strategic future focus to just dealing with the day-to-day operations this last year. So now we're back on track. Now we're back to we have a golf event that's starting that's going to be on September 19th. We are getting back, working with our schools, with the Kid Pack Weekend Food for Kids program, and going to be setting that up for fall again with some of our partners. We work with about twenty-three schools that we're hoping to get that back launched in the fall. And then we got our vision team that's starting to get back to working on our future site in Maple Grove.
Where can people find out kind of like a calendar or kind of see what the events are going on?
Yeah either our Facebook is pretty good and up to date, we're on that a lot. And our website as well, CROSSservices.org, there are lots of opportunities to get involved right now. We're looking for people for that vision team for the future. We're looking for social service partners to colocate together with us and board committees, all kinds of opportunities on in the warehouse and operations and in leadership. There's many opportunities to get involved, Cross, right now as we kind of get back on track on our growth path. You sent me over a couple of little visuals here. You want to kind of go over a little bit of what's going on here and talking a little bit more about what you guys do. Sure, as I mentioned before, we focus on me mainly three areas, hunger issues, housing issues, financial issues, and then children's needs, and each of those has programs within them. We have several different outreach programs for food. People come here to the Rogers warehouse to get food, but we also bring food out into the community and a variety of ways and then our housing programs, financial assistance. We've just taken on another program that we're hoping to develop, which is more supportive housing. And then the children's program scholarship programs, the Kid-pack program, school supplies, all of those sorts of things. So we have quite a few programs and quite a few ways to get involved. One of the areas we're really wanting to expand in our family advocacy work because we meet with the families when they come in to try to just address what the core issues are that are causing them to need these services. And we're looking for mental health workers, we're looking for job counselors, things like that, to be housed with us to kind of bring our programs to a more well-rounded place. We're not just doing basic needs, but we're actually addressing the core situations that families are in as well. We serve six different cities. So Maple Grove Rogers, the two major cities, and then Corcoran, Dayton, Champlin, Osseo around that area.
Tell about some of the ways that CROSS helps the community?
Yeah, but then I have another visual here as well. Looks like we got some statistics and numbers. Do you want to touch on a little bit of kind of what you guys have done in the past? Sure. As I mentioned, we're one hundred percent community-supported, so all of our donations come in through the community and that's in finances and also through food drives and toy drives and school supply drives and things like that. So that enables us to do the work that we do. We have we serve probably about fourteen thousand people, individuals each year across all of those programs. And so it's a we touch a lot of people in our communities and a lot of families. You know, the average person, the average age of someone that comes to cross is thirty-one years old. And so 60 percent of the families we're serving are working families. They don't qualify for a lot of the services that are out there. They're falling between those gaps. And so it's really important for programs like this that provide that support between the paycheck and those monthly costs. And that's our role is really to work with the working families, families that are underemployed or temporarily unemployed. And that's our core service program and service population.
If someone is looking to get involved, how would they go about doing that?
Yeah, either you can just call us or go to our website, all that contact information on our website. I'm sure you'll get in contact information off of this broadcast as well. So feel free to call us. Email us. There are many opportunities in many ways. As I mentioned earlier, we use there are probably about 60 volunteers at CROSS every day, 60 unique people every day that is here volunteering. So there is a lot of opportunities and we always have volunteer gaps. We can always use more people in these programs and in our leadership. Where are you located in Maple Grove? Right now, we're located in Rogers, Yep, right down the street from Cabelas. Our address is 12915 Weinand Circle, Rogers, So just go to our website. You'll find all that contact information. You can log on there you. If you're interested in volunteering, they'll get to us and then our volunteer director will follow up as well. If you're looking to volunteer, if you're looking for help, just call us. We're here. We're eager and anxious to help in any way we can. Yeah, that sounds great.
Before we go here, is there anything else you wanted to share?
No, just stay tuned. There's if anyone is interested or has an interest in helping Cross get into a multi-service site in the Maple Grove area. We would love to talk with you. We'd love to hear about any connections people might have or facilities people might have that could be considered. We really got waylaid in 2020 with covid and now we're back trying to just really pick up where we left off in getting that second site in Maple Grove. And just so important that we have other organizations that are there with us so that our families have easy access to other services that they might need besides cross. So we love to partner and we would look forward to anyone that would want to partner with us. OK, yeah, that sounds great. Thank you very much for being on with us today. And best of luck. Yep, thank you so much.
