Empowering Communities: The Path from Relief to Restoration Pt.1

Summary

The Collage Podcast

Episode: Empowering Communities: The Path from Relief to Restoration Pt.1
Host: Jeff (Feed My Sheep)
Guest: Nancy Glover (Director of Housing and Community Development, City of Temple)
Date: January 22, 2026

---

Episode Overview

This episode of The Collage Podcast, produced by Feed My Sheep in Temple, Texas, dives into the crucial distinction between relief, recovery, and restoration in humanitarian and poverty-alleviation work. Jeff (host, nonprofit leader) and Nancy Glover (guest, city official) examine how both organizations and communities can unintentionally remain stuck in the "relief" phase—reactively meeting immediate needs—rather than progressing to "restoration," which is marked by empowerment and lasting change. Drawing from examples including disaster relief after hurricanes (locally and abroad in Haiti), they question their own practices and challenge listeners to evaluate the effectiveness and goals of community aid efforts.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: What is Feed My Sheep?

• [00:00-02:23]
  • Jeff gives background on Feed My Sheep: a resource center in Temple, TX serving mainly homeless and low-income individuals with daily necessities like food, rent assistance, and ID support.
  • Emphasizes the diversity of the community served and clarifies that the discussion centers on community topics, not "issues," to avoid a negative connotation.

2. Introducing the Relief–Recovery–Restoration Model

• [05:07-08:51]

  • Jeff prompts Nancy—and listeners—to think about humanitarian response stages as explained by a "humanitarian engineer" he met over breakfast:

    • Relief: Immediate urgent needs met by outside help after a disaster.
    • Recovery: Community regains some function, starts to participate in rebuilding.
    • Restoration: True empowerment, with the community becoming self-sustaining.

  • Jeff warns of the pitfall: if relief is prolonged and outsiders do everything, restoration never happens, and dependency is created.

    "If outside forces come and do everything for the community, things get rebuilt, but restoration is never achieved… You basically have stayed in the relief phase..." — Jeff [08:04]

3. Applying the Model to Temple’s Homeless Community

• [10:03-12:43]

  • Jeff asks Nancy to classify Feed My Sheep’s current operations:

    • Nancy: Mostly "relief," focused on stabilization of immediate needs.
    • Jeff: Agrees, but notes the eventual goal is "restoration," i.e., self-sufficiency.
    • Nancy estimates about 25% of Feed My Sheep clients are in the recovery phase.

    “I would say that we at Feed My Sheep are working primarily...to stabilize a person...helping them with their immediate needs today.” — Nancy [10:59]

• Discussion acknowledges the bell curve of client progress—some are in recovery, but as an organization, the overall model is still relief-based.

4. Why Does Relief Become Permanent?

• [13:22-17:11]

  • Jeff asks why, despite intentions to reach restoration, the community often gets stuck in relief.

  • Nancy references the documentary "Poverty, Inc." and her own experience in Haiti, describing how constant external aid fostered long-term dependence instead of empowerment.

  • Jeff recalls visiting post-earthquake Haiti, noting that all relief efforts were run by foreign entities, not local people.

    “…They became completely dependent on this outside support, even though they had full capability to support themselves…” — Nancy [17:42]

    “We have not allowed the community to be part of the serving. We have simply gone in and did for them and see you.” — Jeff [20:22]

5. Contrast with the Dominican Republic

• [25:03-27:54]

  • Jeff and Nancy point out Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and experienced similar disasters, but the outcomes were starkly different:

    • Dominican Republic had less devastation, less dependence, quicker return to restoration.
    • Cites stronger community/government structure as a factor.

    “Same island, same people...One lives in relief at best mode… the other went from relief to recovery, back to restoration quick.” — Jeff [27:06]

6. The Challenge with Daily Disaster—Homelessness

• [27:56-30:29]

  • Discusses that, unlike a one-time disaster, homelessness is a day-to-day crisis with individuals at varying stages (some in immediate relief, others in recovery).

  • Jeff insists that the variation shouldn’t prevent organizations from shifting toward empowering, restorative operations.

    “As an organization and as an entity, the fact that people are on different places in the scale should not change or deviate how we do our operation.” — Jeff [30:29]

• On timelines:

  • Relief after disasters like tornadoes often lasts two weeks ([14:54, 15:24]), but for ongoing issues like homelessness, relief has stretched to 15 years.

7. Barriers to Progress: Systemic Obstacles

• [31:33-32:13]

  • Nancy points out that organizational, bureaucratic, and societal structures often maintain relief-mode operations, especially when combined with mental illness and substance use issues.

  • They express understanding but frustration at being stuck.

    “…the barriers that have been created by the organizations, the processes, the bureaucracy, all of that are not built for success for these folks. And then you add on top of that, mental illness, substance use disorder…” — Nancy [31:43]

8. Self-Critique and Invitation for Broader Dialogue

• [32:16-36:13]
  • Jeff candidly admits Feed My Sheep is still mainly a relief organization—“not saying that’s horrible. I’m saying it’s not good.”
  • The episode closes with a commitment to continue this conversation with a wider group—a city official will invite a nonprofit voice, and vice versa, for part two.

9. Call to Action for Listeners

• [33:26 & 36:13]

  • Listeners are urged to critically assess whether community resources are fostering relief, recovery, or restoration.

  • Emphasis placed on the need for design changes—“if something is not working, there is a flaw in the design.”

    “If a bridge collapses… there’s not any engineer group in the world that’s just going to go, huh? That’s just bad luck. …What failed and how can we make sure it doesn’t fail again…?” — Jeff [37:29]

---

Memorable Quotes

• "You need to form your own thoughts and your own opinions. You have a brain for a reason."
  — Jeff [04:05]

• "Relief is not a four letter bad word."
  — Jeff [13:48]

• "The community must become part of their own solution, or you never meet restoration."
  — Jeff [22:20]

• "How we remain in relief mode is not surprising to me."
  — Nancy [32:13]

• "If something is not working, there is a flaw in the design."
  — Jeff [36:46]

---

Notable Timestamps

• [05:07] — Introduction of the engineering model: relief, recovery, restoration.
• [10:52-12:43] — Nancy and Jeff classify Feed My Sheep's current operations.
• [17:11] — The hard question: "Why are we still in the relief phase after 15 years?"
• [25:03-27:54] — Contrasting outcomes: Haiti vs. Dominican Republic.
• [31:33] — Discussion of systemic barriers keeping communities in relief mode.
• [32:53] — Plans for a follow-up episode with new voices.

---

Tone & Style

Conversational and candid, with moments of humor and humility. Both speakers are self-reflective, open to critique, and approach the issue pragmatically but with compassion. Listeners are repeatedly invited to engage in the debate and form their own perspectives.

---

Takeaways for Listeners

• Reflect on whether local aid efforts are truly moving people toward self-sufficiency (restoration), or simply maintaining relief.
• Recognize the risks of dependency created by prolonged relief efforts, seen globally and locally.
• Consider the value of empowering community members in their own recovery.
• Anticipate a follow-up discussion in Pt.2 featuring broader viewpoints—including city and nonprofit voices from both sides.

---

End of Part 1.
Stay tuned for Pt.2 for an expanded, cross-sector conversation on empowering communities!

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Hey, we want to welcome you to another edition of the Collage Podcast today. We've got Nancy here today and we are going to have little discussion because like today, a lot of moving parts here at Feed My Sheep. So let's rewind before we go fast forward in this. Okay, so you are listening to the Collage podcast. We are recording this in a little town called Temple, Texas. So we are out of Texas. What Feed My Sheep is, is we are a resource and a whole lot of things facility here in Temple, Texas that a lot of our population that we do work with on the day to day basis, they are homeless. A lot of the population that we do work with here on a day to day basis probably lives below whatever this poverty line we have in the world. A lot of our people that we work with, just to give you a glimpse, is a racially and ethnically a very diverse population. Males, females, all of that. We provide daily resources that people would need. We provide resources to help people get out of the places that they're in. They need IDs, you need rent assistance, you need these kind of things. That's kind of the. The nuts and bolts of Feed My Sheep. So then to give you an idea of maybe where we are discussing from. Okay. And kind of the. What we are doing and looking at issues. And we've been kind of not issues topics. Okay. So issues brings a preconceived negative connotation to said word because we solve issues. We like to discuss topics. So this is just a discussion of topics. So I am joined today by Nancy. So, Nancy, you want to introduce yourself?

[B]

Sure. My name is Nancy Glover. I volunteer volunteer here at Feed My Sheep. And I work by day for the city of Temple as the director of Housing and Community Development.

[A]

Okay, fair. So just for point of reference out there, then, we will begin the discussion, Nancy and I. So I'm a nonprofit world. I'm Jeff. So I work over here at Feed My Sheep. I'm kind of in the nonprofit world. Nancy is in the city, a municipality, a government entity of the world. We're both working together on this topic of how to work on some of the topics and issues that are affecting specifically here, the east side of our town, the north side of our town. So over here, that's where we happen to be located and that's how we've kind of come together. It's an interesting possible twist to it because Nancy is municipality. This is city government. I am not city government. I'm out of this. So it'd be Interested. We're going to look at different stuff, at possibly maybe different views of the topic, maybe not. So that's kind of the discussion point. And here's the cool one out there for y'. All. Just like y' all out there who are listening to this, you don't yet know what the topic we are going to discuss today. So that's expected because you're now listening to this. Nancy, who is sitting across the table, does not either, right? Correct. So nothing like to introduce the topic to all of us at the same time. So I am going to ask you out there that are listening to ponder the same thing I am presenting to Nancy. And at the same time, okay, I would like for you to be in your own head while you're listening to come to what is your opinion on these things? What is the theory that we are talking about? Where do you sit on it? Because we're not trying to get you just to land exactly to what we're saying. If you do, that's absolutely stupid way to go. Okay. You need to form your own thoughts and your own opinions. You have a brain for a reason. Okay, so this topic comes out of breakfast today. So we're not going to talk about breakfast foods. But out of discussion number two at breakfast. Discussion number two at breakfast was with a humanitarian engineer.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay. So a humanitarian engineer is an engineer in the drawing things on paper type stuff. Engineer, not like driving trains. Okay. So this is not a driver for Amtrak. That could be an. That could be a humanitarian engineer. They drive a train with people in it. Okay. So this is a person, an engineer that works and tries to come and look at humanitarian social issues through an engineering lens, how to solve issues that are occurring in society with the lens of an engineer.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay. The discussion today was there's sort of a discussion point in the engineering, humanitarian engineering deal because we were looking at a lot of theirs is topical. If a flood comes to your community, you would want a humanitarian engineer to come in because they're the ones who help navigate how do we solve this for the community? What's the best way to do this? And so then we were looking at that and they were in the business of solving and doing things, efficiencies, plans. These kids. Here it is. He said, like if a disaster comes to your community, there is three different modes of operation. First thing is relief immediately. I mean, if something comes, we immediately have to provide. All you are doing is outside forces come in. Are people to bring immediate relief to this community. Flood comes in, everything's gone. They got to have a place to stay at night. City. We know this. So this is going to be. They got to have a place to stay. Tonight we open up this. They can stay at night. We got to have something to eat because they lost their kitchen. Relief. Then there's this period called recovery that you. Then you've got out of, in theory, out of relief operation, into recovery operation. Okay. And then we're going to talk about this. Then the final one is you would go into restoration or restoring. It is restored.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. Better. What? Relief, recovery, restoration. That's the talking point here as we are looking at the feed my sheep world. Okay. So where we landed on that, okay. Is we all understand this. So floods, that's a. That's a natural disaster that comes. And it comes. There's a resolution to it and you move on. Houses get rebuilt. House was gone. It gets rebuilt. You got a new house restored.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. The discussion was. And we get the relief part of it. Nancy's house is gone. If it burns down, guess what? There's going to be relief. Here's a place that you can stay. We got people. Relief, recovery. If done wrong. Game. That's the discussion. If done wrong, if outside forces come and do everything for the community, things get rebuilt, but restoration is never achieved. You basically have stayed in the relief phase, which is do everything for everybody, provide everything for them, and just you next carry it over. You never really go to the recovery phase because you have not empowered.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The community to be part of the solution. You've just had outside forces come in, do this for them, and leave. So there's never, ever in that model a recovery, I mean, a restoration, because the recovery never occurred. And you stayed solely in the relief part of the model the whole time. And you've actually enabled a person to live in a handicap form, even though they live in a new house because they are indebted to. To these services that were never meant to empower them. They were meant to just give them relief immediately. I. E. You look at people that are out of the Katrina disaster that years later are upset, why can I still not get this funding that was provided, which was. That's the discussion point. So that's our launching off point. Okay. If you were looking at the homeless topic in temple. Okay. And keep in mind, we are not answering for all the homeless. We are just discussing things.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. So if I said, Nancy, if you looked at the homeless topic, and that is a humanitarian issue, it is a disaster right now. Fair to say there's nothing negative on anybody. Okay. If you would look at it right now, you would say, and just in the Feed my Sheep model. Okay, so we have been around for 15 years. Okay. And this is nothing negative on Feed my Sheep. I run it. So if anything I say negative, I'm talking negative about me. Okay, so great, whatever. If you looked at us 15 years. Okay, are we in relief phase, recovery phase, restoration phase? First start with Feed my sheep. What would you say how we operate? Is it more of a relief model? Recovery model, Restoration model.

[B]

Definitely a relief.

[A]

What do you mean no? You don't say definitely.

[B]

No.

[A]

Okay. No, you know, you can say what. Okay, go. Why?

[B]

Well, I would say that we at Feed my Sheep are working primarily and I would say the majority of the services that we provide are intended to stabilize a person.

[A]

Okay, fair.

[B]

So just basically helping them with their immediate needs today.

[A]

Okay. So in it, can we already take an off ramp? Okay, no. So then let's come back to this. So before we get off ramp.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Would we start in this place of discussion? Because we're going to go on the off ramp here. Could we start in the place of discussion that you would believe ultimately our model would be to get people to what, to stay in relief phase?

[B]

No. Self sustainability.

[A]

Recovery. Our restoration. Restoration is self sustainability. Yes. Empower them in the recovery phase to get to the place of self sustainability, which is restoration.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

Agreed. So that's where we're trying to get.

[B]

And we do have some, I think that are in the recovery phase.

[A]

Agreed.

[B]

I would say probably 25% are in a recovery phase of our people we serve. Yes.

[A]

Okay. No, that's fair. Okay, so I'll give you that. And so in this we're just talking topical because in any model of population, a bell curve is a. It is stayed around for a long time. There's a bell curve that certain percentage are going to be over here, certain percentage are going to be on the right side, left side. Majority is going to be here.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. So we are looking not necessarily the individuals and where they're at as an organization, as a mindset. I would agree we function more out of a relief mindset than a recovery mindset and sure. Not into a restoration mindset yet. Okay. And so we're not saying necessarily negative. Okay. But that's just. That's a fair assessment. Okay. The homeless topic as a whole in Temple, where would you say we are in that? I would say if even in the like it.

[B]

I feel like all of the agencies are trying to get to the recovery and restoration phase with folks, there's a, there's a spirit of that, but I don't know that we've collectively achieved that as a community. We're still, we're still in the relief.

[A]

And it's not in it. Everybody, we're not. Relief is not a four letter bad word. No. Okay, so let's establish that this is not a negative word. We're not saying don't provide relief. Not at all.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, so then let's head off the ramp a little bit. Okay, so in what you said is we provide the, the daily things that people need to, to just survive at a baseline level. Right. Okay. In the engineering model, we're just talking engineering models. Okay. So we're not talking any. There is a finite timeline that, that ends. You go from relief mode and they would say in a, in a catastrophic situation, that may be a month. Yeah, if that, if that, if that. They would. I even said that to kind of buy me a little bit of time. He threw out two weeks.

[B]

I would agree with that timeline.

[A]

It's two weeks is the timeline in engineering world. And again, they're looking at engineering models, but in a humanitarian sense. Okay. That set things in place that within two weeks after a disaster, Red Cross comes in, whatever, and the government comes in and FEMA and this and that, they have the thing set in place that within two weeks it is now out of relief, into recovery.

[B]

Right. And that is. That timeline is about what it was for the tornado. When the tornado hit Temple, we had the relief phase pretty quickly behind us.

[A]

And why, why do you, why does it stop?

[B]

Well, for a number of reasons, I think the need for the relief phase ended. The folks who had been impacted by the tornado lost their homes or whatever. They were able to find alternative housing. So that was thing one.

[A]

So in theory, to get out of the relief, number one, they get out of the emergency mindset situation, you don't have a place to stay. Now you do have a place to stay.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Okay, so got it. What else?

[B]

The, the organizations that had come in in force, fema, Red Cross, donations from out of town, all of those things dried up within the first few weeks.

[A]

Agreed.

[B]

But again, it was really tied to need. There was just not the need. The immediate needs were met and so those outside organizations were no longer needed. And when the outside organizations were no longer needed, they left or they stopped coming in.

[A]

So everybody out there there is. Let's see if you're playing the game. Well at home. There is an obvious question sitting on the table. What's the obvious question? Everybody out there listening. You would hear this as it pertains to what we're doing in the direction of this. Let's see, Nancy Glover, what would you say the obvious question might be? And I'm again putting on our spot, what's the obvious question that's sitting on the table as it pertains to. To us?

[B]

Why are we still in the relief phase?

[A]

That's right.

[B]

After 15 years. Yeah.

[A]

Are. So then that is a valid question.

[B]

Absolutely. I watched a documentary called Poverty Incorporated and it, it outlines this similar topic as it related to Haiti.

[A]

Okay, fair, fair. Okay.

[B]

I've been to Haiti and the relief phase for them after the mudslide.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Yes. It put them into a state of long term dependence on Western. Yes. On that outside support and relief to the point where they could no longer. Or to the point where they, they were not become reliant. Yes, yes. They, they became completely dependent on this outside support, even though they had full capability to support themselves and to do all of the things that they did prior to the disasters that happened to them.

[A]

It's funny you bring that up. Okay, so this is. Okay, I had. I don't know what the word would be, the luxury or the curse or somewhere in between the two of. And I'm no expert on Haiti. I'm not going to speak on. I'm no expert on Haiti. I'm no expert on any of that stuff. I happen to be one of a small segment of the population that got to go to Haiti within 10 days after the disaster. So I was in Haiti. I was in Haiti for two weeks. And it's still on the epicenter of. They were still in the relief phase.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

I mean, there's bodies. It was devastating, devastating, devastating. What was interesting to me, even at that time, okay, they're giving out tents. Okay, so what? And everybody needed a place to stay. You had a tent. I will never forget. They're lined up as they. They should be. Nobody had a tent. They needed a tent. Okay, they're going to get a tent. And it was. I think they were French. It was UN Peace force people from France that were giving out the tents. Okay, Nobody from Haiti. Nothing at all from that. No kind of system other than, okay, we're going to do this over here. The UN Peace force was handing out water from your family and how to distribute that. That was Germans. Nobody from Haiti. Nothing at all to do this. Not one of the people in the entities that I saw cleaning up the streets, guess who was driving all the machinery. Wasn't Haitians.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Not that they weren't capable of doing it. Okay. We just got in front of them and did it all for them.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And like they say in that one, we've moved on from that disaster. They haven't. Yeah, they haven't. They were not empowered. And then. Then we leave and there's this great void of we being whatever these Western entities that come in. There's this huge void. We haven't allowed them in that one to be any part of the process at all. We have not allowed the community to be part of the serving. We have simply gone in and did for them and see you.

[B]

And now the Haitian government is capitalizing on all the NGOs that are coming in and, you know, doing all. So it's become a system of.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

Enablement and.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So that. So we're going to pick on the Haitians for a bit. Okay. Because I sure don't want to come back to the place that we would look at hard questions here in this discussion of going, nancy, I've got people that come to the line that we fed for the last 15 years.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I sure don't want to ask the question, is that a kind and good thing, leading somebody towards recovery, even? Sure. Not restoration?

[B]

No.

[A]

So you go, no, we won't ask that question because that one's tough. Let's stick to Haiti. Okay. We sure don't want to ask of. I don't want Nancy to ask. Please don't. I hope she doesn't hear this. I don't want her to ask, how well do you empower your people and your own community members to be part of their own solution and to help them move forward on their own and give them the tools to build and bring themselves into restoration phase? Because every single engineering one would tell you, okay, you cannot get to the restoration phase without the community members being empowered in the recovery phase to be part of their own solution. The community must become part of their own solution, or you never meet restoration. And there's even discussions you can. If you do not even give them the proper tools and the resources and the avenues in the relief phase, they cannot even get to the recovery phase, much less the restoration phase. And then you keep them. That is like Haiti, where they're lined up for water every day because they have no way to get out of this thing. They believe it is so monumentally difficult and it's gotten so out of whack that I can't. I mean, Haiti, you're going to wait in line for. Here's the little bit of food you're going to get. And you're going to go to whatever drug lord or gang lord that they have in Haiti right now. Because the government is run by corrupt, dirty, and there's no offense to them. They are, oh, sure, okay. And whoever's the toughest, baddest, meanest, you're going to get your resources there because you don't even have a way. And then we would all look at that culture and then we would say at the dinner party, hey, Chip, Chip, wouldn't it be nice if the people in Haiti were able to be restored and to have restoration brought to the community? You can't jump from relief, past recovery into restoration. It doesn't work that way. Right, doesn't work that way. You can't ask somebody to get out of recovery if they have not been empowered to be the part of the solution to how to truly change the community, to move it forward to get the restoration. If you do not keep true to this model and understand the principles there within, you are forever stuck at best case scenario. Best case scenario. At the infancy of recovery, in higher probabilities, you are stuck at the precipice of relief mode.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Haiti 101. Haiti 101 and interesting. We won't even get into this discussion. Part of. Maybe people know. Maybe they. I don't know. I didn't really grasp it. Haiti's on an island. Okay. Okay. So it's on an island. It's an island that is basically been divided almost in half. So the island itself is two countries.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Not one. Dominican Republic, Haiti not going to get into government systems, this and that, all of that. What was interesting is the same hurricane, the same forces that came across Haiti because it's little island. It's not like it went right down the middle of the line and it's like luckily Dominican. No, the same thing that occurred to Haiti, occurred to Dominican Republic. Do you remember a bunch of tragedy and such like that occurring in Dominican Republic? They lost some people. That was tragic. Not to the scale of Haiti, was it?

[B]

No, no, not at all.

[A]

Do we see rioting in Haiti in Dominican Republic right now? Not at all.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. They somehow, through government and non corruption and all this stuff, they had frameworks, they hadn't already destroyed a whole lot of their country. So they didn't have mudslides. Nearly to the same. Same island, same everything. Okay. So they weren't at a place of disaster. And as a Group. Each village, they took care of theirs.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They're back in. They never even really got. They did have some relief. We did sense there was some. They went from relief to recovery, back to restoration quick.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Haiti still in it. Same island, same people. It's not like there's a line across there. It's a magic line. It's not like there's a line and it's this group of people that's like super duper and the super group of people. And then a really bad. They're the same. The same group.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Okay. One lives in relief at best mode.

[B]

At best.

[A]

At best. At best. And we could say, unfortunately, if things don't diametrically change, which I don't. Whatever. Okay. If they don't diametrically change, Haiti will never come to the place of restoration.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Okay. So here I'm saying I'm starting to get a mindset. And granted. Okay. So then in it philosophically, the discussion. Okay. It's way easy to look at this one time eventually. So then I get it. So then we're talking. Oh, you go, Jeff, you're talking about a hurricane. It came, it went, start, fix up, done. Okay. You're talking about homeless topic. That's something that occurs every day. Okay. Maybe it's. We're in hurricane force right now in the community that we live in and everywhere. Okay. I'll give you that. It's more difficult because you're. You're encountering people every day that are on a different place in this scale of the disaster. We will run across people when we walk outside the store that are on day one. They are in. They are in relief phase. Holy crud. My husband just beat the tar out of me last night. Okay. And I had to leave and escaped that because. And I'm still alive. I don't even know what to do tonight that can occur. That will occur outside the door. So you have somebody who's in this place. Individuals.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I've never been on the street before. Way emergency, major relief segment.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. We have some, like Nancy said, that are in this recovery phase. They're sitting at a rehab facility right now. Right. Huge. Huge. And they're. That one. You go. Great model. They are in a good relief. A good recovery model. They hopefully are giving. Been giving the tools to truly build a thing that would bring them to restoration. Good. Okay. So then we don't have the luxury of when the freeze tornado comes. Everybody in temple was affected by the tornado pretty much similarly the same. The scale would change a Little bit. You're in West Temple, you had more damage than East Temple, but everybody had damage. We all knew a tornado. We're all in the same place, pretty much on the spectrum, the same.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Homeless, when we walk outside, they're going to be at various levels of the spectrum. Right. As an organization and as an entity, the fact that people are on different places in the scale should not change or deviate how we do our operation.

[B]

Agreed.

[A]

Okay. You can't justify inadequate plans or procedures based simply on that. We don't know where everybody is in the spectrum as an organization. You know, if the Red Cross comes in, they come in and operate under an understanding of we have this amount of time, let's get this done. We have to get it done by here. Okay. Let's get to this phase because we want got to get to the recovery phase as quick as possible.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You want out of the relief phase as quick as possible. So then as an executive director of a non profit, it should kick me in my ever loving butt to be able to hear us say with a clear conscience, okay. That 15 years into doing this, we are still in baseline relief operation mode.

[B]

I would even say as a society.

[A]

As a society. Agreed.

[B]

We are all there with you.

[A]

Agreed. I'm not picking on anybody like on us either.

[B]

We're just talking the barriers that have been created by the organizations, the processes, the bureaucracy, all of that are not built for success for these folks. And then you add on top of that, mental illness, substance use disorder, all of that. And alas, I mean it. It how we remain in relief mode is not surprising to me.

[A]

How about this? Because I find this one intriguing.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And I'm picking on me a whole lot. So what we're going to do for y' all out there and for Nancy here too, we're going to take this topic up again. There's going to be a part two of this talk podcast because I want to involve a couple other people in this discussion and to see where they stand on relief, recovery, restoration and to look at that as a group and to expand upon this conversation, I want to leave it right here. Okay. Because we would establish I am functioning feed my sheep. And not necessarily saying that's horrible. I'm saying it's not good.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because if we want to get to people the restoration, you got to get up. So we're going to look, we're going to take this up again. So I want people to be perplexed when you look upon the topic of homelessness. Okay. In your Area where you're at, what we're doing. Look at the things that are out there that are being provided and really ask and look and ponder and go, is that relief phase? Baseline. It's occurred yesterday. We got to get it taken care of. Is that recovery phase or is that restoration phase?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And look at that. So we're going to take it up again and get some other people that are way smarter than us and we're going to keep going that. I hate to leave it in that this will be a part two, but we might do. I don't know when you're going to hear this or not. We may just release them all at the same time, but we're going to stop at this one on that for you to ponder, for Nancy to ponder, for us to ponder. Because I think there's depth and I'd like to hear a couple other voices to articulate and go, it's all right to stay in completely this place. Maybe it's not.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Part two. So now Nancy, and it's fair for her because she will not have time to get her not. She did. She's got great thoughts. But I think this is of depth. I think we could do 3, 4, and 5 episode on this.

[B]

I agree. And should.

[A]

And should. Yeah, it should. Because it is cornerstone. It is paramount. It is huge. Yeah, it is huge. And I think if people and entities and governments and nonprofits really start evaluating things through the engineering model and to see where we're at on the scale, I think things would look very differently.

[B]

Agreed.

[A]

Or you have to acknowledge the fact and say it out loud, which is fine. Everybody's entitled to do whatever they want to do. We don't really want anybody to get to the restorative phase of this. We want them to stay in relief phase because it keeps us in business. Yeah, they say it. Okay. And we would say, nobody wants that. That's not Feed My Sheep's goal. If you say then. Then if you say your goal is restorative. This. Then you have to function slightly differently. Engineering.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Engineering. I don't care if I design a square wheel. No matter how bad I want it to roll you, it ain't rolling.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Okay. Engineering. Truth. So, Nancy Glover, we will take it up again and how about this? We'll make it fair. Okay. You invite one person that you think you would find intriguing to hear on this, and I will invite one person. We will have four.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay. And we will do this to hear their thoughts on it. And possibly. How about this? To go outside of our lanes. You find a non profit person.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

To come to this. And I will find a city person to come to this.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So then that would be outside of our little wheelhouses and I will provide something that would in theory have city or engineering.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

Okay. Deal?

[B]

Deal.

[A]

Hope everybody out there realizes the discussion is simply to embrace the fact that we say people matter, we say people matter. And I'm challenged by, and I want everybody to be challenged by, to really start investigating everything we do, everything we do and to look at that and how we do everything and to look at principles and then also just engineering 101. If something is not working, there is a flaw in, in the design.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Maybe the flaw is that we're humans, I don't know. But we need to look instead of keep doing the same thing, we need to start looking and go, is there a design modification you could make that makes this thing engineering like it makes it sound? If a bridge collapses that had trains going over it, there's not any engineer group in the world that's just going to go, huh? That's just bad luck. That's just how bridges are. You're going to have certain number that are going to fall. No. What are they going to do? They're going to look at it structurally from the get go and go. What failed and how can we make sure it doesn't fail again on these other bridges that are like this one?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's all we're doing. So hope everybody has a great day, week, whatever it is for you and we will take this up again next time.