Paul Szmal: Good morning. It's 816. It's Monday morning and it's Guest-O-Rama Day. Four guests and number three in the list is Rhonda Jasper with United Way of Seneca County. Good morning.
Rhonda Jasper: Good morning. How are you?
Paul Szmal: I'm doing well and shame on anyone who doesn't know this, but we always begin with our value of the month and for October, dignity and sense of purpose. How do we help support that, especially in our kids?
Rhonda Jasper: Yeah, you definitely have to feel like your life has meaning. It's easy to get caught up in everything going on, but helping kids find a pastime that really makes them feel good, obviously creating healthy relationships, really giving chances for kids to investigate their strengths, abilities, and talents. And as adults, you know, we need purpose too, you know, but always asking the younger person about themselves and listening. But even just, you know, finding something you really enjoy doing, finding that place where you really feel comfortable, you know, we need that too.
Paul Szmal: You deal with a lot of kids in your work and you have a bright and perceptive daughter. Where does it go wrong in kids? Where do they lose that sense of dignity?
Rhonda Jasper: I don't know. I think it's interesting because I'm watching my daughter. She gets in the middle school and everything and the whole social media and how kids interact. And it's just it's really interesting to watch how different it is now than it was. Yeah. So I don't know if the communication has a difference. I know families are busier, you know, taking that time to just, you know, get eye level with your kid and sit and talk about their day and what they're doing. I think that goes a long way and I don't think parents really think about it anymore. No, I shouldn't say that. Some parents.
Paul Szmal: It seems like a lot of our values are kind of complementary from one month to the next. So in November, personal responsibility, that's sort of the other side of that same coin. You feel good about yourself, but make sure you give yourself a reason to.
Rhonda Jasper: Exactly. And you're the only one who can change your reactions. So.
Paul Szmal: So we'll talk more about that in detail in November. And I'm learning new acronyms all the time. Tell us about SCOOP.
Rhonda Jasper: SCOOP. So SCOOP is the Seneca County Opioid Overdose Prevention Task Force. It is a task force that is really with Seneca County Public Health and Mental Health. But it is under our umbrella of Coalitions United. So they meet, you know, monthly, but they're the ones where you'll start seeing, you know, a lot of the combined Narcan efforts, things like that. And so we had a meeting last week. It was so well attended. We filled an overflowed room and we got to hear from public health and mental health. We had a DEA agent out of Rochester telling us about what they're really seeing in Seneca County and the Finger Lakes. And then, of course, we had Sheriff Thompson come and talk about the actual, you know, numbers and seeing what his guys are seeing in Seneca County as far as opioids and just reminding people that we're a small town, but it is all here.
Paul Szmal: Now, I always I get kind of sad sometimes because I do these interviews with people and I do domestic violence month. And, you know, I always ask domestic violence down. No, it's up and this problem's up and that problem's up. But we're seeing an impact overdoses, if not locally, at least nationally. I think are beginning to trend down.
Rhonda Jasper: Yes, and locally, too. That's great to hear. It is. It is. I think it's a combination. I think there's definitely a better understanding out there. But having regularly available Narcan has also made a huge impact. So you just speaking of your bright daughter, there she is in the picture with you. Just a couple of weeks ago, you did a guest op ed in the Finger Lakes Times, just explaining how one county, United Way, fits into sort of the overall picture. So tell us what you wrote about and what you were intending to get across with that op ed piece.
Rhonda Jasper: Certainly. Well, all United Ways across the country and world have similar missions as far as, you know, bringing everyone together and working together and really, you know, focusing on those pillars of financial stability and education and health. It's that's that's often where our commonalities end. Every United Way is local. So when you start to see it, like, for instance, for Seneca County, United Way, we only work in Seneca County. We're only you know, we're only responsible to Seneca County. We're all local volunteers and staff. And when you make donations, 100 percent stays in Seneca County. Now, we can't speak to any other United Ways, but I do know that the selling point of United Way across the board is that we have that local connection. We get to be known as the, you know, the expert in our communities. People often reach out to us. But knowing that we are only responsible to Seneca County is just a good reminder for people. And that way we can actually respond in real time to what our community needs. You know, if we see a spike in something in our community that we're not seeing elsewhere, we get to kind of stop and reassess what we're doing and respond to that. We don't need to wait for, you know, a larger organization or other partners. We can just respond in real time.
Paul Szmal: And of course, the reach and the impact are so great. There are very few programs or agencies anywhere that touch the percentage of residents of an area, as does United Ways throughout our area, but particularly Seneca County.
Rhonda Jasper: Agreed. I always say that when I started eight years ago now, we had said that one in four people were touched by United Way Seneca County services. But with the growth we've done with the in-house programs now, with all of the prevention efforts, I would say it would be difficult to find someone in Seneca County who hasn't been affected by a United Way program in one way or another. And as we always say, there are two times of year. There's campaign season and then there's the day after the campaign ends. This is campaign season. And one of the themes in the brochure is always reminding people, because people have this idea sometimes, because they'll hear about, you know, Tom Golisano's foundation gave hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to somebody, and they go, well, I can't match that. But you don't have to.
Paul Szmal: Absolutely not. That's part of the beauty of United Way and how we work, being able to pool resources and put everything together. You know, if every household in Seneca County donated one dollar a week, it would nearly double our annual budget. I mean, it is possible to have a huge impact with just a small amount. And then we talked about that impact over the last 10 years. One and a half million dollars of community investment grants awarded to Seneca County programs and agencies. A million dollars plus grant funds to the county. Nine thousand family time boxes. I don't know if we've talked about those. What are those?
Rhonda Jasper: So family time boxes are an awesome program for the preschoolers in Seneca County. And what it is, is every September they get an actual physical box and it has information for the month in it. And the idea is that once a month or a couple times a month, the family takes all of their electronics and puts it in the box in order to power it out and be able to spend some time together. All right. In the box, of course, there's, you know, information about all sorts of stuff coming up. But there is, you know, simple recipes usually for like a snack and a meal. There's a craft. You generally only need scissors. You get everything else in there. There's conversation starters, you know, coloring pages, all sorts of stuff for the family to do together. And then for the rest of the school year, they get in, they keep the box from the first month and then they get an envelope replacing it. So every month they get updated conversation starters and updated craft projects and all of that. And we give them to all of the preschoolers in Seneca County. So we're up to about, you know, it's just under 300 a month now, but we also set them up at our booths. We can do you can do make your own and you can choose what you want in the box and take one home with you for your family. And it's been a great opportunity to partner with others. You know, the Seneca County Health Department has come in and given us, you know, jump ropes and things to send out. It's been really it's been a really great outreach to a lot of families.
Paul Szmal: Now, part of this year's campaign, you have an ambassadors group. So what do they do and how can someone become an ambassador?
Rhonda Jasper: Sure. So ambassadors are those volunteers who really want to learn more and talk more about what we do. You know, we talk about our reach, you know, reaching probably nearly everyone in the county. But a lot of people don't attribute the programs that we do to us. We're not very good at making that connection. We're working on it. But, you know, lots of people have worked with the coalitions and don't realize they're United Way programs. So ambassadors are those volunteers who want to come and learn a lot more. And then they'll go out there and, you know, they may volunteer at our events and things, but they're out there really comfortable being able to talk about our programs, answer questions and just be true ambassadors for the program and for, you know, the product we have. So and of course, anybody is welcome to join that group. You know, just give us a call or email or reach us through Facebook. We're happy to chat with anyone, anytime.
Paul Szmal: We're almost out of time. So it's lightning round here. I'm going to whip through these things. Twelve trunk-or-treat events in the next three weeks. Three drug take-back events scheduled. One of those Saturday, October 26th. And by the way, go to uwsenica.org. Two more opioid community conversations hosted by Truth Farm. One of those is this Wednesday. Seneca Community Church will have some news about more Narcan vending machines. And don't forget the community Thanksgiving dinner. Sign up to volunteer. Lots of help needed, as always. We'll talk more about that next month. uwsenica.org is the website. Rhonda, thanks. As always, great stuff. And congratulations and best of wishes for another successful campaign.
Rhonda Jasper: Awesome. Thank you so much.
