Transitional Housing

Melissa Frakes, Executive Director of Pivotal Point Transitional Housing

The c1 welcome back to "live at five".

We are joined my melissa franks of pivotal point in st.

Joseph.

We will talk about her annual fund drive and helping to change now in light of covid.

How melissa.

>> hi jodie, thanks for having me.

>> tell us about the changes that have been made on the fundraising side of things.

>> like everything else, change is all around.

Normally we would gather in september.

Happy to see four to 500 people and we just don't think that's going to be possible.

And so we made alternative plans.

We decided about a month ago that doing something virtual would be the way to go.

As much as i'm going to miss seeing all my friends and all those faces that are so supportive of us.

We want to keep people safe.

That's the most important thing.

We're having fall ball in july.

The 26th of july through august 2nd, we will meet online.

We get to meet all of our friends and not just a few and you can be in your pajamas if you want to.

You have the opportunity to be part of the fall ball fundraiser.

It's called you are pivotal.

The change we're seeing there's so many things happening and each of our donors in st.

Joseph are pivotal.

What better way to show you how we feel is tell you.

Just expressing our pivotal our community is.

That's what we're going to do.

>> wonderful.

And you don't need to buy tickets for this.

Usually -- >> no.

>> it's usually something you buy.

>> you can basically just log on and is it kind of an auction as well?

Is there auction items this year?

>> yes, we will do a lot of things the same.

We have already been, our site will be pivotal point@givesmart.com.

We will do a lot of the same things.

We will have a team, premium items versus having live items. we will have a lot of our regular basket type items and tools for guys and we'll still have probably between 85 and 90 items that we will be auctioning.

We are super excited.

We really wanted this to be a support our community type of thing.

Pivotal point is 100% st.

Joseph and our money stays 100% here in st.

Joseph and so we know that a lot of people have had a hard time.

Including our local businesses.

So many of them are really showing up for us, our sponsors are showing up for us and we want to be able to say thank you.

That will be a big deal.

But, we're going to have experiences.

So we already have a camping experience and items to go along with that.

A picnic at the pond.

Which is donated by one of our sponsors.

We're going to have a private party for 12 at the river bluff brewery.

We hope to have a restaurant partnering with us, we'll know soon.

There's a lot of really great things to look forward to.

Most of all, for people to come and see what is happening and just see our residents.

But it's really all about this is our only fundraiser of the year.

It's always our big one.

That is even more important this year.

So we want to emphasize that just we're calling it fill the house.

With our residents, to be successful and make the journey, we need your help.

>> melissa tell us real quick before we end tonight.

What is pivotal point?

If people don't know what that stands for, what are you doing in the community.

>> okay.

Well i'm glad you asked because we assume everyone knows what we do.

But this is i think in the time that we're seeing right now, pivotal point is going to be more and more important because what we do is provide an environment for people to have a second chance and want the course of their life to change.

They don't want to be generationally homeless and we emphasize even more with all of the things happening in this pandemic environment, we will see friends and family and coworkers who are in a situation that's unstable and they may lose their home.

And those are people who are situationally homeless or really in the situation of poverty.

So, we give people an opportunity to stay in our program, which is at 3000 park way a.

We have 19 apartments.

And we provide a furnished apartment for them to stay in for the duration of their stay in our program where we provide all of their needs.

While they concentrate on saving and budgeting and paying off debt and becoming more stable so they can go back into the community and be contributing members of the community as well.

>> i know a lot of those residents have struggled amid the pandemic because the economy and those jobs they did have secured, maybe you had to kind of try to help them make other arrangements.

So thank for all the work you're doing with the people in our community.

19 apartments is a tremendous accomplishment and we just thank you for what you do.

>> well, thank you.

Our families with all the children we have and our teenagers in the building, they are very appreciative to this community.

You make it happen for us and we appreciate it.

>> wonderful, melissa, thank you so much.

That fundraiser is a virtual drive on july 26th through august 2nd.

The virtual fundraiser.

>> thank you so much.

>> all right.

We're going to take