People have said “jazz is dead” for decades now, but Columbus is proof against that assertion.
A Tribe for Jazz, a nonprofit organization, is on a mission to preserve the music's legacy and advance the future of jazz through visual storytelling, performances, education and community engagement.
After his wife was diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, a Columbus radiologist found himself in need of help and information.
His experience led him to create EnergizeCare, an organization offering support for caregivers and individuals living with early-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease.
Since its creation in 2011, Marion Matters has helped more than 300 people out of poverty. The organization provides individuals with skills and training through educational programs and coaching. We will learn more about what the work they do.
It's all part of this week's Fascinating Ohio.
Guests:
- Stephanie Matthews, executive director, A Tribe for Jazz
- Dr. Ken Vitellas, founder, EnergizeCare
- Natalie Longmeier, executive director, Marion Matters
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. This is Fascinating Ohio, a show from All Sides and WOSU that introduces you to people from the Buckeye State with an interesting story to tell. For decades, people have made the claim that jazz is dead, but Columbus is proof against that. A Tribe for Jazz, a nonprofit organization, is on a mission to preserve the legacy and advance the future of jazz through visual storytelling, performances, education, and community engagement.
Joining us today is Executive Director Stephanie Matthews. She has more than 20 years of experience in creativity and visual storytelling. Welcome to All Side, Stephanie. Hi, how are you, Amy? Thanks for having me. So A Tribe for Jazz collaborates with local venues, museums, hosts lots of events. How do you find and connect with musicians in the area?
Stephanie Matthews: So, in all fairness, the majority of the musicians that we bring in are national and international artists. But interestingly enough, tonight actually at the museum, the Columbus Museum of Art, we are featuring a musician by the name of T. Juan. And he's a really acclaimed Columbus-based artist. And so that's always very exciting. And this is a really nice, interesting cultural moment for us as an organization.
But how do we find our musicians? So. It's really a lot of thinking around like looking at people's work, listening to their work, thinking about their character. Are they a right fit for our values and our organization? And so we end up tapping a lot of really high up and coming rising stars in jazz music who are mostly based out of like New York and Chicago and places like that.
But yeah, I mean, the jazz world is small. It's big, but it's small, because jazz is global. But the musicians all know each other and there's a lot of overlap and so we find some really fantastic talent that way just through building connections organically and the word of mouth about you know we I think we treat artists really well you know when we host them here in Columbus and that experience has been it's been very rewarding for us.
Juravich: And hopefully for them as well. Tell me about the name of your organization, A Tribe for Jazz, why a tribe? A tribe.
Matthews: So it's a really good question. No one has ever really asked me that before. So I came into the organization. You could be friends.
Juravich: You could be friends of jazz, you could be like, you know, there's other words.
Matthews: You know, there's other words, but yeah, yeah, no, no. But, you know, tribe is very, so it's kind of like, you know there's a cultural connotation to it. And I remember when I came into the organization, there was conversation around it. Because when I stepped in, A Tribe for Jazz existed, but on a small scale at that point. And then it became officially a nonprofit and all the things. And so, you now, what is a tribe?
Well, I think it's like-minded people. Like-minded, people who come together. And you know we're very interested in creating. Transformative experiences where we're growing audiences and getting like a lot of divergent thinkers together. For these not only performances, but all the experiences that we curate. So, you know, that's what a tribe is. It's different voices.
Juravich: Different voices. Your organization does a lot of educational work. Can you tell me about the Jazz Lab? Because I saw photos and videos, a lot of technology is involved. I saw kids with VR headsets on, which I wasn't expecting. I was expecting to see them holding jazz instruments, right? So tell me About Jazz Lab.
Matthews: So Jazz Lab came about as, there was a period of time where I was given a lot of thought to the intersection between the arts and the sciences. And you're thinking about STEM and then the acronym STEAM and how we can more deeply and intentionally embed arts into our learning. And music is a wonderful gateway to teaching anything. And so Jazz Lab, on the very base level, you think about music as sound, sound as physics, right? And so there's that initial tie.
But what else is it? Because if we're using jazz as a, and this is how we do use it, we use jazz as tool in that we think about like the collaborative process, we think improvisation and innovation, the empathy, the give and take, and the whole values and cultural around jazz music dissect that and we can stretch into different disciplines. And so therefore, for watching. Jazz Lab touches virtual reality, music making, you know, with our partner COSI. It can touch audio engineering, it can touch, you know drumming labs and coding.
And because we're talking about the principles of what jazz represents in that particular space. And then again, using music which all children love and everyone has a connection to music is of course universal. And so to answer your question, officially answer your questions, what is Jazz Lab? So it is a. Interdisciplinary STEAM program, it's hands-on, immersive experiences. We started off really wanting to focus on children who are from underserved and under-resourced communities, giving them those opportunities to try technology, to try different cultural experiences, to see what might spark.
And so from a workforce readiness or workforce development standpoint, the skills building that's happening when kids come and experience JazzLab, whichever lab it is, sound science, where they're hands- on with instruments, or it's the- improvisational design lab where they're doing engineering design challenges collaboratively, where they are building instruments, or virtual reality where they're making music in VR, all of it is about building up those critical creative thinking skills. It is about taking risks, being more adaptable, resilient, and failing but failing quickly and knowing that there's safe space to do that. And so, you know, we're interested in discovery and spark.
Juravich: This is Fascinating Ohio From All Sides on 89.7 NPR News, and we're talking about a tribe for jazz with executive director Stephanie Matthews. Are you a musician yourself? So I play trumpet from fifth to 12th grade.
Matthews: I didn't have the chops to carry it further than that. Were you in marching band? I was. I was in marching bands symphonic. I went to Eastmore High School and I loved band. It was like the most amazing time of my life, but you know what I loved most about it was the fact that it was the collaboration process and the discipline. How did you find yourself in charge of a jazz organization?
So it was a great question. It was during the pandemic. So for 22 years prior to this, I was a photographer and a creative director and I am still those things. Um, I cut, so I brought the visual storytelling aspect to our mission. When I stepped on board, um, again, it was during the pandemic and I was not traveling to New York, I wasn't shooting work nationally or anything like that. And an opportunity came up, you know, the founder of a tribe for jazz, Bruce Halliburton, and I met by chance and it was really divine actually. And, uh, he said, I think there's something we could work on together. And he was right.
Juravich: Did it already exist before you became executive director? I mean, you You morphed it into a non-profit?
Matthews: Yeah, it existed on a small scale. Bruce was bringing in musicians who sound that he really liked from like New York. And he was doing shows over at Capital University. But when I came on board, we adjusted the mission, really started building it out. And then, yeah, did you add the education component? It was already kind of in there, but I don't think our board really knew I was going to take this in the way that I did.
Juravich: They didn't think VR headsets were coming.
Matthews: No, no, because I'm very interested in the neuroscience behind how jazz music and music in itself impacts the body and the brain. And so when we went down that path, you know, it was like, okay, no full on, we're going down this path. And it's a nice lane to live in because most people don't come at it from that perspective.
Juravich: Do you ever pick up your trumpet again?
Matthews: No, I have, once or twice and then I tried and I was like oh man, I really don't have the lips for it. You know, it was.
Juravich: Yeah, you lost all the strength in your lips.
Matthews: I did, I did. And the ability to read music, so yeah. I'm sure you could find a teacher to help you bring it back. I'm pretty sure you know a few. Okay, so back to JazzLab just for a minute though. Is it an after school program and a summer program both? Or is that different? It is actually a... A whole ecosystem of afterschool, summer, yes, and an in-school experience as well. So, you know, our legacy funder was Battelle and they took a risk, took a chance on us and I'm so grateful that they did. And they funded the afterschool version that got us started.
And then we morphed it into the summer program which lives over at Fort Hayes in the construction arts building. And we're actually gonna be starting up again, too. So, and then it's also in the in- school time space a four and a half hour. Immersive experience where 60 kids come in and rotate through the various labs. What schools do you do that in?
So right now currently we went to the lab, excuse me, the grant was focused on us pursuing locations in outlying areas, Fairfield, Licking County. And so we were at Sea Tech Licking, we've been at Eastland Fairfield where Canal Winchester came in. We went to Burn Union, we were over at Watkins Memorial, middle school. Um, my gosh, um. Did Canal Winchester, we've done quite a few. I didn't have my list in front of me. No, you did a great job with the list.
Juravich: I'm going to pivot to another collaboration. You have a newer collaboration with the Hale Cultural Center at Ohio State University. It says that the goal is amplifying jazz while honoring its roots and relevance to black cultural history. How did that partnership come about? Really organically
Matthews: That's um, it's a lovely partnership and like you said it is new and You know with the Hale culture center and they're very rich history It just it made a lot of sense and if their new director over there, Dr. Parisa Amari She is just doing really wonderful work elevating them back up and the You know, they've got they've I believe they have the largest They have the largest collection of African-American art here in the city. And that's something that was kind of like, yeah, yeah, and I wanna make sure I got that right. I apologize if I've misstated. But things like that are really fascinating.
And so, you know, jazz can live in their space. And I'll tell you what we did, our first collaboration together was with trumpeter, Milena Casado, who came in. We did an artist talk and a reception. And then, you now, of course, that invitation of bringing those students from OSU into our work at the Clemson Museum of Art. And so it's always this nice religious dynamic of, you know, you're building a community. I mean, supporting one another's work and vision and.
Juravich: Values and another part of your mission is preserve the preservation of jazz you know the history of jazz can you what does that entail how does your organization teach history and help preserve it so
Matthews: It's, it's this really interesting mix, right, of, so jazz music is, it is an original American art form. It's been around for well over 100 years and now it's a global art form and so noting that, respecting and honoring that, that legacy, that really rich legacy in terms of thinking about who we're bringing in, who we are presenting, how we're creating our educational programming. And while we don't do music education or jazz education... Um, it's, it always there with us. It's always there. With us.
And so in terms of long-term thinking, you know, we have a lot of thoughts around, you know can we be the organization that convenes, you know, jazz landmarks here in Columbus? You know, can there be a jazz walk? You know jazz was huge here in Columbus and you think about like King Lincoln, Bronzeville and that area over there. And some of the historic homes that famous jazz musicians used to stay in because they couldn't stay in hotels. You know, in the 40s and 50s, you know, as black musicians. And so we give a lot of thought to all of that. And then I think you'll see some things coming in the near future. That's a little tease that you're working on. A little tease. All right.
Juravich: You recently received several awards, several honors, the Jazz Hero Award, GCAC Award to do the Arts Education Award. You're also just featured as one of 2026's inspiring women in Columbus Monthly Magazine. I mean, how does it feel to be recognized for all your efforts? Thank you for that question.
Matthews: Grateful, I'm grateful that our work is being recognized. We're a small organization and it's, I make a joke sometimes that it's you know, you know it's me and me. No, but. You're your own, you're your boss employee, yeah. No, no, not only just that, but I'm like you know. We do a lot of work and you know we've got a fantastic board and there's a lot of support and volunteer support around us and our contractors, but at the end of the day it's people don't see, you know the, I think they're starting to see like the passion and the love.
And the deep intentionality around what it is that we're trying to create something different. And so I'm honored to be able to show up for this work. I'm in the right place at the exact right time doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. So I'm very grateful.
Juravich: Before we end, I wanted to pivot back to the fact that you're an award-winning photographer. Was there a link between your photography past and your tribe for jazz future? Hmm in that
Matthews: Bruce saw my work and said, huh, there's something we could do together. But I think I've been really blessed because of the work that I've done before and just who I am as a person to have vision. And it's wonderful to be in a space where I can create freely and boldly. And so that's kind of how I was as a shooter, too. And so I.
Juravich: So you don't pick up the trumpet anymore, do you pick up the camera anymore?
Matthews: There's no time. There's not time. Well, and then you teased a little bit your hopes for the future of the organization. You said, you know, something's coming with history. Is there anything else about the future of A Tribe for Jazz you want to tell us about? Sure. Really think it's um you know the Jazz Lab program and all of our other we have an emotional wellness program as well we're growing we're expanding we're being very thoughtful in terms of how we're moving our footprint out within Ohio and then only more of a national scale we see ourselves as a global organization well everything is global because this is the internet right yeah but I think we're being very intentional on how you know our reach is going to start moving out and I think Jazz Lab has got a lot of a lot of legs and a lot of kids to be able to touch.
Juravich: Everything we're doing. So yeah. Well I want to thank you so much for your time. We've been talking about A Tribe for Jazz with executive director Stephanie Matthews. Thanks for joining us. Thank you Amy. Appreciate you. And coming up we're gonna talk to the founder of Energize Care, an organization for caregivers and individuals with early to moderate Alzheimer's disease. That's when Fascinating Ohio from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. This is Fascinating Ohio, a show from All Sides in WOSU that introduces you to people from the Buckeye State with an interesting story to tell. When someone is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, the impact ripples through their entire system. Dr. Ken Vitellas was balancing the role of physician, husband, father and caregiver after his wife was diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer's. His experience led him to create Energize Care, an organization offering support for caregivers and individuals living with early to moderate Alzheimer's. He joins us today. Welcome to All Sides Ken.
Dr. Ken Vitellas: Thank you for having me.
Juravich: So did you feel alone in your journey with your wife? Is that what did where you did you have this desire? Why did you want to start a community?
Vitellas: Well, as you mentioned, I'm a father, I'm husband, I am a radiologist, and I do give to the community. When someone's diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, it's a shock. We're not prepared. We're isolated, there's lack of education, there's a lack of awareness of what to do in a home. There is little to no support for about six years of Alzheimer's Disease when they're early to moderate stage. Little to no for care partners for six years. And that causes isolation.
I was fortunate enough to have a job at age 55 when I had to stay at home with Lisa. Mount Carmel and Radiology Incorporated gave me a job. That turned everything around. Everyone in my position would have lost their job, lost income, devastation, and suffering, but through love, suffering went away. And I realized that this was not by accident. This happened. On purpose. So, it's time for me to give out, give out. And that's how energized care was born. Through the love of my work, the love of my community.
I'm a big fat family, big Greek fat family that supports me. Friends in my community support me. Others do not have that support. I am working. I am strengthened. And because of the love of the community and friends, I have something very important that caregivers do not receive. And that is respite care. I realized three times a week, three hours a day, three times week provided me with strength so that I can continue with giving hope to my family, the community and to my wife and caring for her.
This is something that caregivers don't have and when they receive it, it's way too late. When they're late, exhausted and burnout, there is no reason why two people need to die from this disease. Caregivers very often Suffer so much that they did they died before their loved ones. So that's what we created in their touch care
Juravich: I mean, it's such a powerful story and what you were saying was, was it Mount Carmel? Did they give you the flexibility to be able to stay home with your wife?
Vitellas: So it was early on during COVID and I was pretty much the first remote radiologist in our group of 40 radiologists so they designed it for me to stay at home with my wife Lisa instead of being unemployed with three young girls in their 20s at age 55 and that just turned everything around.
Juravich: So what made you realize that you wanted to create an organization because you could have just you know Done it for just yourself rather than you know involving other people helping other people so why why an organization?
Vitellas: Again, this is not by accident. I've always wanted to have a fundraiser in my backyard for Alzheimer's, and as the years went by, I would try to wait for the right time to have it with Lisa, so she wouldn't be embarrassed. I wanted it in honor of her. Finally, I went to a church fundraiser last year in December, and I was in awe by John Risen. He's a famous tenor singer. He's famous. He came to Runners Up for America's Got Talent. And his singing and emotion just rocked me.
So I said, hey, John, a year from now, I wanna have a fundraiser in Albany in honor of Alzheimer's, in honor my wife, Lisa. I just wanna have fundraiser for Alzheimer's disease. But then over the months, I've realized that this is bigger. Let's start a nonprofit. So one person from the community, my church community, the Greek Orthodox Church downtown here, her name is Dr. Alice Epitropoulos, had a father, her father is Dr, Mayon Sargernes. Is well known here through the Ohio State University Medical Center community. And her father, she was in the journey with Alzheimer's with him. And I said to her, Alice, let's start a nonprofit. And we came up with the name. She came up the logo. We got our board. And here we are just over one year later.
Juravich: Tell me about the name. What does the name mean? Like, where did it come from?
Vitellas: Again, energized care, we are here to energize care. This is a transformational movement that we're trying to energize the community, energize care partners, energize businesses to come together to support and care those that are in need.
Juravich: So your website says that you want to build a new standard of adult daycare services. So what does that look like? What's a new standards for adult day care services?
Vitellas: So right now, there are daycare services that are in medical non-freestanding facilities where there's some education, maybe not education, there's stigma of dementia, there's a stigma of the word Alzheimer's, you see nursing homes, and it's not a good environment for someone who's an early moderate. So what we're doing, we're going freestanding non-medical respite centers that are free of the stigma where people can come in, feel human.
Engage with people that are also not diseased. And we have an atmosphere built where our volunteers, when we engage our participants, they cannot even tell who has disease and who does not. So our center is what we have now. We have a center in New Albany. We go to the zoo. We now are having been invited to do our care at New Albani, at Healthy New Albni, the Dr. Phil Hite Center at Healthy, New Albini. And we are preparing to do our first building, which will be on Sawmill 270 in September.
Juravich: Wow. Okay. So like a whole facility and
Vitellas: We just signed a lease.
Juravich: What programming do you envision in that building? I mean, dream the dream. What's the dream?
Vitellas: Okay, so the main thing is respite care, right? So we wanna engage the participants to, we want to engage people with disease so their care partners have respite. That's number one, that's why I did this mission. But through this, we also provide education. I'm a trainer, we are trained dementia care experts. We receive training from Dementia Care Institute. We have certified training through John Hopkins that we can actually train the community. We can train hospitals, we can train senior centers. So training is the other thing.
Dementia Friends Ohio, we provide one hour information sessions through Dementias Friends Ohio to provide awareness to the community, to diminish stigma. But at our center, we also will have care partner support groups, we'll have a meeting room, we'll a beauty salon and a nail salon because we know that it's hard for the people with disease to go out and get their hair done, but why not get their head done and see your friends at the same time?
We have partner rooms, so we are inviting everyone who has the same mission as ours to use our space, to use it at a high visibility, high traffic area at the base of Mount Carmel, Dublin to bring down the stigma of this horrible disease to come together.
Juravich: This is Fascinating Ohio From All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about Energize Care, an organization that supports the care partners of people with Alzheimer's disease. And we're talking with the founder, Dr. Ken Vitellas. So tell me more about, I was intrigued by reading about the post, I saw it on your website that you have hands-on experiences at the zoo. So is it that the caregiver and the person with Alzheimer go to the zoo together, or is it volunteers take the person with Alzheimer to the Zoo?
Vitellas: Again, this is an organization to provide the person at home with free time to take care of themselves.
Juravich: Right. Okay. So it's that's an example of your adult daycare services. So there. So you know, you're leaving your loved one in good hands. You're having a good time at the zoo instead of sitting in a hospital.
Vitellas: Exactly. Okay. Okay
Juravich: And can you tell me a little bit more about the education sessions that you offer? Because I also saw there's weekly meetups. So did you find that a lot of caregivers don't have anyone to talk to who's going through the same thing? Is that what these are?
Vitellas: So the education sessions are mostly for the community, for businesses, individuals. So Dementia Friends wants the community to understand dementia. And we also provide the same education to our care partners. The aloneness that our care partner receive, that they have, I try to help that by being present at our sessions. Before the sessions, they'll talk to me, I'm present by phone, by email, by communication.
But we also have care partner support groups. We're partnered with a place called Amy's Place, which is partnered with Dementia Northwest in Washington State. It's with the Alzheimer's Association. They have a care partner support group headed by a nurse for 25 years of experience that we provide virtual support and encourage our care partners to go to that support group once a week. So I encourage them to have the training. I encourage to talk to me.
I encourage possibly to even serve standardized care when their loved ones pass, since hopefully their soul can be part of our mission in our building, and they can come and serve the other care partners and teach them what we've all gone through. And that's a goal.
Juravich: Tell me more about the volunteers you have. Do you have paid employees who are helping you or is it mostly volunteers?
Vitellas: So we have two paid employees. I have an executive director, director of operations, and we have an activity director. The other are volunteers. So they all go through our certified training program for two hours who commit their time in volunteer work. We haven't had to pay any volunteers yet. So they go through a two-hour program. Which is certified through the Dementia Care Institute, John Hopkins Collaboration, it's certified with our name and their name, so it is recognized from them. And then basically they sign up for shifts at the zoo, they signup for shifts in New Albany, and eventually when we have our building, we'll have it operated six days a week, and at that time, yes, we'll probably have to pay for volunteers.
Juravich: Do you, can you give us, do you have a story or an anecdote of someone who has been helped by Energize Care that, you know, just to tell people about the impact?
Vitellas: Well, the impact is that number one, the best sentence I've said is a first time volunteer after the session says, who has dementia again? Because our goal is to care for them in the new way. The new way is the transformational model where you have to bypass their disabilities and go directly to their emotional memory. So what that means is you find things that stimulate them. And create happiness, joy, and dignity. So music, number one. Storytelling, dance, engagement, socialization, lunch, exercise, the zoo. All these things we do for three, three and a half hours. So that's the most important thing.
The other thing is that they always wanna come back. I'm Mr. Ken, Ken's gonna be there. They wanna come and see me and that just provides me more strength. You know, and the other volunteers, but they all want to come back. The care partner feels the most relief, the three and a half hours is the best rest they receive knowing that their loved one has the best care that is offered. And when they know that, they trust us and they believe in us and they have the best cure they can get.
One other thing too is another story, just as we're walking through the zoo, we know we're wearing our energized care t-shirts. And there's about 10 of us wearing these shirts and one of the zoo workers will come by and say, oh, what are you guys doing? And one of our participants has Alzheimer's. Oh, we're here with Alzheimer's, we're just enjoying the day because this is Energized Care, we're trying to have fun and enjoy as far while my wife has a break. And they say, no, you're kidding me. No, no. I have Alzheimer's disease. I've been diagnosed. So he was strong enough to explain to him, which again is strength, but also decreases the stigma of our disease. We're not inhumane. They're not inhumane. They're people that need love and dignity. They can live well with the disease. So that's our story.
Juravich: Do you still work as a radiologist or is this your full time gig now?
Vitellas: I have to work radiologists because I needed support energized care. We're only a year old.
Juravich: Okay.
Vitellas: Yeah, so our money is coming from donations, right? And we have a lot of movement. So, yes, I am still working. Care for Lisa is expensive. She's now, I think now, had her last birthday this year, unfortunately. So yeah, I'm working. I have my three young girls. I want this to be successful. So until we have more community sponsors and grant money where I can hire someone to do my work. I will still work.
Juravich: So tell me about where you get your donations from. Is it individuals, is it corporations? I'm sure, I know you're looking for more money, but right now, who are your big sponsors?
Vitellas: Yeah, I think again, we're only one year old, right? So we had a gala last year, first gala, first year, we raised $100,000 from individuals, right, $50,000, also donated throughout the year by individuals. So I think this is a year we'll probably, I hope to get corporate sponsors to see our vision and our motion, but we know we have a, New Albany Foundation has supported us with some funding. Chase Bank has supported us recently with some fundings. Chase Bank is supporting us with a volunteer spotlight through the programs. So things are coming together, but we haven't had big community sponsors yet
Juravich: the facility on sawmill. When did you say you hope it opens?
Vitellas: September 1st.
Juravich: Oh, you already have a date. All right, you're ready. So, time to reverse. Is Lisa well enough? Is she going to be able to visit there?
Vitellas: So Lisa, no, she's not. So obviously I created this for her, for her and for the community. And we enjoyed respite care together the first couple months at New Albany, at the zoo. We went to the zoo regularly, almost every day. But as she's progressed, she can't enjoy it that much. She's mostly at home right now. But I now am thankful that I can provide love and hope. And people give me strength by just going to EnergizeCare and providing services there myself.
Juravich: Besides building this building on Sawmill and offering services there, what else do you see in the future for energized care? If you could dream the biggest dream.
Vitellas: Oh, the biggest dream is basically, first of all, 20% of all funds we raise goes to those in need, and we have a sliding scale. So that is one thing. The second thing is I hope that central Ohio comes together and supports this mission because this could be the model for the country. And if it becomes the model of the country, I see people buying our name. The money that the people buy our name in the future will buy buildings where they are needed in our cities. Less income, more accessible to people.
And then also transportation. I want us to have a transportation fleet in a year. North, East, West, South Columbus, to bring them to our place if we only have one. So I think maybe central Ohio will come together and create a transportation for us. But it is so, so needed.
Juravich: I love that you want to fleet you're not even talking about one bus you want a fleet. Yeah
Vitellas: Alzheimer's disease affects everyone. Everyone, everyone either knows someone who's affected. Two football stadiums at a high state is what you can fill with people affected with Alzheimer's and other dementias in Ohio. You multiply it by two. Six football stadium are their caregivers and people. That's 60% of Ohioans that are affected. And then the other 40% either know somebody or not.
So central Ohio can come together and make something big through promoting education. The public needs to be aware to decrease the stigma, tell people about respite care, support groups. We need to break down the stigma and love these peoples to see our wonderful people as our first of its kind logo for Alzheimer's awareness just was launched a couple of weeks ago.
Juravich: Well, I wanna thank you so much for telling us all about this. And we've been talking about Energize Care, an organization that supports care partners for people with Alzheimer's disease. And we'd been talking with the founder, Dr. Ken Vitellis. Thank you so for your time today.
Vitellas: Thank you, Amy.
Juravich: And coming up, we're going to talk with the executive director of Marion matters. It's an organization that helps people get out of poverty. That's when Fascinating Ohio from all sides continues on 89 7 NPR News. You're listening to All Sides.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. This is Fascinating Ohio, a show from All Sides in WOSU that introduces you to people from the Buckeye State with an interesting story to tell. Since its creation in 2011, Marion Matters has helped over 300 people out of poverty. The organization provides individuals with skills and training through educational programs and coaching. And joining us now is the executive director, Natalie Longmeier. She has worked in the nonprofit sector in Marion County for more than 13 years. Welcome to All Sides Natalie.
Natalie Longmeier: Hi, good morning. Thanks for having me.
Juravich: So the mission of Marian Matters says it provides leadership in developing and sustaining pathways out of poverty using education and support. Can you tell me what do you mean by a pathway out of property?
Longmeier: Yes, so what we do at Miriam Matters and what that pathway looks like. Is by having individuals register for our 14-week class and help them really discover what their strengths are. We call them the 11 resources and they're able to identify what is strong and maybe what they have opportunities to work on. And so that pathway of self discovery, looking inward, finding out what's available in their community, building social capital, strong networks of people to really help give them some mentorship and some guidance along with education for that pathway to move forward to stability.
Juravich: I also read that you have a focus on breaking generational and situational poverty. And you hope to do that through empowering people. But do you find that the people you work with feel like everything's out of their control? I mean, tell me about how you help them find control, you know, breaking that generational or situational property.
Longmeier: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the foundations of what we call hidden roles in the work that we do is that folks from generational poverty do feel powerless. You kind of hit it right on the head there. And so we help them understand also the socioeconomic class of how the society works. And so by doing that, understanding that middle class or life of stability may not necessarily maybe the environment that they grew up in, which is instability. And so helping them understand the world around them and the differences between maybe how they were raised versus how society operates in certain norms helps them build that strength and that power to understand what they need to do to kind of help start to thrive in the environment.
Juravich: That they're in. How do you find the people who come to Marian Matters? Do they find you? Do you find them? Is it referrals? Yeah, both. We do have a lot of graduate students.
Longmeier: Yeah, both. We do have a lot of graduates from the class continue to refer because they feel so empowered by the class and really have new fresh perspective on life and hope that they often do refer. However, we work with community partners, community action, some of our local agencies, job and family services here in Marion County, where a lot people do refer to the program. Along with our core systems, municipal core, Marion municipal core has been a huge referral source and also part of the foundation of where this organization came from.
Juravich: Now, because it's called Marion Matters, do you have to live in Marion? Like, tell me who are the people, yeah.
Longmeier: Yeah, so it was founded in Marion County. And so it, yes, it was absolutely Marion Matters. We are doing some expansion work right now. And because we want to stay true to the foundational root, what we did is we're looking at expanding into Crawford County and Marow County. So we just identified them as Crawford Matters and Marrow Matters and so really wanting to give each one of those counties their own identifying sense of belonging and that in our rural communities here in Ohio, that's really important.
And so we just utilize that, we hear from the community, and we kind of take that into consideration, especially as we grow. But the foundation work did start right here in Marion with a lot of local people willing and wanting to break a lot that stigma on poverty.
Juravich: Tell me about, because you mentioned it's all rural areas, tell me about the idea of being in poverty in a rural area versus being in a city. Is it, I mean, is it different? Are there fewer services or do you feel more alone since you're not surrounded by as many people?
Longmeier: Yeah, that's a great question. And in all honesty, because I grew up in the rural community, I can't speak to the metro or the urban side of it as much. But I do feel like in the real communities, we do have a tendency, I think, to band together. There is a sense of community pride and some community work that happens. I do believe also with our smaller communities, it is easier to get things done. We do have the tendency to come together and see our own and help our own as a community and not necessarily as pockets of people.
And so the rural communities do struggle with poverty, specifically in North Central Ohio. We had a lot of migration for the Appalachia area in back into when industry was booming in the 40s and 50s. And so a lot those mindsets, a lot the things that people grew up on transferred right here to North Central, Ohio. And so we're still seeing some of the effects of that generational mindset here. And so that rural community piece definitely has a little bit of a different flavor than I do believe probably what's seen in some of those larger metro areas.
Juravich: You mentioned that there's 14 weeks of classes. Are they free?
Longmeier: Yeah, great question. So they are free. Mary Matters is actually a completely self-sustained agency with very limited state and federal funding. We primarily are funded by our community foundations, our local United Way, along with some local contracts with our drug and alcohol board and our JFS. But everything is funded right through here in Marion County. And so the classes are free, we actually incentivize classes. This 14 weeks is a long time and it's a self-discovery class.
So each participant earns a gift card every time they show up for those 14 weeks and really helps a tangible way to support them through the class. Maybe they need gas money, maybe they need help with groceries. And so it's great way. We have a lot of participants say, hey, I first came for the gift card, but man, I've learned so much and I'm so glad I stuck with it. And even though I might've started with the giftcard, Um, I stayed because it was super impactful.
Juravich: Changed my life. So tell me about what what types of training people go through. I mean are we talking job training? Are we talking you know getting a GED or you know college? Like what what what are we talking?
Longmeier: Yeah, so it's actually a little bit more fundamental than that. And so what we're doing is we look at all of those things that typically training is centered around and we're looking at the person. And so we follow what's called a getting ahead by just getting by curriculum, which is a Bridgesaw poverty model. And it's through the lens of the individual. And it is based on 11 resources that we believe affect somebody's stability. And so over the years, over the last couple of decades, we've moved from what we would consider poverty, middle class, and wealth to instability, stability, and long-term stability.
Because a lot of times we believe that poverty only looks like people who are under a certain financial class. And that's just not true. People can make a living wage and above a living wage and still operate in a poverty mindset and how they spend their money, how they spent their time, and what those things look like. And so during those classes, we assess what those 11 resources look like. As an example, we're looking at their mental, emotional state, their social capital, their network of people, their drive, their understanding of hidden rules of economic class.
We're looking all of those things that they do a self-evaluation of how they, where they land in that stability scale. And then we help them take those resources that are on the lower side, and we identify which ones they are stronger in, and then we have them take those stronger resources to help develop the ones they have more opportunity. We also have some financial literacy classes we do aside from that, which is very grassroots elementary of how to build a budget, what does your debt look like, how do we incorporate financial assistance if you're receiving SNAP benefits, and what does smart shopping look like and why do we spend money? So we're definitely looking at a mindset of education versus maybe just some skill training that a lot of people continue to do in our communities, which is great, but we're typically the only ones doing this mindset education.
Juravich: Are you, for the 14-week course, are you by yourself or is it a group class?
Longmeier: Yeah, it's a cohort. Typically, we like to start with about 14 or 15 individuals and then try to graduate about that many. We usually have a few fall off. They get jobs, job changes, things like that, which is always great. But it is a cohort that we typically like 10 to 15 people to be involved in.
Juravich: This is Fascinating Ohio From All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. And we're talking about how Marian Matters helps people get out of poverty. And we are talking with Executive Director Natalie Longmeier. I saw that you joined Marian Matter as a success coach. What does that role, what does a success coach do?
Longmeier: Yeah, so I always say Mary Matters has a two-prong approach. We have that internal programming side, Amy, that you and I have been talking about. And then we have what we call the external programming. And that's called the employer resource network. And so I was a success coach in businesses, in our community. And what that looked like was a business contracting with Mary and Matters to provide a person on site to help employees walk through barriers that may be keeping them from employment or having attendance issues, calling off tardiness issues and things that are keeping them from not being super productive at work.
And so when I started as a success coach in 2019, I had a handful of businesses I was designated to per the contract and I helped employees. Talked with them, I was a confidential resource. We talked about their personal situations, what's keeping them from work and I learned a lot. I was very honored to serve in that role for people to share their stories and how I could help navigate resources and support them while they're at work. Because a lot of times people think just because they're working, there's not support out there, and that's just not the case. And so a success coach can help streamline those condomative services.
Juravich: How did you eventually become executive director and find yourself in charge of the whole thing?
Longmeier: Yeah, so Heidi Jones, who was the previous executive director, had moved on to become the president of the Marinary Chamber of Commerce. And so I had been there as a success coach, moved into coordination of the Employer Resource Network Services. I've been in the nonprofit field in Marion County for a little over a decade. And so just found a great opportunity to kind of step into that role and have been really fortunate to do so. And love, love the organization and everything that we do. What's your favorite thing about Marian Matters?
Yeah, gosh, you know, what a great question. I would say it's the opportunity to learn and hear from those in our community that typically don't get the voice. And so when we stigmatize and slap labels on individuals, being able to have the opportunity to really hear people's stories, why they choose and make the decisions that they make is a very humbling experience. And I have always been very honored to get across from those individuals. And that's my favorite thing is being able to hear them and then, and they allow me. To help become a part of their story.
Juravich: Do you have a success story you can share? I mean, you don't have to share a name or anything, but just an example of one of those 300 people I mentioned at the beginning that you've helped get out of poverty.
Longmeier: Yeah, so one of our greatest, one of the great successes I have been privileged to work with, and there are so, so many, is I did work with a student at our local college, and he was taking some classes to become a police officer, and we were able to help secure some funding for some car repairs, and that was able to, that specifically program in that area, he was able to complete his training. He graduated from the Technical College, is employed at Ohio Health here in our local community, and is really doing a great job.
So many community partners involved there. We had some funding support from United Way, one of our coalitions. He took training and financial literacy classes to help kind of grow that understanding of good financial support. And so being able to help him. So then he graduated, got a job in our community, and is thriving. So we're super proud of that individual and everything he's been able to accomplish and all he needed was a little bit of mentorship, guidance, and some car repairs.
Juravich: Yeah, talk to me about how, in a rural area especially, transportation is sometimes the deciding factor. If you have a car that doesn't work, then suddenly you can't get to class, and then suddenly, you drop out, and then, suddenly, your in debt. Yeah, yeah.
Longmeier: Transportation is a massive issue in the rural communities. I mean, unlike those metro areas, we have local bus stations and things like that, but it's really more of an on-demand service. Oftentimes, it doesn't run into the evenings. It doesn't operate on the weekends, and it's something rural communities across this area are trying to address. But funding is typically a big challenge for us. And so how do we get those services so that they're more accessible and hours of operation that really could benefit employees in our communities?
We have a lot of manufacturing in our region. And so, how could we be partnering? Lots of discussion, lots of good leads, but still working towards some good solutions. Because oftentimes here, specifically in Marion County, we're dealing with multi-family homes. They often only have one car. One person is running everyone around trying to manage schedules, trying to get kids to school. If that one car breaks down, the family's got big problems and often requires some assistance.
And oftentimes if they don't reach out for assistance, then they may be burying themselves into further debt by changing out the car, adding more car payments, Things that they may not be able to afford, but they're in survival mode at that point.
Juravich: We've been talking about how Marian Matters helps people get out of poverty with Executive Director Natalie Longmire. Thank you so much for your time today, Natalie.
Longmeier: Yes, thank you so much. I really appreciate this.
Juravich: And this has been Fascinating Ohio from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. I want to say thanks to the All Side staff, producers Marcus Charleston and Erin Esmont-Rabinowitz. Our student producers Iza Huck, Colin Simpson and Brianna Fortunat. And our student producer from Denison University is Ellen Hansen. Video production by the Ohio Channel Board Operation by Chris Johnston. If you missed any part of today's show, listen back at our website, that's wosu.org all sides, subscribe to our podcast, or listen to any episode in our mobile app. This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich. Thanks for joining us today.