609. People, Place, Practice, Policy: RestoreOKC's Community-Led Model - Caylee Dodson

Meet Caylee, Co-Founder and Executive Director of RestoreOKC. Caylee joins us to share how she and her team have taken a radically different, community-led approach to addressing complex, systemic issues in their city. It's a powerful case study on how data can be a helpful tool (but not the driver), how grassroots programs are transforming access to education, jobs, and housing, and how meaningful partnerships are key to lasting change. 🤝

Their work has sparked sustainable, community-led development that’s been recognized with state and national awards—including Caylee being named USA Today’s Oklahoma Woman of the Year. ⭐ This one is a must-listen for anyone passionate about driving systemic change and building more just, thriving communities. 🎧 Live now!

💡Learn: 

• RestoreOKC’s “people, place, practice, policy” framework for community-led change
• The importance of centering community voice and lived experience in program development
• How partnerships and collaboration help address complex, systemic challenges
• Practical tips for self-care as a nonprofit leader

Episode Highlights: 

• Caylee Dodson's Journey and Formative Experiences (2:54)
• RestoreOKC's Community-Led Approach (13:00)
• How RestoreOKC leverages partnerships and collaborations to address systemic issues (22:00)
• Place-Based Approaches to Community Development (30:19)
• Self-Care in Nonprofit Leadership (39:37)
• A Powerful Moment of Philanthropy in Caylee's Life (35:00)
• Caylee's One Good Thing: Be a presence of radical warmth and hospitality. (37:00)

Explore the Episode Shownotes: www.weareforgood.com/episode/609

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Restore OKC
• 6:18 Kaylee's Formative Experiences
• 16:58 St. Louis and the Birth of Restore
• 28:42 Four Pillars of Community Flourishing
• 39:57 The Power of People-Led Change
• 52:12 Partnerships and Collaboration Success
• 1:10:15 Self-Care and Staying in the Work

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hey, I'm John.

Speaker 2: 0:02

And I'm Becky.

Speaker 1: 0:03

And this is the we Are For Good podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:06

Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.

Speaker 1: 0:15

We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.

Speaker 2: 0:23

So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.

Speaker 1: 0:34

So let's get started. Becky, you're beaming over there, hey.

Speaker 2: 0:39

John, I feel like my child is on the podcast. We're at that level where I am so excited to have our audience hear this profound and beautiful mission story today. Before I introduce our guest, I got to back it up just a little bit. I got to take you to little Becky Krause. She is a freshman or sophomore in college. Does not know who the heck she is or what she's about, but our guest today is in this family. And do you ever just meet, john, like families who are just so kind and generous, like when you think about families?

Speaker 3: 1:17

that you know what did they feed these kids, yes, yes.

Speaker 2: 1:20

But the Dodson family I met when I was like 18 or 19. And today we get the woman, the myth, the legend, kaylee Dodson is on the podcast today and we are so excited to have her. But here's what we're talking about today, y'all. We're talking about how partnerships and collaborations address systemic issues, and I am so unbelievably proud to highlight this mission, which is in Oklahoma City, and it's Restore OKC, and Kaylee serves as the executive director and it's just this beautiful community-based nonprofit that she helped found in 2016. And the work of Restore OKC has led to this beautiful, sustainable, community-led development that's won state and national awards, including Kaylee getting recognized as USA Today's Oklahoma Woman of the Year. There is so much to unpack.

Speaker 1: 2:15

Right.

Speaker 3: 2:15

That had to be a typo it was a slow year or something.

Speaker 2: 2:19

I know you're pinching yourself, but you are absolutely worthy of that friend. But she was working in St Louis and we're going to get into this story about how Restore OKC came about and had some really pivotal things happen to her. We're going to get into partnerships, collaborations. We're going to talk about equity. We're going to talk about love and revitalization. Kaylee, get into this house. We are so excited you are here.

Speaker 3: 2:43

I am beyond excited to be here, other than, like massive imposter syndrome, feeling like I listened to you guys to soak up the wisdom of this community on the regs. This is such an honor.

Speaker 2: 2:53

Start at the beginning. Tell us you know about your formative experiences growing up and how it kind of led you to fulfill this role today.

Speaker 3: 3:01

Absolutely. You know, be careful what you ask for. But there is there's so much, I think, formative journey that you I mean I'm getting old. So I think what tends to happen as we get old is we're naturally more reflective and you just kind of look back at how the cards were sort of laid on the table for you before you really realized it. And so you know I love my family is wonderful.

Speaker 3: 3:23

So my mom was a proud public school teacher till the day she retired and you know, I grew up in the same neighborhood as this lady right over here so I could ride my bike to her house because there were green belts and parks and things in the community there and we my dad was a lineman for AT&T, what became AT&T Southwest Rebels, so kind of very solidly, you know, working class families it was just, I think you know laid some foundations of community and understanding, sort of what's at the heart of flourishing communities.

Speaker 3: 3:55

So there were parks, it was safe, there were neighbors around, there were adults you could trust, you could be in and out of each other's homes. There was so much of that sense of fabric of we that I think laid a foundation for there to just be intense safety, Even though you know we probably were. You know we bought the bank-owned home in the neighborhood that got us in the school district where my mom taught and that's like how we stumbled in there, right. So even though that's sort of our story, it never felt that way. We just felt like equals and we ran around the streets with everybody else and it laid a really wonderful foundation, I think, for understanding that communities can be this way there can be thriving community, schools in the middle of them and neighborhoods where people have opportunities, regardless of, maybe, what their families do.

Speaker 1: 4:37

Yeah, I mean connect the dots to your journey and restore OKC.

Speaker 3: 4:42

Yeah. So the move to St Louis. I joke, we do a coffee tour around here once a month. You should definitely jump on our website and grab a ticket. Come see it in real life, because it's so much more powerful to hear it from the voices of the community leaders that lead each arm. But in that coffee tour I really start off with, like we moved to St Louis grad school housing, right, and we kind of sign up to be newcomers in a city we don't know, we don't know anybody there, and they just had kind of purchased this apartment unit for kind of overflow, graduate housing for real cheap in the middle of the inner city, st Louis, and we moved there, we lived there, we loved it, and then they promptly turned around and sold it and we learned, you know later because it was in a dangerous area of the city so nobody wanted to move there and live there.

Speaker 3: 5:31

Well, we were there and we were like, wow, we kind of don't know any better and uh, our little Oklahoma cells were like we also just think this is part of why we've moved here is to is to kind of get a different experience and understand some different lived contexts. Let's just stay, let's just give it a year and say, um, it was this fast forward to a beautiful like doing life together and for the first time in Josh and I is certainly like lived experience the majority of our world we were the minority culture within it. So never and I wish that I could have that happen for everyone, because it again was not some sort of like wonderful missional decision that we really set ourselves up Like I really want to be purposeful in doing this it just so happened to transpire and just those relationships, those friendships, saved me, opened my world and eyes to a totally different understanding than I had ever even grasped. Right, it was not even like a reality that I knew to think deeply about, I just was clueless. And so I think that a good chunk of us are right. It's not that we have animosity, it's just ignorance, and I don't mean that in a negative sense. I think we just genuinely don't know, and our communities are built in such a way that it really naturally allows for that, for us to not know.

Speaker 3: 6:46

So you know, fast forward there, and I'm six months in and I've joined staff of what's called Restore St Louis, which is a community development ministry there that had been around for a couple decades when we started and I really kind of started learning from some of my absolute heroes, right, who've been in this work, and I start to just further learn how little I know and I pop off as an administrative person and said, you know, what really bothers me is just that there's this total red light district a block from our, from our office, and we lived in the inner city. There. The offices were in inner city, very similar to here, pretty strong emphasis and even core value on kind of relocation. So it's not you and me problems, it's I and we problems. And so, you know, we kind of landed there intentionally and lo and behold, there's this whole red light district happening right underneath our nose and I said, gosh, has anybody ever done anything about that? Right, and when you say things like that and then people say, well, why don't you, why don't you go, so I'm like you know what? I don't know, why don't we do that? It's something that really has burdened my heart to watch this happening.

Speaker 3: 7:46

And I don't I don't have the first clue what I would have in common with a woman who's trapped in the prostitution industry. I haven't had just a lot of deep conversations with those women in my life. And yet let's go. And so I remember just being like so nervous that first morning about what do we talk about? You know, what are we going to have in common? And we went out to a community garden that was run by restore St Louis, there, right in a widow's front yard that that had this just long, beautiful, prayerful presence in that community. And so she had said you can use this community garden space anytime for kind of outreach. And so donuts, coffee, and we're gardening and boom right, it's the start of what became some of the most formative relationships in my life.

Speaker 3: 8:28

Because, lo and behold, what you find out right, is that you, you're worried you'd have nothing in common, and we wound up having everything in common. Right, it's the human aspect of it, it's the longings of their heart, so similar to those longings that I told you about even in my childhood, not recognizing them as the gift that they were, which was gosh. Our longing is for an industry that supports another economy than this one, which is the economy that runs our streets in this community. We wish and long for schools that didn't fail us and fail our kids. We wish for housing that we could get into. Whether we're the bank-owned home, in a two parent household or we got one wealthy person, doesn't matter. We just want these same basic fabric and flourishing that we believe it takes for a, for a family, to be able to truly just flourish and rest and have that community and sense of safety net and purpose. And it just unfolded this beautiful vision of what would it actually look like if we dreamed holistically with this community about seeing those systems changed. And so, you know, fast forward.

Speaker 3: 9:27

Mike Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, missouri, and because our roots are here, we've been there for about a decade doing this work and man it was doing its work on us.

Speaker 3: 9:37

And when he was shot and killed in Ferguson the world kind of ripped apart. You know, at least that's how it felt there and I do think it rocked the nation, rightfully so, trying to make sense of this, and it was just it broke my heart kind of watching that play itself out. I'll never forget how that felt, even the moment that the verdict for the officer involved there came out not guilty. There was just such palpable emotion, grief and anger in the air and we had groups come and visit us, really kind of from all over. I mean at Restore St Louis there were a lot of groups from all over the nation, even world, coming to see some of the Faith for Justice and just different justice movements springing up out of that time. But that's when a group came from Oklahoma City. So some Eastside leaders and Westside leaders came and we really largely thought we would just kind of partner and resource them from afar. But Oklahoma City hit the national news maybe six months after they had come and left for the Daniel Holtzclaw trials.

Speaker 3: 10:37

So this was the national officer right indicted on 90 something accounts of sexual abuse almost entirely from women in our community, and we have neighbors here at Restore who have very much lived experience stories of him growing up as kids, and so it was this sense of like you know, we'd sort of sent them back with homework to kind of go. Okay, some of you are East side leaders and you know this scene really well, others of you don't. But if we really wanted to think about, like, what is the dynamic of you know, sort of racial tension look like in our city? Do we still have racial division? And so what does that mean? Are there differences because of that? And so we sent them back with a lot of homework and they came back a year after that and the Lynn Institute had just released a study, a 2016 study just of Northeast Oklahoma City that showed an 18-year life discrepancy between a kid born in our Tri-Zip area and anywhere else in the county. 18 years 18 years there is an 18-year life expectancy difference.

Speaker 3: 11:40

It was both shocking and angering and those leaders kind of came back with a little bit of you know. I think they'd come and seen Ferguson and there was a way of walking away from that going? God, well, at least we're not like that. And as they started actually doing sort of the homework, and a lot of incredible and key partners doing pieces of that together came back and realized, no, we're no different.

Speaker 3: 12:03

Um, and in a beautiful way. When they asked josh and to return, we were not ever planning on moving back, but as we started really thinking and praying through it, my gosh, we said you know, this is a hundred-year-old city, more or less St Louis is a 250-year-old city. So when you think about some of the systems and the injustices within them that have just gotten baked in over centuries, there really is just a pretty unique moment in time and opportunity to come back where our community and networks are. And we had an incredible community leader, born and raised here, who finally said hey, I would be honored to co-found this with you. And that was really the last kind of thing that we were very committed to was that it would always have to be a co-founded, co-led, co-directed effort, because I don't know anything about Northeast Oklahoma City, you know. So it's really been a beautiful start to what is now Restore.

Speaker 1: 12:55

I mean Kaylee, lots of things right.

Speaker 1: 12:58

So many things I don't want to lose that early on. You just talked about the power of listening and can't help but look around at our country at this time when we feel the polarity in everything and it's hard to see the good in whichever side. You're looking at the other side and I think that your story illuminates what we've found to be true on this podcast, hearing hundreds of stories of people that are just changed as we realize we're in this together. We have the same core desires and beliefs underneath the surface of the stuff that really divides us. So thank you for that call out, and so I'd love for you to kind of talk about what how you turn that into programming Like what does Restore OKC do? How do you lean into reconciliation and restorative justice? Specifically, how are those values as principles delivered in programs Like what does that look like?

Speaker 3: 13:53

Oh, that is a wonderful question. So I've gotten myself in troubles more way than I can count. That's sort of the theme in my life and one of those was recently, you know, I was on a panel where we were asked a very similar question and there was a very strong, very nationally recognized group that said you know and I think this is wonderful, so don't hear what I'm not saying I think there is a tremendous move to data and I think that data is a cornerstone. We have to be looking at it, thinking about it's one of the key ways that we actually can listen to the community or constituents. However, you break that down Right. So I'm a huge data nerd, I love it. So don't hear what I'm not saying.

Speaker 3: 14:32

But because I think we've made that shift and the pendulum has sort of swung there, the sort of outcry a little bit was you know, data has to drive programs, has to drive policy. And I just said I could not fundamentally disagree more. And they said what do you mean? I said for us all of those things matter that you've just listed, but it's foundationally the wrong starting point, at least for community led change. So I said for us our four levers are people in a place create a practice and I use that word intentionally because it's not a one size fits all and once you've figured it out, you can just pop it in and do it over and over again and that starts to shape policy. So people in a place create a practice from which we can shape policy that more justly and robustly like addresses those systems that affect them uniquely, and that's going to look different from community to community, as it should. And so I started, you know, of course. I said, okay, well, let me give you this example, right, and this is Restore's kind of first program arm, if you will, and we don't necessarily always refer to them that way, but we moved back and we live in the community here and so we know, okay, it's a relational work.

Speaker 3: 15:42

We're co-founded alongside Ernest, who's born and raised here in Northeast Grad, and so let's spend some time in really the one public gathering place in northeast Oklahoma City, which is our Ralph Ellison Library, which is a place full of saints who work there and do the work of a librarian and a social worker and a pastor and friend I mean, you name it, they do it. And so let's just spend some time there getting to know neighbors and just starting to kind of build the relational trust and thread and listen and understand what's kind of happening here and how the community understands. There's statistics, there's data everywhere about the community, right, I've just told you there's a whole study about the TriZip area that has been released and so we have data points, some general ideas about where we're headed right. We have data points, some general ideas about where we're headed Right. But here's the key difference is we're sitting in the library, we're talking, okay. All of a sudden librarian corners us about two weeks into this kind of daily exercise and our kids are just destroying the library every day.

Speaker 3: 16:40

They're with us and they corner us. Yeah, I'm so relatable. It was a, it was a full family deal. And she said hey, you know, give me a little bit of a sense of what you're doing here. So it was like, okay, let me kind of give you a little bit of this vision of what we've been a part of in St Louis and what we're kind of hoping to be a part of here. So we start into a conversation. She says, hey, this is summer 2016. So Mary Fallin's final year in office is a major oil and gas bust here again. And so she says the state just announced that they've cut child care subsidies and mental health benefits overnight. So, immediate radius of our library, 87% single parent household that summer. So almost nine of 10 doors you go knocking on. Don't know what they're doing with their kids the next day, right, and so this is a crisis. And so she says how many background checked trained adults Can you get in the building by tomorrow?

Speaker 1: 17:31

And we went well clearly we shouldn't be in charge of any more children than our own.

Speaker 3: 17:38

I think we've established that over the last two weeks and so we just kind of went okay, I don't know. So we did some background checks and we got we thankfully there were some churches that hold these robust background check safe things. So we have a few kind of churches. Okay, we get this in. Well, I kid you not, there was a community servant doing lunch there every single day, some regional food bank connections that came to class and by the end of that summer we had 125 kids. We were serving breakfast and lunch Monday through Saturday, had 125 kids. We were serving breakfast and lunch Monday through Saturday, and Restore's part was really tutoring. You know that's. That's, that's giving ourselves more credit.

Speaker 3: 18:15

It was a lot of water balloons. We did some reading activities. There's coloring, I really excelled at the water balloon part and we just we just got to know a lot of families. One of our initial, actually, parents from that summer had lost her job. They'd kept her at 30 hours for a previous felony and so her knees were super swollen and so instead of just staying home and pounding, which is what I would have done, she was showing up to serve every day and we got to know her and actually she helped start a different program, which is now Restore Employment, but our first program.

Speaker 3: 18:45

So everything unfolds and this is why I say you got to come to the tour, because everything unfolds in relationship from that first summer and it's all holistically intertwined. You can't pull one apart from the other. But that first summer ends and we had done this big mural because this was also the summer that Philando Castile shot and killed as a passenger sitting in the car and Alton Brown verdict comes back not guilty. So it another summer. We're just like how do we get a different narrative to play out? And we have to listen to one another.

Speaker 3: 19:13

And so we did this giant mural and, at the invitation of parents, we start really kind of tracking what would flourishing look like for our community, what do we need to stop doing, start doing, et cetera. And those parents said, hey, we have three schools at the time in northeast Oklahoma City and all three are considered failed. Now I will tell you, having served in those schools, that letter grade does not anywhere close to define who those humans are that are superheroes in those buildings doing incredible work with students. But in terms of an educational, thriving, equitable ecosystem, three failed schools doesn't seem to represent that very well, very well. And my word, there's one that's considered failed at every level. So there were two in the states and ours was one of them, and so we was like, let's start there. And at the kind of parent and the leaders that stayed in that school, we said know where do we start? Here and there there was about four to 5% teacher retention happening, so 95, 96% of that teaching staff's turning over every year, right, and and so okay, so what, how, what, what would we do here? And it was would you help us focus on retaining teachers? Amazing. So we started something we kind of called care teams, which was six to eight adults showing up. We did some TBRI training thanks to Halo and said your job is to show up for two hours a week and do whatever that teacher asks you to do. And so it was really that, and in seven years time, teacher retention shifted from 4% to 87%. So data drives programs drives system change.

Speaker 3: 20:52

What we would have said is the data shows that schools are failed and kids aren't reading at grade level, and so we would have started tutoring programming. With tutoring program, we would have said there needs to be more literacy focused. Here's what's happening. Instead, we said okay, data is as good as its guide. You have to have an interpreter in the communities that that data is represented by, and if you don't, you will come up with the wrong starting point, which is why we said it's people in a place and that data is part of it.

Speaker 3: 21:22

But people in a place know best how to make sense of that data and how to say where do we start actually developing some practices and piloting and seeing if they work? And so, lo and behold, 87% teacher retention. And now we're getting to do take all of the teachers to camp in the summer and we're sending them out to Vegas to learn different tools to serve students that are in their class, and that school has gone from last in the district in reading hours to top 10. And it's gone from highest chronic absenteeism to Kaylee Right. Those systems are changing themselves because they know the right starting point. I don't Right, and so, even if I had the data, I don't have the lived experience and that has to be the guide. So that's my threading back for you.

Speaker 2: 22:02

Wow, okay, I think that this is where a lot of us and I'll include me in this get stuck. Is that interpreter? And we don't start at that right place? And also you didn't say this word, but I'm going to say it we also don't release our ego and our need to be involved and to drive the change. It's about the lived experience. It's about understanding and having the humility that I don't know at all. I don't even know exactly what this data is telling me. It's going to take a village approach, which is what I love so much about Restore Okay.

Speaker 1: 22:39

See.

Speaker 2: 22:39

John, what were you about to say?

Speaker 1: 22:41

No, I'm freaking out at that. Of course, this leads to the outcomes, you know, because we talk the power of building with community, not for community, and that's the most beautiful example of it wouldn't have worked if you would have centered yourself as the solution you know to come in.

Speaker 1: 22:59

But the teachers you know, the families had the answers. They just needed some of this wraparound support to to bring it to life. What a beautiful example, I wonder. I'm also geeked out at the kind of formula that you dropped. The people place practice before we move into policy. Could you kind of help our listeners figure out how does that apply to them, because we've got a lot of different missions, leaning in and thinking, oh, this is something that could be really breakthrough for us. How do you apply that to what you're working on in front of you?

Speaker 3: 23:31

Yeah, that's a great, that's a great question. So I mean and this is where we're a little bit unique in that, like Restore is a very place-based company, you know, on purpose In fact, our kind of core mission statement back to your programs, we say we're, you know, epically cheesy and that we say everything we do we do here H-E-R-E in Northeast Oklahoma City, and those are our four programs. It's just an acronym, so it's health, education, residences and employment. So those are sort of the four big bucket foundational elements we think it takes for any community to sort of have the foundational elements of flourishing available to them and they have to be working very holistically. So that's. You know, that's my nerd out. So, given that we are very much a like place based group, right, there's a very maybe way that that sort of those four key kind of levers for change get pulled on by a group that's very place-based. But I think they're relevant, even if you're more of an issue-based organization, right. So we've got large groups here that are partners, that maybe they focus on an issue, you know, homelessness or whatever it may be.

Speaker 3: 24:38

I still think, gosh, there's so much wealth and knowledge that's sitting right in the people that you serve, whether that's based in a community or it's based in an issue, there's so much wealth and knowledge that's sitting right in the people that you serve, whether that's based in a community or it's based in an issue, there's a lived experience, knowledge that just I don't have. You know, and, and if you haven't now, what's really beautiful now is restores. We have social enterprise businesses that employ around 100 neighbors and every one of them are managed and led by somebody who's graduated our programming. So once you kind of get to that point, you can actually have lived experience actually in that managerial or leadership role. Like that's a beautiful thing, but we don't always start there, and so, foundationally, how do you really get those people to be centered and helping you to think through what the problems are in their perspective and how you would maybe begin to articulate a little bit of some practices that we talked a lot about.

Speaker 3: 25:28

Practices. You can pilot practices, you can tweak practices. We're not writing anything in stone, and the beauty is you're going to try some things and they're not going to work. That's actually a gift. I mean, there's a number of those for us, and I think that just makes it better when you're in an evolving conversation with the people who are part of it. Okay, it didn't work. Why didn't that work? Oh, because you didn't start with the secretary, and she's the gatekeeper Great.

Speaker 2: 25:53

Oh my gosh how many of us can know about that.

Speaker 2: 25:56

Anytime you're getting into someone on your major gift portfolio. There are always gatekeepers, but I do want to compliment you because it feels like there is almost like this trying stuff pilot, always optimizing mentality around what you're doing, and the framework and levers are so simple, because Restore a KC is really about four things it's about health, it's about education, it's about residences and it's about employment, and I think you have broken it down so simply and that you're running these pilots through in a really interesting way, and so I want to get into how partnerships and collaborations are really helping to not only lift your programs, but they're addressing these undercurrents and these systemic issues that keep schools in poverty, that keep kids in single parent houses all the things.

Speaker 2: 26:51

So talk about how collaboration is at the heart of your approach. What role do partnerships play in the success of all of these initiatives?

Speaker 3: 27:03

It's like the bread and butter of them. And I will tell you that. You know, occasionally you write a grant and I think it's hysterical. They're like list your partners here and I'm like how many pages am I allowed to attach? It's like, do you want just for this arm, because that's probably seven pages, but if I do the whole organization, it's like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds.

Speaker 3: 27:24

I just think that has been such a bedrock. We say this no community ever is left without incredible lived experience, leaders who have real vision. But also no community is divorced from its need for the other communities around it. And so there's answers that other people have that we need and vice versa. There's answers that you need that our community holds.

Speaker 3: 27:47

And we're seeing that a lot happening right now with some of the managed care organizations around health are trying to figure out okay, how, what does Medicare, medicaid enrollment look like? And we've been listening for eight, 10 years now. And so there's some incredible ways. We're again now starting to be able to shape some policy and talk to some of those groups. That just feels like an absolute, like pinch me, I can't believe we're really here, you know, shifting some policy. Do? We did a big child welfare study around like child welfare in this community with the casey family programs and ekc offshoot this past year. So it's just it's wild that we're starting to actually see some national outcomes from something that just really seems so simple and so local. It's so so hyper-local at some level. Your original question, I mean, was not related to anything that I just said. What was it?

Speaker 2: 28:33

I love you so much.

Speaker 1: 28:35

You are so great.

Speaker 2: 28:37

Oh my gosh, it was like. So like, talk to me about collaborations Like how do your? Partnerships help you address systemic issues, but I loved all that, by the way.

Speaker 3: 28:47

It's related. Yes, it's so related. There's I mean truly partnership at every level. Right, there is an answer to these solutions that community starts dreaming out of, and it's somewhere, it's right around us usually, and so, literally, one of our first social enterprises that you may or may not be aware of was a farm. So we have a, we have a giant five acre farm. Our office is centered on it. People drive by and they're like what on the world was happening?

Speaker 3: 29:12

Well, we started out of a local church two blocks up the road from here and pastor Carrie free. Reverend Carrie free, who, pastor in COVID, was such an incredible saint so much of his story would have made him naturally so opposed to the work of reconciliation right Landed here because segregated hospitals in Arkansas and this is where he could get care, and so like literally, his whole being in Oklahoma was rooted in just this kind of like yuck, you should be naturally opposed to anybody who looks like me, and yet here you are, not only welcoming us but opening your doors to your congregation and building to start this kind of reconciliation work. So beautiful saints, such incredible legacy, but really I remember the day he knocked on my door early on and said Carrie, why don't you come here? I want to talk to you. And he was the parent liaison at Northeast high school at the time. So he said I've just got this kind of wild idea Langston Connections. And he's like I just I want to think of and this was kind of early social enterprise like pathways to just kind of keep doing what you're doing at the elementary schools, but with middle and high school pre-pathways to greatness. So middle and high school were in the same school for us still at this point and I want you to kind of follow them up in the middle and high school.

Speaker 3: 30:22

But I think we need to do something that ties in higher education, because we're seeing high dropout rates to these kids and also part of the reason the dropout rate is so high is because they need to be a household income earner. Like how can we do this Right? And we start going OK, well, you've got university partnerships, you've got people. So you know this fabric of let's pull Langston, let's pull Oklahoma State University, we've got land grant universities, we've got all of these pathways right in partnerships and collaborations that start getting formed, that just start laying the foundation for just beautiful, beautiful work. Well, that farm now probably has a dozen or more intentional partnerships, and it launched the farm.

Speaker 3: 31:03

The dream of the interns from that farm was to be able to go seed to shelf, and so during COVID, we lost our last grocery store here as a community and so we were a food desert. And then some and had the opportunity. They're like let's go see the shelf right now. And that whole thing was built in public, private partnership with Homeland and you know, soprivate partnerships have created opportunities that, as a normal nonprofit in June and we were talking a little bit about this when we first got on like the ecosystem of the Eastside is so much bigger than Restore and it has to be right.

Speaker 3: 31:36

There are things that we need private developers to come in and do. There's housing, and where Restore really can shine is when we understand the strategic value of each of those partners, both within and on the outside of our community, and we can leverage it and braid it to what we say we do really well, which is innovate behind our community leaders. Right, but you have to know what those different pieces are doing to be able to really make sure that it's moving behind the community to build an ecosystem that doesn't gentrify. And so that's been a that's been a real honor to figure out, and we have dozens and dozens and dozens of partnerships and collaborations on purpose as a result.

Speaker 1: 32:14

Yeah, and the fact it's happening on a farm. Y'all had those formative conversations in the garden. I'm like I just feel like there's something poetic about just the seasonality of that and how, I don't know, we're planting things together and they're taking time to kind of grow together. It's like a beautiful analogy. And so you're tackling I think I said this at the top really hard issues, really complex issues and this community is made up of change makers that are pouring into that too issues, and this community is made up of change makers that are pouring into that too. What's your advice for nonprofit leaders who are really working to address complex community challenges? How do you take care of yourself?

Speaker 2: 32:52

What is some other?

Speaker 1: 32:52

advice to just stay in this work and really do meaningful, impactful things.

Speaker 3: 32:58

Yeah, absolutely. Well, this is one of my many communities that I call on for that right it's just to to listen and tone set and, even if you're not sure you know, listen to some of lindsey's work, like just the how do you, how do you just pay attention to your own heart and soul and the journey and all of the different kind of accusations lobbed either internally against yourself or from the outside in and, uh, just make the space to back up and remind yourself to see the beauty of everything. I think being on the farm is, you know, lucky me, I actually can step outside and see beautiful things growing and remind myself that this is a journey and it's, you know this, the group that have this we're in. It's an old church with five acres that we took in and the family, the house, family is just incredible. Saints and servants been in this community forever. When we, when they kind of passed the baton, we, we, we engraved a watering bucket that says like one, so it was another, waters, you know, and kind of this verse of like, there are seasons to this thing and so taking care of yourself along the way so you're not just kind of a one season wonder, is incredibly important.

Speaker 3: 34:05

For me that looks like community groups. For me that looks like regular counseling and self-care and check-ins and making sure that we set a culture within our team that is very open to hearing. I'm not doing okay today, I need to just stay home or just making the space to recognize that. And then we have a shared practice. Every Monday we come together and we share what's good and so we start the top of our week. It's like a one good thing. It is, it's your one good thing. I'm so proud of you guys. Good for you, thank you. And we do.

Speaker 3: 34:32

We say this is our centering of our own core values, which is we're going to refit. There's no other agenda to Monday other than our entire staff team stops for an hour and you don't have to participate If you are not in a good headspace. It's been a rough week. You're just not great. You can just sit and listen, and that's okay too, because it's really designed for that. Like, let's just point to what's good and what's going on so that you can maybe re-catch vision for it if you're not there, and that's okay. So just, we do a lot of things to make sure that that's really centered, because this is really hard work and it doesn't shift. So I love that you guys have done such a beautiful job highlighting that, and I do consider this one of my communities that I come to to just sort of like check out for a minute and check in.

Speaker 2: 35:16

So well, my gosh, you are most welcome here. It is such a joy for us and I, like, went to immediately implement into we are for good, an hour's worth of observations, joys, gratitudes, like, yes, we need to dread Monday meetings.

Speaker 3: 35:34

Right, that's the point Top of the week.

Speaker 2: 35:36

That's how we're starting. So, good, but I also think what you're saying is really important and I, lindsay Fuller, said this and I think it's something I want every leader to hear, and she said it's bad for the brand for me to be burnt out.

Speaker 2: 35:50

And we don't want any of you all to be so burnt out that you cannot do the thing that fills your heart and your soul and your purpose. So thank you for bringing us back to that. And you know we love story and we want to hear a story from you of a moment in your life where philanthropy, generosity, kindness, something changed you. What have you got today?

Speaker 3: 36:16

Yeah, man, I've been thinking a lot about this. It is so natural and innate tendency as humans to just other one another. And and knowing I was jumping on this podcast, I was just thinking to where are those moments where I've just had such a radical welcome to hospitality? And it really was in that garden. So when we started outreach with those women that I was like oh, you know, you have every reason to write me off. What does she know?

Speaker 1: 36:40

Whatever?

Speaker 3: 36:43

There was such a welcome, even like hey, you want to understand this industry, come to the car that pulls up with me and I'll kind of walk you through and talk you through how it just there's a sense of like humble learning and shared life and experience and no pretenses, and radical welcome to enter my world. In fact, uh, I felt so humbled and honored just hanging out with them and understanding and unpacking this, that it just has forever changed me and so I thought what better, what better thing to end with and kind of the inaugural starting point of the restore story that shared here too?

Speaker 1: 37:16

Well, kaylee, y'all start your week with sounds like your one good things. I wonder if you'd wrap this up with your you know what? What's your piece of advice, what's something you'd leave with the community? One good thing you'd offer up.

Speaker 3: 37:27

Yeah, you know, I think my one good thing is just truly there are more people hungry for connection and what we share in common than the overwhelming cultural narrative that is so loud right now, which is that we don't and we need to be enemies. And so I think my one good thing is just remember they're there, they're ready to welcome you. Be that presence for somebody else, be that presence of radical warmth and hospitality that you want extended to you, and let's do this thing right. It doesn't have to be this way. So, and I will tell you this, the more polarized our world gets, the more people want to know what's happening here and how it's happening. And so there is, I think, this remnant, this undercurrent of we're so hungry for connection and we know we're not seeing it here and we really are like let's do this thing. I think more of us want to have connection and wholeness and community with one another than don't want to have connection and wholeness and community with one another, then don't.

Speaker 1: 38:29

Yeah, I mean the World Health.

Speaker 2: 38:30

Organization put loneliness as one of the great epidemics and social isolation, and so go find your community and Kaylee people are going to want to know how they can connect with Restore. We want to give you a shout out to say what do you need, right?

Speaker 1: 38:43

now.

Speaker 2: 38:44

And how can this community help you and where do you hang out online? Give us all the details.

Speaker 3: 38:48

Yes, so you can catch me. So I'm LinkedIn, just Kaylee Dodson, and you absolutely can shoot me a message. If any of those things that were mentioned or you want to sneak peek at strategic planning or what all that's like, I'm always happy to share. It's also restoreokc on Instagram or Restore Oklahoma City on Facebook any of those social media channels or just jump on our website too, and you can find a link to come to the coffee tour or find any of those other communication tools too. So come on over. This really is their idea. We're innovating.

Speaker 2: 39:20

Well, it's to touch it and to see it, I think we talk about the experiential component of getting in with your missions in a way that's deeper and so I'm excited to dive in. I just think you're a complete and total wonder, and so much gratitude to you and all of our friends out there who are working on the front lines of social change and doing the hard work. We are absolutely rooting for you Well, thanks.

Speaker 3: 39:48

It was a treat. Thank you, friend.