When did you start working at Call of Freedom? And what is your personal and professional journey that led you here?
I started working at Call of Freedom in 2021.
Originally I started my professional career in child welfare. From there, I moved to working with homeless individuals. I worked with shelter care and rapid rehousing and eviction prevention services as well as emergency housing.
I decided I needed to branch out and wanted to do some more things and Call of Freedom came across my dashboard. So I packed up all my stuff and moved to South Dakota and started working at Call of Freedom doing housing navigation. I then kind of started to create the housing program that currently is here.
What is your position at CTF & why is it important to the mission?
I’m the Housing Navigator. That means I find people housing. I do all sorts of different things like housing programming so I can help people get housing with other agencies or with vouchers and things like that. If our housing program is not a good fit or if they want something a little different, we can talk through their options that way. With that, I am often working with not only just our agency but other agencies, some of the county agencies and state agencies as well.
Why do you believe in the mission of call to freedom?
A lot of people need a lot of help. And unfortunately, there’s not a lot of good people out there to give help. With our mission being helping people get out of their horrible situation, that’s something that’s always been, of course, a passion of mine.
I love that we help people move forward especially knowing that the system has already failed them probably multiple times. If we can be that system that finally helps them, that’s going to be something that I’m all for.
What is a moment that sticks out to you from your time working here or why do you feel like it’s meaningful?
Usually it’s the first person I housed. She had actually been housed previously, but because her family situation changed, she needed a bigger apartment. Knowing that her family was able to be reunified because of it, those are the moments that just stick with you.
It’s like that first initial person who you meet with and they are trying to figure out what to do and don’t understand this, but you help them and you get them to that place. It definitely stays with you for a little bit.
What is a fun fact about yourself?
I know a bunch of random facts. So I’m your go to when it’s trivia night.