Skip to main content
Global Edition
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Interserv prepares for the recession

Credit: KQTV
Duration: 0 shares 1 views

Interserv prepares for the recession
Interserv prepares for the recession

Interserv Director, Randy Sharp talks with us about his non-for-profit and the ways they are attempting to meet the needs of residents.

C1 welcome back to "live at five".

We are joined by randy sharp of interserve here to tell us about his organization and how to help him during covid-19.

Welcome randy.

>> good to be here.

>> tell us a little bit about your organization.

>> well, we have been around since 1909 and done a wide variety of things.

At its heart, it's a social service agency that reaches out to those in need and those are who under represented in our community or struggling in our community.

That ranges from children and child care all the way through to our most senior of adults who need help to remain in their homes.

>> i bet you have been busy during coronovirus and i am wondering how has your mission had to adjust and change to the needs you have to the needs of other people?

>> when coronovirus hit on a center that's open all the time.

The first people show up at 3 o'clock in the morning and the last people usually go home about 10 o'clock at night.

That had to change.

Some our services had to change because we do serve the most run vulnerable populations.

The biggest chain is in our meals program.

We have a senior nutrition site here.

We had to make sure they could get a meal for their use at home.

We also have mobile meals.

That's one of our biggest programs. every day we have a lot of volunteers coming in here to run 15 routes throughout the city.

We had to rethink that.

How we prepared the meals and interacted with those getting the meals.

So now we're at a place two days a week we're bringing frozen meals to people for the whole week and we're doing it with a no contact sort of process.

Food pantry, another big service.

The drive through no contact and we do work with people seeking housing.

So we had to do that differently.

But we're still able to do it and help people.

The thing we most lost right now is we usually have sports league during the summer.

Summer jam and summer spike.

The nba can't figure out how to have baseball, we haven't figured it out either but we're working on that.

We do have child care and a summer youth program that went through from the school.

When school stopped, we had camp covid for people who had to work and had a lot of kids in that.

In the summer, we have even more.

Those are things that help a lot.

But it's been challenging to try to keep everybody safe.

>> i bet.

I bet that's true.

Are you seeing just a greater need in the community for services like you provide?

>> there's always a big demand for our mobile meals program.

That's enhanced and even more so because a lot of the seniors can't or don't want to get out and that's probably a good idea.

We have seen that, now, interestingly enough, our food pantry spiked and kind of levelled off.

There's a lot of different food drops going on in the community.

With those within the next few months expect the food pantry to pick back up.

We usually serve over 6000 orders a year.

We're a big operation in that.

We know one of the things is the community has to put a moratorium on utility bills and rent and mortgage is listed.

There will be a flood of foreclosures and disconnects.

And so, luckily there's state and federal money coming to help us deal with that.

We know that will be a huge challenge in this community.

>> tell us how we can support you as a non-profit.

>> well, us and every non-profit deal with the financial impacts of this as has everybody.

Some of the things we typically do, we can't do or have do at a diminished capacity.

Our donors have stepped and sent in.

Everybody wants to volunteer and that's a tough one in the covid-19 world.

I have a couple outside kinds of landscaping projects but we're trying to limit the face-to-face intimate kinds of settings where covid can be spread for people.

So, that is a tough one.

Staying by us and be raid to help not only interserve but all the non-profit communities in town.

We all will be facing more needs as this thing goes on.

>> randy, that's a really good word.

Thank you for joining tonight.

>> glad to be here.

>>

You might like