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And today we are sitting and talking with Captain Mark Van Meter, and he is in charge of the local Salvation Army in the Wheeling and Moundsville area. We'll get into the area specific of what he covers. But first of all, Mark, welcome. I'd like to welcome you.
And so we want to talk about the little bit of the history of the Salvation Army, the mission, ministry, the shop, obviously, the thrift store. And then of course, a little bit about your background and your wife's background. And we'll take it from there. We'll see where we go.
Awesome. Good to be with you. Good. Good.
So let's talk about the background of the Salvation Army. So according to my stats here, I understand that it was a Protestant Christian Church International Charitable Organization. Is that a fair statement on how it's labeled now? Yeah.
The Salvation Army started in the East Slums of London by William Booth. And Booth was a Methodist minister who became a little concerned about how the folks in the East Slums were being integrated into that church at that time. And he just had a heart for the people in those communities. And so he branched off, if you will, from the Anglican Methodist Church and decided to really preach the gospel in the slum areas of London.
And he just wanted to see people come to Christ first, but then also get out of poverty. And thus the two branches, if you will, of the Salvation Army. In the end, Booth came up with this slogan, soup, soap, and salvation. You can't preach the gospel without feeding someone's stomach and cleaning up their lives, cleaning up their bodies.
And so that's the social mission of the Salvation Army. And you're up to, according to the stats of red, 1.7 million members. Is that right? Yeah, somewhere in there.
And I don't know. I've heard 103 countries. The Salvation Army is the world's largest social service agency. We serve in this little community of Wheeling, the West Virginia, but we are a worldwide organization.
And it is an awesome organization to be part of. So now everybody's familiar with the Red Kettle Campaign and Salvation Army and their services, their offering and the collection of services that they're offering at Christmas time. And of course, with the tie-in of the Dallas Cowboys and those huge kettles in Arlington, Texas, the Salvation Army is much more than that. So why don't you touch a little bit on their services and we'll jump through the different services too?
Yeah, I mean, man, when you talk about services, it's just throwing a dart at a huge dart board. We've got Boys and Girls Clubs, we've got camps, we've got senior citizen high rises throughout the country. We've got schools throughout the world. I went to school in Chicago for the training program and one of our classmates walked across the stage up in Chicago and he was commissioned, he was a medical doctor, but then he came back in as a Salvation Army officer.
He was commissioned to Africa to head up AIDS research and AIDS care for the Salvation Army down there. We have schools for English and Second Language. Here in the Upper Ohio Valley, we've got our emergency disaster canteen. We send kids to camp throughout the year.
We can talk about that a little bit. We've got a group that goes to nursing homes throughout the year and just visit nursing home patients throughout the year. We've got our youth programs over at my Oak Street property. We've got a senior citizen program that they need once a week and they have lunch together and play games.
So we've got programs go lower. How does the Salvation Army worldwide, first of all, and then locally? How do they get the word out about all these services that you're talking about right now? Well, I mean, obviously the world wide web, Facebook, word amount, you know, Dave, but when it all comes down to it, it's about showing up.
It's about doing the services we do. The Salvation Army does not charge for our programs. We do what we do based off of the donations of our donors, the people who believe in services we provide. We do not stand at a fire, if you will, and put out our red kettle and charge the firemen.
Right, right. Even for kids going to camp, we don't charge kids to go to camp. We say that a kid can go to camp for a charge if need be. We ask the families to help out with a small amount.
But even if a kid can't afford to go to camp, we put them in the van and haul them up to camp. So they can go to camp for the summer. Is your number one fundraising aspect then still the red kettle campaign? Obviously you're doing fundraising all year long in some aspect is yeah, but is the red kettle campaign.
So your number one aspect? It is one of our biggest fundraising. It's one of our biggest public fundraising. We do all kinds of fundraising throughout the year.
We've got all of our male appeal fundraising. We've got our red kettle fundraising. But a lot of folks in our community know we are still actively involved in our male appeal fundraising and the Salvation Army needs to become more vigorous at online marketing and these other computer generated marketing campaigns. But we're catching up this year.
We are trying more of the Google Pay Apple Pay on our kettles. Okay. Those were started folks when they came up to our kettles this year. They had the opportunity to use their phones and do the scanning on that way above me anymore.
But those stickers were on our phones and sure. I mean, we're trying all kinds of ways to raise money anymore. The Salvation Army getting into high tech stuff here. So we're talking with Captain Mark Van Meter, who's in charge of let's get the area down.
So Wheeling, Moundsville is are those are obviously your two main areas, but where do you brand or how 40 branch out? Yeah, my command is Ohio Tyler Marshall, Wetzel counties. Okay. And I noticed in some of my research here.
So the Salvation Army refers to its ministers as officers. That's correct. And so how is the high is there and it's treated just like the United States Army for lack of a better term in the hierarchy. Is that how it works?
Yeah. So top down, we have one general of the Salvation Army and they are based in London, England. And it's only one individual right now. It is a male, but we have had female generals.
So currently we have one general and then there are commissioners that are in charge of territories or regions. And then then we're broken down into divisions. And so I am in the Maryland, West Virginia division and then our commands are broken down into counties and then local operations. Okay.
And typically the Salvation Army tries to tag a husband and wife team. Is that correct? And then place you in a designated area? That's correct.
And so if you are married, you both have to be commissioned officers in the Salvation Army. You cannot have a married couple that are not commissioned officers. Okay. Because of the way that we're moved.
We are and we can talk about this a little bit more. We are moved every three or four years. Right. Pretty quickly.
So yeah, we'll go down that road here. It's a great idea. Again, we're talking with Captain Mark Van Meter, who's in charge of the local area for the Salvation Army. So you and your wife, Jennifer, have been here for seven months.
Okay. You were in Louisville, Kentucky before that rate for about three years, close to three years. Yes. Okay.
And so you just said that at any time, not anytime. I mean, they how much advance notice that they give you then if you're going to be moved. Yeah. So our stay in Louisville actually was not with the Salvation Army.
So just kind of backtrack. We were selling to officers from 92 to 2002, but we had five appointments in 10 years. So you kind of average that almost every two years. We were being moved.
Yeah. And you're kind of trained in specific areas, whether it's PR or capital campaign fundraising, something like that. Most officers have a specialty that they kind of are known for, if you will. So we moved quite frequently in our first 10 years.
And so we decided to step out for almost 17 years. Okay. So that our kids could get their education behind them. And we we decided to let them grow up and move move on.
And then when once our kids grew up and flew the coop, we decided to step back into Salvation Army. I spent three years down in the Louisville area as an executive director for Habitat for Humanity. And during that time, we started dating the Army again and the army decided to bring us back in. And we so the process is the Salvation Army has two or three days a year that are appointed where the divisional commanders let the officers know you need to be by your phone between the hours of typically six and six p.m.
and eight p.m. And if you are going to be moved, you will receive a phone call and you said baited breath watching reruns of something eating popcorn. And if your phone rings, you pick it up and your divisional commander says Mark and Jennifer, you are moving to the foreign country of Wheeling, West Virginia. So how do you that's funny right there?
So how do you personally feel about that when you know that you may get entrenched in an area, you've made new friends, you've made some good relationships or whatever. And then all of a sudden you're yanked out. You know, you some officers anticipate it and they want it. Yeah, for various reasons.
Other officers, they love the community. They're in and they don't want to move. But all officers know the the acts will fall. Okay.
You just will move eventually. Okay. My friend over here in Bel Air. He major over there has been in his appointment almost 11 years, I believe.
Okay. And you know, other officers are in their appointment 18 months. So so you just don't know. Right.
And so it will come. Yeah. And you don't know when right again. We're talking with Captain Mark van meter.
He's in charge of the local area for the Salvation Army. So you got here you and your wife, Jennifer, got here and around August last year. Father's Day. We can June 17th.
Okay. So you and I talked a little bit off the air and so we'll jump right into it. I feel and a lot of people feel around here when you got here and some early decisions were made on made about the Salvation Army. How was going to operate and how you were going to handle housing for different folks or whatever.
You got some bad press and I think it's a great opportunity. That's part of the reason why we wanted to bring you here at I Heart to answer some of the questions that are out there and basically clear up some bad and misinformation out there. So so you got to town and you started doing evaluations and you recognize the size of the building specifically for wheeling and the purpose of what it started out to be and then what it morphed into as far as housing, ladies and gentlemen, and I'm not sure if kids were involved in the housing too, but you saw that this was probably not correct. This was not the mission or this was not how the Salvation Army should have been operating.
So you acted and so what did you do? What did you need to do right away? Yeah. So let me preface again.
I had three years as an executive director for Habitat for Humanity Housing Ministry. I also have an extensive business background and so one of my first responsibilities when we moved into town was to walk our properties, evaluate our programs, look at our staffing and just see where we're going to be moving forward with the Salvation Army in this community. And initially what I discovered was we had a shelter in our 16th Street property and what what it appeared was that we had a shelter that accommodated an office where in reality we had a office that had a shelter in it and somehow we had gotten this flipped around and we needed to get this shelter back on track. Also what had happened was somewhere in the mid 70s.
This men's shelter became a family shelter and the shelter was originally opened and appointed by the Salvation Army as a men's shelter and some officer at some point and I totally get it because it happens to me all the time. Probably got a phone call from from a police department or another agency that they had a family or a lady who needed housing and an officer started shuffling around in made room for a family or a female and they they converted this men's shelter slowly into a family shelter. When I got here we discovered that this emergency shelter underlying bull print italicized parentheses emergency shelter became nothing more than a flop house. I had people who had been in the shelter for a year.
They they literally had moved dressers in carpet, you know lamps the whole bit into our shelter and and they had been in the shelter for a year and we just made the decision this cannot be. We had we had ladies in the shelter. We had children in the shelter and I knew in my gut that this was a potential legal issue and certainly a risk management issue and would be these be considered the working poor where some of them may have had a job they would go out and do something during the day and then come back to. Absolutely.
Okay. Yeah. I mean these were people who were working at some of the local factories making twelve hundred fifteen hundred dollars a month and spending it and have no accountability for their finances in in paying rent if you will living in our shelter free of charge. So shortly I mean literally a week after I got here my divisional commander arrived to do our installation as the officers here in the community and I asked her to just tour the property with me and so we walked around and I explained this is what's going on in the shelter and she agreed with me that this was a shelter that had lost its oversight and so she suggested that the the director of social services for the division should come in and do an evaluation.
So about ten days after that that director for social services came in she totally agreed with me and she said let's have another social service secretary come in and get an opinion and so that's social secretary so the second one came in and she said this needs to shut down yesterday. She saw exactly what I saw she agreed with what the other social service secretary saw and so we began a 30 day process. I met with fifteen community providers in our in our community and I was assured at that time that there was more than adequate beds in the community to house women and children and that if we converted to a men's only shelter that it would be fine that there was enough beds in the community for women and children and so it was advised to me by these other service providers to go ahead and move forward with becoming a men's shelter and so you start going down that road of enacting this and then all of a sudden you're attacked in the in the meeting. I know it started out by trying to get some explanations out or you know getting some interviews from you basically saying what's going on we just we want some explanations but then it almost turned into an attack mode the fact that you weren't looking at the organization of Salvation Army and what the purpose was but you're just arbitrarily throwing people out on the street right.
It really did become you know here's the new guy he's making sudden changes but but but individuals did not see the potential legal and risk management issues and that this was protecting the Salvation Army and it was protecting women. We were looking out for the safety and security of women and children who you know we as community leaders need to understand that we are looking at people that have mental health issues and individuals who are coming out of prison and though we tried to do background checks that that a lot of the stuff lies under the radar and we are doing our best at in very short notice to house people and keep them safe and we can only provide it this time you know safe and secure in warm environment for segment of our population and that's what we're trying to do right. We're talking to Captain Mark van meter who's in charge of the local area Salvation Army and just stepping back for one second when you were talking about short-term housing for individuals that are trying to get back on their feet or whatever how does health care work into this. Do you guys provide health care coverage and then of course that rolls down the path of prescription drugs too.
So how does how does that work with the Salvation Army? Well the Salvation Army locally we do not provide direct health care. Okay. Although we do provide space for pathway of hope to come in once a week pathway of hope provides local health care in our facility for those homeless individuals and those individuals who need that service and we're happy to provide space for that program in our building.
Okay. So where are you today? So 2020 February of 2020 so all that's in the past as far as the quote unquote controversial part of it perceived in someone's eyes. So where are you today and how does temporary housing work for you locally?
Yeah. So we have a 35 bed shelter and that the shelter desperately desperately needs renovation and so our goal and our desire is to eventually open up approximately 10 to 12 of those beds as an emergency shelter again three weeks 21 days come in. You know maybe there's family quarrel transient individuals 21 days come in really no questions asked another 10 to 12 of those beds. We want to open up as a 90 day potentially 120 day bed transitional housing program where we are working with the Wheeling homeless coalition where those individuals can have a safe secure place again for up to 120 days where they can go get a job they can begin saving money they can have a secure place.
And they can also begin looking for an apartment and so that's a second tier of our of our program that we want to open up the third tier of our shelter and additional 10 to 12 beds we want to provide to the DOC in our area so that individuals who are coming out of prison can designate the Salvation Army in their home plan so that prisoners can have a place you know when they're when they're needing to parole back to our community they can come to the Salvation Army have a place where they can say I am staying at the Salvation Army again for 90 to 120 days and this is where I'm going to land to find a job and start working on settling back into the community because a lot of these prisoners have no place to go. Okay and so once and let's just say that right there for a second and then we'll move on so once that prisoner goes obviously gets released from the Department of Corrections lands in your facility for the max let's say 120 days what happens what if they come to you and say you know Mr. Van Meter I'm I really don't have any place to go I'm still in a hardship situation or whatever how do you I'm sure it's just a case by case basis. Yeah are you know we really try to set landmarks if you will with the individuals if they are working with the homeless coalition if they are working with local employers if they are if they're starting to save money if it is apparent to us that they are doing what they need to do then we will provide them a bit I have no problem providing a bed for an individual but if I drive down the street and see one of our guys just sitting on a bench every day smoking a cigarette drinking a beer and they are not out hustling and I have no desire to provide them a bit every night right right.
Let's jump her off into another area I'm sure it's used for fundraising so again we're talking to Captain Mark Van Meter the gentleman in charge of the area Salvation Army let's talk about the thrift store and charity shops sure that brings in obviously revenue throughout the year is that a big part of what you guys do for not lack of a better term fundraising. It is it should be it hasn't been and we are trying to turn that around our thrift store has been a bit of an albatross in theory the thrift store should be in the black and should be putting money into our social service program so that we can continue providing services to the community unfortunately that store has been a source of drain for us where we have had to pay to keep that store open we are now in the process of redesigning our staff redesigning the program and even redesigning our warehouse usage so that this year our goal is to get out of the red and hit the black line and next year to actually make the store profitable and how do you get items inside the store I'm sure I'm sure you could go through a hundred different items that's carried inside the store how do you go about getting in essence the shelves restocked. Yeah it's all donation donations donations and you know people call us that's one of the things we've been doing our truck has been out more doing pickups and we would love to get people's furniture it's kind of hard for us to go out and pick up just a bag of clothes if people are donating furniture to us you know we'll pick up some clothes and that kind of stuff we need good use product right and honestly I'm tired of taking trash last year we spent $10,000 in dump fees and we can't do that anymore be responsible with our donors monies right and so you know we need good use product to sell and resell in our store so you know we're looking for good furniture good household goods you know it's hard to believe but even flat screen TVs are now coming back to our stores okay and so you know as spring starts to come upon us as people are cleaning off the garage remember us right and the message there folks is the fact that it's good gently used clothes and furniture and things like that again we're talking with a Captain Mark Van Meter with the local Salvation Army some or let's talk about we've got a few minutes left here let's talk about expansion plans you and I've talked about what you what you're trying to do towards pass a little bit of the Mason Dickson line with emergency services in Tyler and Wetzel County go ahead yeah we've been given a great opportunity by our friend Mr. Cooper he's the Tyler County emergency director down there they've provided a trailer to us the Salvation Army has a emergency disaster truck up here but we discovered in order if there's a major disaster in some of our southern counties it takes us a while to stock up materials get our crew together get to our southern counties and so they provided a trailer already in our southern counties and we've already started the core team to to train up and get ready to go on these disasters New Year's Eve we were out at the former roller rink service right the fireman out there we pull up our truck open up our trucks or hot coffee and sandwiches and stuff like that last I guess it was late summer we were down in Moundsville at the auto part store fire and and you know we want to be part of our community and so we have this service truck and that's just part of what we want to do and so you have you said you have or your goal is to have something based in Tyler Wetzel Metro area as something that's emergency right away and then you would take the wheeling truck or the wheeling mounts will truck down to you know take over command at that point absolutely yeah so the trailer would be initial response in the southern area and then our truck would get down there to set up if it's a long-term disaster okay so as a recap here or something that you would like to put across the tee and dot the eye for the Salvation Army you want to get the message out how would you recap what your what your daily mission is and then your six month and a year mission here for the Salvation Army you know the Salvation Army started in 1865 and the wheeling area was one of the very first areas that the Salvation Army settled here in the upper Ohio Valley area we've been here some some 126 years a while down and so we are not going anywhere yeah and you know the Salvation Army is well planted and we've put our roots down and you know we have our ebb and flows we have our ups and downs but you know the Salvation Army has a vested interest in this area and so we're digging and deep we're digging hard and we're looking for new innovative ways of servicing our community this last year we gave out some 3,800 toys to kids a lot of that was the stuff animals from the nailers games and we gave out 320 gifts to nursing home patients just going and visiting them a lot of food at Christmastime and you know we need the community just as much as the community needs us what would it be like if the Salvation Army disappeared absolutely right question mark right yes my friends so it's more than about the red kettle campaign each Christmas time and you see the folks out in front of Walmart and Kroger and in the different area businesses ringing the bells the Salvation Army is is much more as you just heard Captain Van Mieder thanks for coming in thank you I appreciate it no problem this yeah that's right Merry Christmas very early Christmas I guess so this has been the weekend focus the product of iHeart Media on day flatly if you'd like to have an interview posted or if you'd like to send something to the community calendar and have that read on the air it's OV Community Calendar at iHeart Media dot com once again it's OV Community Calendar at iHeart Media dot com once again on day flatly for iHeart Media thank you