Today in Henrico – Claiborne Mason, Virginia Home for Boys and Girls

Virginia Home for Boys and Girls President Claiborne Mason discusses the home, its efforts and one of its newest programs.

(The transcription below is provided through an automated service and may contain some errors or omissions.)

Tara Gray – I’m Tara Gray, and today in Henrico, I am speaking with Claiborne Warner Mason with the nonprofit the Virginia Home for Boys and Girls. Claiborne has served on numerous nonprofit boards. Currently she serves on the board of Hanover County's community policy and management team. Hi, how are you?

Claiborne Mason – I’m great, Tara, how are you?

Tara Gray – I’m good. Thank you so much for joining me today. The Virginia Home for Boys and girls has launched a new program called Pride Place. Pride Place at Virginia Home for Boys and Girls helps reduce homelessness of the LGBTQ young adults. The Virginia Home for Boys and girls has a unique history. Would you like to share a little bit about the history of the nonprofit before we talk about Pride Place?

Claiborne Mason – I would love to. So, Virginia Home for Boys and Girls has been around for over 170 years. In fact, next year we're going to be celebrating our 175th anniversary, having been established in 1846. So we're proud of our history. We're proud of the fact that over the many decades of decades that we have been serving youth and families in in Virginia, we have always evolved to meet the specific needs of our communities. That said, we've never taken our eye off our core mission, which is helping to support children and their families who are experiencing difficulties, particularly children who have experience at least in the more modern times abuse and trauma at the hands of those who love them. Those types of situations, that type of abuse that unfortunately many children undergo, makes it difficult to grow up in a way that is to grow into healthy functioning adults. So what we do as we try to do our trauma informed approach, work with the kids who live with us on campus or learn with us in our school or take advantage of our therapeutic resources to make sure that they get the healing that they need.

Tara Gray – Ok, so let's just jump right into Pride Place. That is obviously something that's fairly new. Would you like to, obviously you're going to want to talk about how it came to be. And then of course, a little bit about the program.

Claiborne Mason – Yes, absolutely. So one of the things I just mentioned about Virginia for Boys and Girls is that we've always evolved to meet the changing needs of our community, the changing needs of children, youth, young adults in our community. A couple of years ago, we took our first step in the direction of serving homeless, or young adults who would find themselves homeless by establishing our independent living arrangement program. It was originally set up to provide housing and support for children, essentially, who turned 18, and are in the foster care system, but who have unfortunately not ever found a permanent family.

So before independent living programs were around, these kids basically fell off a cliff. They would become homeless, they lost the support that they had been getting from the state, they have no family and nowhere to go. So we repurposed some former staff living spaces on our campus and made them, converted them into apartments for these young folks to come in, have a place to live, have supported case management, learn how to make connections in the community, get jobs, continue education and so forth. So that happened a couple of years ago in response to a need that has evolved into our partnership today, with side by side which we just launched at the beginning of this month.

We learned as getting to know the folks at Side by Side over the last year, that among the homeless population in Richmond of the homeless youth, about 35% of them fall into the category of the LGBT, LGBTQ plus community, which is the exclusive focus of Side by Side. We have a place where they can live and that's one of the things that Side by Side has done is trying to find ways to house these young adults whose basically have had family conflict as a result of sharing their their LGBTQ status with family. So in working with them over the last year, we worked out so that we could put two additional dwellings on our campus, dedicate them to young adults in the LGBTQ community that Side by Side would refer to us. It was a natural extension of the independent living arrangement that that we already have.

We already have staff who are trained to work with these youth to provide life skills instruction, to help them navigate their communities and in partnership with the other case management services that Side by Side is providing in their expertise with this population. We think it's a real winning combination. And we're delighted to be partnering with them.

Tara Gray – The website is has a lot of information on, it's a great place if you just want to do some research or hours on like I said, the history was fascinating to me the history of the Virginia Home for Boys and Girls. The timeline, like you mentioned, does it goes all the way back to 1846. And the little story, I thought was really neat about how it came to be as far as the young homeless boy that came looking for food. That's a great story. I'm not going to say it, so maybe, maybe the listeners will go on to the website and look at that story. It's a really neat story. All the way, it goes all the way through 2018 when you just spoke about the independent living arrangement that's offered to youth aging out of the foster care system. And if you would like to mention the website and the phone number.

Claiborne Mason – Sure, our website is vhbg.org. Virginia Home for Boys and girls VHBG.org. And our number is 804-270-6566. We're a nonprofit. So of course, we depend greatly on our community support. We always appreciate that Henrico Citizen is great about getting the word out about what we do and who we are in our programming. So we appreciate all that our community has done for us for almost 175 years.

Tara Gray – Yeah, that's a long time. That's a lot. That's, that's a that's a lot of time to be helping the community and the way that it has grown, even if like I said, if you just go back and read from the last 10 years, the program the way that has served and help the community, it's just a great nonprofit. And I'm very happy that you were able to join me today. There are, I guess a couple things that I would like to mention before we say goodbye. On the website. There is obviously about us section which I strongly encourage people to take a look at the mission, the history, but there's also a donate today button. Would you like to share a little bit about how COVID has affected the nonprofit's ability to receive services and give services? Sure.

Claiborne Mason – Boy, COVID has turned our world upside down. We have very fortunately been able to continue providing services to our youth. We have kids who live on our campus. They had nowhere else to go, so we kept going, we have not missed a beat. We have the most amazing staff who are truly essential employees on the frontline with these kids. We have to have our houses staffed 24/7/365. So we've been able to keep that moving. We have a school on our campus, it's a special education, private school, working with kids who, much like our kids in the group homes, who have experienced trauma and have certain emotional disabilities related to that. When the governor closed the schools, our school building closed, but much like schools around the state, we did not stop. We did not close the school itself in terms of providing education. So our teachers have been working with our students through distance learning. We have an online tool that allowed for a lot of that to happen, and just just figuring it out as we go.

And so of course, we also have the young adults in our independent living program who remained on campus and our staff has continued to work with them. You were specifically asking me about the the Donate page. It's tough raising money, right? And you can't sit down across the table from someone and talk about your work and our worth and what we contribute to these youth and families. So our philanthropy team has done, you know, is doing everything they can to maintain connections with our donors. Most of its over the phone these days, through other means of communication, but we still we are still operating at 100%. So the support is needed now more than ever. Right?

Tara Gray – Well, I'm happy to be able to help you spread your message and all of the all of the good works that you guys are doing in the community, Virginia home for Boys and Girls, again, great website, a lot of information. Thank you so much.

Claiborne Mason – Thank you, Tara.

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