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Journey On Non-Profit Organization | Rapid City South Dakota
WE ARE ALL RELATED MITAKUYE OYASIN
STORY BY DOWNTOWN RAPID CITY PHOTOS BY MAGGIE JEAN WINCE
It wasn’t long ago when Toby McCloskey could have used the very help he gives today.
“I came here to improve my situation, but I was too young to get access to resources because I was a minor,” he described. “I lived on the streets for two years alone, and I know what they are going through. I know how they are viewed; I know the struggle to survive and because of that I can help them. I am living proof that you can come out of the other side, and I try to use that to help my houseless relatives.”
Toby is one of fifteen employees at Journey On, an organization that works to support vulnerable individuals experiencing, or likely to experience, houselessness in Rapid City through collaborative street outreach, case management, and culturally responsive programming.
Journey On was established by Tracy Sigdestad in 2018, initially as a youth mentorship program. At that same time, the Rapid City Police Department had received the Collective Healing Initiative grant from the Department of Justice, allowing Rapid City to become one of five demonstration cities to engage in healing strategies.
“Chief Hedrick believed the support had to come from the community,” explained outreach director Rich Braunstien. “We were able to take his support as well as the teachings from Aqeela Sherrills and create a public safety program with an emphasis on putting public safety in the hands of the public, that’s what Journey On does.”
With this partnership, Rapid City was one of the first cities in the country to deploy an outreach program using this boots-on-the-ground model that formalizes relationships between city government, police departments, and community organizations to help the community’s most vulnerable. “A team of leaders in our community traveled to Newark, NJ this summer to learn from peer organizations across the nation, and it was great to see. Each city does things their own way, within its own culture and its own set of challenges,” added Braunstein.
Learning from Sherrills and the Newark Community Street Team helped Journey On the past ten months, but the most important piece to the organization’s success lies within its employees. All employees have experienced some of the very trauma they encounter in their work with the organization. They are able to use their experience to make a connection. “It starts with a basic conversation,” Iva Roaneagle, street outreach team member explained. “We tell them our story because we may know the same people but it is all in an effort to help them improve their situation.”
Journey On recently received an Emergency Solutions Grant to continue and expand their services to help the houseless relatives in Rapid City. With the funds they have received Journey On recently launched a youth outreach team to address many of the issues that impact the houseless at a younger age, before they resort to the streets. “We never want to change our focus on street outreach, but we also see the need to extend into additional areas over time. But the growth must be responsible,” added Braunstein.
The work the group does may not see immediate results, but the goal of the organization was summed up by McCloskey: “We may see someone 100 times before they want to accept our help, it’s the idea that on time 101 that they finally want to improve their situation.”
