What if there was a way to make a substantial difference in your community, and it all started with something as simple as pre-K education and outreach ministries? Bernice Bush from Building Blocks Outreach joins us today to recount her 17-year journey of tireless service to the Brook Mill Court Complex community.
Bernice's compelling story takes us on a tour of her transformative work, ranging from her preschool program to a back-to-school event assisting families with free school supplies and backpacks. And then, there's the Empower Women Now ministry, a beacon of support for the community's mothers. We'll also explore the inspiring story of a young woman who, with faith, community support, and forgiveness, rose to achieve her dreams. As we appreciate the teachers and educators who make a difference in our community, we'll learn about Bernice's exceptional efforts to support her students. This episode serves as a heartfelt reminder of the importance of love, gratitude, and appreciation. Listen, be inspired, and discover how you can make an impact of your own.
What if there was a way to make a substantial difference in your community, and it all started with something as simple as pre-K education and outreach ministries? Bernice Bush from Building Blocks Outreach joins us today to recount her 17-year journey of tireless service to the Brook Mill Court Complex community.
Bernice's compelling story takes us on a tour of her transformative work, ranging from her preschool program to a back-to-school event assisting families with free school supplies and backpacks. And then, there's the Empower Women Now ministry, a beacon of support for the community's mothers. We'll also explore the inspiring story of a young woman who, with faith, community support, and forgiveness, rose to achieve her dreams. As we appreciate the teachers and educators who make a difference in our community, we'll learn about Bernice's exceptional efforts to support her students. This episode serves as a heartfelt reminder of the importance of love, gratitude, and appreciation. Listen, be inspired, and discover how you can make an impact of your own.
We're excited to launch season three of the Love Fort Wayne podcast. The Love Fort Wayne podcast connects the stories of leadership happening in northeast Indiana to imagine, inspire and ignite transformation in leaders, 20 to 25 minutes at a time. I'm Jeff King, ceo and Executive Director of Love Fort Wayne. At Love Fort Wayne, we know that the pillars of a flourishing community are its schools, its leaders, churches and families. Join us as we learn from leaders across the region on how to not just lead but love our city. Welcome everybody to this month's episode of the Love Fort Wayne podcast. I am Jeff King, ceo of Love Fort Wayne. I'm joined this month with my good friend, mitch Cruz. What's up, mitch? How are you, man I'm doing?
Speaker 1:so good it's a blessing to be with you too. Super excited because Mitch my mama's here. That's amazing.
Speaker 3:My list of questions is going to be extensive.
Speaker 1:Oh no, yeah y'all, my mom is here. Bernice Bush from Building Blocks Outreach, thank you for being with us here this month.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm super excited to talk to you about the work that you're doing in the community not only leading in our city, but loving our city and the work that you do. Before we do that, I do want to say thank you to those folks who support Love Fort Wayne Tom Shepard, tom Cruz.
Speaker 3:I'm here, yeah, as you have. Sorry, tom Cruz.
Speaker 1:Tom Shepard and his family auto group. Thank you, brotherhood, mutual. And To Star, we thank you guys as well for supporting Love Fort Wayne and making these types of conversations possible. And so, mom Bernice, that's going to be hard the whole time, but we're going to be fun. We're always going to be fun. We're making I think you should call her mom.
Speaker 2:Should I call her mom? So, mom, you're here, you can call me Bernice. Yeah, I call you Bernice.
Speaker 1:Okay. So we're super excited again to have you because you've been serving in a community here in Fort Wayne. If you're not from Fort Wayne, or perhaps even if you are from Fort Wayne, there's this lovely little community on kind of the near southwest side of Fort Wayne, kind of south central, far south central side of Fort Wayne, called the Brook Mill Court Complex. There you've been serving there for how long?
Speaker 1:I've been there 17 years 17 years, for a long time, primarily running and overseeing a lovely and I'm not being biased, but a lovely pre-K school there and also serving the families and the women in that community. And so we're excited again to talk to you because, as part of the show, we love to highlight where leaders are loving our community schools, families and pastors and leadership as a whole, even in prayer. You have this really beautiful context, kind of like last month's guest Angelo, where you're able to serve families in the family context, but you're also able to serve in schools with our youngest, and so can you share first a little bit about yourself, how you got there 17 years ago and just the work that you all are doing at Building Blocks.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, first of all, I'm God's child, I'm a wife and a mother and a grandmother and I love, I enjoy working with children, especially the young kids. I became a part of the program, which was at the time under a different organization and I was simply looking for a job, and I was hired as a teacher and a couple of months later became the director of that program, which is a program that serves mostly women and children in a community that is over 90% single moms on some type of assistance. So this program is a free of charge preschool program that serves children ages three to five, prior to going to kindergarten, getting them ready for kindergarten. And then we do a couple of actually three different community outreach ministries to those, to the people in that community.
Speaker 2:One is well, first of all, our preschool program, and then we have our backpack back to school event that provides the children with free school supplies and backpacks and we also make it a special event for them. So it's not just here's a backpack, we make it really special for them. We also provide Christmas gifts to all of the children from in the womb to age 18. And then we do a women's outreach ministry, which we call Empower Women Now that I started a couple of years after I began working there, so this is just a way to go beyond working with the children, but also embracing the families as well and giving the families and the moms a hand up instead of a handout, and empowering them to embrace the better part of themselves and know that they matter, and encouraging them to go beyond where they are.
Speaker 3:What's your goal with a mom? What do you wanna accomplish in your ministry with the moms?
Speaker 2:My goal with the moms is, first of all, is to let them know that we care about them. Of course we are gonna embrace their children, but we also care about them and we want to partner with them as they raise their children. We're available if they not that I'm an expert, but I've been I think it might be.
Speaker 2:I've been where some of them are. Sometimes they just need to know that they matter and that people care about them, and so that is our goal. One of our goals is to let them know that we care and that they matter to us. So, in addition to what we do there, we also provide community resources that they can reach out to to get some of the services that they need, because we can't be everything, but they're just a plethora of sources in the community and we try to connect with some of those sources.
Speaker 3:What's the format of the preschool?
Speaker 2:The format of the preschool?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know how some people wanna teach a four year old calculus and some people just want them to play.
Speaker 2:What lane have you chosen?
Speaker 3:All of the above no.
Speaker 2:Not the calculus, though, but first of all, when the child enters the preschool, we want to help them to know that we care about them, because they're coming into an environment where we're strangers. Their parents might trust us, but they don't know us. So our goal is to help them feel safe. That's the first goal. And then we work with them socially to help them become more comfortable socially, so they're able to verbally communicate and interact with people. We also provide spiritual guidance.
Speaker 2:They get a Bible story and we interact with them, and they pray every day. Oh, that's awesome. And then they learn through praying. I mean, they learn through praying and they learn through playing. Someone once said and I found this to be true is that for a child, work is play and play is work. So there is some structured learning, and then they also learn through playing and individual one-on-one time with the teacher. So our goal is to get them ready socially first of all, so that when they go into kindergarten they're able to communicate what they need and what their needs are and what they know. And then it's also to get them more comfortable in terms of knowing some of their ABCs how to write and how to just let people know what their needs are.
Speaker 1:It's really good, mitch, I think about my three kids, which it's wild because I have two teenagers and a first grader now. You don't look old enough. Yeah, I know, thank you for saying that. My bald head says.
Speaker 2:I'm old enough.
Speaker 1:But you know.
Speaker 1:So my kids, you know, as they get older.
Speaker 1:But all three of mine went through the building blocks program with her and her staff and she's got an accredited teacher on her staff and I just think about the benefits of any of our children having that opportunity to be nurtured not only educationally and academically but also spiritually and socially, and the benefit it was specifically for my girls and my girls being older I can remember both of them vividly being kindergarten ready because they were, you know, at a program or at a preschool such as this one. And then that part that time in my life, you know, we were a family with without a whole lot, and so we needed a program like that that was free, that was flexible, with schedule, that was supportive of young parents and their young children, getting them ready for kindergarten. Because you know that early childhood education footprint is super, super important and I kind of want to hit on that. Next, it's like how important from the work that you all do at Building Blocks, how important do you see that early childhood development in the everyday when you're working with these children?
Speaker 2:Okay, I know that there are some parents out there that think that going to preschool is not important and that, and some parents are able to work with their children so that they can be ready for kindergarten. But I will go back to saying the socialization is so important. It goes beyond knowing how to count one, two, three in ABC. That communication part of it is so important. It has been said that children learn just about and I found this to be true between the ages of, I would say, two, three, four, five, two to five, especially three to five, they learn the foundation of everything that they're going to be using in life. They learn that early, during that age, just in that short period of time.
Speaker 2:So it's important because you want to give them that foundation developmentally early, so that when they step into that large school they have something inside of them that shows them how to and teaches them how to interact, to give some confidence, even though they're going into a large classroom with a bunch of strangers. It gives them that confidence to say that I can speak up for myself. If there's something I don't know, I can ask questions. And some children aren't able to do that because this is the first time they've been away from mom and dad. So I would say that if you're able to make sure that you get your children into a preschool program if I'm not talking too long, some parents want to hang on to those children as long as possible. Just know that they're not gone all day long, just the small part of the day, and it just helps prepare them for life in the big world that they're going to be stepping into. That's right.
Speaker 2:So I just say that preschool education is very important, very important to get them off to a good start in kindergarten as well as for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 3:I'm a believer too. I didn't go, but my brother went.
Speaker 3:He's seven years younger than I am and we sent all four of our daughters. It's a ministry that's now at our church and my granddaughter now goes and she's four and it's what you said about the foundation being laid at that age period Just makes so much sense, because I can't believe the things that come out of her mouth. I had her in my vehicle and she went from making a silly face, pulling her eyes down and just saying we're driving out on the road. She goes oh, there's a Jeep. I about got whiplash looking back at her. How do you know? I said maybe you should sell cars.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I got a little quiver in my voice and tear them out. It's amazing it is it is.
Speaker 2:It teaches them how to be observant. Because in part of our program a large part of our program is not about how much you can read, it's about the observation. For example, if you're teaching children about shapes, we don't just teach them to look at it on paper, but you go out in the world around you, we'll walk around the neighborhood and they'll look at the apartments in the community and they'll say I see a rectangle, it's that window, that window shaped like a rectangle.
Speaker 2:I see a circle. The basketball is shaped like a circle, so it teaches them to observe the things in their world. When we're going on field trips, we teach them to look out the window and see if the leaves are changing. Or they'll look out and say, oh, I see an S on that sign. Or they'll say that is shaped like an octagon. Or they learn all of those things just through observation and the way we teach.
Speaker 3:Wonder what they would say about the shape of my head. One of a fight would break out of an oval or a circle.
Speaker 2:They'll say an oval. They'll probably say it.
Speaker 1:She'll keep it real with you and let you know. That's just awesome. Mine might be more of a circle.
Speaker 2:I don't know about the little milk bed circle.
Speaker 1:That's funny. You talked a little bit earlier about partners, resource partners and I know just from kind of insider when it comes to empowering women's now that ministry there have been partners that have come in and shared with the women and come alongside the women and equipped the women and I know I won't say her name, but I know there is one woman that said I just wanted them to know, I'm so much like them than more than they think, regardless of my status or their.
Speaker 1:I am so similar to them. But how important do you think especially because of the love for Wayne, this is important to us, mitch is that convening power? We want to collaborate people for the transformation that we believe we can see in this city. How important is partnership in the work that you do with children and with families? And is there a word of encouragement you might give folks that are listening to partner well with people in our city and their community, wherever they're listening at.
Speaker 2:I would say that without partners we would not exist, and because I alone, neither my teachers, can make this program happen without partners. We're totally supported by partners. We're funded through partners and individuals financially and, I would say, human-wise, because we have people that come in and pour into the lives of the women mostly females. Every once in a while will have males come in and talk to the women, but they need to see that they can come out of where they are.
Speaker 2:There was a young lady that was going to school and she lived in that particular community. She got her degree in nursing and started to work at a local hospital. And during one of our Empower Women's meetings there was a gentleman who is no longer with us, but he taught on forgiveness as he made his famous cheesecake and then he gave that cheesecake to one of the women. That was a drawing. He gave the cheesecake to one of the women, he taught them how to make the cheesecake, he gave them the recipe to the cheesecake, then he gave them the cheesecake and then, of course, we enjoyed eating some of the cheesecake she had already made.
Speaker 2:But during that time this young lady stood up when we were having prayer requests and she said I want to go back to school, get my master's degree, I want to get a car and I want to buy a home. And I will tell you. It kind of jokes me up when I think of it, because I feel like I've almost watched her grow up. But she's achieved all of those. She carried a 4.0 during her master's program while working in a burn unit in one of our local hospitals. She bought a car and she is no longer living in that community. She and her daughter are living in a home that she just purchased about a year and a half ago.
Speaker 3:That's incredible.
Speaker 2:It's incredible so we prayed and believed with her and she did the work and it happened so good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that happened in a community setting, mitch, where folks are together, they're learning, they're being loved on in partnership with someone that didn't work for you but saw the time to come and partner with you to pour back into these families, which I think is beautiful.
Speaker 3:God uses the word of God, the spirit of God and the people of God to make us new again, and I think doing that in community is huge. My dad used to tell me the strongest deals made in the hottest fire. I know enough about your life that you've been through some challenges. What would you say to somebody that's maybe experienced disappointment in their lives or things didn't work out the way they thought they would? How would you encourage them to recalibrate with God?
Speaker 2:I would say number one, even though it seems hard.
Speaker 2:there are two things Forgiveness is important and faith and believing in something that you want, that you have no idea how that's going to happen. It almost seems impossible, but just to keep pushing forward, getting up every day, doing what needs to be done for that day, having a goal but not becoming overwhelmed by that goal. I will tell you, I got up every day and I did what I needed to do that day. What I'm doing now was not part of my plan. That was God's plan. When I applied for that job the job that I currently have I had no intention of being there past five years. I just needed a job with insurance and I love working with children, which is why I applied for the job. I had no intention of being in this position doing what I do. So I would say get up every day, do the work that needs to be done for that day and then repeat it and just be open to new possibilities.
Speaker 3:Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. Looking in the rear view mirror, I assume you can see God's faithfulness in spite of the fallen world we live in.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely, absolutely. When I look back I say, okay, god, I'm sure I'm gonna say this. I didn't like some of the stuff worth a darn, but I could see how he used those things to get me to where I am now. I could see how he used those things to get my children to where they are now. And sometimes people will say, well, what is your legacy? What is going to be your legacy? My legacy are my children.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he's sitting beside me, he's in the palm of his feet.
Speaker 2:There are three of them my children, and, first of all, the children that I gave birth to, and then those children that God has blessed me to minister to, that others have given birth to. I enjoy seeing the light bulb go on when they finally get it and to know that I'm a part of that. Those are the reasons I get up and step out the door every morning, if I may say. When people say, when are you going to retire? I have no idea, it may be when I leave this earth, but right now I have reasons to get up every day and step out the door to do something. And I would say to people who are struggling right now with various challenges find a reason to get up every day, even if it means just sitting on the side of the bed and standing up. That's a reason, and you don't have to feel like it. And see, sometimes we wait until we feel like doing something. You don't have to feel like doing it, just get up and do it so good thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so good I was debating on going down this road. It's not that bad of a road. But I mean your staff and yourself, mom, all black women, women of color some tough roads, but you all are leading your school, you're leading your outreach and your ministries. Is there a word of encouragement for women as a whole, or even women of color? You just gave some beautiful nuggets of encouragement, so it might be repetitive, but is there a specific word, even just for women or young ladies of color who are trying to make specifically these community impacts that you guys are making the social service connected community impact?
Speaker 2:I would say sometimes we look to change the world as in the world as a whole, and I was thinking the other day when someone was talking about I want to do something to change the world and I thought if you can change the life, just have a small impact on one person, you're changing the world because that person lives in the world and that could be your child, that could be your, your spouse, that could be all of your children. If you're making a positive impact in their lives, then you're helping change the world because they're going to be living in, they are living in this world. So I would say, if you're looking for a way to make a social impact, don't look to make a huge impact. Start with the little things. I started with trying to make a positive difference, of making a positive difference in the lives of my children, just seeing those positive things happen out of some challenges, and then I embraced to distract from some of the negative things going in my life.
Speaker 2:I embrace other people's children in terms of teaching, as I started teaching over 40 years ago in church with little kids and then started volunteering outside of that and learn how much I love doing that and just talk into the women of the parents, of the mothers of those children and letting them know that I understood what they were going through, even though a lot of them didn't think I did. They thought I had it all together. Well, I'm here to tell you no one has it all together. We have some things together. So I would just say, start at home, making little impacts there, and then reaching out, because if you just aim really high and say I'm gonna go straight to the top, it starts right here and then you keep reaching out, does that?
Speaker 1:make sense, it does, it makes great sense.
Speaker 3:John max. John Maxwell changed his definition of success to those who know me best, love and respect me the most. And I thought, when I first heard that decades ago and I got to know him, I thought that sounds good. But then you got, you know your marketplace life and you're pressured in this Western culture to be bigger and better whatever you're doing and we reward that. And then I came across. I think it was Socrates who said why do you scratch and crawl for money? To the people of Athens I think he said why do you scratch and crawl for money and you spend so little time with your children?
Speaker 3:yeah to whom you're gonna give it all, anyway, that's right yeah, and I'm telling you, the greatest fulfillment is in what your mom says to that legacy of your kids and those relationships super important is for those listening and even watching, you know it's.
Speaker 1:I hope that we take heed to that because it could be our children, or it could be those that God's given us as our children and niece, nephew, whoever we're caregiving like those, those impacts that we make then, those times that we spend with them there, are super important. And it also just makes me think that in our community and communities like ours, we have people like you and your staff that are pouring into someone else's child or children, and that is beautiful leadership legacy. So thank you for what you've done for us, for me and and for my brother and my sister, but then also what you've done in our community as we kind of move towards a close it, where you know we're in the month of November and I think about thanks and and giving, and Mitch might have a funny question about food soon, but I got a couple about you I want to like where is?
Speaker 1:as we hit that note on like, let's be aware of the folks that are giving to our kids like is there a word just of encouragement for an everyday person like Mitch and I. We don't work with kids, we don't work in school setting, preschool setting, like are there some places where you would just prompt us to be more thankful, or even prompt us to give back to the teachers, the educators in our community?
Speaker 2:I would just say worse of an words of encouragement. Teachers, as everyone knows, don't make nearly enough early childhood education or any type of education if you're working in that field, as a teacher or early childhood director or so, don't make nearly enough, but they give so much to the children to get them off to a great start and to help them along the way. So I would say just say thank you, send a note of thanks. You've got children in school. Don't wait until someone asks you, just send a note of thanks to the teacher. Instead of looking for things that the teachers do wrong, try find something good that they've done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and just send a note out of nowhere to those teachers, because teachers put a lot into caring for your children and you probably know that, and sometimes we pick up on the negative things that happen, and there are negative things that happen in schools. But if we highlight the good things that are going on, sometimes it can prompt the teachers to even have better behavior toward your child or toward other children by just encouraging them. I would say doesn't make you feel good when your supervisor or someone you meet in the community comes up to you and says oh, you know, jeff, oh Mitch, thank you for doing that. Doesn't that make you feel good? So why don't we do that for our teachers and our educators to support them?
Speaker 1:amen, yeah, especially in this month. You're like that that prompting of gratitude. It could go a long way. What would have no other better season to actually start doing that. That's a really good, good point of advice and I think a neurologist, it was a study.
Speaker 3:They said that gratitude and anxiety don't exist in the brain at the same time. That's right yeah. So really I'm a recovering perfectionist and being thankful has been one of the most freeing things from perfectionism in my life. Yeah man, so good.
Speaker 1:Well.
Speaker 3:Can I ask her?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can. When did?
Speaker 3:you know that Jeff was gonna be one of the best athletes in our community.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Probably when he was in preschool. See.
Speaker 1:See.
Speaker 2:He does not remember this and I know I will tell you this real quick, I promise it won't be long. He was. They had a little competition in preschool and he went to this school where they had a circle and on a field day of some sort, the one that ran the most circles won a prize. Do you know? He came home and practiced.
Speaker 3:Run in circles.
Speaker 2:No, running up and down the street, up and down the sidewalk for as long as he could, because he was determined that he was going to win. And so when I went to field day, his teacher said oh, he ran circles around all the kids. They had stopped and he just kept running and running. That's awesome so he got his first running trophy in preschool. Does he know what his prize do?
Speaker 3:you remember, was it a trophy? Or no, it was it was a I have no idea, he got a trophy.
Speaker 2:It was his first.
Speaker 1:You remember running. That is so cool.
Speaker 2:And this is a child that the doctors told me when I was pregnant with him that there was a possibility that he might be born with some of his limbs missing.
Speaker 3:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:Look.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's got them all.
Speaker 2:He's got them all.
Speaker 3:Oh, my goodness yeah.
Speaker 1:I knew that part. That is amazing. You did. I knew that. What was that? Oh, you just ran around the building. That means you know what child that means. It's almost time for us to close after that.
Speaker 2:I will tell you, though, he's a humble person he would never brag about his running or anything. He always reached back to help others and he's still doing it. I'm very proud of him.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that. Appreciate that, bernice.
Speaker 2:Okay, Jeff, yes yeah, we do.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for spending some time with us today. In all seriousness, because I don't know you just had some gems for us, for the folks that were listening, from all the different spectrums that you serve in as a leader in that transient community, the work you do with women and family, but also the importance of us pouring back into our littlest ones is so, so vital, and so I think my encouragement, our encouragement always, is one of the beautiful ways that you can lead your city is loving your city, and the author of love is Jesus and he showed us those ways and, thank you, you share with us some stories of how you love like him and you go low like him and you meet people at the table, like he did, to love them well, and so thank you for spending some time with us and sharing these gems with our listeners. Mitch, thank you, it's been an absolute honor.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:All right, folks, that was been our November episode. Thank you for tuning in. We will see you next month. We got a special December episode that you do not wanna miss. Until then, have some blessed days and we'll talk to you next time.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for joining us this month. We drop a new episode the first Monday of every month. Love Fort Wayne has some amazing episodes coming up. You don't wanna miss a single one, so subscribe today, wherever you are listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please like, share and leave a review. We wanna share your thoughts and comments with listeners on future episodes. Thanks again for joining us today. Join us next time, as we hear from leaders that don't just lead, but love our city.