Kevin Adler, founder and CEO of Miracles Messages, an innovative non-profit using digital media to reconnect homeless people with their loved ones, sits down to talk with Mark about this amazing work.

TRANSCRIPT

0:01

Welcome to Jessup think I'm your host, Mark Moore. And I'm so excited to be joined on the show today by Kevin Adler. Kevin is the founder and CEO of miracle messages, an innovative nonprofit using digital media to reconnect the homeless, with their loved ones, have been so inspired by Kevin's work, and I know that you will be inspired as well. Hope you enjoy the show.

0:31

Kevin, thank you so much for joining me on the show. And I was so inspired when you spoke at Jessup in Chapel about a month ago now feels like two years ago, but but I was so inspired. I was actually in my office, listening to the chapel livestream. While I was, I was multitasking. And but then I stopped and I just listened to the rest of your message. And I was so inspired, I got out of my office and basically ran to the RA, you know, as as socially appropriate as I could walk fast through through campus, and ended up catching you just as you were coming outside the chapel building. I didn't know that backstory. Yeah. So just connect, because I was, I was just so moved by the work that you're doing in the work, and the focus of miracle messages. So maybe for our listeners, if they don't quite know, what is the work that you do with miracle messages? And kind of maybe how, how'd that all get started?

1:33

Yeah, well, thank you. I'm honored mark. Here, that little anecdote, I like to figure out what the appropriate speed is to be running while pretending to be professional. Are you an Olympic Qualifying or not? You know, so miracle messages is a nonprofit that I started about five years ago. And we help people that are experiencing homelessness, reconnect with their loved ones, and with us as their neighbors. The first part of that has developed into an award winning reunion service, where we record short video, audio and text messages from people on the streets, and that shelters and living in their cars, to family members and friends that they haven't seen in a while. And it could be to say, I, you know, would love to come live with you. But it could also simply be I miss you. I love you. I'm sorry. I want you back in my life. So when one of those messages gets recorded, usually by a client directly, or a volunteer, or a caseworker, or one of our formerly homeless community ambassadors, and you're usually using one of our tools, whether it's the mobile app, paper form, the online form, or our one 800 miscue hotline. We have a network of volunteer digital detectives, that then go online and make phone calls write letters to see if they can locate the loved ones deliver the messages to reunite folks with our families. So that's the reunion service, the how do we better connect with people experiencing homelessness as our neighbors? That's a really exciting area that's just been emerging, really, in the last couple months, even a couple of weeks? Around COVID-19? Yeah, new and exciting ways. And I'd be happy to share more about that. If that's of interest.

3:47

Yeah, definitely. That I mean, that we're definitely have experienced a shift in, in the world in the last, you know, in the last couple of months. And and yeah, interesting to see. So that's kind of brought up new things within miracle messages. In that new Yeah, I want to express Yeah, a little bit of that kind of the new stuff you have going on.

4:11

Yeah. Well, let me read some news that is in front page of the New York Times right now. I just got the news in the last hour or two. And it's, I think, very relevant and pressing it for where things could be moving very soon. So it was just announced that today, on Wednesday, there were five positive cases at the largest homeless shelter in San Francisco. Today, there are 70 Wow. Wow. And there's a real fear as w