Steve and Teri Vogel, founders of Thrive Arizona, launched the ministry in 2016 to address foster care needs, prevention efforts, and support for aged-out youth. Their initiative grew from their personal experience as foster parents, where they noticed a gap in resources available to biological families.
Thrive Arizona now provides essential services like housing and counseling to help both foster youth and families working toward reunification. In this conversation, the close partnership between Christ’s Church of the Valley (CCV) and Thrive Arizona is highlighted, with a shared commitment to aiding vulnerable children and families involved in the foster care system.
The Vogels were foster parents for six years, and they had up to 18 kids in their home at one time, and they also have adopted a little girl out of the foster care system.
LINKS
Website: https://www.thriveaz.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThriveAZProgram/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thrivearizona/
Christ’s Church of the Valley: https://ccv.church/
CCV Missions: www.ccv.church/missions
Pastor Larrie Fraley: linkedin.com/in/larrie-fraley-53445032
Email: missions@ccv.church
Steve: [00:00:00] I like to use the analogy. You know, we're all kind of headed down a path, whether you want to look at it as a river, and we're headed towards a waterfall. And we have a lot of really great resources in this community and throughout the world that catch people once theySteve've fallen off of the waterfall or the cliff. What happens if we keep them from falling off that cliff? And that's really what we want to do. Because if you look down at human trafficking, addiction, homelessness, all of that, a lot of it boils down to the breakdown of the family. When a child is removed from the home, they're raised by somebody else for a time, and the family kind of disconnects. And when they come back together, they really don't know each other. And so we want to provide attachment repair classes. We want to do some more counseling services, more than just giving stuff away. We want to be able to strengthen them. And our thrive motto is that a family that has hope will thrive. And if we can keep families together, we think that people will be much more successful.
Larrie: [00:00:58] Welcome to the Let's Go 360 podcast. I'm Larrie Fraley, your host, and I'll be bringing you conversations with outstanding, mission minded leaders with the aim of helping you develop your own spiritual life by understanding what God is doing through our guests lives, as we learn about their ministries and what God has called them to do. Well greetings everyone. I'm Larrie Fraley, your Let's Go 360 podcast host. First of all, thank you for supporting Let's Go 360 with your positive ratings, kind comments and and referrals to your friends. Let's Go 360 as part of Christ's Church of the Valley here in the greater Phoenix, Arizona area throughout the valley, CCV has 15 campuses where children may enjoy interactive activities that strengthen their faith, where students can learn how to be Christ centered change agents regardless of where you're at in your own personal walk. Adults, young and old will discover a place in which they can grow and feel at home.
Larrie: [00:02:05] And we have a very special guest with us today. Steve Vogel is a good friend and a mission partner of CCV. Steve and Terri, his wife, are the founders and directors of Thrive Arizona foster Care, Prevention, reunification, and for the aged out kids. The Vogels were foster parents for six years, and they had up to 18 kids in their home at one time, and they also have adopted a little girl out of the foster care system.
Larrie: [00:02:35] The vision of Thrive Arizona was birthed from Terri walking through the foster care process and realizing that there were many resources for foster care, families and kids, but there wasn't much available for biological families. Founded in 2016, Thrive Arizona provides resources for biological families that are trying to prevent having their children removed from their home and are working with the Department of Child Safety to reunify their family. Thrive Arizona works out aged foster care youth by providing resources such as housing and counseling and much needed resources. Steve and Terri have three biological children along with their adopted child, and they also have three grandchildren. They've been married for 36 years. Well, Steve, welcome to the show. You know, foster care has been a passion of CCV for many years, and we've tried to get involved in a lot of different agencies. But I'd have to admit Thrive Arizona stands out. And so we're honored to have you as one of our mission partners and look forward to what God is going to do with your ministry. Tell us a little bit about your story and a little bit about thrive. Yeah.
Steve: [00:03:48] So it was interesting. We had just dropped off our oldest son at college. We're ready to be empty nesters. And my wife was actually volunteering at the Phoenix Dream Center and was a mentor for one of the young ladies that was in the human trafficking program. And she was pregnant with her eighth child. She had other kids that were already in foster care. And so in 2016, if a child was born and their siblings were still in foster care, that child was automatically removed from the hospital. So she reached out to Terri and asked whether we would be willing to take her child, just for a little while until she could get herself together. And so I was actually on the golf course. And Terri called me and said, hey, I need your Social Security number. They're going to do some background checks on you, and it looks like we might have a baby to look after. It's going to be super short term, very temporary. So when I got home from the golf course, we had a baby in our house and we had to run to Walmart and buy a crib and all the other things that we needed to to be able to take care of a baby. So that kind of launched us into what we're doing now and just the world of foster care. We realized that we needed to get licensed as foster parents so that we can come alongside these moms that that needed help and so God had a different plan for us. I was planning on being retired and he said no.
Larrie: [00:05:13] 18. 18 foster kids later.
Steve: [00:05:15] Yes, exactly.
Larrie: [00:05:17] Wow. That's amazing. And so one thing I like about thrive is they don't only deal with the the prevention and reunification, but you also deal with the aged out kids. Those kids are often forgotten, right? It's almost like, okay, you go through the foster care and then all of a sudden they're 18 years old, and then it's like you never see them again.
Steve: [00:05:37] Absolutely.
Larrie: [00:05:38] What do you guys do for the aged out.
Steve: [00:05:40] So we we had a young man when we were foster parents that actually was aging out of foster care. He came to us at 16 and we were they were getting ready to turn 18. And his caseworker came to us and said, hey, you know, when he turns 18, you're not going to get funding for him anymore, you know, what do you want us to do with him? And at that point, he was still in high school. He was a senior in high school. And we we looked at each other and were like, well, he's not going anywhere. I mean, we're going to make sure that he gets taken care of. And so we saw him through graduation in high school. He actually moved off to college, got a college degree. But what we learned is that when they turn 18, they literally are given a bag and told, hey, have a nice life. And Larry, I don't know about you, but I wasn't ready to have a nice life at 18. There was no way. And I had a great family. And so, um, God really laid it on our hearts that we needed to start providing housing for these young adults. Um, almost 50% of the young adults when they age out are homeless within a year. And we wanted to do something about that. So, um, God has provided an amazing property for us, actually, here in Peoria, where we're able to house 45 young adults that have aged out of foster care.
Larrie: [00:06:53] Wow. Wow. So what kind of resources do you provide them?
Steve: [00:06:57] And one of the things that we learned is that loving them into health wasn't going to work. Um, as much as we cared for them, as much as we wanted them to feel a part of a family trauma had been so deep into their past that we needed to address that. And so we provide counseling services. We've actually started a new treatment. It's called bio neurofeedback, where we help their brains to calm down so that they're not in fight or flight all the time. And it's been amazing once we've taken them out of fight or flight, that they're actually getting rest at night, they're actually able to think about what they want to do for the future. So now the resources that we provide, such as educational resources, job skills training, all those things, we're being much more successful in it because we're not dealing with the fight or flight. Wow, that's so good.
Larrie: [00:07:44] Now, at one time, as I recall, there was almost 18,000 kids in the in the foster care system right now.
Steve: [00:07:51] There was 22,000 kids when we started in 16. Yeah.
Larrie: [00:07:54] What's the total today?
Steve: [00:07:56] I believe it's around 11,000 is what the Department of Health Safety. Yeah, the Department of Child Safety has really put a lot of resources towards prevention. And so they're really working hard to be able to keep families together rather than automatically removing a child.
Larrie: [00:08:11] Would you say that's the primary reason that it has gone down is because the focus shifted to prevention as opposed to care?
Steve: [00:08:18] Absolutely. Yeah, because there's a lot of people that that lost their kids due to poverty. And that's why really why thrive was formed is we never wanted to see a family separated due to poverty. And so the Department of Child Safety is putting resources in place to, to prevent those, those removals.
Larrie: [00:08:36] Well, there's a lesson there, right? I mean, there's a lesson for our city and our state and even our country, probably the world, that prevention is a better route to go than actual deal with it once you've you've got it. I mean, it it applies to almost every part of our life, even our health. Right? It's better to prevent us getting sick as opposed to waiting for us to get sick and then go get treated.
Steve: [00:09:00] That's right. I like to use the analogy. You know, we're all kind of headed down a path, whether you want to look at it as a river, and we're headed towards a waterfall. And we have a lot of really great resources in this community and throughout the world to catch people once they've fallen off of the waterfall or the cliff. But what do we what happens if we keep them from falling off that cliff? And that's really what we want to do. Because if you look down at a human trafficking, addiction, homelessness, all of that, a lot of it boils down to the breakdown of the family. And if we can keep families together, we think that people will be much more successful. Yeah.
Larrie: [00:09:37] So how does how do families and young adults get connected with thrive?
Steve: [00:09:42] Mostly through the Department of Child Safety. They have already done their their due diligence and finding out if there's any addictions or any things that need to be addressed. And they refer them to us and then we provide those resources. We also have partners with school, uh, counselors and officers that are aware of young adults that may be couch surfing or maybe homeless, and they can connect us with them, too.
Larrie: [00:10:08] Interesting. Now, I know our audience is is some of them are asking, how do I volunteer? Is there any way for for them to get involved?
Steve: [00:10:17] Yeah, absolutely. We have a lot of different ways to volunteer. They can visit our website at thrive Avaaz.org. We have a volunteer tab. But some of the high level things is they can they can help us, um, just come into our Hope House, which is young ladies that have are pregnant or either have had a child. They can come in and rock a baby or take care of a baby while mama goes and gets a shower. We have opportunities that we have a thrift store and coffee shop off of Camelback that we are always looking for volunteers, and so we do events throughout the week that if it's just, hey, I only want to come and volunteer once a month or once every couple of months. Those events are a great way to get connected.
Larrie: [00:11:01] Yeah, so I know that they can go to your website, which is ThriveAZ.Org. right. ThriveAZ.org. And we will we will include the website information, your contact information in our show notes, so that the audience and our listeners can go and find out more about thrive. They've got an amazing website. You can go on there and and check out pretty much everything they do. There's a really well done newsletter that they have and just ways that you can get involved. And of course, if you wanted to donate at that time, there's the ability to make a donation at that point as well. What's coming up? What does thrive going to look like five years from now?
Steve: [00:11:41] Well, we really believe well.
Larrie: [00:11:42] Hopefully you're out of business.
Steve: [00:11:44] Well, that would be fantastic, right?
Larrie: [00:11:46] That the the foster care system is down to zero. And you and Terry are looking for something else to do.
Steve: [00:11:52] That would be amazing. I would love that. But the plan right now is that we really feel like we need to add housing for young adults that have aged out. There's going to be over 900 kids that age out of foster care here in Arizona this year, which means, statistically, that 450 of them will be homeless within a year. And so there's just not enough resources for housing for young adults. And so we're hopeful to get to 100 beds, which would be double of what we have now. Um, it's hard to to believe and see that. But, you know, we serve a big God, and we know that if it's his plan, he will make it happen.
Larrie: [00:12:29] Well, you never know. There might be someone in our audience today that set around this weekend and looked at their spouse and said, honey, what are we going to do with that? Uh, that hotel we own downtown and and maybe God is going to provide that. So anyhow, we hope that and pray that that God will provide the resources for many of these aged out kids. And so that's going to be something we can pray for. What else is going to happen? What's going on now that that's exciting?
Steve: [00:13:00] We're really excited about putting more resources towards our prevention and reunification. We're providing parenting classes. Um, we're going to do some other things that will strengthen the family, because honestly, when a child is removed from the home, they're raised by somebody else for a time, and the family kind of Disconnects, and when they come back together, they really don't know each other because they mom looks different. Dad looks different. The child looks different because they were in a different home for a while. And so we want to we want to provide attachment repair classes. We want to do some more counseling services. Just more than just giving stuff away. We want to be able to strengthen them and and our our thrive motto is that a family that has hope will thrive. And that's really what we want to do, is provide hope.
Larrie: [00:13:47] Let's shift back to your thrift store. Um, first of all, has this been a very successful, uh, initiative for you?
Steve: [00:13:56] It absolutely has. We've had a thrift store for about five years now, and it's been great, um, sustainable income for us. And we just moved into this new place off of eighth Street and Camelback a little over a year ago, and it's been a tremendous blessing.
Larrie: [00:14:12] Where's it located?
Steve: [00:14:13] On eighth Street in Camelback. 839 East Camelback.
Larrie: [00:14:16] And so I'm assuming that there that's a place that people can go and serve as well, right? I mean, you you obviously need people to take care of the place.
Steve: [00:14:26] Absolutely. And it's a beautiful location. It's 11,000ft². So it's a big location right off of Camelback. Um, coffee shop, the whole thing. So it's been great.
Larrie: [00:14:37] Wow, wow.
Larrie: [00:14:39] So anything else that you want to share with our audience today?
Steve: [00:14:43] I just on behalf of thrive, I just want to I want to thank CCV for their tremendous support. Larrie, you guys have been along with us almost from the beginning, and we just appreciate all that you do in the community. It's amazing how CCV doesn't just look inward, but you look outward and that just encourages us so much. So thank you.
Larrie: [00:15:03] Well, when we have mission partners like like you and Terri, it's it's easy. And so we we value you as a mission partner and our church values you. How can we pray for you guys?
Steve: [00:15:16] Um, I think right now we're kind of in a season where where we're a little tired. And so just pray for strength. Pray for wisdom as we make decisions going forward. Um, I'm no spring chicken. Um, and we're, you know, we're starting to think about succession paths and just different things like that. And, and the other thing is always resources. You know, that it can be challenging sometimes, especially in the summertime. And and, you know, God always shows up just in time. Um, and it's just been a real growth experience for me to, to let go of some of the control that I feel like I need to have and just trust in him. And so that's the biggest thing, is, is just to pray for us that we have wisdom, and walking down the paths that God opens and not trying to kick down the doors that he closes.
Larrie: [00:16:05] Well, in looking at your statistics here, it looks like God is blessing your ministry. It is growing your ministry. I see over 12,000 children have been served and over a thousand of those are aged out. And so what a what a testimony to God, who has certainly used your ministry and I think will continue to use your ministry to do great things. Steve, thank you for joining us today. And we look forward to to having you back and see what God has done, say, in the next year or so. So God bless you, my friend. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Let's Go 360 podcast sponsored by Christ Church of the Valley. Check out CCV at ccv.church and our missions activity at ccv.church/missions where we are trying to fulfill the Great Commission inspired by the Great Commandments.
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