The Gift of Community
written by Susan Griffis, Associate Vice President of Marketing, Shepherds College

Read through the Community State Bank website and you will see statements like “relationship-driven,” “creating a culture that exemplifies positivity,” and “investing our time, talents and resources into building the communities we serve.”

These statements aren’t just empty messages created at a monthly marketing meeting and then forgotten about. They are statements lived out by the bank president and his staff on a daily basis.

Visit the Community State Bank Facebook and Instagram pages and scroll through posts of free community events they’ve hosted, farmers and other business owners they serve, and neighbors with real needs they support. Several of those posts will be about the café they built for Shepherds College, a post-secondary school for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

For the students, Shepherds Community Café was a message saying, “You matter in this community.” For Shepherds College, the café was an awesome blessing that still continues to reveal other important gifts through the bank’s original, generous act. By caring for their neighbors, the bank gave the college:

The Gift of Community

From the grand opening to now, the chairs at Shepherds Community Café are filled with supportive neighbors, local business owners, out of town visitors, media personnel, Community State Bank employees, and Shepherds College parents, students and staff. The students and alumni who work at the café, our baristas, are being exposed to new people and potential new friends every day. These interactions give the students the opportunity to build their communities and support systems. Each relationship developed can be a source of wisdom, spiritual guidance, life experience or assistance as these students learn to live on their own after graduation.

Every contact is also an opportunity for the students to give back – to engage in another’s life – sharing their unique abilities and personalities with the people around them. With each connection made and every relationship built, the students are creating safer and more welcoming communities in which they can live out their dreams of independence.
 
Read about the Gift of Experience in the February 11, 2019 blog.  The Gift of Awareness and the Gift of Financial Support coming in March.

​The Gift of Experience
written by Susan Griffis, Associate Vice President of Marketing, Shepherds College

Russian nesting dolls are fascinating gifts. The main doll is beautifully carved and painted and, in itself, is a wonderful surprise. But then you open the doll to find another, similar to the first in its beauty, but with intricate and important differences. As you open the doll you’ll continue to find another… and another… and another… each unique and each an essential part of the whole gift.

In 2018, Community State Bank gave Shepherds College a gift much like this. They gave the school a café for the Culinary Arts students to run - Shepherds Community Café. 

One of the first things people do after receiving a Russian nesting doll is to remove each doll, put the halves back together, and line them up next to each other to examine the gift in its entirety. After receiving the gift of Shepherds Community Cafe, the staff at Shepherds College did the same.  The second gift was easily revealed:

The Gift of Experience
Shepherds Community Café is staffed by the second- and third-year students and alumni of Shepherds College. These baristas all have intellectual or developmental disabilities so they are supervised by a café manager, one who is experienced in the disability field.

Running the café and serving the customers gives these students valuable, real-life business experience. As they grow in knowledge, the students are gaining confidence in their skills and in their personal interactions.

The students each learn specialized skills in their Culinary Arts program at Shepherds College. They also learn soft skills, such as professional behaviors, dressing for success and conflict resolution. These soft skills are tested and enhanced through working as baristas at the café.

Later this year, the café will offer baked goods made by the Culinary Arts students. The students will be baking cookies, muffins, bars and other delicious treats in the newly licensed production kitchen at Shepherds College. Producing these baked goods to sell in the café will add another level of experience toward their careers in Culinary Arts.
​
Thanks to the gift of Shepherds Community Café, the Shepherds College Culinary Arts students are building impressive resumes to assist them on the path toward fulfilling their dreams of independence.
Read about the other generous gifts in upcoming blogs.