Outreach Mission: Bloom Enterprises
Grace Episcopal Outreach Mission Spotlight
Bonus content on the Glimpses of Grace podcast feed
Episode Introduction
Welcome to the first episode of the Grace Episcopal Outreach Mission Spotlight, a new series on the Glimpses of Grace podcast highlighting community partners supported by the Grace Episcopal Outreach Ministry in Gainesville and Hall County, Georgia. Each episode features local organizations making a measurable impact through service, advocacy, and compassionate support.
Featured Organization: Bloom Enterprises (Gainesville, GA)
In this episode, we spotlight Bloom Enterprises, a Hall County nonprofit dedicated to empowering adults with different abilities. Their mission is rooted in inclusion, dignity, and faith-based community support. Bloom Enterprises works to ensure that adults with different abilities can participate fully in community life and experience meaningful opportunities for growth, contribution, and connection.
Mission Statement: “To support, encourage and empower adults with different abilities to participate as contributing members of their community and to enrich their quality of life. Our faith-based organization aims to celebrate each person’s value while shining a light on inclusion in all that we do.”
Guest Interview
Our guest is Cathy Drerup, Chairperson of Bloom Enterprises. Cathy shares the organization’s vision, the motivation behind their work, and the values that sustain their mission of inclusion in the Gainesville–Hall County community.
Learn More & Get Involved
Discover Bloom Enterprises’ programs, volunteer opportunities, and ways to support their mission at bloomga.org.
Learn more about Grace Episcopal Outreach Ministry.
The Glimpses of Grace podcast is a ministry of Grace Episcopal Church in Gainesville, Georgia. We are passionate about supporting the spiritual growth of souls, and we hope these sermons and conversations meet you where you are and enrich your soul as we all continue to make meaning in the world today.
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Transcript
Bruce Leyton: Good morning. I am Bruce Leyton. I’m a parishioner at Grace Episcopal and a member of the outreach committee, and with me today is Cathy Drerup, chairperson of Bloom Enterprises. And good morning, Cathy.
Cathy Drerup: Good morning.
Bruce Leyton: So, the purpose of this discussion today is to create a space to look beneath the surface of our community partnerships and beyond the numbers that we so often use to demonstrate the impact of an organization, and rather for us to delve into the deeply personal nature of the work and the way lives are touched and transformed, and which I had the opportunity to experience a couple of weeks ago at Midland Kru on Main Street in Gainesville, which is a program. We’ll talk about those programs later, developed by Bloom Enterprises. Cathy we’ll talk about the programs, but frankly, it’s more than a program, it’s a happening.
Cathy Drerup: It is.
Bruce Leyton: So, I thought maybe a good place to start, and with me to stop talking, is if we could go into the what, how, and the why of Bloom Enterprises, and maybe you could share a bit of the background that shaped Bloom into what it is today.
Cathy Drerup: Thank you. The incorporation in 2012 was Randy and Friends, the name of the organization founded by Marty Owens and Randy Owens, and they are pioneers in the nonprofit community to expand an inclusive community, and that was the goal from the very beginning. And as the years went by, of course, as all organizations have evolution, Marty and Randy endorsed us looking at the evolution of the organization, and that’s when our board of directors and the associates and families and stakeholders all started to look at a way to name and brand the organization as it had evolved. And that’s how Bloom Enterprises came forward.
And the fact that we’re a faith-based organization took us into scripture to try to find God’s path. An abundant life, Marty and Randy had always just exemplified that having an abundant life was something that God planned for us. And for all people, and they knew that their organization, Randy and Friends, and we knew that our organization going forward had that same solid grounding. And so we started to examine scripture and landed on just an inspiration in Genesis 1:11 where God was planting. He was producing fruit-bearing trees, and he planted seeds to produce various kinds. And so as this was life and this was purpose, God’s purpose was that there shall be a variety. That hit us, a diversity of people, a diversity of purpose. And so we knew that God intended for us to help with this abundant life, and blooming seemed to be a joyful way to look at that.
Bruce Leyton: And can you put that in the context of what Bloom does?
Cathy Drerup: Yes, our mission, the key points are that the associates that enroll participate as contributing members of the community, their quality of life is enriched, that they can be celebrated as a unique individual, and that inclusion is what it’s all about. And if you look at the garden with its variety, you can see a community. So the purpose is to provide skills, experience, outcomes, and opportunities. And that just is growth, growth and achievement. It all seems to center around that unique value of each individual.
Bruce Leyton: Yeah, so who are the individuals?
Cathy Drerup: Adults with different abilities of varying situations of their personhood that might include autism, might include Down syndrome, may have challenges in just managing behavior and emotional situations. So anyone that can come into our program and participate according to our program design in terms of their level of independence or their need for support. So there may be some day programs that can handle various levels of care beyond ours where medical intervention or support with feeding or other types of more intensive intervention.
Our associates that join us are able to participate, communicate, and provide support for some of their own needs as well. And any 18-year-old and older. We have had associates as in the age group of 62. Maybe the average mean would be 30 or 40 is the average mean. And the programs are designed to give experiences that also are access-based. In other words, going to the community and being a part of, let’s say, the downtown scarecrow on the square event and being there with your scarecrow that you have all put together and handing out candy to the kids in the community, moving from a more isolated environment to one that, to me, and you may have felt that too, it’s just cheers. It’s like going in someplace where everyone knows your name.
Bruce Leyton: So I’ll describe the lunch that we had. So we were invited to a lunch. We sat at a table with some of the associates, and it was a great exchange and it was lively and felt like home, frankly, and the atmosphere in there is phenomenal. But we were greeted at the door. There was a line of people greeting us. And then we walked to the back, we had lunch and the ice cream, by the way, was phenomenal. And I’m hoping you can describe a little bit about your ice cream socials in just a minute, but, and then we got a tour given by the associates, and everything was conducted by the associates. The employees of the organization were there certainly, you can tell the love and the support that comes from the employees, but it was driven to a great extent by the associates. It was phenomenal.
So you’ve got three programs: Midland Kru, the Ice Cream Social, and Community House Creations. Can you describe those in just a little bit?
Cathy Drerup: The core enterprise, of course, is the day program where the associates enroll, and it has a variety of components including spiritual development, personal goal, working on pathways to success. If someone has a social goal to initiate more communication, someone else may have a goal to take responsibility for chores. There’s a variety of ways that goals are developed, but that’s a part of the Midland Kru Day Program: community participation, getting out, volunteering at Elache or the food bank, helping the Blackshear Place Baptist Church put together Christmas boxes for children.
So in the day program, there are personal development, interpersonal, social, fun and recreational activities, and exploration in terms of ways to be an active citizen. So that’s the core. Those are the people and that’s their foundation.
Then branching off into Midland Ice Cream Social, which is an enterprise that has an employment component to it. And the associates that are interested in having some job opportunity and skills training do applications and get accepted into the ice cream program. And there is a portable cart that can go to events. We have a trailer that can pull that loaded cart, and it could be a corporate event, it could be a community event, and the associates help to load, go through the setup, provide customer service in selling, and there’s an adaptive component to it.
If you look at the menu and you want vanilla and your wife wants cookies and cream or something to that effect, there’ll be a color and a number. So it might be an orange four and a red two, and the person who is getting the ice cream for the customer may have reading skills or may not. So it’s adapted so that anyone can successfully get the product and the customer receives their service. And it’s also just being out there for people to see the joy of having a booth and being with other citizens and offering a product that we feel very proud of. Our ice cream sandwiches make people just scream with joy without a doubt, so that they receive a fair wage and have that opportunity to have independence with that earnings.
The third program is Community House Creation, which is really so much grounded in exploration. Um, it’s not creating stuff, although there is some manipulation of materials and that type of thing, but it is more the creations part of the enterprise is to explore your interest, to maybe have speakers come in, which is a great opportunity for our supporters to come in and share what being a makeup artist or being a floral designer looks like, and talk about that and what are the skills that could be used and could we possibly do that here? Could that experience of seeing a florist inspire us to make centerpieces for Grace Episcopal Church?
It inspires opportunity and interpersonal relationships, having time, as they did at the lunch, to practice social engagement, to ask questions, to respond, to share your interest. We also in Community House Creations help some of our partners with activities like creating manipulatives for an occupational therapy company and packaging those and sorting, and there are wages applied to any production of a product with our associates. And sometimes it’s just volunteering and doing something nice for someone with a skill that we’ve obtained. Ideally, we want to have resumes, and they build resumes with those skills as well, and that’s in progress right now.
Bruce Leyton: Oh, phenomenal. Yeah. So it sounds like you’ve got aspirations as well.
Cathy Drerup: Absolutely. One of the reasons that Bloom Enterprises, the name, was important to us is that we wanted to have a corporate umbrella that was able to evolve. And so Bloom is the umbrella, and underneath that are currently the three enterprises that we’ve talked about: Community House Creations, Midland Ice Cream Social, and Midland Kru, which they selected the name, and they’re very proud to be on Main Street near the Midland part of the community. There’s a lot of pride in that.
And so we want to be able to explore other enterprises in the future and have an evolution of interest and opportunity. So although I think right now our focus is on the pillars of program components in each of these three, transportation is a huge barrier in every single enterprise because a community access group, which is what we are, community access from the home to a place that you belong, that you are valued and understood, cared for and nurtured. That is what they come into from their home. But then we are the springboard to go into the community. So finding win-win opportunities with people in the community can evolve, and we can look at what that might mean.
To us, people spending time with these wonderful citizens, with these men and women who have value, just spending time. That’s why the lunch event was created, because we don’t want people looking at the associates from afar. We don’t want them seeing them across the sidewalk and say, oh, look at those individuals that came to the community today. No, we want there to be a unified community where we have conversations, where we sit on the bench on the square and ask your name, where do you live and why are you here today? To come forward and embrace the simplicity of getting to know people who are different and have value and who can enrich your life.
I am an enriched individual because of these people who have found this place that is a springboard to other opportunities. Does that make sense?
Bruce Leyton: Yeah, I love it. Absolutely. And it’s that enumerating our gifts that gives us a sense of abundance, which we often don’t pay attention to, especially in the society of consumerism and the way we’re driven. So thank you for that. I appreciate it.
I’m going to try to capture what I think we’ve spoken about today and tell me if I’ve got it right. So I’ve heard, number one, a culture of caring. There’s absolutely a culture of caring. Culture, I think, is an important word. Eliminating barriers to access in so many ways, and that’s not without its hurdles, right? We say eliminating, but we’ve got some hurdles there, and it’s not like we haven’t heard that before from other organizations. It seems to be a resonant theme.
And in terms of impact, I mean it really goes beyond the numbers. I know you’re assessing the numbers as well and you’ve got the data, but to me, it goes to at least in what I’ve experienced and what I’ve heard you say to person-centered engagement and well-being and as members and valued members of the community. We all are, right? So our associates as well. So if that sums it up, if you’re okay with that, if you give me the thumbs up on that.
It’s great. I’m going to thank you. And I think we know how to, we’ll post something in terms of how we reach out to you if you’d like. Do you have, is there a general telephone number that somebody can reach out to or do you just go to the website?
Cathy Drerup: I think the best thing to do, which is a wonderful journey to understanding Bloom, is to go to b l o o m g a.org. Then there will be contact us information, volunteer information. Of course, we need volunteers. So that would be a delightful way for people to spend time with a group of people that will give you gifts back in so many ways. So all of those opportunities to donate and volunteer and contact us are on the Bloom Georgia website.
Bruce Leyton: Great, Cathy. I’m just going to read something on behalf of Grace Episcopal. Grace Episcopal Church is a congregation in communion with all that is God, seen and unseen. We are led by the example of Jesus Christ and are empowered by the Holy Spirit to support each other through prayer, formation, worship, and service. We will welcome all with kindness, acceptance, and love with God’s help. We are grace, grounded in faith and relentless in compassion. Thank you, Cathy.
Cathy Drerup: Thank you.