One of the runners that carried the torch for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City reminisces on his 27 year career of helping children and youth at risk.

The soft-spoken man with a gentle demeanor and warm brown eyes has also carried a torch for the youth who have, for whatever reason, fallen by the wayside of society.

Executive Director of The Inn Between, Brian Burgess, has been a driving force in the local community since 1981 to foster partnerships and provide outreach services to homeless and at-risk youth.

“It’s not what I do; it’s what the teachers and students do… I’m most proud of the way they are progressing in terms of the students achieving credits and that they are gaining educationally,” he states humbly.

“When I think of the last year, I think in academic terms, not the calendar year.  We had nine students complete GED’s and another nine graduate with degrees from their own high schools.  We don’t provide diplomas from Inn Sight Alternative High School, they are enrolled in their regular high school but they attend here and gain their credits here, that way they can focus on one class at a time, do all the work on that class then move on for instance,  if they are behind.  As long as they are willing to put out the work, they get the credits,” he explains.

The challenges faced by Inn Sight are like any other business.  ”Part of a non-profit organization is work; we work just as hard as any other business.  However we have to make our money from donations, grant writing, government contracts, and bids.   Just like an engineer bids for a road project we bid to provide a school for kids.   It’s like running a regular business; it takes quite a bit of work.”

He continues, “Demand for services go up at a time when the resources go down.   So it’s a tough situation to be in now.  Even the foundations I know have taken a hit  in their financial portfolios because the foundations were invested in the markets at some level, not all was guaranteed.”

Burgess says the biggest challenge he faced last year was figuring out how to purchase the Avista Utilities building The Inn Between/Inn Sight Alternative High School currently occupies and has leased for the past 11 years.

“We’ve been actively writing grants but we are always caught in this chicken or the egg  situation with the grants because everybody says they will help if someone else helps you first , but we haven’t had anyone step up to the plate.  We applied to the Meyer Memorial Trust, but were rejected.  They fund about 80% of requests, however they were hit economically just like everyone else.    The lengthy application process took from May to November, just to get to the point for them to decide.   The foundation said they could fund middle size grants, but lopped the big ones and small ones.   We were asking for $108,000, but they ended up funding the grants in the $20,000 to $25,000 range.  They funded a lot of those.”

Burgess admits wearily the trust did not offer them a smaller amount.

“Every time you get a grant you get leverage.  If we were to replace (or buy) this building and the square footage that we need in today’s market our payments would be less than what it would take us to replace it in a rental market.  Now is the time to buy,”  he says.

“We’re still working with Avista, and they are still trying to sell us the building if at all possible.  They’ve been most helpful,” he says optimistically.

“We applied to the Carpenter Foundation in December and we’ll find out those results later on in January.  But that would be for a smaller amount, $15,000, but that will help.   Anything that gets us a step further down the road.  We’ll probably ask for another $75,000 between the three other sources.  Evergreen Federal has agreed to loan us money, but we can’t borrow a huge amount because we still need to stay within our budget in terms of what we have for a payment that matches our current lease payment.”

He qualifies, “We are waiting to develop more grant money so we won’t have to borrow as much from Evergreen.  It would be financially irresponsible for us to borrow more money than we can pay back.”

The Avista building is worth approximately $420,000 based on appraisal and we’re trying to raise the difference - about $150,000- through grants, fundraising and alike, or a discount from Avista.  ”They could maybe sell it to us at a bargain sell price,” he smiles, “it might be a good deal for them too.  They are looking into it, they are working with us best they can,” he acknowledges.

“That’s the challenge for the future because we have to get that secure. And if not we’ll have to find something else.  This building is really ideal because these walls are all portable, you can move them around.  The whole thing is a clear span so you can reconfigure this.   We have a local contractor who is willing to do the work for free, and reconfigure the layout.   And once we take over the entire building one of the things that we need for our homeless youth population we serve,  is someplace for them to shower and do laundry.  So that when they come to school they can be clean, that would really help them,” he says.

“The other challenge for the future is trying to integrate more of the students who are homeless back into school.  Because the kids that are out there on the streets are being mentored by the wrong people and we would rather mentor them and get them back into the mainstream of education; get them to move ahead rather than being mentored by the people who have chosen that as a lifestyle.  They make it sound great and that kind of lures those kids out there.”

Burgess continues, “We now have 13 homeless youth in our program.  We do an outreach with our two vans and get the kids to come in.”

A youth may be categorized as homeless if they are in a transient situation; living in tents, substandard housing, couch surfing, living under bridges and so on he says.

“Some reports list about 700 homeless youth in Josephine County, which might include those who do live with their families, but maybe in a trailer camp or tent.    That’s a huge number, but we don’t see that many, we see about 45 homeless youth per quarter.    We provide services for them by way of clothing, sleeping bags, toiletries, meals and blankets.    Grant funding provides monies for those items as well as the state’s Commission on Children and Families and a Cow Creek grant, however those are ending,” he says.    ”But we have reapplied.   We should hear back from Cow Creek in January.

The Inn Between does accept donations, except for clothing Burgess explains, “because we don’t have a lot of physical space.”

“We do accept specific things like blankets, warm coats, toiletries.  We need to have things that turn over, that the kids will use, that we move through, we can’t store a lot of stuff.”

“Our website www.innbetweenyouth.org lists donation items, so folks know specifically what we are looking for,” he suggests.

The homeless youth program L.I.F.T. stands for Life through Independence, Family and Trust and services Wolf Creek, Sunny Valley and Illinois Valley as well as the Grants Pass area.

Burgess reports, “The community really helps.   At our annual Christmas dinner last month 23 youths attended.  We gave them socks, gift cards, and a good meal at JJ North’s.  The local churches help us; Bethany Presbyterian does a lunch once a month for Inn Sight students and the homeless kids enrolled in school.”

If it takes the endurance of a long distance runner to meet and continue mounting the challenges of showing direction to youths at risk, then Burgess is a marathon man.  ”The Inn Between Incorporated  has run many types of program over the years in  Jackson,  Josephine and Douglas counties,”  Burgess remembers,  ”in the 80’s  we served 1,300 kids a year in all the programs.”

It is indeed gratifying to see individuals who have been helped by The Inn Between programs return to give back to those at risk.   “Over the years I’ve had people who were served in one level of our program now working in the community as high school counselors and drug and alcohol counselors.”

Burgess elaborates, “For instance one of our teachers began as an alternative education student,  then began working for us as an intern–like work study experience — and has come along from that to becoming a current instructor.   Shannon Stearns has worked for us 12 years after going through the program.  We also have a high school counselor who came through the program, who went on to get her Masters degree.”

Clearly Burgess is proud of his teachers and students.  And although he doesn’t teach, he can be called upon to relate his experience as an Olympic flame bearer.    ”What works here is that the kids really get involved in taking care of their school, because they are very connected to it.   Everything you see here the kids do; they clean the place, decorate, it’s their place and they want to maintain it.  They govern themselves here.”

Burgess continues, “The Inn Sight Alternative High School utilizes a lot of small groups, 10 to 15 students per group.  Their attendance is important and the students encourage each other to attend because absences pull the rest of the school down.   Peer relationships and peer support – that’s going to move these kids.  They might look at us and say,  ’Oh yeah  they don’t know what they are talking about’,  but when their peers say they do know what they are talking about … then they start to get it,”  Burgess says.

The man with the huge compassionate heart says he has been in semi-retirement for the past three years.  He’s almost 60 and says that someone from within would eventually take over his position.   “I’m trying to be retired, trying to ride my horses,” he muses.

Burgess has his wife Jean, two grown children and three grandchildren waiting to spend more time with the tireless toiler.

But he will always stay connected to the organization he built and expanded.  And yes, he probably can be persuaded to retell his experiences as one of the Olympic torch bearers to eager listening students.

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Mary Ann Bullard