Jefferson City native helps people facing tough situations

Stefani Thompson stands for a portrait outside her office on Thursday, March 10, 2022, at Central Missouri Community Action. Thompson is the community organizer for the organization. (Ethan Weston/News Tribune photo)
Stefani Thompson stands for a portrait outside her office on Thursday, March 10, 2022, at Central Missouri Community Action. Thompson is the community organizer for the organization. (Ethan Weston/News Tribune photo)

Helping people face difficult situations is what Stefani Thompson has done all her working life.

The Jefferson City native started her career at Pathways (now known as Compass Health) and then worked the past 12 years at Central Missouri Community Action, where she serves as community organizer.

"My job is to start projects or task forces to address the reasons or causes for the conditions of poverty in the community," Thompson said. "If there are gaps to where we're missing resources, we need to find ways to fill them, working on the issues of poverty at a larger level that ultimately helps the families that need it."

One of those ways to help was the Jefferson City Room at the Inn. Catholic Charities let CMCA use their space at what used to be known as the Shikles Center on Linden Drive. It was only a shelter during the winter and closed March 6.

During the first year of operation, Thompson said they averaged five people a night at the shelter.

"We found out by talking to people who came that a lot of them didn't know about the shelter," Thompson said. "We also think the location may not have been the best for where homeless people live. If they didn't know that they had a ride back to where they stored their belongings, they didn't want to come to the shelter because they didn't want to leave their belongings unattended."

To address that problem, Thompson said they worked with First United Methodist Church, which picked up homeless at the Missouri River Region Library on Adams Street in a church van and took them to the shelter. The next morning, they would drop them back off at the library. Later on, two other local churches volunteered to do the pickup and dropoff service.

Thompson said they plan to have the center at the same location next winter from December through February.

"Throughout this summer, we plan to figure out what things were good and what we need to fix," Thompson said. "It is on the table to look at maybe incorporating downtown churches in the program since many of the homeless stay in areas near downtown."

Thompson is working with Transformational Housing and interviewing families that could benefit from the program. Earlier this month, five families moved to their location in the 200 block of Cherry Street, a donated structure that was fixed up after it was damaged in a fire.

"This not-for-profit group is made up of religious organizations that came together in 2019 and decided they were going to work on the housing crisis in Jefferson City," Thompson said. "Then the tornado hit that year and that just solidified their effort."

Two single people are living there along with three families. It's that type of result that keeps Thompson working to address the housing needs in this community.

"I had no idea housing would become a great passion for me, but I absolutely love working on housing," she said. "Before the tornado hit, housing was such a huge need. But after it hit, that made the problem even more acute. There's a lot of projects going on that I'm involved with right now and they're all dealing with housing."

Along with working on housing issues, Thompson teaches a class to people in poverty that's called "Getting Ahead." It's a 12-week class where they talk about resources they need to get out of poverty, and by the end of the class, they have created a goal plan for what they want their life to look like.

Those who complete the class can join a group Thompson leads known as "Friends." It's a weekly meeting at First United Methodist.

"We then bring people in the community who would be considered middle class or higher and they go through a training called "Bridges Out of Poverty," which teaches them about what those in poverty go through," Thompson said. "Then we match people from both groups together to create relationships. We'll come up with a community issue we want to deal with and figure out how we can fix it."

Listening to Thompson talk about all these programs, you can tell how excited she is to be doing this type of work.

She noted Room at the Inn started with 20 volunteers but ended with more than 80 people helping out.

"When the word got out about what was happening, I was surprised at how fast the response from the community was," Thompson said. "Our volunteer bucket grew very fast."

She said one of the "cool" things she can do as CMCA community organizer is bring her children along for a lot of the projects.

"They get to volunteer too and see how life can be different for other people," Thompson said.

Thompson recalled a trip years ago to a Springfield homeless camp that had been shut down. The homeless who had been at the camp were walking around the area and had no place to go.

"This happened to be right by our hotel, and it was freezing outside," Thompson said. "My kids came up with the idea to give a pair of gloves they had to one of the homeless people walking around. As soon as they saw the reaction of that person, they said we needed to do more. So we went to a store, got some more items and gave them out.

"To this day, my son will talk about one of the people we met that night, and he wonders if he has made it to this area," Thompson added. "He just remembers how excited that person was to get those gloves that night many years ago."

When asked how long she thinks she will continue doing this type of work, Thompson said, "Probably forever. Yes, individual choices can put someone in poverty, but there are so many other factors that go along with it. And if you've not experienced it or talked to people in poverty, then you have no idea what these people go through."