George Chochos
George Chochos has never liked the term “at-risk youth.” He prefers “youth with potential.”
That’s a phrase that could have defined the Albany, N.Y., native’s younger years, though he likely didn’t think so at the time.
In many ways, Chochos, the new executive director of Harrisburg’s Bethesda Mission, may have been just like the clientele that Bethesda serves.
In his youth, he got in trouble in school, began facing legal issues, experienced family trauma, started using drugs and faced homelessness. Eventually, he got jail time in the maximum-security Sing Sing prison in New York.
Chochos was later moved to Eastern NY Correctional Facility and became one of 15 students to participate in Bard College’s prison initiative, which offered inmates an opportunity to get a degree.
“Everything changed,” he said.
Chochos found a different path in life, earning a college degree while in prison, working as a chaplain at rescue missions and, a year after being released from prison, was accepted into Yale Divinity School.
“My first semester, a front-page article in the New Haven Register came out that said, ‘From Jail to Yale,’” Chochos said.
Chochos graduated with two master’s degrees and went on to work for Georgetown University and Vera Institute, creating college programming for people in prison and advocating for federal Pell grants for the incarcerated.
Afterwards, working his way out of several jobs by creating and implementing solutions, Chochos went on to find the next, leading him to Harrisburg late last year. With not only an impressive professional background in the field, Chochos feels that his personal history makes him well-suited for the job.
During his first time preaching at Bethesda’s chapel service, Chochos shared his story. Later, someone told Chochos that they asked a Bethesda client if they knew the new director.
“Supposedly, they said, ‘oh yea, that brother understands,’” he said.
Chochos is not alone as the new director of one of Harrisburg’s longest serving homeless and community service providers. In addition to Bethesda, both Downtown Daily Bread and Christian Churches United of the Tri-County Area have new top officials.
In our October issue, we published a story on organizations that are taking unique, innovative approaches to housing the unhoused locally. However, nonprofits like Bethesda, DDB and CCU have logged decades marked by service to the community and have become institutions that residents, and even transplants to the city, rely on.
Still leaning on the tried-and-true service methods, new leaders at the top of each of the three pillars are casting their own visions for the future of service in Harrisburg.
“Many times, places like rescue missions and shelters, it can almost feel like how prison felt for me. It was like a bracket in my life,” Chochos said. “It’s not like when I got to prison, I knew there was going to be a pathway to some kind of life post-incarceration. What I would like to see with Bethesda Mission is for us to have pathways to education, pathways to employment, pathways to long-term housing.”
Kristen Herman
Puzzles & Potential
For a decade, Kristin Herman worked in the prevention field, serving at the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
She advocated for grant funding for domestic violence programming and studied how trauma, systemic barriers and other experiences can lead to relationship violence.
Now as the executive director of Downtown Daily Bread, Herman is working on the other end of the service spectrum.
“This is very much the opposite end. This is crisis work. We’re giving meals, we’re giving showers, we’re giving day shelter,” she said. “I interact with clients here. I get to do things like fix the dishwasher and unclog the toilets.”
And while her work now is very hands-on, Herman feels confident that her prevention background will be an asset to the nonprofit.
“It was a way for me to transition and take the skills that I have in prevention and seeing the bigger picture of how folks end up on DDB’s front doorstep,” she said. “I really like puzzles and, I would say, potential. So, looking at something and being like […] ‘how do all these pieces fit together?’”
Like Herman, Matt Reichard was looking to move into a more direct assistance role.
Reichard most recently served as the associate pastor at CrossPoint United Methodist Church in Lower Paxton Township and has also worked at Paxton Ministries and operated a medical clinic with his wife in Haiti.
When Reichard saw the opening at Christian Churches United, he decided to apply.
“It piqued my interest as something that’s a little bit different than the church setting and back into the community work like I had done in Haiti,” he said.
Reichard started as director earlier this year, at a time when there have been a lot of changes and uncertainty at the local, state and federal levels regarding human services.
“It’s always kind of in the background, but it doesn’t keep us from doing what we do, for now,” he said.
Fortunately, federal budget and funding changes and pauses haven’t caused any service or program cuts yet for CCU, because homelessness continues to rise in Harrisburg, as it does nationally.
“It’s a growing problem,” he said. “That’s something that I wanted to try to do something to help with.”
Matt Reichard
Everything Approach
For CCU, Reichard sees one of the biggest needs as continuing to beef up the organization’s homeless prevention efforts through programs like rental assistance. He’s also focused on keeping CCU’s shelter space for adults, which is heavily utilized, running smoothly. In the future, he hopes to expand shelter options to include families with children.
Reichard sees the work that other, newer community groups are doing to address homelessness, such as through building tiny homes and organized tent encampments. He appreciates the fresh attempts at finding solutions, but emphasized the need for a variety of approaches, including older, more established ones.
“I think the two have to work together,” he said. “The newer things are great, and I love new ideas, but I think it takes an everything approach. It’s going to take everybody working together. Some of these newer things will work for some people, but not for others. Some of the older things will work for some people, but not for others. It just depends.”
At DDB, Herman would also like to expand existing programs to make more space for highly-in-demand shelter beds and hot meals.
For Bethesda, Chochos has a vision to bring his expertise in college programming to the shelter by offering pathways to education to clients, possibly even partnering with a university to open a satellite campus onsite.
“That way when somebody comes to Bethesda Mission, there’s not that uncertainty at the back end, but there is a pathway,” he said. “I think that would also motivate people to want to be in our programs. When you know there’s housing at the end, there’s employment at the end, or I can get my education while I’m here.”
While the issue of homelessness continues to climb, all three of the new directors have plans to continue growing their organizations to meet the needs in Harrisburg.
“When I was a chaplain, [my goal] was to help people move from hopelessness to hopefulness. And that’s really what I want to instill,” Chochos said. “Hope can motivate you in ways that other things can’t.”
For more information about Bethesda Mission, visit www.bethesdamission.org.
To find out more about Downtown Daily Bread, visit www.downtowndailybread.org.
To learn more about Christian Churches United of the Tri-County Area, visit www.ccuhbg.org.
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