Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Hello there and welcome back to another episode of Just say Something podcast. My name is Philip Clark and I am your host and CEO here at Just say Something.
Today we have a guest with us that the organization has been around for quite a long time, but the individual is fairly new to Greenville. And so I would like to welcome Rand Williams with the Greenville Elks lines. Rand, welcome.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: Thank you. Appreciate the time.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: So tell us, give us a little rundown on ran and, and what you're doing with the Elks.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: All right. My name is Rand Williams. I work in community education and harm reduction, building practical systems that work for family and youth.
And my background is layered in communications and taking these complex, fast moving drugs that are out on the market that people don't really know about. Spent years working with local organizations, schools, community groups, and have been focused mainly recently on the synthetic compounds like fluorophene and how they're showing up before people even know their name.
And my goal is always to have clarity, prevention and giving people the tools that they need to save their lives.
And as I mentioned before, I done deep looking scouring Internet and as we joked, I found more than this chlorophyne that's out there.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Oh yeah, there's, there's, there's a lot out there that, that unfortunately we don't find out about until it's too late.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: So the Elks have a deep history in drug prevention.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: And so tell us some of the activities and things that the local Elks club or state Elks do to help communities have these type of conversations.
[00:02:10] Speaker A: Well, they've got the Jug awareness used to be drug awareness program DAP and the national switched it over and thought that that needed a new name. So they changed it to the Drug Awareness Commission which encompasses much more and gives it a better title as far as I'm concerned.
Some of the things that they do is each month I and other people that are affiliated with the Drug Awareness Commission get notices from the National Health and from the DEA that a particular month they want us to stress or to perform a certain activity. This month is Alcohol Awareness month, which is important.
And then at the end of the month they have the.
I just lost my train of thought. They have drug take them back. And last year we had worked with the Greenville County Sheriff's and we were going to take the drugs back, but they ran into a situation where it wasn't funded and so it really didn't get off the ground.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: So part of the problem we had with that is that the Elks decided that they were going to do it on. So we had April 25th is drug take back. And I was sponsored on it. I made the announcements at our local lodge all month long that this was going to be. And put out a bulletin stating that these particular drugstores, cvs, Walgreens, several of the hospitals will take the drugs back.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: So you don't have to go to a central location. You can just do that there. And strongly advising in all the Oaks, in all the lodges are strongly saying, do this and get it done. And May is coming up and we'll have new directives that they want us to do.
And then we have sports activities that we do. We had the hoop shoot. That was back in February. We were over at the Rock Center. The Salvation Army.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: Okay. The crop sitter downtown.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: I call them Rock Croc. Yes.
Two of our people, young adults, went on to state.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Basically, it's just a free throw contest, but we had the regionals there. We had the district over in Greer. And then once the state area, all the people are there, went on to state. And one of our people, young girl and young boy, I don't know what their grades were, but they became state champions.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Oh, wow. That's great.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: So that was good. We had earlier in the month, in February, we had the soccer shootout, which is in Greenville, and they had this. I never even knew the complex was that big. It was out there, but it was just literally a thousand kids shooting balls at the nets.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: And we had four of them that went past state and went to nationals. Wow. Over in Umatilla in Florida, and they came back as national champions for their age groups.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: So that's awesome.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Yeah, we're pretty happy about it.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Right here in Greenville.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: Yeah. So Greenville's getting in. Our lodge is getting, you know, quite a bit of notice. We have specifically with the drug awareness program for last year.
We had a young girl that submitted her essay. It one district, one state.
She went out and she won the national.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: Aaliyah Moon. And she's in 10th grade, but she's jumping grades and she's going to be graduating pretty soon.
We just had part of our group efforts on education that we promote with scholarships, and we had a number of them that gave presentations for that were scholarships. Finished up one of them. I can't think of the young man's name, but he went to state and two others went to state with him. And then they were picked to go to national.
And he won the national for the scholarship for his age Group,
[00:05:55] Speaker B: we have a lot of winners around here.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: And they're all in Greenville.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: And it's great for Greenville because it's putting them on the map, some of the other lodges, but we're really excited about it.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: Well, it's putting us on the map for a good thing.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: Exactly.
Instead of a negative.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: So what you is ran, right?
[00:06:17] Speaker A: It doesn't matter.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: Why is this topic so important to you?
[00:06:24] Speaker A: I wasn't.
When I was in Naples, I was a state officer. So I was there for six years, seven years. And looking at the drug program, it means a lot to me on a personal level. And I just, personally, I just thought things could be different. And I know the history of it, how it came about and stuff, but I didn't have a person that I could actually talk to right when I came here from Naples and joined this lodge.
When I met May Crooks, she's the state person for the drug awareness program for South Carolina.
And when I turned my information over to her, told her what I can do and stuff, and my background, my legal background and scholarly background, I told her, I want to work for you.
And she's like, oh, good, you know, but like, what are you going to do? And I says, well, she said, why do you feel that way? And I just gave her the 32nd rundown. I said, my brother was a drug addict. He was an alcoholic and he died, combination of things. But he came up with the disease. I don't know if you ever heard of Lewy Body Syndrome.
Okay. He had. And he was in lived in Canada and they didn't know the cure up there, and he died from it. But he was a chronic alcoholic and his chronic, chronic LSD user. When he was in high school back in the 70s, my son just idolized him. And when Michigan changed the drug laws and made marijuana legal, he decided he was going to become a drug kimping. And so he was pushing, you know, marijuana selling.
My son, my brother went to prison for four years, got caught in a drug sting.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: He's in federal prison for four years.
My son thought that basically a gangster attitude, that that was something interesting. Well, he got caught up in it and he went to federal prison for four years.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: So it's hard on the family. But, you know, but all through my young years, older years, et cetera, et cetera, I went out of schooling and I got my education in law enforcement, criminal justice with Myers and psych and soaps. And that was something that I brought to her.
And I've got as far as I was concerned. I had the background, I had the experience, I had the knowledge, and I have the input and the desire, right. To stop a lot of this.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: And basically, I'm doing a lot of research and finding the information.
So you.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: You have a.
For lack of a better phrase, that e. Blast. That you send out on a regular basis. Tell our listeners a little bit about that.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: It's called Elk Nuggets.
I was the second person to basically be in the lodge to. To run the drug awareness program. That person that had it basically advocated it says, you're more experienced than I am. You know, more than I am. He says, you already have two binders. I've got one that's solely on just drugs.
I've got another one on a program to train other people. So one of the things that came up through all of this is it wasn't my idea, but it was something that the three or four of us that were on a program and they just kind of split off, thought, well, we need something catchy. And I said, like what? And one of the groups, she says, why don't you put out a nugget about the drugs? Because you know so much about the drugs, and we can maybe put it on our website. And so we were thinking, and I thought, well, what about elk's nuggets? And it just kind of. That name took off. And so it was like, well, what drug are we going to do? It's like, what drug aren't we going to do? So I was. It was new, it was not controversial, but it's like nobody's ever heard of it, right? You're trying to push something, and we're not sure we want it, et cetera, et cetera.
But after about the third month, and they're putting it on the website and their Facebook, and people are like, wow, I didn't know about this.
This is something parents need to know. This is something kids need to know, something schools need to know. Basically, we all just got a life. Like, this is something everybody.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: Everybody needs to know.
And for. For those that aren't in this type of work, they don't know what they don't know.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: That's exactly. And that's kind of like the catchphrase that we had. And I have now, when I go to different events, I have my own drug table, and I've got these pamphlets that the Elks have. I put them all out and put the information there, and I don't pull the people, they come to me, right? And they ask the questions and I did one event for the soccer shoot, and it was a learning experience because kids were really interested and they wanted of the stickers and stuff. The young women and the moms and the nanas would come up and ask questions. The dads, everybody else would walk by and just give me a stiff arm, like, I don't want to know. I don't want to talk to you.
You know, I kind of like look at them like, either you're guilty because you're a past drug user, or you just don't want the information.
But once they leave, the women come back and they're the ones that really, really, really want the information.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: So I know kids, when you're in schools, they're real quick to say, well, my mama or my daddy or my grandparent, they're real quick to say about what those around them that are influenced them do that they shouldn't be doing.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Kids are typically the first ones to tell.
So how can people get in touch with you in the Elks here in Greenville? If they want to find out more, if they want to get your be on your nugget list, all they have to do.
[00:12:15] Speaker A: We just had a state meeting and all the lodges in my district were there. And one of the things that I had a few moments to give to expound on me kind of threw it my way, like, tell them about the Elks nuggets. Okay.
So I put it out there and told them what it is. And if you, as the officers or the secretaries or whatever you have, this is my email address, contact me.
I'll let our secretary know because that's where they go. And she can send them out to anybody, everywhere. And it's something that is. I don't want it to just be exclusive to the Oaks or the Light. Right. You know, I. You show me some of the organizations that you have. I've sent some out.
I got the information from the fire department.
I showed them that. They're like, wow, you know, this. This goes beyond what we know about this. Right. And some of the other ones. But I don't send it out to anybody, you know, and I got the email address, and far as I know, there's nothing preventing me from spreading this information.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: It's. It's open, so I want to get it out there.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: So how can people get in touch with you?
[00:13:29] Speaker A: They can call, can call me, or they can. Easiest way is to send me a text message or send it to my email and I can get a hold of them.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: All right, what's Your email.
[00:13:38] Speaker A: It's Rand's place at Outlook.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: Okay, so that's Rand's place. Outlook.com and so if there's one thing you would like for the community to know about the Elks that you don't think they know, what would that one thing be?
[00:13:58] Speaker A: One thing is they don't know where they're at, which is a big thing. And we're up on Pelham and just passed topgolf.
Originally the Elks were downtown Greenville and then they moved. It's the awareness that what the Elks do, they're benevolent protective order of elks and their focus is on vets and kids. That's their two main priorities. But in addition to that, it's drugs.
They've gone through different stages of how to get the message out and it's improving.
It's not where personally I would want it to be, but.
[00:14:35] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:36] Speaker A: I'm working within the system and let them know that we give out scholarships, we give out help and assistant to vets.
We give out when it's given to us. We give out food for the holidays. We give out clothing when it's distributed to us. That we have several contacts that are out there that get excess clothing. Walmart's one of them.
When they go through a particular period, they dump it off to one of the other associations. The associations get them to us and we give them to the homeless or the people that actually need it.
We have a back to school program that we have different organizations come in and we give away school supplies.
This last year we did one group had backpacks and we gave them all away. We've got stationary supplies, crayons, tablets, etc. Etc. I would like to see it expanded with the technology the way it is that we start giving away tablets because you know, they used to give away dictionaries and do they print those anymore? That's, that's a question that, you know, it's been raised a number of times, like do the kids even know what a dictionary is? But were very, very much into charity.
And one of the things, I suppose the main thing is that we make money to give it away.
So it's through the scholarship programs. We give you an X amount of money for scholarships.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: So when you talk about scholarships for students, what are some of those scholarships? Do they.
Are they to pay for school, pay for books?
[00:16:23] Speaker A: They get a.
This year they get a gift card and it has X amount on it and it might be $3,000, might be $2,000.
Aaliyah got one. I don't know how much it was. I gave it to her, but I can't tell you where she's at, but give you a clue of what these students are capable of doing. And they're in our school system here is that she's going to graduate, she's going to Duke, she wants to be a neurosurgeon.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: So, I mean, the scholarships that we're giving out are charity.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: These are well deserved young men and women that already have plans what they want to do with their life.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: Right. What do they have to do to qualify for these scholarships?
[00:17:07] Speaker A: There's a program that we have in the early part of the year, you fill out a form.
Basically the scholarship program is done to every lodge and we have coordinators. I worked on the one and they sent information and they answer a series of questions. And those questions have a number value based on how much money your parents make, where you want to go, what activities you've done after school, what's your education level, etc. So it's quite complex. And then they tally them all up and you get it and they don't know what your score is. I don't know who I just graded.
Is sent all around to a central and it's put in a database and they come out and then these people, young kids, girls and boys, based on their ages are grouped and they're sent out and then it goes to the state and then they're looking at all the numbers. So nobody knows who's actually who, which was the interesting thing. And when we had this a couple weeks ago, these young kids were notified. It's like, oh, you know, but I don't know who I did.
[00:18:10] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:10] Speaker A: But there was four or five of them and they were like, you know, really kind of anxious about the whole thing. But they were all there getting a certain degree of scholarships. And so that's something that we give back.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: Well, school, schools and everything are so expensive these days. I'm sure that the kids who have the wherewithal to know exactly what they want to do, whether their family can afford it or not, appreciate any type of financial assistance these days.
[00:18:45] Speaker A: It was just, to me, it was just kind of real surprising.
They're listing seven or eight things that they do after school. Not all my work related. These are community functions that they work at.
Some are in sports, some are, you know, taking college prep classes and they're in the ninth grade, you know. Right. So it was quite interesting to see everybody and they were really, really appreciative and we do this every year. And so.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: That's great. That's great. So you have a cycle. So does that cycle start early in the year? Yeah, with payout in the fall.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: It's done. They get their payoffs, like, a month ago.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: So we started this, like, January. Yeah. So the school, depending on what district schools get out at different times. And so we wanted to make sure that those that we felt qualified would get their scholarship money because they've already applied someplace. They're most likely been accepted. We don't know where they're going. I happen to know you know, the one, because she's part of my group.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: But she's only in 10th grade. But, you know, she's a national scholarship.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: She's got a bright future.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: She does. And her essay that she wrote on was very personal.
It's basically deals with the Drug Awareness Commission. And it's either something that Nationals put on you, you write something about this, and generally it's, how have you been affected? Or what do you know about drugs? Or what's your statement to kids your age that they don't realize? Right. And in her particular instance, it was personal, and she just submitted one this year in a video, and it's even more personal. And that's all of them, but nobody really knows what they're doing or they're just something that they want to get out there.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: Well, it also goes to show that we don't know, as we look at people and as we work with young people, we don't fully understand or know from where they come from. And so we don't know what their home life is. We don't know what their family history is.
And so it's incumbent upon us who are in the opportunity to support and to provide that type of assistance to do so. So. And I know that elks have been very, very supportive for a long time.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:21:12] Speaker B: And continue to be. So I appreciate you picking up the mantle here in Greenville and spreading your information.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: I'm excited about.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: And so with that, we'll.
We'll come back in the fall, and we'll have you back in the fall, and we'll talk about some things that y' all have going on then.
But with today, I'd like to thank you again. Ran for being with us from the EL Drug Awareness Program here in Greenville. But their quick question, how many elk lodges are there in, say, the upstate?
[00:21:48] Speaker A: 17. 17 throughout the whole state.
[00:21:51] Speaker B: Oh, okay. So there's about seven. There's probably one near them.
[00:21:56] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:21:57] Speaker A: Especially if you're. It goes. We're considered upstate, and there's the southwest section, and then there's, you know, lowland or whatever.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:22:05] Speaker A: It's all right. Kind of split apart.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: Okay.
Well, we appreciate you and appreciate everything that Elks does for our young people and for our community, and we look forward to having you back.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: I look forward to coming back.
[00:22:18] Speaker B: All right.
Thank you. And so that does it for another episode of Just say Something podcast. Again, be sure to, like, share, comment, and subscribe, and we will see you next week. Until then, have a good one.
