- Will you consider this?

You've got a program idea to benefit a lot of people, all ages, especially our youth.

And there's got to be a clever and innovative way to ask people to buy in.

We'll explain about the 800 Club in just a bit.

(upbeat music) He made a name for himself, worked hard to earn the accolades, and sharing his good fortune is at the top of his list now.

You've seen him on the court.

You've seen him on the front of the paper and Sports "Illustrated".

Now here he is, Marcellus Sommerville from the Friendship House to enlighten us on the 800 Club.

How are you, Cellus?

- I'm fine.

- Good.

Great to be here.

- And we're sitting up straight.

Yeah, we're doing good.

We were just talking about our bad posture, but we're gonna do, okay, so.

Let's just talk a little bit about you, Peoria, homegrown.

- Homegrown had the- - What schools did you go to?

- Whew, that's a, that's quite a list.

Especially before the age of 12, but I ended up at White Middle school, graduated from White Middle School and then attended Peoria High.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

So several different Harrison Home, went to Irving, King, which is no longer open.

Several different grade schools.

TJ, Thomas Jefferson, several of them.

And that was due to my mom, you know, having me at such a young age and moving me around and you know, traveling with- - Putting a roof over your head.

- Aunt and uncles.

- Yeah.

- Grandpa and grandma.

Just, you know, trying to find our way.

And ultimately when I was at 12, ended up moving in with my father and had a little bit more stability when it came to concrete grounds and foundation.

And living in one household.

- Wow.

What, I had no idea.

But then you went to, I mean, were you always dribbling a basketball then at that point?

At all of those places?

- I, it's amazing.

I always had the dream of making it pro.

Always of course NBA and yeah, I was always trying to dribble a ball before I even knew how to play.

- Really?

- I actually didn't start playing organized basketball until sixth grade.

So a little late bloomer when it comes to basketball today, they young kids are professionals at the age of five and six.

- And they're playing travel everywhere.

Yeah, exactly.

- Travel everywhere.

Exactly.

And so, yeah, I was a late bloomer and ended up falling in love with it and got to high school and my coach introduced me to what was a college scholarship.

And I, from there just kind of took off.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- And so then you, you played at Bradley and made it to the Sweet 16, which was pretty exciting.

Was that one of the most exciting things that ever happened in your life?

- I would say yes.

It's one of the most memorable moments in my career in terms of playing the game.

- Okay.

And then from there, you played overseas.

- Yeah.

- After you graduated.

- Yeah, and playing overseas was, I mean, a ton of fun when you're talking about raising a family.

I have a family of four, you know, four children I mean.

Boy, girl, boy, girl, various ages.

My wife and I decided to take ourselves overseas and played over there 14 and a half years.

So to be able to make a career, teach our kids culture, different languages.

Our youngest daughter was born in France, so it was, it was everything for us.

I won a championship over there in 2010.

Also was, I made it to the finals and been MVP two or three times.

So very, a lot of accolades when you're talking about the game of basketball, but very, very rewarding when you're able to offer your family some, so much culture.

- Yeah.

And opportunities.

- Yeah.

And opportunity.

- Good for you.

- Yeah.

- Good for you too.

- Yeah.

- So all of that, that came together, then you came back to Central Illinois because family's here, Brooke's family is also here.

- Yeah.

- And how did you land at the Friendship House?

- So, quite a long story, but at the same time it, it's meant to be, I can't explain it enough in terms of how I came to, I remember it so vividly three years ago, a Friday, seeing Friendship House pop up on a app and that they were vacant with the CEO and receiving a call from a friend that Saturday morning like, "Hey man, I think you would be ideal for this".

And my wife also leaning in and on me that I would be ideal for this.

And I've always had a passion for providing, helping others.

I think that was instilled in me at a very young age.

- Well, just all of your life experiences to that point, you knew- - Yeah.

- You knew that there were needs.

- Yeah.

And just being able to identify that and using, I guess, my platform in terms of some notoriety and things like that.

And just integrity to bring to the mission of Peoria Friendship House.

I saw it as a great opportunity.

I didn't know how it would go.

Right?

'Cause I hadn't officially been in that realm, but at the same time, I knew I had a passion and heart for this community.

- Alright.

But you didn't do that when you first came back.

What did you do right before Friendship House?

I guess I should have started that, boop.

- Yeah, actually I was, you know, running programming for basketball, mentoring, introducing kids, allowing them to have some power of who they are through the game of basketball and develop confidence, all those different type of things.

- So Friendship House, now you have this, we'll talk about all kinds of things at Friendship House.

Let's talk about 800 club.

We'll just bounce all over the place.

How's that?

800 Club sounds pretty important.

Sounds pretty clever.

So tell me, tell us all, what it is.

- 800 Club is 800 friends donating $800 to 800 Northeast Madison, which is our address at Peoria Friendship House.

It was birthed in COVID actually, that was the year I took over as the CEO and a group of individuals who have creative minds got in one room and we just thought of, you know, everything was remote, everything was social distance, and how can we get individuals to buy in to the mission of Peoria Friendship House.

Alright.

- So how are you doing on the 800 friends?

Have you reached your 800 yet?

- So the goal is always to do 800 in a year.

We've yet to do that.

- Okay.

- Which is 640,000.

We've yet to do that.

But at the same time we're very optimistic.

- And you just keep growing.

- Keep growing.

Every year it's grown.

Year to date, we have over 472 members, which raised over 470 plus.

- Alright.

- 428 plus thousand.

- [Christine] You don't have a calculator here to figure it out.

- Yeah, but I'm usually pretty good with numbers.

But yeah.

So it's grown and it's been able to impact families beyond our wildest dreams when you're talking about supporting a family who's trying to become citizens of America.

And they can't afford the $748 that it costs, actually 900 plus dollars that it costs to become- - To become a citizen.

- And so it's, it helps support those goals for that family.

It helps with children who are in need of food outside of services that we provide, families who need beds outside of things that we provide.

So it's able to feed the need for programming that is underfunded as well as be an enhancement to some of our very, very, very, very nice programs.

- And you're on the near north side, so how many families do you serve?

And you, you mentioned a couple of the programs, but there's a whole lot more involved at the Friendship House.

- Yeah, so we have afterschool programming, which year to date, currently, I mean, we have 700, no, sorry, 177 students in our afterschool program.

- Right.

- Registered.

We probably see on an average around a 150, a 155.

- And buses drop them off at Friendship House?

- Buses do not, we pick up actually.

- At the schools, at their schools?

- Yes.

We have several vehicles that we've been able to acquire through grants.

We have several drivers.

Some staff members also help with that.

But parents pick up from the Friendship House.

It's one of the requirements that we feel is empowering when a family member picks - up the student.

- 'Cause they're engaged.

- That's right.

And so we want that engagement.

We want the holistic approach when it comes to wrapping our arms around the entire family.

- So that's the afterschool program, but you have a lot of other programs too, such as?

- Yeah, we have Parent Mentors program, which is parents being advocates for their children in the school district.

So we have a good partnership with Dr. Kherat and the school administration.

And it's a great program.

It's also another empowering program, engagement program where parents go into the school, they be, you know, go one-on-one with students, things like that in studying.

And then they also come for, to our house.

- Friendship House.

- Right.

Our house for Professional Development once a week.

And every hour that they accrue, $15 an hour.

And they can receive up to $1,500 check once they accrue a hundred hours.

- So staff is helping them with that.

Your staff is- - Yeah.

Trained to do that?

- Staff is trained to do that.

It's a program that we birthed from Chicago, but at the same time it plays in Peoria, especially when it comes to helping put some funds in the family's pockets.

- Well you have, well you have some programs on weekends too, I believe and and food availability.

- Yeah.

- For some of the people in the neighborhood.

So explain that as well.

- So, so our strongest program probably is the pantry, which has been around for forever.

And when you're talking about hot meals, you're talking about, you know, shelf stable food.

We, man, we give out so much food when it comes to the pantry.

We have stuff a bus, which is annual, and this is the 36th year of it.

And last year we did 12.4 tons of food.

- Wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

- Yeah.

- And this year our goal is 13.

So when you talk about the food desert and food hunger issues that we have here in Peoria, we're trying to mitigate some of that.

We're trying to be, you know, a champion for those families.

And I think we've done a amazing job at doing that.

None of this would be possible without an amazing staff.

Right?

And that we have and- - How many staff do you have?

- I have 15 full-time.

And then we have several part-time employees.

- Hmm.

- Yeah.

- So back to 800 club, you want to have, now one person alone doesn't have to donate the 800.

I mean, they could get a couple friends together and come up with the 800.

Is that correct?

- That is correct.

We have actually a few churches who do that.

The congregation comes together and then they do just as you said, they give 800 bucks.

And we also have some different levels for companies and businesses that want to do a little bit more.

So we provide different options in that way too.

But yeah, it's a program that I'm hoping can reach its goal in one year at some point.

But it's constantly growing.

It's constantly impacting the families who truly need.

- And, well, you had mentioned before we were on camera that Hedy Elliot came up with it and she said something, you gotta do something that is sustainable.

Sustainability is a big, big catchphrase right now.

And this can, you know, snowball and nurture itself, I suppose.

- It truly can.

I believe that.

And it's done well.

And of course everything has its challenges, but we're gonna continue to push to grow it.

And we're gonna, you know, like you said, it has the ability to establish a great foundation for the agency for years to come.

- Who, how are you getting the word out?

- We have, first year we had a lot of advertisement throughout the city, thanks to Adams Outdoors.

That was a amazing grant that we were able to get through them.

But just word of mouth, right.

Champions for what we do is everything.

When, and I invite anyone and everyone to come take a tour and see the children in action, do a project with the kids.

And it's amazing how once you do that or you see the amazing things that we post online, you want to give, you want to give to those kids.

'Cause it goes directly to them.

It goes to their families.

- So the money all stays local.

- The money all stays local, other than helping our Hispanic and Latin families continue to become citizens of America.

- Okay.

Wow.

Did you ever in your wildest imagination when you were traveling the world and playing basketball and everything, that you would be in a position to really give back to other people who maybe had similar situations to you growing up and, you know, live one place, living in another place and worrying about your next meal?

- Never in my wildest dreams.

To be honest, I thought I was gonna be a basketball coach or athletic director at a high school.

- What did you major in?

- I majored in communications.

- Okay.

Well, that's good.

- Minor in advertising.

And I got a couple degrees.

I had a, I went to SWICC, which is Southwestern Illinois Community College.

So I have a general educational degree in science I believe, or arts one, I can't remember.

- It was a long time ago.

- Long time ago.

- I got it.

- But at the same time, no, I thought I was gonna be a coach and I thought I was gonna pour into student athletes in that way.

And God has a way of turning you and flipping you to be where, where he wants you to be.

And I say that all the time, right now, I'm where I'm supposed to be helping those that I'm helping.

- And, and he really does kind of have a way of moving you around and, you know, and when you least expect it, all of a sudden it's oh yeah.

That's great.

- And it makes sense after, like you said, going through some of the things I've experienced, being able to share with the kids and have some actual empathy for what they're dealing with.

You know, having experienced it, I looked at my birth certificate just the other day and actually my grandfather lived on Madison.

- Really?

- And my mother lived with my grandfather and grandmother at the time.

So to know that I grew up two blocks down the road from Friendship House is, it gives me goosebumps.

- Now you've come full circle.

- Come full circle when it comes to, yeah.

- Well that's fun.

But in your own special way, you are still coaching.

- Yeah, that's what, that's what one of my staff members always tells me, you're still coaching, you're just coaching a bigger, bigger team.

- In a quite different way.

- In a quite different way, right.

- Yeah.

- But you, I don't always reflect on what I'm doing and the impact that I've been able to make.

But it's always rewarding to see when you have a coat drive partnering with a Peoria Police Department and a kid puts on a brand new pair of shoes and he is running through the hallways talking about how fast he is now.

- Yeah.

- And you know, it really makes you, it really makes sense when, when those things come to light.

- So you are partnering with a lot of different organizations too.

- Yes.

- And I know that you have a Sugar Plum partnership, so tell me a little about that and we'll get her on one of these days.

- Yeah, Terry Taylor, her and her family started the Sugar Plum Project about 12 years ago, I believe.

And it's been a great partnership the last three years.

We really appreciate all the love and effort that they put into helping families find support for their bedding and beds.

And it's a program that I think has the potential to continue to grow.

But she has alerted us that she likes to keep it intimate because she really wants to get to know each and every family.

And she's afraid that if it gets too big, then it'll be somewhat outta control.

- Out of control.

- Yeah.

- And so that it, they found out, or she and her family found out that there are children who have never slept in a bed.

- Yeah.

- They've slept in a pile of clothes and towels and things.

- Absolutely.

- And so then it, they took it upon themselves to develop this, this fundraiser and program and buy beds for and and they distribute them at the Friendship House.

- Yeah.

And I think it's an amazing story when it comes to their journey and what they've been able to do over the last 12 years.

And we appreciate and love the support because we help in that way of finding individuals who have experienced not having a bed.

And so I think it's a grand partnership and we look forward to continuing it.

- Now, funding from 800 Club does not go to that.

That's an individual separate program.

- That's an individual separate program.

Yes, ma'am.

- Okay.

What else about the 800 Club?

How being in communications and marketing, how do you think you can really grow it in a different way?

Who else do you need to reach out to?

You just wanna keep it in central Illinois or you're willing to reach out for?

- We have support of individuals who live outside of Central Illinois but was born here and, and you know, have since moved on in a different profession outside of Peoria.

So we get some of that.

I have this grand idea to kind of host wine and cheese 800 Club parties at different homes if anyone wants to be a champion or different venues, different businesses because it, like I said, word of mouth is everything.

And if we can share and show all the impact that it's making, I think all of Peoria could some way find a way to be a part of the 800 Club.

- Support the program, yeah.

Well, you know, one person will have at least five friends and then those people will have at least five friends.

So you can grow it that way as well.

- Yes ma'am.

And that's kind of a dream, but it's kind of something that I hope could come to fruition.

- So I think I saw on the Friendship House Facebook page, I believe, where you had some people saying, say I'm at home.

Or what are they, what are they saying?

- Oh, this is my house.

- This is my house.

This is my house.

- This is my house.

Okay.

I knew I was close.

Okay.

All right.

This is my house.

- Yes.

- So explain why they do that.

- So they do that, so usually once a individual becomes a 800 Club member, we take a picture with a big check, have 'em signed it, and they claim Friendship House as their house because of the commitment that they've made through their financial contribution.

And it's a good way of showing stewardship and playing off the 800 for 800.

- Okay.

Yeah.

And, but that doesn't surprise you that people have come forward and are willing to do that and just say, "Yep, I'll do that for you."

- It, first year it was quite surprising, but at the same time, the mission at Peoria Friendship House is amazing.

The spirit of and culture of the students who come in first day and now I have been there for two to three years.

To see those kids lead in a way for the new kids coming in, it just lets you know that everything you're doing is for the right reasons.

And we're helping young leaders become leaders.

- And that's rewarding.

So what are the ages of the kids who are coming to the afterschool programs for starters?

- K through eighth grade is the afterschool program.

And then we have a teens program that we have too as well, called Pathway to Your Future, where they're become mentors and they work on the job, whether that's in, like, they want to either be social workers or some form of early childhood education.

Some want to be in the trades, various different jobs.

Some want to go to college.

And so we help them understand in a workplace how all that works.

And they tutor the kids.

They, they're leaders of those young students.

And it's been very, very remarkable to see teenage high school kids.

And we have about 47, 28- - I was gonna ask that, yeah.

- High school kids at our building each and every day, so.

- From all of the schools in the area?

- From every school in the area, which I'm most proud of because I know territory is usually a conflict with a lot of the students.

But it's amazing to see the students we have drop all barriers and they are motivated for just one house, which is Friendship House.

- Well yeah.

Common cause.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Good for you.

Good for you.

So what other surprises do you have down the line, like on your bucket list?

- Bucket list?

November 30th we have a date for a gathering for the 800 Club.

We'd love to have and invite everyone out to Louisville Sluggers.

We're gonna have a gathering to discuss and talk about the benefits in a more in-depth way.

How the 800 Club has helped impact Peoria Friendship House.

We also have a turkey giveaway where we do once a year, turkeys for families in the community.

- For Thanksgiving and or Christmas or?

- Thanksgiving.

We do turkeys and hams for the holiday is for Christmas.

So we'll do those.

I think we're gearing up for the 19th of November, which is, I believe a Sunday.

- And then how do people apply for receipt of those?

- They just show up, honestly.

It'll be first come, first serve- - And how many will you have- - Until supplies last.

- We usually have anywhere from a hundred to 200, in between there, really depends on how many we can gather from our partnerships with Midwest Food Bank, Peoria Area Food Bank, and also what we can purchase.

So yeah, we, it's a collaborative effort when it comes to supporting our community.

- Well, what do you look forward to most on a daily basis?

- I look forward to having not so many emails.

No, I'm joking.

- Sorry about that.

- I'm joking.

No, I look forward to just continuing to be consistent.

When you talk about the kids who feel like they don't, I wouldn't say have no one that loves them, but on a consistent basis, showing and spreading the love throughout our organization and community, allowing it to pour over into our community.

I look forward to those days.

And just how, how can I be of an influence in a positive way for the children and their families?

- And you see it really just about every day, different kid, different day?

- Different kid different day.

We have so many success stories when it comes to kids who, A B honor roll, comes to being spelling bee champ.

And I know that the staff played a part, played a hand in their success, along with their parents.

- Right.

- Or guardian.

I think not all the time families get a good, good rap.

It really takes a village to help the teachers, the principals and us as you know, our organization, nonprofits in the community.

- Right.

- It's really a collaborative effort.

- So 800 Club, people wanna know more about it.

There's a special website.

- There's a special link.

1800myhouse.

- Ah.

Imagine that.

- Dot com.

- Not, well, not I'm at home.

Yeah.

Silly me.

Okay.

- 1800myhouse.com.

- Perfect.

And it gets you right there to Peoria Friendship House.

- And you can find out about it and take it from there.

- You can find out about it and take it from there.

- Thank you for being here, my friend.

- Thank you.

- You are the best.

- No, thank you friend.

- And thank you all for joining us.

It was pretty inspirational.

He's doing a pretty good job.

Thanks again for joining us.

Stay healthy.

Be well.

(upbeat music)