MOSES LAKE — New Hope has a new leader. 

“I am so excited for Kim (Pope) to take the reins and add some fresh breath into the work,” said former New Hope/Kids Hope director Suzi Fode, who retired May 15 after 20 years at the helm. “I am excited to see what she does.” 

Pope, previously the director at Boys & Girls Clubs of the Columbia Basin, took over May 4.  

“We overlapped for just a little bit,” Pope said. “We were both pretty busy with trainings and meetings, so we didn’t get as much time as we wanted, but she’s still here. I’ve reached out to her a couple of times and she is more than gracious, because (New Hope) is important to her.” 

New Hope/Kids Hope serves Grant and Adams counties in some pretty comprehensive roles, Pope said: domestic violence, including emergency shelter for victims; sexual assault; crime victim advocacy and crimes against children.  

“There aren’t many (agencies) across all of Washington state that have all of those components under one roof,” she said. 

Pope is no stranger to child and family advocacy. She spent 20 years working for the Washington State Division of Child and Family Services, and her time at the Boys & Girls Club has brought her into countless children’s lives. 

Besides its main clubhouse, the Boys & Girls Club has clubhouses at five elementary schools in Moses Lake with a teen center at Vanguard Academy. The club offers children and teens a safe place to go after school, with games and activities as well as quiet places to do homework or just get away from the pressures of being a kid.  

And the adults there listen to the children, getting to know them and sometimes hearing about problems the children might have at home. 

“Boys & Girls Club staff are able to identify (abuse), or kids will disclose it to them,” Pope said. “So, we’ve had a lot of interaction. When I worked in Child and Family Services, I did some direct service with families that were involved with Child Protective Services. I feel like (I’ve come) full circle into those trenches, trying to make a difference.” 

Fode first came to work at New Hope in 2006, she said. Among her proudest achievements has been watching New Hope expand from its origins as a domestic violence advocacy service. 

“Growing a victim service agency into what it is today,” Fode said. “It was very small, serving one county; now it serves two. Growing the staff, getting more grants … adding sexual assault services and crime victim services.” 

Fode also oversaw the establishment of Kids Hope, which serves child victims of domestic, sexual and other abuse. In 2010, there were only nine children’s advocacy centers across the state of Washington, and the nearest to the Basin was in Spokane, according to New Hope’s website. New Hope applied to become a CAC in 2017 and completed what is ordinarily a five-year process in two years, achieving accreditation in 2019. 

Fode also helped Kids Hope get one of its most useful – and friendly – resources: a comfort dog named Valor. Valor sits with children during what are often very difficult interviews and goes with them when they have to testify in court.  

“Valor has heard the disclosures of so many kids throughout the years,” Fode said. “He sits in with them while they're telling some of the most horrible things that have ever happened to them, and he's laying across their lap and there's a connection.” 

Because an abuse case can take years to get through the court system, it can be a long time between the child’s forensic interview and their court testimony but the bond between them and Valor remains, Fode said.  

“Kids always remember Valor, and Valor gets to go up on the witness stand during trial,” she said. 

Valor, now almost 8 years old, lives with Fode, who’s trained as his handler, but he won’t be retiring right away, Pope said. Fode brings him to the New Hope office a few days a week. New Hope/Kids Hope has another comfort dog, two-and-a-half-year-old Bea, but she’s still getting acclimated to her job and hasn’t gone to court yet, Fode said.  

Fode has also been instrumental in keeping New Hope funded, which is never easy, Pope said. New Hope operates as a Grant County agency, but it gets almost no money from the county, relying instead on grants. Fode managed 17 different grants last year, she said in a previous interview, each with its own set of hoops to jump through and the ever-present threat of state budget cuts. 

“She has just been instrumental in getting all of these grants applied for and building up the staff,” Pope said. “Right now, we have 21 staff to take care of all of those programs that we run. That would not happen without those grants. So, kudos to her for building those relationships and making those connections so that we can continue to operate at the same level that we are right now.” 

Fode has some plans for her retirement, she said.  

“Gardening and travel,” Fode said. “I'm going to go to Machu Picchu next year. I'm so excited about that. France, I'm going to go there next year. I'm going to go skydiving. I'm just going to experience things I haven't really had time to.” 

Pope has a few ideas for things she’d like to grow at New Hope, she said. One is the availability of exams for children who have undergone sexual abuse. Those require specially-trained professionals who often aren’t available locally, making it necessary to drive the child to a larger city for testing. 

“My goal would be to make sure all services that a family or a child needs are available in Grant and Adams counties, to have more people trained and more locations available so that somebody who has been traumatized can get their services right away,” Pope said.  

New Hope addresses some of the most heartbreaking things that happen in a society, and it would be easy for the people who provide those services to be dragged down. A New Hope director – or staffer – has to take a different perspective, Pope said.  

“You think about it like, you offer services to a family and now they're safe, so at the end of the day, that's the success,” she said. “That's the satisfaction that you have to take that you've made sure that somebody is safe.” 

“It is full of all the emotions,” Fode said. It's sadness and frustration, and yet there's a lot of hope. And that's probably what kept me in the work for so long, is that there is so much hope.” 

    Kim Pope demonstrates the quiet room at the McGraw Clubhouse, one of many expansions she ushered in during her tenure as director of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Columbia Basin.
  

    Suzi Fode stands in the New Hope office last year with comfort dog Valor. Valor, who joined New Hope in 2020, sits with children during interviews about abuse, and goes with them when they have to testify in court.