ABOVE: A Girl Scouts group and the baskets they made for Healing Hearts Housing for their Bronze Award project. Pictured are Troop 37816 4th grade girls Amelia Algarro, Alayna Leach, Clara Harris-Moenkedick, Delila Tino and Zayda Lindsay; Troop 37837 5th grade girls Ashlynn Willner, Carleigh Hoiseth, Emma Byers, Lila Klunder and Nevaeh Curry; Troop leaders Sara Sokoloski, Madison Sokoloski and Betsy Tino. Submitted photo.

FAIRMONT– Cheri and Curtis Frank of Sherburn spoke about their new sober housing project to the Early Risers Kiwanis on Wednesday morning. Recently, a group of local Girl Scouts have made and donated welcome baskets to the cause for their Bronze Award project.

The Franks were in attendance at the Kiwanis meeting, which is held weekly at the Ranch Restaurant in Fairmont. Cheri said that their project, Healing Hearts Housing, which is located in Sherburn, is licensed to house eight women in recovery though they plan to start out with seven.

“We not only offer board and lodge, but also we’re going to offer a full program, not just food and shelter. We have peer support services and are going to put a gym in the basement,” Cheri said.

The project started roughly two years ago but is expected to be completed in the next two weeks with the completion of the gym. Right now, two women are living in the house as Cheri said their need was immediate.

In sharing background on the project and how it came to be, Cheri noted that she herself is in long-term recovery for alcoholism.

“I sponsor a lot of women and basically, I’ve found that they just need love and to know that they have value and worth and they just want to be safe,” Cheri said.

She said one of the biggest problems people in recovery face is that they’re usually forced out of sober housing after 90 days for insurance reasons or other and often struggle to find a new place to live and spend more time worrying about their next step than focusing on their recovery.

“The whole time I’ve been sponsoring these gals, Curtis has been receiving this information through osmosis… so two years ago in April, we had a plan that we were going to retire in two years and travel,” Cheri said.

In addition to working for the Martin County Star, Cheri launched Southern Minnesota Home Creative and Kid Creative magazines in order to earn more income and thus save for retirement and their plans.

They were largely sticking to the plan until Cheri went to visit her sister in Utah and while Curtis was at home, he got very sick with Covid.

“He called me, very calm, and said, ‘I think God’s talking to me.’ I said ‘what did He say?’ ‘He wants me to quit my job, flip a house, and turn it into a women’s sober house,'” Cheri recalled.

She was skeptical of how much the sickness had affected Curtis so told him that they would talk more when she returned home. To Cheri’s surprise, Curtis was still adamant on the message he had received and the new project that they were destined for upon her return home.

After talking through it more, they started looking for potential houses and initially began looking in Fairmont but did not find any that fit the vision there. After looking, on their way home, they took a different way and happened to come across a home for sale by owner near their own home in Sherburn.

Upon seeing the inside of the house, Cheri was immediately against it as it required a lot of work, but Curtis saw the ‘good bones’ of the house and said he could work with it and transform it and the couple ended up signing the paperwork for the house.

Cheri admitted that when she went home after signing the papers she had a lot of doubt and fears concerning how the project would come together and be funded, but shared that a lot of coincidental things happened to make everything work out, which she thoroughly believes was God’s doing.

“All throughout this whole year, God threw something at our lives to help us get through another month,” Cheri said.

While they were working on Healing Hearts Housing, they were also working on Healing Hearts Recovery because the house is the board and lodge– which the state will pay for for just 90 days– but the Franks wanted to ensure that people could stay longer, for up to two years.

“That’s where Healing Hearts Recovery, the non-profit, comes alongside. We have a 501(c)(3) non-profit status and the funds that come to that will come from donations and grants,” Cheri said.

Funds through the non-profit will also be used to secure an activities director, transportation to required meetings and appointments and several other matters that are bound to arise.

“It’s a whole program of not only safety, a place to live, but also physically, emotionally and spiritually and we’ll encourage you to go to counseling and take your medication,” Cheri said.

She said that they’re hoping to change lives, one at a time.

“This is the first home of many I hope,” Cheri said.

Betsy Tino, a local Girl Scout troop leader, said that she had a group of girls who wanted to make blankets to donate to the homeless for the Bronze Award project. She learned of the Healing Hearts Housing project from fellow leader, Nancy Klemek.

“Cheri told Nancy what she was working on and that’s how we connected. We thought to grow the project into a basket because with 10 girls, we needed the project to be bigger,” Tino said.

To meet the requirements for the Bronze Award, a Girl Scout must spend 20 hours on a project. It is the highest honor that 4th and 5th graders in Girl Scouts can receive.

“We ended up making 25 baskets, which is how many they’re hoping to have in a year,” Tino said of the housing tenants.

The baskets include about 25 items, some of which are handmade, like tie blankets, painted rocks with inspirational messages and shower bombs, and some store-bought essentials like toothbrushes, makeup wipes and towels.

The girls began putting together the baskets in an assembly style in December and will finish up delivering them in March.

“We had about 13 work sessions that were about an hour to four hours and all of the girls were able to reach 20 hours,” Tino said.

She said that not only did the young girls learn what a sober house is, but that some people in the world don’t have the essentials.

To help fund the project, troops members received donations from the American Legion Post #36 and Early Risers Kiwanis and a grant from the Martin County Youth Foundation.