>> Kaleena Black: Hello, everybody. Welcome to this vibrant Congress Literacy Awards webinar. I'm Kaleena Black, and I work in the Professional Learning and Outreach Initiatives Office, Library of Congress. We're so glad that you're joining us today for part two of our Literacy Awards Successful Practices Webinar Series. Today's topic, as you know, is literacy education beyond the classroom. We're really glad that you're here with us, and we're glad to have our wonderful panel here with us as well today. Kathy, if you go to the next slide. So just a little bit of housekeeping before we get started. We are recording this program and we'll start the recording as soon as we can. As this event's going to be recorded, any questions or other participant contributions may be made publicly available as part of the Library's archives, and our comments are subject to the Library's comment and posting policies. There's more -- pop a little bit more information about that in the chat for you. Can go the next slide? So like I said, we're excited that you're all here, and we'll have the opportunity to talk to each other via chat, as well as our panelists and our moderator, so just to get started with that, if you could just share your name and where you're joining us from in the chat, that would be very helpful. Just make sure that you selected everyone in the "to" field of the chat so that we can all read your comments and your responses. Indiana, St. Louis, Minnesota, DC. Yes, Maryland. Great. It's great to see so many folks from across the country. Pittsburgh, Maine, Georgia, New York. That's awesome. So yes, please continue sharing your name and where you're from. It helps us get to know who's here with us and yeah, who's in the room. Kathy, you can go to the next slide, please. So just a little bit about why we're here and the big picture of that. So the Literacy Awards, as you may know, was originated by David Rubenstein in 2013, and it honors organizations that are working to promote and expand literacy and reading in the United States and worldwide, and you the awards recognize groups that are doing exemplary, innovative and replicable work, and they emphasize and spotlight the need for the global community to come together in striving for universal literacy. So this video, or the image that you see on the screen is a screencap of a video that was made about the 2021 Literacy Award winners and honorees, so I encourage you to take a look at this video -- and then Kathy, for the next slide -- as well as the website to learn more about last year's winners and honorees. I'm going to put the link to the website as well as these direct pages, so you can get them easily. Next slide, please, Kathy. So before we get into the program, we just wanted to just reflect a little bit about why we're here and why you're here. So we're asking if you can complete the sentence now. "Blank, that's why I care about family literacy." So if you can just put that into the chat, and it can be a word, it can be rephrased, a couple of words. Mm-hm, equity, that's why I care about literacy. My grandson, the future, the key to success in my community, community, empowerment, inclusion. They're great words. Future, again, lifelong education, knowledge, representation, breaking the cycle of poverty, equal opportunities. Yes, thank you for sharing all of these thoughts and ideas and just being to and helping us reflect on why we're here and why the panelists you're going to hear from in just a minute, why they do the work that they do, why you all are doing the work that you're doing, why you care about this topic and why it's so important to us all. So thank you so much for sharing and just reflecting with us about this for a minute. So like I said, today's panel is on literacy education beyond the classroom. This conversation is going to be facilitated by Don Vu. He is a Library of Congress Literacy Awards Advisory Member. He's also an educator and the author of Life, Literacy, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Supporting our Immigrant and Refugee Children Through the Power of Reading. And he'll be joined by our great group of panelists who represent several of this year's honorees. They include Parents as Teachers, The Luminos Fund, Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, and Literacy Minnesota. So with that, I am thrilled to turn the program now over to John. >> Don Vu: Thank you, Kaleena. Hello, everyone. My name is Don Vu, and I'm a former teacher, elementary school principal here in California, and I took a leave of absence from my job a couple years ago, right before the pandemic. I know, perfect timing. And I wrote a book on building a culture of literacy for all kids in our schools, especially our immigrant and refugee students. It's called Life, Literacy and the Pursuit of Happiness, and I am honored to be a member of the Library of Congress Literacy Awards Advisory Board, and I'm honored to be here today with you all talking with these four extraordinary individuals whose extraordinary organizations were recognized, as Kaleena said, as 2021 Library of Congress Literacy Award winners. We're going to have a conversation built on our panel theme, Literacy, Education Beyond the Classroom, and today, we have Caitlin Baron, CEO of The Luminos Fund, Constance Gully, President and CEO of the Parents as Teachers National Center, British Robinson, President and CEO of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, and Eric Nesheim, Executive Director of Literacy Minnesota. And we're going to start with Caitlin, today. Please take a few minutes to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your organization. >> Caitlin Baron: Wonderful, thank you so much for the kind invitation, Don, and it is such a pleasure for me to be here on behalf of my entire team today. It's been a great honor to have the chance to get to know the Library of Congress team as well as the other panelists in the discussion, so Luminos, I founded Luminos just about six years ago with the explicit mission to help children around the world who are kept out of school by conflict or poverty, to get a second chance to learn. We run innovative programs across Africa and the Middle East to enable children to catch back up to grade level, learning the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic and readying them to mainstream into their local public school. All of this is with an eye towards not just getting to school, but getting through school and a real ambition to achieve lifelong learning. On the next slide, we talk a little bit more about that context. So just to put our work in a bit of context, you know, even before the current pandemic, there were close to 60 million children around the world who are kept out of primary school. In a place like Africa, that means actually one in five children don't get the chance to even begin their educational journey, and most challengingly, what we find is even those children in the classroom are often not served by the education they find, so about 80% of children in low-income countries have not managed to learn to read by age 10. Of course, what does this mean in the current context? We are at significant risk for a far higher number of children failing to return to school. In some countries around the COVID has been different things in different states in the US and also in different countries around the world, and even across the African continent. In some countries, schools were closed for a matter of weeks. In a country like Uganda, schools were closed for 500 days straight and have literally only just reopened in the last month. And so why do children wind up being out of school? Well, first and foremost, the most common reason is quite frankly, poverty. So two out of three children who miss out on primary school simply come from very poor families and their families actually need them at home to work on the farm or care for siblings. About one in three of the children around the world who miss out on school though, are themselves refugees and their families have been displaced and they've found themselves in a place where accessing education is no longer possible. And we can take a look at the next page from here. So a little bit about our work and where our work comes in. We work with children who were 10 or 11 years old and have never been to school. We cover the basics, taking children from not being able to recognize all the letters in the alphabet to being able to read short passages of text and short storybooks. We do this in a variety of ways, first and foremost, a much smaller classroom than children would face elsewhere, so we have what in our context is small, just 25 kids per teacher, and we have an extended school day and extended school week. Actually, kids get the chance to spend four times as many hours practicing reading as they would in a mainstream school. Importantly, in each country we work, we work with local publishers so that we have locally written, culturally relevant texts. These are all anchored to a phonics-based approach to literacy and learning, but there's storybooks that are populated with kids who look like our students who have the similar names to their own, and who are growing up in contexts just like theirs, and that's vitally important because a significant proportion of the children in our program are first-generation readers, often the first generation in their family to attempt school of any kind, and so everything that we can do to actually make this onboarding into the school system warm and welcoming, and a celebration of everything about where our students have come from is vitally important. The next page, we talk a little bit more about so essentially what we've been able to do in this program. So our evaluations year in and year out show that students are able to learn to read 41% faster in our program than they are in their neighboring public school, and what that means is that when children come to our program, they're years behind their peers from their village or community, but when they leave our program, they're entering mainstream public school ahead of their age group, which means that they're able to enter the classroom, not as students who have fallen behind but as students who are really on par with those around them. Next slide. Sorry, can we move to the next slide? Perfect. So a quick picture, I mean, you know, one of the exciting things about our program is seeing -- sorry, I'll just talk to the long-term results, and then we can move on. So what the great news is that in the short run, we're able to help children learn an enormous amount in a short period of time. Ninety percent of the children who start our program, ultimately mainstream into their local public school, but the most exciting news we've seen is through long-term evaluations with our research partners have shown that students who start our program actually go on to compete primary school at twice the rate of their peers and, you know, we believe the essence of that success comes from two things, one, a classroom that meets each child where they are academically, and is tailored -- that drives forward through what we call joyful learning. One of the things we recognize is that the world over, children everywhere learn best when they're happy, and that has been a fundamental part of our success to date. And on that happy note, I'm going to pass the baton to some of my colleagues. Can't wait to hear about their programs as well. >> Don Vu: Thank you very much, Caitlin. Constance. >> Constance Gully: Hello. >> Don Vu: Hi, Constance. >> Constance Gully: Good afternoon, and it's a joy to be here. I'm Constance Gully. I am with Parents as Teachers National Center, and Parents as Teachers, or PAT, is an evidence-based home visiting model with a forward-thinking approach that recognizes and reinforces the pre-literacy skills that precede literacy, so parents are key to engaging their child's development, and improving parenting knowledge and behaviors improves child development outcomes. So PAT offers culturally competent interventions, with a focus on families during pregnancy and the earliest years of a child's life, because those years hold the most vulnerability and opportunity. This particular slide shows the vision and mission of Parents as Teachers, and we're honored to be recognized by the Library of Congress with the American Prize for Literacy for engaging parents and children in book sharing activities on every home visit, often providing books for families to keep, supporting the creation of literacy-rich home environments and routines, drawing on connections for parents between all aspects of child development and literacy and sharing strategies to improve parents' confidence and competence as reading partners, and we're especially proud of our 30 year plus partnership with the Bureau of Indian Education, the National Center for Families' Learning and Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, promoting literacy with an emphasis on tribal culture and language through our face programs in 50 PIE schools right now. This next slide illustrates our reach, and more than half of our programs are in rural areas and home visitors often reflect the communities they serve. The National Center supports Parents as Teachers affiliates delivering our evidence based model and curriculum subscribers -- can you hear me okay? >> Kaleena Black: Loud and clear, Constance. >> Constance Gully: Yeah, thanks -- and curriculum subscribers which are often other home visiting models like Early Headstart, HFA, or NFP that use the PAT curricula to implement their models. The PAT research-informed curricula guide our work with families and they include parent-facing materials on hundreds of topics, and our curricula are also highly rated by West Ed. The next slide illustrates the four components of the PAT model. All four components are carefully designed to work together to support families and children. Our certified professionals meet families where they are most comfortable, typically in the home, or where they share information and resources to ensure parents are confident in the emotional, behavioral, and physical development of their children. A child developmental health, hearing and vision screenings happen during the personal visits and home visitors work with parents to set family goals such as finding employment, health insurance, or advancing their education to help increase family self-sufficiency, and then provide coaching support at every home visit around a family's unique goals. So every home visit follows this frame, but no visit is exactly the same because the content is tailored to each family's needs. And parents are also offered regular facilitated group connections, which provide an opportunity to engage families in traditions, crafts and cultural activities, so groups build social capital for families or a network of other parents and caregivers in their community, and this protective factor contributes to the prevention of child abuse and neglect. This last slide talks about our impact and outcomes, so scientifically valid studies using rigorous research designs including a randomized control trials and quasi-experimental designs in diverse settings have shown that PAT parents engage more in home literacy activities and that children are better prepared at kindergarten entry. And in later grades, children who participated in PAT, performed significantly better than non-PAT children on English language arts standardized tests, and on computerized reading assessments in the areas of phonics and comprehension. PAT families were more likely to read aloud and tell stories, say nursery rhymes and sing with their children, and over 75% of parents in PAT reported taking their child to the library regularly and modeling enjoyment of reading and writing. So parents engage more in language and were more likely to promote reading in the home and have more books at home, so taken together, the past research on PAT suggests that targeting parents knowledge about child development and increasing positive parenting behaviors is an effective means to positively impact child outcomes, especially as it relates to social emotional development and school readiness and academic achievement. It's been an honor to be here and to share the PAT story and special thanks to the Library of Congress for acknowledging and recognizing the work that we do. >> Don Vu: Thank you so much, Constance, very important work. British Robinson. >> British A. Robinson: Good afternoon. Thank you, everybody. It's a pleasure to be with you, and Don, thank you for moderating this session. On behalf of the Barbara Bush Family Foundation for Family Literacy, our staff and board, we thank you for this incredible recognition and award, and we're so pleased to be able to share a little bit more about our work in this program in particular. And more importantly, we want to thank the Library of Congress for putting a spotlight on literacy and the importance of making and having a more literate America, so thank you again for that. So the Barbara Bush Foundation was established in 1989 by former First Lady Barbara Bush. We are a nationally based, not-for-profit headquartered here in Washington, DC, and our vision and we are dedicated to a stronger, more equitable America, and we hope that everyone can read, write and comprehend, so they can navigate their lives and their worlds with dignity. And to that end, we operate through sort of three levels, or three areas or three categories in the way that we carry out our work, through technology and innovation, research and thought leadership, as well as reading mentorship programs, which I'll get into in a minute. We also operate at two levels, at the grassroots level as well as the grass tufts level. Next slide. And so as we think about reading mentorship programs, our program that is our longest running program, which is approximately 20 years old, in fact, we celebrate our birthday this year 2022, that's what I'll talk to you a little bit about. So the Teen Trendsetters program, we operate at a grassroots level. We work to improve literacy and skills across multi-generations, leveraging a combination of high quality curriculum, research proven mentoring techniques, and parent engagement resources. The Teen Trendsetters program is a school-based program that pair students in grades one to three, who are reading at least four months below grade level reading with trained teen mentors. We pair these folks together, these children together, to meet weekly for mentoring sessions, where they use evidence-based strategies to boost their literacy skills. Children also receive a packet of books that are age appropriate for their home libraries, and their parents or caregivers are also required to sign an agreement, promising that they too will read with their child regularly. Families also received parent guides available in English and in Spanish to support their own home learning as well. Additionally, those parents guides are really critical, because we take a kind of holistic view or that family lens or that multi-generational approach, we believe it's absolutely critical that we include the parent in the child's learning. So for example, as part and parcel of our resources, we include technology in that, which is one of the first pillars of our work. We actually offer a tech based solution, an app called SEL ed, so the parents can actually enrich their own learning while they're helping to support their children, so this is kind of the X factor, if you will. We know that data shows and has shown for the last few decades, that a mother's reading level is the single greatest determinant of a child's future academic success, and so we think it's critical that we embed and inculcate all of our work and support for the child reader that the parent is engaged as well, and that is absolutely critical. Next slide. And so as we face this challenge of COVID, we've all been through this and still are going through it. We have not been immune to it, but we've been flexible. We believe we've been nimble, and we had to pivot pretty quickly, so in addition to maintaining our programs, either online or offline, we had to quickly create online programming. We also had to continue to support, in some school districts, continue to support the kids in person and in some school districts, we simply began to start up online programming. We also created a toolkit for families when there was a nationwide shutdown of school closures in March of 2020, and we were recognized by Forbes and Fortune Magazines, respectively, offer the toolkit which you can find available on our website, but in addition to this programming, we thought it was important, given our 32 years of history, to also provide all parents, regardless of where they live, who they are, what race they are, what level of reading they or their children might be at, some evidence-based tools that they could use when we were all sort of trying to navigate this world of COVID, and we weren't so sure about that. So we are happy that we were able to meet the challenge, but we know that there's so much more work to be done. In order to constantly improve on our work, we really have to look at the outcomes and impact on an ongoing and annual basis. Next slide. So every year with the Teen Trendsetters program, we're grateful that we have an annual impact evaluation which has consistently showed remarkable and profound results around this program, its documented success, over 20 years, as I said, its increase -- most kids increase their grade level reading to one year and two months above from when they start with the program. Typically, mentees show 50% more growth than is expected for most kids who are on grade level or above grade level, so qualitatively and quantitatively, it's a true success story, and we have sort of years of studies that show year over year, the improvements that kids make. Additionally, we include qualitative surveys, so also get data from the actual mentors as well. We show that they improve their confidence level, self-esteem and their own sort of improved learning skills are typically increased, and so that's a major sort of X factor of our program as well, that it has a multi spillover effect, so not just the child that we're supporting, but the mentor, as well as the parent or the caregiver. Next slide. So we are grateful, again, to the Library of Congress for supporting this work. We look forward to continuing it and to frankly, scaling it in the future over the next 20 years, so thank you for having us. >> Don Vu: Thank you, British. Very impressive work. And finally, Eric. >> Eric Nesheim: Thank you. Absolutely, and I'm lucky to go last because I can ditto all the thanks and appreciation to the Library of Congress, and just also echo the awe that I'm in being in the same room with this group, because there's a lot of amazing work going on. I'm Eric Nesheim, Executive Director of Literacy, Minnesota. I'm here today to talk about the Northstar Digital Literacy program that that won the award. You can go to the next slide. And but I will just want to give you a little brief about who Literacy Minnesota is. We are -- we sort of grew up as one of those early literacy councils back in the '60s and '70s, so we're 50 years old now, and we continue to be a leader in our field and in our state, and as you'll find out, nationally in some ways, and I think we're unique in the sense that we do a lot of work on the ground locally, in learning centers that we run around ESL, GED preparation, citizenship, basic skills. And we're also a group that does a lot of capacity building, so we're doing a lot of training with teachers and training with volunteers and technology training and that sort of thing. So we have the local work, we have the statewide work, and we're more and more being recognized for some of the national work that we've been doing around -- particularly around digital equity and digital literacy. So please go to the next slide. And I don't think this is a surprise to anyone in this room, but one of the things that we've seen throughout the pandemic particularly, is that there's a lot of interest in digital skills and digital literacy. A lot of the funding and the streams that seem to be flowing down into counties and states seem to be around devices and access, which is great. I mean, there's an absolute need for that, and that's one of the biggest issues that we're facing right now, but I'll add to that that we generally look at it as sort of a three-legged stool, and the third leg of that stool is the skills building piece. That oftentimes is forgotten, and there isn't a lot of resources flowing to that, so we often in our advocacy efforts are really pushing that, and I know there's some of those going on right now, nationally. I just want to give you the quick origin story of Northstar, and it involves libraries so threaded throughout this whole -- throughout our whole project is libraries. We had a library come to us about 12 years ago in St. Paul asking us, you know, The Great Recession, we need to sort of decide how people's -- what people's needs are around digital skills, you know? How can -- we aren't able to do that without some kind of a tool. And so they came to us, and we said yeah, we'll try to see if we can find something. We couldn't find anything, so we started working on developing something, and so we started developing the first prototype of what we now call Northstar, and within -- you know, we put it online thinking this is just like a nice little St. Paul thing, and within weeks, we were getting hits from all over the world, and I guess we should have realized that was going to happen, since we couldn't find anything but there was an obvious need for this type of a tool out there. It's standard-based and so we have our professional PhD type people working on the standards around digital literacy. And one of the -- I think another unique thing about the program, we're a nonprofit organization obviously, and so we're not here to make money, but early on, we realized that if this needs -- you know, if we want to make this sustainable in any way, we need to figure out a funding model for it, and so we do a lot of grant writing, a lot of, you know, requests out there, and we also have a subscription model, so while the vast majority of people who take the assessment, go online and take it for free, you know, millions of people go and take it for free, there's groups that subscribe because they get an additional amount of resources with that. So they get access to a data system, access to proctor tests, and so on. So a lot of groups subscribe and help pay in so that we're able to continue to innovate and continue to grow the project, which has been -- so far, that's been a great model. As you can see, we're now in 2,300 sites around the country, all 50 states, and a growing number of international sites. And since inception, we're working towards about 6 million assessments given through this platform. Next slide, please. So what the platform consists of, is essentially assessments around digital skills. You'll see on the next slide in a minute, the array of different assessments that are given. Each of the assessments has curriculum that goes along with it, and so oftentimes what happens -- and I was actually a tutor for many years in one of our learning centers tutoring this -- you will give somebody the assessment. They either will pass or won't pass. If they don't pass, there's some skill building that goes on, and then hopefully, they'll pass the next one and move on to the next assessment. It can be instructor-led, tutor-led, and a growing number of groups are using self-directed online learning that we also offer, which has been a very popular thing during the pandemic. It does have a learning management system that subscribers have access to, and we're working really hard on a mobile feature, and looking at some translations, starting with Spanish and a few others soon will be on the on the docket as well. You can move on to the next slide. This is the list of current assessments that we have available, and there's a few that we're hoping we could be working on soon. One is telehealth. Another one would be around financial literacy, but as you can see, there's the basic pieces that most people go right to, and then there's a little higher end suites around Microsoft Suites, and then some of the things around Daily Life that we're offering. It's been an eye-opening experience for us as a literacy organization to see who walks through the door looking for these skills. It's not the same people that we've seen in the past, and it's, you know, a lot of work-related issues, people losing jobs, people needing to re-enter the workforce that we're seeing, and so it's been a unique experience, and I think it's been, you know, the whole country has been experiencing this obviously, and which is why we're getting lots of phone calls wondering, you know, how they can partner with us. So again, next slide, please. Is that it? Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so again, thank you so much for having us here today, and again, this is really fun to hear about some of these programs, and I look forward to any questions people have. >> Don Vu: Okay, well, thank you, Eric. And congratulations to Eric, and to all of you on your very much deserved recognition by the Library of Congress. It's well deserved and it's an honor. Let's go ahead and get started with some questions. For those of you in the audience, please feel free to ask any questions that you may have in the chat box. I've seen some questions pop up already. Kaleena and Kathy will monitor the chat box and will chime in when it makes sense, and I'm going to go ahead and get started. I wanted to acknowledge that we are in the virtual halls of the Library of Congress, one of the greatest libraries in the history of the world, so I'm going to go old school, and I am going to go back to basics and start with books. All right? And it's a personal question. What are you reading right now? What book is on your nightstand, and I'm going to get a little bit more personal. I'm going to ask you to talk about what inspired you to go into this work. We'll go ahead and start with, you know, we'll go ahead and start with Eric since he said that he likes to be last. I'm going to have you go first, Eric. >> Eric Nesheim: I appreciate that. >> Don Vu: What book are you reading right now? And -- >> Eric Nesheim: And what inspired me? >> Don Vu: -- what inspired you to get into this work? >> Eric Nesheim: So the book that's on the table next to my couch right now, is probably going to be unique for this group, but it's not a novel. It's called The Secrets of Art. I'm a years-ago art history person, and I've always been intrigued by the sort of the convergence of art and politics and current events. It's always intrigued me, and so I can't get enough of stories about why artists did what they did and how they included things in their works, so I have a book that's sitting there and I've been paging through at this point, so that's what I'm working on. How I was inspired to get into this, I didn't mention this, and I -- it's -- I don't know if this is embarrassing or not, but I've been at Literacy Minnesota for 32 years, which I think is pretty unique. I came right out of the Peace Corps, and I was looking for something where I could make a big difference, and literacy is where I landed, and I never left because it was exactly what I was looking for. It's the place where you can really, really make a difference. You know, we joke that it's kind of the center of the universe, but it honestly is. Without literacy, like nothing else really can happen, and so we're at the conjuncture, and this is the best place to be and I'm super happy to be in a room with this group. >> Don Vu: Very cool. Thank you, Eric. How about British? >> British A. Robinson: Great. Yeah, sure. So for my book, it's the Personal Librarian, written by Marie Benedict and Victoria Murray. It's a book about the personal librarian of JP Morgan. She was a black woman in the early 20th century, who had to pass as white to actually get the job and keep the job. It's an incredible story, personal story about her and her black family who passes as white to sort of stay in society and to gain sort of wealth, but more importantly, it documents the relationship between her and JP Morgan, and how her curating this incredible art -- speaking of Eric your point -- she curated incredible works of art and books and manuscripts for JP Morgan, and all of that art -- a lot of the art in the manuscripts are sitting in the JP Morgan Library Museum in New York. I got a chance to go visit it this summer, and it's absolutely incredible what she did, not only as a woman, a black woman, and at that time. She was just a remarkable, brilliant woman, and so it's so fitting when we talk about literacy, because also, JP Morgan was, you know, one of our early leaders, in some ways to help really found and build this country, and he really believed in libraries and building up libraries along with many others, and so I think it's a representation. The book and the museum is a representation of how important it is to have a literate America, and really, it's the through line for all of our lives, and our livelihoods, which is what I think Eric was saying. Eric, you've been in Minnesota, in your program for 32 years, where 32 years ago, we were founded, March of 1989, so you started the year that we were founded, that Barbara Bush founded our program, and the reason why I'm in in this is I have a deep background. I've always had a long career in mission-oriented work, from HIV/AIDS, to breast cancer, to refugee issues, immigration issues, traveled all around the world, and this is my first foray into to education, but in particular literacy, and the why for me is because literacy is the through line. Literacy is about equity. It's about dignity, and if you're not a literate person, you can't accomplish anything, and so it was critical for me to bring kind of my other experiences to this space, into this field, but it also is a quiet sort of challenge, if you will, that we have in America today to have a fully literate America, whether it's the child or the parent, and so I thought I had something to offer to the field. It's an unrecognized problem and solution, and I thought I could add something to the field and to the sector, and I'm honored and privileged to be a part of it and to be with all of you. Incredible, incredible work that you're all doing, so congratulations, and thanks again for having me. >> Don Vu: Thank you British, and I noticed that Kathy is in the chat box writing down the books that our panelists are reading right now. Let's go ahead and go with Constance. Were you reading and what got you into this? >> Constance Gully: I just finished reading The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris who was a young, black male. Really it's a fictional book about two brothers right after the Emancipation Proclamation that were slaves and their journey over I think the maybe the first year after the emancipation was passed. It was fascinating for me. Just two books I keep handy or Brene Brown's Dare to Lead and also Influencer. My journey to Parents as Teachers is unusual. I'm an accountant by profession. I'm a CPA. I practiced public accounting for 10 years and then worked in higher education for 16 years after that, but my first introduction to Parents as Teachers was 26 years ago on the floor in my living room with a parent educator with my own baby, who is now 26 and has a beard, so that was my first exposure to Parents as Teachers. We kind of had the privilege in Missouri of having some semblance of a PAT program in every school district, so my local school district, that was my first introduction. I had no idea that Parents as Teachers have a footprint that spanned over all 50 states, six countries, and 115 tribal communities when I saw the opportunity to serve as the CFO, which is how I started and now I'm the CEO, but what I remember as a parent is being afraid to leave the hospital with this tiny person, and be responsible, and I was married and had a mom and a mother in law, but still knew I needed some support, and I think that is what is important about the work that Parents as Teachers does is that every parent can benefit from some support, and then helping families. I think home visiting as an equity accelerator, helps families navigate complicated systems like health systems, education, and even social services, so that is what drew me. I've done mission-based work. Even in public accounting, I worked with nonprofit and governmental entities, so that is what drew me to Parents as Teachers, and it's almost like a unicorn opportunity for me, and I love it. I love the people I get to work for, the professionals that we support and engage. It's a wonderful opportunity. >> Don Vu: Thank you, Constance. And Caitlin. >> Caitlin Baron: Well, so I often like to say I was raised by two loving parents and the extraordinary staff of the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, so this is a hard question, because there's a long list of books, and even sitting on my nightstand, you know. Maybe only one of them's actually getting read at any given point in time, but they're all lined up waiting for me, but one that I have actually here on my desk today, because we were just talking about it at work, is The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste, amazing publication about women soldiers who fought against the Italian invasion in Ethiopia in the 1930s, and Ethiopia is the home of Luminos's work. That's where our first program was really crafted and created, so that's a country that's always close to my heart, and this is a great -- this book I recommend is a great sort of a history lesson, but also just a excellent page-turner, you know? It's just enjoyable in its own right. You don't have to come to learn. What brought me to this work, my first work in the sort of mission-driven sector was with first-generation university students, and I was really just blown away by the power of those unique inflection points in each person's educational journey, those moments were a path parts in the woods, and some young people, some children, managed to access the next rung of opportunity, and so many other worthy young people and children don't. And I just I became incredibly just -- and I found this just to be a really gripping moment in young people's lives and a real privilege to be a part of helping young people succeed at that moment, and I that work for about 10 or 15 years. It really changed my life and ultimately, though, I came to recognize that there was an entire world of children who never even had the chance to reach for that first rung, and in our line of work, the question of achieving access to education for children is a topic that, you know, our sector made enormous progress on in the beginning of this century, so between 2000 and 2010, there were 40% fewer kids out of school around the world than we had seen before. I mean, in my line of work numbers typically don't move that quickly. That's huge progress, but we really got to a point where there's 1 in 10 children in the hardest reach areas in the most vulnerable families, you know, for whom sort of business as usual education is not enough to provide real access, and so it just really captured my imagination, like what would be possible if we focused most attention on that last 1 in 10? What innovations and new models could we come up with to make that opportunity a reality for all? >> Don Vu: Great. Thank you, Caitlin. Okay, so let's go ahead and let's -- thank you for sharing your personal -- your books and your personal stories and how you were inspired. I want to talk about your organizations. I have some specific questions for each organization. Question for Constance, okay? So as an elementary school principal, every effective school leader realizes the need to partner with parents and at home when it comes to building literacy skills for kids, and it seems like schools reinvent the wheel every time we come up with ways to engage parents, teach parents how to work with their kids at home. I felt like I did, and you know, when I realized and when I found out about your program, your organization, the work that you guys do, I was impressed, and I was thinking, why can't we connect with organizations like this? Where do school leaders start in getting your program into their schools and districts? >> Constance Gully: Well, I think, for Missouri, where we were founded, there's some legislation that has PAT services, or parenting education in every school district. Similarly, Delaware is another state. There's a huge education footprint in Texas, but Parents as Teachers is in schools, hospitals, departments of health, community action programs, so any entity that has a mission to support young families and children can use Parents as Teachers as a strategy. I think what's important for educators to know and especially in public school systems, is that there are resources that allow for funding of programs like Parents as Teachers, by Title 1 dollars and ESSA funds can be utilized to fund early home visiting, and that strategy of early home visiting, that parent engagement continues on into school age systems of elementary and secondary schools, so once parents are connected and tap into the power that they have to impact their child's development, it never stops. >> Don Vu: Right. Right. Thank you, Constance. Question for Caitlyn, joyful, play-based learning, this core idea in second chance, I know you talked about in the intro, what does it look like for kids and teachers every day? You know, your work, and also your work has been primarily with Syrian refugees. Are there any plans to help other refugee groups, like from Afghanistan, for example, throughout the world? >> Caitlin Baron: Thanks for the question, Don. You know, we believe quite frankly, we couldn't remotely do what we do if we didn't make learning fun for children, so we have kids with us for what is a long school day in their environment. They're with us for about seven hours and the typical school day's about half that. In Ethiopia and some other areas, we actually run Saturday schools as well, so this is an intense program that really asks a lot from kids, and keep in mind, we're often working in really, really hot climates, without anything in the in the way of climate control, and so quite frankly, long story short, if it wasn't fun to be in our classrooms, there's no way that kids or teachers would make it through the day, and so what we really tried to do is just recognize that children outside the classroom are learning all the time. They're learning through doing, right? They're learning by helping their parents cook. They're learning by helping their parents transact in the marketplace. In point of fact, you know, most of the children who come to our program have never been in formal education, but most of them do mental math pretty well, and it's because they're used to transacting in the marketplace, right? So we try to build a curriculum that really like recognizes and celebrates what children already know. So, you know, we help them then learn how to symbolize math actually, how to write that down as equations, but we recognize that actually, the simple calculations are something they can already do, and that's critical to how we think about literacy as well. Song and dance, working with simple manipulatives is a is a big part of what we do. We work in low-resource settings. You know, none of our classrooms have electricity. We're well beyond the reach of a cell signal but, you know, we're surrounded by natural materials, and so if you step into one of our classrooms you might find, you know, the only source of light might be through an open door or window, but the walls themselves will be covered with learning materials created by the children themselves, which I mean, first and foremost, it's practical. These geographies are hard to get to. They're far away, and we have to keep the program low costs so learning to work with what's there is important, but, you know, I think more importantly than that, what it means is that even for children, many of whom are first-generation learners in our classroom, learning is presented as something that's authentic and organic, and has sprung from the community they reside in, and not something that's brought from outside, and that has been a critical part of just really creating welcoming classrooms that welcome both children and their parents into the learning environment. >> Don Vu: Very good. Thank you. Any plan to work with other refugee groups? >> Caitlin Baron: Thank you. So yes, so in Lebanon, we work to support Syrian refugees. The Lebanese government has made an extraordinary commitment in the world of refugee hosting, which is that they've committed to enroll all the Syrian refugee children who have fled to the country into mainstream Lebanese public schools. That means that the Lebanese public school system has literally had to double in size in order to accommodate those children, and so we run programs in Lebanon to help Syrians who've been out of school get caught back up and be able to access those places in public school, and it's been an extraordinary opportunity to be a part of that program, and has very much informed our work elsewhere. So Lebanon is the one country where we have a true refugee population in that we have children whose families have crossed international borders, but in Ethiopia, for example, Ethiopia is host to the largest number of internally displaced people on the African continent, which means families that have been moved from one part of Ethiopia to another, either due to climate change, or to conflict, and in a country where 84 different languages are spoken, actually having to move from one region to the other has some pretty profound effects on children's ability to keep learning, and so it's been really, really powerful for our organization to actually take the lessons from our work in Lebanon and weave those back through other sort of country contexts with different vulnerabilities but with shared traits of trauma and displacement, and how do you create a caring learning safe environment, because recognizing that before children can learn anything, they have to feel safe, they have to feel at home, they have to feel cared for? >> Don Vu: For sure, for sure. Well, thank you, Caitlin. Now, I know that British has -- lost some connection with British. >> British A. Robinson: I'm still here. Can you hear me? >> Don Vu: Yeah, we can hear you. >> British A. Robinson: Okay, so you can't see my photo, but I can hear you and you can hear me, so feel free. I'll just talk we'll just talk. >> Don Vu: Okay. Yeah. >> British A. Robinson: Old school, you know? >> Don Vu: Old school, I like old school. Okay, so I have a question for you, British. So I've seen the impact on both older student mentors and the younger student mentees when we connect them in schools through reading buddies. What do you think are the critical components of a successful mentoring program for Kids? >> British A. Robinson: Yeah, great question. There are a couple of elements that help us be successful. The first thing is that the relationship between the mentor and the mentee, that bond is absolutely critical, and so we try to really pair and match the mentor/mentee with if they have similar interests and backgrounds, and that really fosters that bond, and we find qualitatively that that bond even leads to better outcomes for the mentor and the mentee. So number one, is the bond between the mentor and the mentee, and in this case, you've got a younger kid, you know, that's grades one to three, who's being mentored by a teenager, typically junior high, so it's sort of like oh, I get to hang out with the cool kids or the cool teenager. When I grow up, I want to be, you know, a football player or, you know, whatever the bond is, so that's really strong and really important. Second is structured lessons and activities that improve the reading skills and facilitate that -- those relationship building. Third is the training amongst the mentors to equip them with the proper tools to help the mentees with comprehension fluency, and frankly, one of our other panelists said earlier, the love of reading. It needs to be fun and kids, we want to inculcate that love of reading. That's absolutely critical, I think, for the success really, of all of our programs, and I've heard everybody sort of mention this in one way or the other. The fourth is data collection and surveys and constant evaluation, so that we can be on a cycle of continual sort of improvement. That's critical. Fifth, I talked about it being fun and engaging, and then six, and this cuts a little bit across, Don, I think what you were saying and our colleagues, our colleague at Parents as Teachers, is the infrastructure. You know, I think COVID has been this -- you know, it's kind of a blessing and a curse, but infrastructure, or the lack thereof, can really affect all of our work, regardless of whether you're teaching the child or the parent, and so good infrastructure is critical, the quality of the resources, the classroom teacher, supportive teachers, the administrative district. We partner with every district for to implement our programs. We actually have MOUs with the school districts, so we need those school districts to actually be fully sort of empowered to help support the work, our work and then the work of their students, and so that leadership piece is really important as well, that I think we talked about a little earlier. So those are our kind of six sort of considerations that we think are absolutely critical for successful mentorship programs in the literacy space. >> Don Vu: That's great. Thanks, British, and by the way, we have your video feed now so we can see you. >> British A. Robinson: Great, excellent, thanks. >> Don Vu: All right. So let's go to Eric, the last, the last question here for in this round here. Digital literacy has become critical in the last few years, as we found ourselves online, for work and school more than ever, right? What makes your program unique from others? >> Eric Nesheim: Yeah, that's a great question. That's a very relevant question. I think, so like I said, we started working probably 12 years ago, on some of the digital scale questions, probably prior to a lot of groups, and that was just something that came up in our community. And, you know, so we started working on it, and we went all in. So we went all in on digital literacy and digital skills, and created this platform and, you know, have nurtured it throughout these years, and I think what makes us unique is that when -- probably a few things, but when the pandemic hit, we were literally ready to go the next day. So we had -- you know, there was obviously chaos all over the place and our direct service sites struggled and so on, but the staff that was working on digital literacy skills, and digital and Northstar, and digital navigation, sprung into action, and I mean, worked double time for a year, year and a half, and we started getting calls from all over the place, and we were prepared for it, which I -- you know, I think in some ways, that's accidental. In some ways, it's not, you know? I think as a field, we need to be prepared for this kind of thing and we're lucky that there's groups out there like us that were, you know, in that place to be able to offer that, and as a nonprofit, our mission and our goal is to help and so, much of what we did was sharing, sharing what we have with other groups, and we continue to do that, so I think that that makes us unique, I think, in the sense that we -- if you go look at our website, we have an area for resources, and it's a heavily used area, literacy programs around the country come to our website, you know, and find curriculum, find digital literacy, volunteer training types of things, often. And I know there's many groups like us out there that do that, but I do think it probably shouldn't be unique, but in that sense, I think around digital skills, I think the uniqueness of us is that we were ready to go with this platform, and it turned out to be valuable. >> Don Vu: Now Eric, so you guys were ready when the pandemic hit. I guess my question is, the pandemic has kind of -- it's been over two years now, and it's changed the way we've kind of moved along in society, and it's the pandemic has actually changed in terms of its impact on us, you know, with various variants. Has that impacted your work? I know you guys were ready at the beginning. Has the changes -- have the changes in the pandemic caused you guys to make changes in your organization or has it been pretty consistent? >> Eric Nesheim: Yeah, I believe we have had to change along with the changing pandemic. The questions that people are asking about much more complex and much more advanced now than they were before. The types of programs that groups are forming, are very well thought out at this point, and there's a lot less chaos. Another change is that there is lots and lots of resources flowing now for this type of thing and so, you know, one of our biggest partners is state librarians and library systems and workforce systems, because they're forming statewide initiatives around digital literacy now, and they're needing some kind of a platform to do this work, and so we're part of, you know, many different states' platforms when it comes to what's going to happen next with the state, and the stimulus funding is aiding with that, and so I think -- I mean, it's a -- there's some success stories here, and I think there are some silver linings around sort of where we've come from and where we're going around digital equity. Whether people like it or not, it was in their face, and I think there's a lot of good work being done, and there will be more good work being done that will help us, you know, shrink that divide. That was a canyon, and maybe it's now more of a smaller canyon. >> Don Vu: Yeah, perfect. Thank you, Eric. You know what, that's a question I have for the rest of you. Tell us about the challenges your organization has faced and how it's overcome them in regards to the pandemic. I know, British touched on it a little bit. You want to elaborate on that British? >> British A. Robinson: Sure, maybe I'll pick up. I can I completely agree with everything Eric has said, and in some ways, it's that's sort of the gift of this pandemic is I think it's put a spotlight on the lack of digital literacy skills in this country, but also for us is first and foremost, I'll come back to that is this holistic approach, and that this is a multi-generational problem, and I think the pandemic and the challenges of COVID have exacerbated that, so that now you find a parent that can't get on Zoom, or doesn't know how to get on Zoom, or can't click on the app or understand the directions from the school or whatever it may be because they themselves are low-literate, and then they have a child that's maybe a struggling reader or is not on grade level reading. These things are inextricably linked. There's a continuum, and so the sort of the gift and grace in this for us is that everybody recognizes that we have to take this multi-gen full-family approach, and regardless of where you stand on the continuum, we all do different things, but that our viewpoint, our point of view, has to be more holistic, and that digital literacy, and reading and writing comprehension is not just the child, but if we don't equip that family unit, that parent, that caregiver, that auntie, that granny with the skills to help lift up their child, then we're all going to fall behind, and so I like that COVID has put this spotlight on the problem, and folks like Eric were ready to go, and frankly, all of us on this panel were ready to go in our individual ways, but I think we're being called on to do more and be more and that means more partnerships in the literacy space versus us working in our silos, and this digital literacy sort of tech piece is not going to go away. In fact, the gift of it is it helps us recognize that it's going to help us with the reach and access questions that we all have across the continuum, and so for us, we're bullish on technology. We think it's a critical element for expansion, for greater access, for greater reach, using everything in the toolkit, whether it's gaming all the way to AI, to VR, moving our programs like a 20 year old program like Teen Trendsetters. You know, within six to nine months, we were able to get that fully online, but also for some school districts, they still wanted that in-person piece, so we were flexible and nimble enough to offer kind of both, but I think the -- our success now is how, as Eric said, how do we grab a hold of this and make sure that these tools, technologies, capacity gaps, the skills that people need, are being offered across the sort of platform? And I think that's the one lesson learned but also what's driving us towards to double down on our agenda and how we can better support really folks at the at the grassroots level. What can we invest in from a technology perspective that can help folks really working at the grassroots do their work better and reach more parents and children? >> Don Vu: Thank you, British. How about you, Constance? How has your organization been impacted by COVID-19, the pandemic, and how have you successfully overcome some of the impact? >> Constance Gully: Well, before the pandemic, we had a four-year pilot with the University of Southern California led by Dr. Dorian Traube in their Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, and it was the USC -- PAT at USC telehealth were piloted all four components of our model being delivered virtually through interactive video conferencing, and at the time, we were trying to pitch it and, you know, share with people hey, this is an opportunity to reach families and may have family members that are medically compromised or and a family member, a parent that's deployed in the military, and people were listening just a little bit and it was, you know, we just kind of felt like, oh, that sounds good, but home visiting is in the home. Because of the pandemic, we couldn't go to homes anymore, so but that work gave us -- it was somewhat prescient, because we could get guidance out to our field immediately on continuing with virtual visits, and when schools were closing and childcare centers were closing, we could not stop seeing families and we did not. So that work also -- it -- we had shared it with Heising-Simons, and that particular funder said, what would it take for you to share your guidance and your learnings with a broader home visiting network? So that led to the launching of the rapid response home visiting collaborative, where we partnered with the Institute for the Advancement of Family Support Professionals and the alliance -- National Alliance for Home Visiting Models, and we created this collaborative where we had weekly initially webinars to support home visitors. They can log in, share strategies and say this is what we're doing, and then we also developed doable content on virtual service delivery. So that was -- that is how we pivoted and supported the broader home visiting field. What we did not have at Parents as Teachers was, we train professionals to deliver the services. We did it all on-ground. We couldn't do that either. So we had to stand up our training virtually, and it was already in the midst of a major overhaul. What we were able to do, by last September, we stood up our virtual training in May of 2020, but we revised it and launched it this last September in English and in Spanish, virtually. So that was -- the big hurdle was to make sure we could continue to stand up the home visiting workforce during COVID, and it's still a challenge, because we're not sure where we launched virtual training, we see a steady stream of professionals coming through, but we're still trying to figure out of that stream of professionals that we're certifying, is it growth or is it turnover because of the workforce challenges that we're facing nationally? So those are some of the challenges that we -- that mostly standing up professionals and continuing to reach families and even with virtual home visiting, the digital divide is a huge challenge. We have interactive video conferencing visits, but also telephone visits, and when we look at the data, in our programs in Indian country, we see a flip. Rather than 75% virtual and 25% phone, it was more telephone business because of the digital divide and not having access to high quality broadband, so those are some of the things that we're still dealing with, and then when we look at the number of families that were we're reaching across the country, those numbers are still declining, so just like schools have students that they cannot locate families they cannot find, I think we're experiencing the same thing in home visiting, so we have to really lean in to continue to partner with community partners that were physically referring families in person, but connecting to their remote networks as well in the current climate. >> Don Vu: Thank you, Constance. >> Kaleena Black: Do you mind if I just jump in for just a second as we're -- >> Don Vu: Of course. >> Kaleena Black: -- getting to closer time and I see some really great questions that are relevant to this conversation about COVID and how that reality has sort of changed the landscape in some ways. It was a question to all the panelists about whether your organizations face limitations or goals caused by a tight labor market and a lack of volunteers. So if anyone wants to talk about that, that'd be cool. >> Constance Gully: We haven't faced challenges on the volunteer front. Only a few of our programs heavily use volunteers, but the challenge has been, I think, because of the work that we do, being mindful of self-care and reflective supervision, where, you know, our parent educators are bearing the secondary trauma that they're experiencing serving families, so really being mindful and supporting our network of professional supervisors and leaders with understanding the importance of reflective supervision and giving time for self-care. We stood up our entire staff remotely, in late March, like most companies did, but we were all -- we had to understand that we're all experiencing the heaviness of this pandemic, in the midst of continuing to do the work. >> British A. Robinson: You know, maybe I could -- >> Eric Nesheim: That's all right. Go ahead. Go ahead. >> British A. Robinson: Sorry, I was just going to add to that. For us, we've -- you know, although we put out this program online, and we were flexible and, you know, did all these different sort of variations to meet -- again, meet people where they are, you know, the strain that we're seeing is the teachers in the school districts, right? You know, it's one more thing for them. Although they love this program, and we're bringing these very students that they care about, you know, up to grade level or beyond grade level, and they know it has value, return on investment, if you will, they just -- they can't handle it. So we had school districts pull out, just because they're overwhelmed with, you know, do I get the shot? Do I go back to school? Am I wearing the mask? I'm dealing with the parent that can't put their kid online. You know, they're so stressed out that it's just one more thing on the list, so that's the real, you know, sort of wall or challenge we've had is school districts sort of dropping in and out, and in particular, because the administrators and the teachers are really, really struggling, regardless of the supports we tried to put around them. So that's been really challenging for us. Sorry, Eric, go ahead. >> Eric Nesheim: Yeah, no. Just add to that. You're we're a pretty heavy volunteer-based organization. Sort of the literacy council world, especially in the adult literacy world, is very volunteer based. And it did heavily -- the COVID heavily affected programs like ours. We do volunteer training, so we are accustomed to, twice a month, having a roomful of 50 people to train, and then they go out and work in different programs, and that just stopped, stopped short, you know, March 13th, or whatever date that was, and so a lot of programs had to retool how they do that work, because they continue to do work, you know? Programs continue to do service for learners and, you know, and run their programs, and so a lot of work was done around how do you retool to train a volunteer to do a different kind of tutoring? And that's still happening. We have not figured it out fully. You know, I don't think if you like looked at numbers, I don't think you'd see even half the amount of work going on now that was going on before the pandemic in that category, so it's a challenge. >> Caitlin Baron: I guess, I think from our perspective, at Luminos, probably the toughest thing, quite honestly, has been the sort of unintended economic dislocation for the families that we serve, so a number of the countries that we work in had a very hard lockdown back in March 2020, with marketplaces closed, you know, people sent home from work with no sort of social safety net to speak of. And in fact, in the early days of the pandemic, when it was really difficult to get to the homes and families we support, we set up a cell phone-based survey of a sample of parents in Lebanon and in Ethiopia, and Liberia, and what we saw was in a matter of weeks, families going from families that had been sustaining themselves on two meals a day dropping to one meal a day, and we saw precipitously sort of how each additional week of lockdown had a really profound effect on really the family's ability to survive and get by and, you know, I think in those moments, we really leaned into exactly what British was saying about the need to think holistically, and were able during that time to -- I mean, our funders were remarkably supportive and enabled us to completely convert our grant funding over to literally getting food baskets to families, whose children were suffering pretty serious malnutrition. I mean, the good news in most countries we work in, we've come through that, but we're def -- we're, you know, the same story that we see in the US, we see in Liberia, right? We're in year three of a disrupted school year, and this is in a country context where five years is probably the most number of years of school that a kid's ever going to see so, we're actually dealing with the majority of the average child's time in school has now been disrupted by COVID, so it's a lot. It's humbling to see the resilience with which people push through some pretty extraordinary circumstance. >> Kaleena Black: And actually just to follow up that, Caitlin, a question came in for you, and Constance, you talk a little bit about the trauma and the emotional weight that, you know, are new realities and having [inaudible] work with, but for -- Caitlyn, for you, because the -- as the attendee asked, what are the mental health components of your program that you use, especially since so many of your students have experienced trauma? So thinking [inaudible] big picture about the trauma therapy thing. >> Caitlin Baron: Yeah, and it's a great question, Kaleena, and I think, probably as everyone would expect, this does vary a fair bit from place to place, but it's always an essential part of what we do, so in some of the new stuff we've added in the COVID period, is we've actually added socioemotional learning screener to our standard literacy and numeracy testing. So now, in each of our programs, children are assessed at the beginning of the year and the end of the year on just overall socioemotional health. We've always had a focus on self-efficacy, sort of building up the child's sense of their ability to manage their own learning. That continues to be very much the case, but we've done a lot more sensitive training for teachers on how to identify the subset of kids who are really struggling and struggling with bigger things than can be addressed in a mainstream classroom. The challenge in a lot of our operating contexts is that we don't have nearly the same sort of referral capacity that you would have in a US setting, so a lot of what needs to work as a solution, needs to be able to come from the community itself. There are often relatively few resources you can reach to outside, so giving teachers a way to understand, you know, how to identify the kids where I need to call for help from within the Luminos infrastructure has been has been really, really important. >> Kaleena Black: And I see that we have just about 10 minutes, so I just want to just get through just a couple of questions more, one that came in through the Q&A for Eric was whether your volunteer training is available virtually. >> Eric Nesheim: There is some volunteer training available virtually, and we're working hard on making it all that way. Whether it's shared yet, I don't think so. I do know that there has been a lot of work going on around the country, and maybe some people on this call might be able to help with that, too. I know New York Literacy Council has done a lot of work with volunteer training, and I think they've been putting some things online, so there's a lot of sharing going on of ways to do virtual volunteer training. And honestly, you know, sometimes the bigger question is sure, you can train somebody, but then how does the program work? Right? And so, so there's a lot of things that needed to happen over the last year and a half, but I think we're getting to a point where some programs are starting to stabilize in that area and frankly, I think there's going to be programs that just keep doing that from now on, because it has become clear that there's a lot of learners who, that's the best way for them to learn. That's the most convenient use of their time. >> Kaleena Black: Another practical question for British, someone asked where are the books coming from that go to families, to their home libraries? Do they come from various publishers? >> British A. Robinson: They come for us. They come from one publisher, but it's across grade levels, leveling up curriculum standards, so we do have a contract with a publisher without naming that, but anybody can reach me on email, and I can talk to them about it. I don't want to promote publishers, but feel free to reach out. It's a suite of about 16 to 20 books for every child that we serve, so they have their own home library. >> Kaleena Black: Great, and yeah, we'll make sure to put their website in there, so folks know how to -- >> British A. Robinson: Perfect. >> Kaleena Black: -- get in touch with you. >> British A. Robinson: Yup. >> Kaleena Black: And then the last question that I see is a question again for everybody, and it's what recommendations do you have for others who are passionate about early literacy, parent engagement, social justice, and want to make a difference? Big question, but, everybody. >> British A. Robinson: Great question. Well, I'll start with it. First and foremost, if you know of a parent or an adult or a caregiver that is low-literate and needs -- is struggling with their own literacy issues, there is an 800 number, and 800 number if you Google literacy 800 number, it comes right up. Kaleena, we can find it and get it so you can give it to folks, but you -- the big thing is to really journey with that person, with that parent, or that adult, so that they can then help their help the child. The second thing is, you know, Eric talked a little bit about all this money is flowing to states, and a lot of it right now is around devices and access, but we've really got to get people out with skills. We'd ask that you -- you know, we don't do sort of lobbying or advocacy work, but we really ask that, in order to support all of us, the bookend or the back end of this is to really get to your mayors, your executive leaders, your governors, and say to support the skills building programming, exactly like what folks are doing here. That's absolutely critical, so some of these COVID dollars and infrastructure dollars, we need it for the soft side, the skills, the holistic approach. It might be food for the mom, so she can go to the class or so that Eric can put more people, you know, on, have more online programs for volunteering. We've got to get these resources, regardless of what age we're serving. We've got to get it down to the grassroots so that these literacy programs can thrive. This issue is a through line. It's not a sidecar. If you're low-literate, you can't read a ballot, you can't vote, you can't read a medicine bottle, you don't know how to put on your mask or hand wash, you're typically living in poverty, you have poor health outcomes, etc., and so we need the funding. The biggest thing folks can do is push for funding for literacy across the continuum. >> Eric Nesheim: I would -- I'm just going to pile on to that, because I agree that it's a huge social justice issue. It's one of the biggest ones we face in our world right now, and there is a lot of funding flowing in. It isn't necessarily going to skills building, which is -- you know, there's needs in the other areas, but there's a need in the skill building area as well, and there is legislative actions through National Coalition for Literacy and some other groups, COABE, that are trying really hard to push for this, and that is something that people can definitely get involved in, and I would just -- I would even add to some of the long list that that British started that, you know, if somebody -- if everybody is now going to their doctor's online, right? -- you need to be able to use that health portal. Those are hard to use. Everyone needs to now do all the school stuff through their computers, through their laptops. Now, if you're -- if two years ago, this happened, you didn't have in your home, you didn't have a computer, your kids didn't have -- how did you do that? Right? These are huge issues, and there's a lot of resources that need to flow in certain directions, and it's correct that it is mayors, its governors, its workforce systems, its state librarians that are seeing these resources start to flow, and those are the groups we need to get out. >> British A. Robinson: Amen. Yes. >> Kaleena Black: Great. Don, and we're anywhere about five minutes away. Do you want to have, you know, the last word before we wrap up our slide deck? >> Don Vu: No, I'm just a super impressed with the work that you're all doing, British, Eric, Constance, Caitlin. Just keep on doing the work. I -- you know, and thank you so much for sharing your work with all of us and your efforts in making this world a better place through literacy education, so that's all I wanted to say. It's been a pleasure. >> Eric Nesheim: Well, thanks to all of you, as well. >> British A. Robinson: Thank you. >> Constance Gully: Thank you. >> Kaleena Black: Kathy, if you could just bring the slides back up, and then we'll just wrap up. Thank you so much to the panel for sharing their insights and more about their experience. Thank you to Don, for facilitating that conversation and really getting us all reflecting and thinking more deeply about this project, or this topic, I should say. So the one thing that we want to leave you with is another sentence stem and you can complete it in the chat or you can just take it with you, this, when you go today, but "Family literacy makes blank possible," so feel free to do with that, you know, whatever, makes the most sense to you. Kathy, you can go to the next slide. Great. So these are the websites. I'm going to put them all in the chat again, and I'm also going to include Don's website as well. And just a little bit more information about the Literacy Awards. If you want to learn more about the upcoming webinars that we have planned, we have two more coming in the session, one next month, and one in March, so if you want to learn more about those and register, you can visit our website. The next one, like I said, is next month, and it's going -- it's called Places and Spaces to Grow Literacy, so encourage you to join us for that if you're interested. Just another piece of information, a press release with details about the open period for the 2022 Literacy Awards applications, it's going to be posted next week, so do keep an eye out for that. You can find those press releases on the Library of Congress website, so loc.gov, and I'm just going to post, like I said, some more resources for you to learn more about the Literacy Awards in general, and also just kind of plug where you can find the recording for this webinar. where you'll be able to find it eventually, as well as the link for the last webinar that we did in case you missed that or want to revisit it, so I'm just going to pop those in the chat. Great. And once again, thank you so much to our panel, our moderators, to all of our colleagues at the Library of Congress who assisted in to support this event today and of course, all of you for your presence and for your reflection and for your participation. We were happy to be with you all today, and we hope to see you next time.