Well, welcome to the Farmers' Forum Saturday session. I am Patrick Byers, Horticulture Specialist with the University of Missouri Extension and our next presenter is Dan Kenney on the topic of growing a future, preparing tomorrow's sustainable growers today. So let's welcome Dan. Thank you very much. Good morning. I want to thank Sarah and I also would like to thank Small Farm Magazine for having this event today and giving me an opportunity to come all the way from Northern Illinois to share with you about what we're doing up there. Today I'm going to talk a little bit about the history of our project and then where we are now and where we hope to go. We're very early in our project and so the SAIR grant that we were given, we're in the process of using right now and I'll go into more detail about that. One of the things I wanted to ask is how many of you are actually farmers in the crowd? A couple of you. Well, I wanted to bring up something I thought about this morning is that we have something in common, possibly, is that we're both non-profits. I grew up on a small farm in Illinois, Central Illinois, and we had 180 acres as I was growing up as a child and my father had to take a job as a night watchman in order to stay farming. Then when I turned, I was born in 1953, so in the 60s, he had to get out of farming because he couldn't keep going two jobs at once and so we moved into town. Other than one summer that I took off from my summer work, I usually worked in a factory during the summer and one summer I decided I was just going to garden all summer, which was very upsetting to my father, but I spent the summer gardening and from that experience is what kind of fuels what I'm doing now and in a way what I'm doing now is going back to my roots without going back to farming per se and you'll see that as we go along. For me, I'm a teacher, I teach fourth grade and so my whole life has been about futures, preparing others for futures and so I always am thinking ahead in terms of planning ahead and one of the things that struck me was when I was working with my students and I'm from DeKalb, Illinois, which is 60 miles west of Chicago. It's a university town, Northern Illinois University is located there. We have a population around 40,000. We're connected to another town, which is Sycamore, Illinois, which has a population around 17,000 and the entire county is 100,000 people. We're right on the edge of the collar counties around Chicago so we have a lot of rural area around us and it's all large agricultural farms. We're the largest hog producer in the state of Illinois our county is yet you can drive around the county all day and never see a hog and so when I grew up, as I said, I was on 180 acres, we had cattle, we had hogs, we rotated them, we grass fed them, all that and so you know it was a very different world that these students were growing up in that I was working with and so one of the things I wanted to introduce them to was the idea of where their food comes from because they had a total disconnect from that. So our project is to use school and community gardens to teach responsibility, leadership skills, business planning, marketing, sustainable agricultural methods and social service learning. Students will learn from CSA farmers, that's what our SAR grants being used for is to pay for a young man that's worked three years on CSA farms to work with the students and educate them about what organic farming is, what sustainable farming is and the participants will learn about health benefits and eating fresh, wholesome produce. Now in our county, as I mentioned, while we're relocated, we have about 14% of our residents, around 15,000 of them in our county, that are considered food insecure. When you think about that in a county that's predominantly agricultural, it's quite a comment to make. In terms of the food deserts, you may have heard that term where people don't have access easily to fresh, wholesome food. We have that situation right in the rural areas as well. 51% of our students are considered low income and qualify for free and reduced lunch. Some of our schools even have 65% of the students qualifying for free and reduced lunch. What that translates into is if you don't know where your next meal is coming from and you have $2 or $3 for your entire family for a day for food and you rely on food pantries, most of that food is all going to be prepared, canned, boxed, so on and so you don't get a chance to have fresh, wholesome vegetables. One of the stories that has always moved me emotionally about this project is that I'm on the chair of the board of our local homeless shelter and one homeless woman said to me, you mean after all this time, after all these days of going hungry, you mean to tell me that food grows out of the ground? In the kids that I work with, the same thing, they didn't have an idea even where tomatoes came from or once I remember pulling a carrot out of the ground, this little girl's eyes got really big. I thought she was going to faint. So in 2006, I was working at the middle school at that time with seventh and eighth grade students who had kicked out of class because they weren't paying attention. So they were put in what's called in-school suspension, which was in a room upstairs. It used to be a locker room. They had put some study carols into it and there was no windows, no fresh air, and we were in there for the rest of the day with them having nothing to do. So a lot of them also were their family members or relatives were involved with gangs and they had that kind of future ahead of them. So I decided to get some grants and I got a grant from our local community development foundation, also from teaching tolerance, which is with the Southern Law Poverty Center and some other support, and we put in some gardens behind the middle school with those students. And these are the gardens today. They're 10 by 10, three 10 by 10 raised beds. And since that time, we've been keeping this going with students and volunteers and it's probably produced well over a ton of food in itself, just that one garden. Then I moved to fourth grade, as I mentioned before, and I put in a small classroom garden with my students in fourth grade. And then the next year, another teacher wanted to get involved and so we decided to expand it and to take in a larger area so that each classroom in our building could have their own five by 10 raised bed lot. So we took up the sod because this building was built in the year 2000. This is all cornfields at one time.  And so we went through the work of taking up the sod. I now have learned other ways of doing it, so I don't do that anymore, but very often. Then we had a parent volunteer who had construction skills. They built the raised beds for us. Again, we had grant money and support for that from the DeKalb Education Foundation and others. I started an afterschool program called the Green Club. It's his fourth and fifth grade students. And so they help prepare the ground and get it ready for filling the boxes. We had dirt brought in by the school district. And then we had a planting day when we had all the classes come out at different times during a two day period to plant their garden beds.  At one time, this at this particular moment, I don't know many how many classes are out there. But at one point, we had almost 100 students out there at one time, each working in their own individual beds. One of the things, of course, this whole experience teaches kids is cooperation. And this is an example, I we had this huge pile of wood chips, we put wood chips around all the raised beds. And the kids on their own came up with this idea of making a driveway through the middle of the pile, so that they could fill the wheelbarrow going down the middle. And they covered up they surrounded all the raised beds as well as did some landscaping around the building. So anyway, this is how the garden ended up then. And that's the way it looks pretty much today. We have 11 raised beds there plus a center area. And each classroom, as I said, has their own bed. So as I mentioned, our project is pretty small. But I mean, young, we just got started this year. And we raised about a ton and a half of food this year. And it was all donated food to food pantries, other than what the kids took home themselves. And that wasn't just from that garden. This is from our other projects that we have we have 16 garden sites that we put in this year. Well, two of them we had existing. So 14 went in this year, seven schools, nine community sites, over 100 beds. All of them are about five by 10 in size. We got 5,000 square feet of garden space. And right now we're working with another small, smaller town that's near DeKalb about a mile away. And they have four acres of vacant land that they're going to give us. And so that's where we're going to start putting in some hoop houses and and do some more growing of vegetables there. One of our community locations is in that small town where we put in raised beds where people could pay a certain amount of rent each year, each growing season for use of those beds. And so they want to expand that. And also we'll have a lot of space now to grow more food for the community. We one of the things I was trying to think what could I give to you in terms of practicality that you could take back to your own areas. And one of the things I would say is it's really important to just put your idea out there. Because what I've been affected by a lot is how many people come forward and want to get involved. As Levi mentioned that there's a lot going on right now with this issue of sustainable agricultural local food systems, that whole thing. And so there's a lot of we were approached by the DeKalb Public Library. And so now we're going to take over one of the vacant lots that they own. And we're going to turn that into garden space, as well as a learning area for the kids during the summer. Our local community college, that's another partnership that you could form no matter where you're located is they they've also approached us and then we're working out a partnership with them to have the hoop houses, green houses there at the community college, as well as have some interns available to us to use and to work with. Northern Illinois University as I mentioned is in our town. They have environmental studies department. Again, we're going to have some interns from there working with us, as well as there's a lot of environmental student groups on these campuses, usually that want to get involved and volunteer and things like that, and also a preschool that we're going to have a garden at next next year. One of the important partnerships that we have is with our local hospital and our local YMCA. There's a program called pioneering healthy communities. And that program is a federal grant, which is in the area of around a hundred and some thousand dollars all together that they brought in with this federal grant. And part of their initiative is walkable community and rightable community, more bike paths, more walking paths, things like that. But the other initiative is community gardens. So ours, our project started first and then they heard about what we were doing. They approached us and asked if we could partner with them. And so now we're working together with them. And that's how we got our 501C three statuses through the YMCA. Instead of the establishment our own, we went under their umbrella for the for that status. And so then we we get grant money from them as well. So again, this is how we would do it. We would go to an area. Now this is where we didn't take up the side. We would go to an area, lay out where the garden beds are going to go. And then we put down cardboard in the bottom and then fill them up with compost and soil. We have a local farmer who has spent about half a million dollars on developing composting operation on his farm. He uses his corn stalks. He uses leaves from surrounding communities as well as horse manure. He has a whole big operation where he makes these great big long wind rows of compost. He's been very generous with us in terms of working together and making that compost available to us. And that's the way the garden looked during the summer. Didn't turn out very well that picture, but they they produced on a regular basis over about over a hundred pounds of produce every week for food pantries. Then we also were approached by the city to turn in a vacant lot. This is our city hall in the background there. And so we turn in a vacant lot there into what we call the mayor's community garden. And again, we had to bring in all the supplies. We have to run the water hose all the way across from there about 400 feet of water hose from that building to our site.  This is another elementary school. One of the one of the great experiences about all this was all of the different volunteers that would get involved all of different ages and backgrounds. This is our local Hispanic Community Center where we put in gardens there. And this is another really small village that's near DeKalb called Malta. And there we have a large elementary school there. And we put in gardens with raised beds there also. Some of the benefits of school gardens are that in addition to being connected again with the land and and learning about where your vegetables come from and where food really means is that they gain self-confidence along with leadership skills. They learned like I give the example of the wood chip pile. Just little things like that that you don't think about. One of the things Levi said is about kids not wanting to touch the dirt. That's one advantage of working at the elementary level is they're not they still love playing in the dirt. And to them it's a lot of fun. And so we had a lot of energy around that. And and and they also learn how to take responsibility for different different parts of the project. The other thing is that there's been a lot of studies done. Right now there's a lot of issues and education about data and keeping your annual yearly progress. You probably have heard about that with local school districts here where you have to have a certain number of test scores above a certain percentage of all your students in order for them to reach their goal for that year. And eventually there was they were changing it now but that was going to cut down on their funding from the federal government and from the state governments that they didn't make that annual yearly progress. So when you bring up a project like gardening with schools quite often they wouldn't be open to the idea because they felt it was taken away from the academics of it. But what we have found with doing a lot of research in the studies, studies show that their achievement scores actually go up when they're involved with projects like this. These types of hands-on projects and and makes learning more relevant to them in general. The students become more fit and healthy. They spend more time outdoors. That was another big issue. One of my students last year said to me, I said to him, I think it's Thanksgiving break. They ran about four or five days off. I said what are you going to do over break? Oh I can't wait for break. He said I'm going to be playing video games 24-7 you know indoors and not outdoors. And it's the the idea that I spent all my childhood outdoors and it's like just felt sad that these kids were missing that experience and this is one way of getting them back into that that kind of experience. They also learn about the food and the healthy food compared to unhealthy food. They also learn about giving back to the community. As I said all the excess that the students don't take home with them goes to food pantries, goes to one of our feeding sites. It's called feed them soup in our community and so it helps others as well. Then there's all these benefits that go along with the community gardens. Again it encourages self- reliance on the people in the neighborhoods. What we do is these schools are spread out throughout our community and we also have them in the neighboring community of Sycamore. And so the neighbors in the areas around the schools and around the community sites can get involved with growing their own food or just getting involved volunteering to make the food available to others who need it. It brings people together, beautifies the neighborhood. There's also been studies to show that it actually in these neighborhoods where they have community gardens crime rate actually goes down. None of our gardens have fences around them and we've had very little in the way of anybody coming in to take the food or any things with related to theft. Of course right now with the situation with the economy being able to reduce your food budget to be able to stretch your dollars and food is very important to a lot of people in these in these neighborhoods. And it preserves green space as well as providing opportunities for intergenerational cross-cultural connections. One of the things that we have is a lot of senior citizens who get involved wanting to work with the kids. That's a great experience because a lot of these kids don't have a lot of role models in their own families and so it helps them in that way too. So again it's about building relationships is really important. These are just some of the funders that we've had in our and all of these are local funders. You can go for national grants and SARA is the only national grant that we've ever been able to get because it's very difficult to get national grants or even regional grant. In a way SARA is a regional grant for us and so you know what I would encourage you to do if you have any desire to do anything like this is to reach out to the area around you. We've had banks be supportive of us with small grants. We've had the school district of course the hospital the YMCA, Kiwanis, civic clubs they all would like to get involved with these sorts of things and help. And one of the interesting things at the top of the list is the Douglas Lynn Roberts Foundation. You may have heard of DeKalb Seacorn I'm sure you probably have. Anybody here hear of DeKalb Seacorn? Okay that started out with this one small farming family called the Roberts family and they developed the Seacorn over time and then about 10 or 15 years ago now I guess they sold the business to Pfizer first and then Pfizer sold it to Monsanto and now it's the largest Seacorn available in the world. And so anyway they have been very supportive of this project as well. Again I think because they started out as small farmers themselves they identify with the idea of access to food they identify with the idea of how farming has changed and have been very supportive of it. So our goals for the future my timekeeper isn't here I guess I'm doing okay. The goals for the future are to reconnect children to the land and nature as I mentioned before provide children the opportunity to learn about the origin of their food. Work toward a food secure community. One of the things we're going to be doing this winter is creating a local food security council. I'm going to get all the food pantries together get some of the faith-based organizations together and other nonprofits in our county. Get us all together in one place because right now our food pantries are all open at different times. They're located in churches and Salvation Army all different locations so people who don't have a lot of money who don't have a car who have to try to work part-time jobs and so on it's difficult for them to get to the food pantries. So we're going to see what we can do to try to figure out a better way to do this so that they have easy access. On a Thursday afternoon is the last time the food pantries open and then after that they don't have and if it's a holiday where there's nothing open on Mondays then they have four days sometimes to go without being having access to the food. And so one of the things we want to try to do is work at closing the food gap in our county. Some additional goals is one of the things I want to highlight is that we're going to be creating a sustainable farm and community sustainability learning center based at our high school. We have a new high school that was just built two years ago and it has 30 acres of land around the high school farmland and we're hoping to take that land and turn it into an actual working farm with using sustainable agricultural methods and create a CSA for the parents of the kids at the school so that they can have the produce from the farm. Any excess would go to the local feeding sites. Also one of our main goals is create a sustainable revenue stream. One of the things we teach the kids is about composting and all of our sites eventually will have compost piles so that we can start and especially that four acre site we hope to be able to do a large amount of composting and start bringing in some revenue in terms of collecting food scraps from local restaurants and local residents because we don't have municipal food scrap composting in our area and so we hope to be able to do that as a way of charge a little bit to pick up those food scraps from those individuals and those businesses and be able to use that as a revenue screen. We're also going to be establishing a community commercial kitchen for processing the food so that people farmers or local growers of one kind or another can rent the space go in there and do their own processing and make it available to the community for sale and they would pay a little bit of rent for that and that would be another possible small revenue stream. Levi already talked quite a bit about community food system and that as I mentioned that's one of the things we're working on in our county. One of the things you might want to bring up to with as you go for I don't know what it's like in Missouri but in Illinois we have 46 billion dollars a year spent on food and 85 percent of the fruits and vegetables consumed in Illinois could be grown in Illinois but that money is going out of Illinois. We only have about 20 percent or less than 20 about 2 percent of the money stays in the state for food and even though we're an agricultural state it goes out of the as you know your food usually travels 1500 miles before it gets to your plate. Here are some resources if you're interested in doing this on your own. There's the American Community Garden Association, University of Missouri has a community gardening toolkit on their website and the University of Illinois Extension Master Gardener program which is not relevant for you but you have one here in Missouri too. So one of the things I wanted to leave with you was that the important thing is if you were interested in doing something like this is always to be thinking in terms of what relationships you can build and who you can tap into and reach out to in your own community and to use all forms of communication. We have a Facebook page with over 200 members on it. We have our website. We have brochures. There's all kinds of ways to knock on people's doors. We go door to door in the neighborhoods around the gardens to reach out to people and get them involved. And one last thing as I mentioned earlier if you are a farmer and you're struggling to get by and you have all the headaches and you have all the struggles of a non-profit without any of the perks if you consider grants a perk. Most farmers are burdened with loans. What we get is grants. If you work in an educational component into what you're doing on your farms you are then can move into having a separate 501c3 non-profit as part of your business. Thank you. You did fine Dan and thank you very much. Is there a quick question or two you'd like to ask? There's one back there. This is one of the best programs I've ever seen especially in just one year you've been doing this. It must be more than just you. Did you use the American Community Garden Association or how many people actually got this thing rolling? That's a good question. Well we started in March of this year or February was our first meeting. Basically I used a network of friends already had but I got the word out through the newspaper article and we had our first meeting and it just kind of grew from there. We have about 25 people that make up a core committee that is like a steering committee for it and then from there we have as I mentioned we've had over the year probably 200 or more volunteers from Boy Scouts classroom the schools themselves have the kids involved with with planning the gardens and caring for the gardens and harvesting the gardens. If it's a community site like the Hispanic Center they have some of their own volunteers from the Hispanic Center take care of the garden. So it's a lot of volunteers right. So I don't get paid anything. I consider myself the director but I don't get paid anything. It's all volunteer work. Dan says he'll be out back for a little bit and so you can ask him questions back there if you want to. Thank you again Dan that was really a good program.


So, I'm interested in doing research on microbes that's found inside the sheep's stomach. And I'm interested in creating a vaccine for the animal that will help reduce the greenhouse gas that's being produced, being bell child of the sheep. My background is in protein biochemistry and I'm interested in looking at the proteins on these microbes and hopefully making a vaccine for the animal to change their gut microbes. It wouldn't completely cure off the microbes, it'll help reduce the number of them. And so reducing the number, reducing the amount of greenhouse gas being produced. As we know, global warming is a big issue, especially with New Zealand being a pastoral based country. Being able to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas for all the farmers and keeping the economy going is very important. So on daily basis, I assess the different proteins that's on the surface of these microbes called methanogens. And at the moment I'm looking at trying to find different targets that may have not been looked at before. And so I'm hoping to use my biochemistry knowledge and just go on an antigen hunt. I love it. Yes, it's a lot of fun. I like doing a lot of new biochemistry techniques and also working together with a lot of immunologists, which is something different. And also having a chance to collaborate with scientists up at Massey University.


Hey friends Yes, this time it's moonlight magic. It's our first time for my magic here. Oh boy, the fireworks But we're gonna meet up with some friends have a good time and meet some really cool interesting characters So let's go do this Alright all checked in got our voucher and a big thank you Hey Yes, our friends who brought us in this evening. Thank you guys Here is a look at some of the character me and greats the seventh sister both Sweetomes Buzz Lightyear and Jesse Chewbacca and Ray Darth Vader captain phasma BB-8 and also Oswald the rabbits gonna be out and the Ewoks So I kind of want to see the Ewoks Far cry Of what the Star Wars fireworks used to be I miss them so much, but it's still very nice And we ran into a world of Micah hey and the holy moly So cool, and what are they doing over there? Yeah, that's some intense vlogging that's what I'm about to do. That's my new setup I didn't want to break the You heard her here first world of Micah first things first Oswald have to get Oswald done. We're inside the path of the Jedi and We're with this life of ours. Hey, I said it right Thank you And a lot of other fun amazing people I'm so excited to meet you. Thank you. Yes, so excited She's excited too.  Who made that? Oh I love it. Yes. Yes, you did lucky. Ah, all right. Let's take a photo Wow That was amazing Oswald is a great meeting great. Yeah, I can't believe he smooched you like he was He made the noise. Yeah It was cute. We met him before at Disneyland. Yes, we have ventured across the pond once Yes across. No, we didn't go across the pond Caverns no well if you when you say across the pond it actually means you go across the water So we went across the land So let's go see what other cool characters there are to meet Well, you got the seven sister meet and greet right outside Star Tours Hey, wait, I went like this. Hey, but we're looking for the Ewoks Right over there. Oh fantastic. Thank you. I Have to say I am so happy to meet you guys. I really am It's like my childhood dream come true. Thank you. Yes, awesome. Please high five. I love you my favorite. Oh No, it's recording All right, I'm gonna get a photo with you guys, please Look how amazing We're coming back for more Veronica's not familiar. She's not familiar with what Ewoks are That's right get her I don't mind take her out throw her throw her away. You're gone They're very nice What yes She's like, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh wait, do I go in the middle or yeah, I go here. Thank you and After meeting the Ewoks, I feel like I need to get a beverage because my heart is definitely going pitter-patter Yes, my heart. It's going pitter-patter. I love Ewoks Seriously Ewoks were probably my favorite thing so far tonight and probably will always be my favorite thing. I Stopped at baseline to get myself a scrim shot. I'm still a little under the weather Yep is a little under the weather. So if you see her Sweating or got a face like that right now. It's because she's got a little bit of a cold It's not bad. We've been out of the parks for five days now So it's kind of like oh, we're so happy, but it's the first time she's come back out of my help I may I have a hole in the bed. Oh, well you guys if you're on our live stream. No, yeah, I haven't been feeling well Yeah, she hasn't been feeling well, but we are gonna go meet sweetums. I'm so excited for that as well But I'm better enough to the point where I'm not going to spread it to anyone else. Yes I would think that's very important.  Yes, please Five days, so let's go meet sweetums five days. Was it five days? Yeah Well, I'm making an educational guess that sweetums is actually down here by muppets and I think I'm right. I Think I am right. Oh, look who's here Look at that. I knew that Everywhere we go. We're right behind you I'm in line to meet sweetums Veronica left me And she video chats me and look where she's at she is partying up at pizza riso without me I can't even believe this Can you believe this? Huh? Goodbye. Oh Oh Hiya, let me get my hand there. There we go. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, yes, yes, yes What no, that's me she doesn't know that's me I've always wanted to meet you she doesn't she doesn't care She doesn't care I care No, yes, yes, no, I care. No, thank you Who cares who cares you're right. Thank you. You're right. Who cares you're right She's right Yep, definitely It's alright Sweetums it's okay. Oh They're gonna have to coach about this Sweetums have now put you you're in time out. Thank you sweetums Okay You got it, you're okay. All right, come on All right, we'll let her stay we'll let you stay. Thank you. Yeah, just don't look at us. Yes What What does that even do It eats food Wait, do you got a kiss by sweetums? Oh, yeah, I did All right Got my eye on you sweetums And you don't have your eyes on me Thank you Okay, sweetums were sweet wasn't it? Sweetums was definitely My whole life growing up like walking right It was really exciting bunny. I know some of you like him I know but that bunny so why I know but Right sweetums is great and I'm so excited we get to meet them. We got to meet them. We got to meet. We got to meet sweet Yeah, now you're ready to go I know well, yeah, we've already established that and I'm very upset Guys, I know you're on your way, but thank you both. You're wonderful. I appreciate it You wait, he's missing some spy. He's got the bolt spot right on his back. What do you want to be a Dalmatian? Veronica literally just said both is missing some spots. She's basically saying both needs to be a Dalmatian. I Don't even know what to say Well, there's nobody waiting for you I'm so sorry. I gotta come over here. I absolutely love her You're the best anyway, we don't need anybody else. We just need us just us I was being nice She's an angel Yes Very good. Very good Very good an angel. She saved the galaxy Yes, good job Yes Oz won you walk Sweetums and the seven sister and now Our Thomas Jefferson we can't decide but we are going to go into the Backlot Express and use our voucher because we get a free meal With this wonderful voucher. Anything we like I guess This voucher may be redeemed for one quick service meal at one of the following locations That is the perks of moonlight magic. So let's see what we're going to get here And then we're going to use the other one at another spot I think we're going to go with the dark side chicken and waffles Oh, yeah And there is the dark side chicken and waffles look at Darth Vader We figured since we have two vouchers will split one and one so that way we could try two different things at two different spots Makes it make sense.  Thank you All right chicken and waffles were very delicious She didn't like them though Well, she didn't like the syrup mixed with the chicken and the waffle. She ate the chicken and the waffle together. Just no syrup Yeah, I like it mixed together. I don't know It's definitely a unique taste Now we have a dance party we have to get to yeah, that was my first time with the chickens and the waffles Oh, that was your first time with the chicken and the waffles, huh mixed with syrup and stuff All right, let's go dance. Thanks Kind of a fun fact but we stopped and did Oswald first thing because we thought that that was going to be probably the busiest Was gonna be the busiest line that we'd have to wait on to actually meet Oswald and we waited like 20 minutes And right now there is nobody in there waiting to meet Oswald and it's an hour before the party ended so So if You do come to moon night magic then you Should wait until a little bit later, I guess I don't know if that's how it is all the time That was feeding you water. I don't know. She just walked by Just to let you know It's a baddie bash And indiana jones We're here look at this party I think we are just super excited to actually be able to come down on the indiana jones stage That's what i'm most excited about you go get it many go get it. Yes Doing his dance anna jones I'm sorry if i'm yelling, but I don't know if the music's too loud or if my voice is too loud So we're gonna keep it at this level for now Oh, you got some serious dance moves, man. I love it. Oh Whoa You can't dance like that You can't I'm trying to get baronica to like try to do the thing where like the spikes are coming out. Is this where it is? I'm pretty sure everybody is in toy story land at this moment See we shouldn't have left the dance party The lion king just came on and it's your fault I I would like some money What to go gift shopping. Oh, man. I think we need to learn the lyrics This is the hollywood studios. I love right here Oh No, it's so quiet peaceful. There's not a lot of crowds Believe it or not. We have seen this this park like this During normal operating hours actually Oh, but we've seen it like this before during normal operating office. Should we get uh a free No, not right now. No, okay. Maybe later. No Well, I think we're going to catalina eddies to get a meat lover's pizza pie Keep them flying. Hey We waited a little bit to get our pizza Because I mean it's very busy. The cast members are working very hard You can only imagine what it's like when everyone's coming around with free vouchers But we did get strawberry lemonade and We're taking our pizza to go with us Right. Yeah, that's pretty awesome that they gave us a to-go box So we can eat that later. We might have filled up on the chicken and waffles Look at that a mickey premium bar dropped on the ground You'll see that you'll see that a lot I know you'll see that a lot of dbc events You knew you stepped in the ice cream bar. Yeah, I wanted to see what it would feel like underneath my shoe Because here at moonlight magic Mickey bars flow like wine This party's over this party's over guys The party never ends That's right the party never ends But we are done with today. It was pretty amazing. I had such a great day Yep, Yip's makeup is running. I was looking for that. That's what I was actually checking. I know you were Dark dark dark under eyes So thanks so much for watching Absolutely love tonight. Yes. Thank you for our friends for inviting us along. We had a blast Absolutely blessed. We met so many wonderful people tonight. Yeah, we met a lot of you guys tonight and it was awesome Yes, and we're walking home with some pizza and this is the best I've looked since 1942 So love the life you live the life you love. We'll see you next time Somebody left their food here. What did they get? No, it's literally right there. The guy is literally right there It's right there at the trash can Well, that was embarrassing I told you that was his food. No it wasn't was it? Oh shucks What cool off I got you this ice cream bar to cool off here have it have it to cool off Oh, that's not leaking that's just popcorn It's not leaking though. I know oh Yeah, I got skills Yeah, I got skills Oh, so close. This is getting very one more time for good luck. This is the one It's not gonna happen. No, you're putting too much more vertical onto it All right Perfect we did it We did it


I'm going to get us started and welcome everybody to the second annual pitch competition co-sponsored by the Program and Practical Policy Engagement here at the Ford School in our Graduate Career Services office. I'm Liz Gerber, I'm the director of P3E and I see lots of people who have helped make this event happen. I apologize in advance if you are one of those people and I miss you but I'd like to thank the P3E staff, Maryam Nagarin and Cindy Bank, the GCS staff, I see Jennifer, I see Peter, I think I see Claire. Sorry if I've missed anyone. It took a lot of people to bring us all together here and for a really exciting event. I'd also like to thank our good friends and sponsors Phil and Kathy Power who are serving for the second year as judges. I will hand it over in a moment to Peter who will give a proper introduction to all of the judges but just want to recognize Phil and Kathy for their generosity in supporting the Ford School's engaged learning. We are all very grateful and this kind of event allows us to sort of see all the great engaged learning internship experiences you guys are all having. So could everybody please join me in thanking the amazing staff who's helped bring us together. But you did not come here to listen to me, you came here to listen to Peter. No, right. Peter Vasher really and Cindy Bank really sort of led this the work in organizing this and I hand it over to Peter to get us going, thanks. Yeah maybe he came to hear me very briefly and then we'll kick it to our students. But thank you for coming to our second annual policy pitch competition, very excited about that and we have a very full room which is fantastic. But we appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with our friends in P3E and thank you to our staff for working hard to make this happen. Jennifer, Claire, Casey, Shiyu and Elizabeth for being here and supporting the event today. Thank you to our judges who I'll introduce here shortly and then also thank you to our student presenters. So thank you for having the courage and the confidence to come up and deliver your pitches today. So if we could have them a hand at the outset. All right, so our judges right up here, but we have Kathy Power of the Power Foundation and she is also a community volunteer with such organizations as Planned Parenthood and the Humane Society if you're on Valley. We have Kathy Hand. We have Phil Power who is a BA from the University of Michigan 1960, a former newspaper publisher and served on the U of M Board of Regents from 1987 to 1999. He is a member of the Ford School Committee as well. He was the owner of Hometown Communications Network, an award-winning group of 64 community newspapers in Michigan and the Upper Midwest. Phil founded the Center for Michigan in 2006, a think-and-do tank that encourages greater understanding and involvement in policy issues among Michigan citizens. He also helped found the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce and served as Vice Chairman of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. So I can give Phil a thank you. Next up we have Alusha La Samuel. He is a division administrator for Michigan Medicine and also the chair of the Ford School Alumni Board. Alusha helps lead division finances, human resources, operations, research administration and faculty affairs for Michigan Medicine. Prior to this he was a business manager over at Beaumont Health in Royal Oak where he helped lead the integration and strategic planning for women's and children's services across the organization's eight hospitals. He's also been instrumental in leading the reunion that's coming up in a couple weeks here at the Ford School. So thank you. We have Nikki Sunstra. She's responsible for developing innovative solutions to strategically leverage and advance interactive communications at the University of Michigan. She leads the social communications office and strategic oversight of the president's public engagement and impact initiative. These efforts, along with the university's social integrity project, each aim to ensure that all online communications provide additional value to university stakeholders while mitigating institutional risk, elevating brand perception and educating users of all ages and around the globe of the lasting impact of these critical tools. And prior to the University of Michigan, she worked developing and coordinating the state of Michigan's statewide social media footprint. So thank you for being here. And last but not least, we have John Zeraldo who's the president of Commonwealth Consulting and former vice president of program and strategy at the Skillman Foundation where he led their vision and strategy in support of the development of program team members. He brings significant experience from the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors. Most recently serving as a VP at Skillman, a senior program officer at the William Davidson Foundation and also as president and CEO of Lighthouse in Oakland County. He also was the director of programs at the Guidance Center and a founding executive director of the Thompson McCauley Foundation. John holds a BA in philosophy from Detroit's Secret Heart Seminary and an MPA from the Ford School of Public Policy here at the University of Michigan. John's also a lifelong Detroiter and die-hard Red Wings Tigers and Lions fan, which I appreciate. All right, I know you've heard enough from me and we will get started by just a couple housekeeping logistics on the evening. So we have 11 presenters here today delivering their pictures and throughout the evening I'll be popping in to give a quick fun fact about our judge's time to recoup their thoughts so you hear from me a couple times. But these fun facts will be focused on internships career development and other fun things about career aspirations and for those in the audience I actually have pulled some data that you shared with us a couple weeks ago so you may hear something that you have shared in your first couple weeks of school here at Ford. But without further ado we welcome our first pitch presenter, Monica. Hi everyone and thank you all so much for being here today. My name is Monica Anderson and before I came to grad school I worked for about three years as a case manager working with young adults who suffered serious mental illness. I absolutely loved the work. I loved the interpersonal work. I love doing social work. But over time I was increasingly frustrated with some of the systems that social work exists within and some of the disconnect that I was seeing between who is making mental health policy, who is implementing it, and who is receiving these services. And I really wanted to do something about it but I couldn't figure out what the right career path was. Unbeknownst to me at the time dual degrees exist and I am now a second year dual degree student with the School of Social Work as well. When I was looking for an internship last year I was really thinking about agencies that inspire me and that I really like. I ended up cold emailing the executive director of the New York City Office of the National Alliance on Mental Illness also known as NAMI. NAMI is the largest grassroots mental health organization in the country. They are unique in that they serve not only those living with mental illness but also their family and their loved ones. To my shock the executive director responded to me also and said that they wanted to have a little bit more focus in public policy and that they might have a spot for me. NAMI New York City has a full-time staff of 12 people, a budget of just over a million dollars and they reached 13,000 people last year. They're an incredible office to see what they can do. The beauty of working in such a small office also was I got to work all summer directly with the manager of public policy and advocacy. I got to really help shape what our priorities are, what we wanted to be pushing, what we wanted to be working on. I did everything from breaking down the data of who is using our services to researching legislation to helping organize a rally to help save a hospital that was at threat of closing. One of my biggest projects though and what I'm really very proud of is from start to finish I researched, wrote, created and delivered an entire campaign plan that NAMI NYC is still using in order to pursue the passage of a bill that is currently stuck in committee in New York. The bill would require all teachers in New York to receive training in mental health, eating disorders and behavioral disorders. And considering 50% of all mental illness show signs by the age of 14, this is super important info for teachers to have. All of my work came together in my last week of my internship when we did what we called an Advocacy Week. My supervisor and I traveled throughout New York City. We hit three of the five boroughs. We met with almost a dozen elected officials. We talked to them. We told them what NAMI does. We gave them statistics about how many of their specific constituents had used our services. We pitched this education bill to them, asked for their support, and in general we built relationships with the elected officials so that we could keep pursuing good mental health policy. The New York legislature is not back in session until January. I wish I had the vacation of New York legislature. So I'll see what happens with that education bill then. And I'm looking forward to hearing if it can finally move out of committee. In the meantime I'm not sure what I'll do after I graduate. I kind of like the unknown also. One thing I did learn this summer which surprised me is that I really don't like New York City. So I probably won't end up there. But what I do know is I want to keep doing work like this. I want to keep advocating and talking about mental health and really speaking on behalf of organizations that I believe in such as NAMI. Thank you so much. All right and we now welcome Carl. Three years ago my wife and I bought the four unit apartment building where we were living. As part of our commitment to make our building affordable for our low-income tenants we participated in a home energy weatherization program. This means we improved our building's energy efficiency in order to save our tenants money on their electric bills. This experience sparked my interest in energy policy as I enrolled at the Ford School. Nevertheless last year I really struggled to narrow down my internship search. I'm a generalist so I like a lot of things. In fact when I met with Jennifer from Career Services and she asked me what I wanted to get out of this experience the best answer I could give was I want to solve really big problems. I landed an internship with the Michigan Energy Office in the Department of Environment Great Lakes and Energy. The Energy Office acts as a bridge between federal and state grant programs and local stakeholders. They work on projects that promote clean energy and reduce energy waste. I worked on a series of pilot programs in three communities that combine solar energy credits with home weatherization programs for low-income families. Our program had three main goals. We wanted to reduce electricity usage, reduce energy burdens for these families, and improve their home health environment. And this program fit me perfectly. I got to work on two really big problems. Affordable housing and climate change. And it jump-started my experience in energy policy. Most exciting was the way I was able to see how the skills and knowledge I learned in my first year at the Ford School applied to my internship. I want to give you three examples. First I was working on an analysis of our Cherryland pilot. And I wanted to answer question number one. Were our subscribers using less electricity? Which turns out is a really difficult question because temperature variations from year to year can affect how much a household uses. And we didn't have data on whether they were using air conditioners or portable heaters. So I used an econometric solution from program evaluation. I regressed electricity usage on temperature data and I found, yes, our subscribers are using less electricity. Second, I wanted to solve this data problem. So I wanted to create two new surveys. A pre-survey and a post-survey for future pilot programs. But I'd never created a survey before. So the energy office paid for me to attend a survey course. And when I did that I was able to start conducting these surveys with the participants of our second pilot program. Finally, as we were preparing for this second pilot program we wanted to try something new with financing. And there was a lot of debate among our stakeholders about whether a short term or a long-term financing option would be better. I used a lesson from Microeconomics about the future value of money to prove that the long-term option was not only better for all of our subscribers but also better for the electric utility. This experience allowed me to work on two really big problems and helped me plug into the energy policy circuit. It built on my experience as a landlord and helped me to apply my skills from the Ford School. But best of all I was able to directly connect with the people who were benefiting from our program. This survey reminds me that even though I don't know exactly what big problems I want to tackle after the Ford School, it's the people whose everyday lives are impacted by these big policies that need to inform the solutions. Thank you. All right this is one of those times where I'm going to say a few words. And actually it starts out with trivia. So I want to leverage the quant skills in the audience. So you'll see that we have 11 presenters tonight.  But just guesses from the audience in terms of combined mileage. One way for each of these students from Ann Arbor, so adding up from Ann Arbor to Detroit. Ann Arbor to Lansing for all 11 students. Seeing the reach of these 11 presenters and in the Ford School what that total mileage may be. Do we have any guesses? We can go over under here. We're just a number. You don't have to throw out a calculator but you can use one if you want to. But any guesses? Okay John is guessing 50,000 a little less than that. 11,000. All right. A little more than 11. All right. We're going to go with 17 as the closest guess. Not price is right rules. But the correct answer is 15,527. So nice guessing them over here. And all right we're going to we are going to bring it bring it back together though and get started with pitch number three. But just two points on distance and again in geographic reach of Ford School policy impact. So at the graduate level the furthest international destination was in Dilley Timor-Leste which is 9,505 miles from Ann Arbor. And we had two students that were there at the Asia Foundation. And then domestically we had one student in Honolulu, Hawaii, Hawaii, Appleseed which is 4,445 miles from Ann Arbor. So just some geographic trivia because I like maps if you've been in my office. But thank you for playing Ford Fun Facts Trivia. And Afrasal come on down. Thank you Peter. I think I contribute like 9,000 miles because I'm from Indonesia. Good evening ladies and gentlemen my name is Aprisal. I'm a second year MPP student and I'm from Indonesia. One year ago September 4th, 2018 it is the first day I stepped my feet here at Will Hall to pursue graduate study in public policy. And then 25 days later a 7.4 earthquake hit Central Sulawesi Indonesia. It followed by two tsunamis and at least three liquefactions. That disaster destroyed Central Sulawesi, my hometown. It killed more than 4,500 people. Some of them are my friends. Some of them are my neighbors. And at least 173,000 men, women, children lost their homes. Five months later I received an email from Direct Relief in Santa Barbara California offering an internship as a research intern for a disaster relief program. Direct Relief is a humanitarian aid organization with a mission to improve the life and health of people affected by disaster and poverty without regard to politics, religions or ability to pay. I was surprised to receive this email because first I was not applying for that position and they actually created that specific position for me. And the second because the disaster relief program was actually in Central Sulawesi in my hometown. My internship focused on two main things. The first one I have to analyze and map the disaster impact after eight months and how the government policy were being implemented especially in the area of housing, health and international aid. I travel across Central Sulawesi especially to the remote areas where government support seems unavailable. I talk to the refugees asking them what's it's needed right now and the most pressing challenges they currently face. And I put all of my findings and document everything and create an interactive map using ARGIS online for the public to see. The second focus of my internship is to work together with local governments and communities and university to come up with a plan to build healthcare infrastructures. I evaluated at least nine budget proposals from local governments. I drafted two grant agreements and two memorandums of understanding. Yeah I found that at the end of my internship I successfully organized a signing ceremony between direct relief, the vice president himself coming to Indonesia and also the government of Central Sulawesi province and also government of SIGI Regency, Palu City and Donggala Regency and also University of Muamadiyah. All of these stakeholders they finally agree and I'm so happy to that they finally agree to build a hospital and aid public health clinics in Central Sulawesi. My takeaway from this internship well apart from gaining 20 pounds for the last eight weeks probably the new interest that I found toward disaster management policy and it has grown since I started the semester here in Ann Arbor. Today September 17, 2019 one year later I am standing here in front of you all and I'm wearing this traditional hand woven clothes from Central Sulawesi. I'm celebrating one year studying public policy in the US and I'm also mourning for the day the disaster happened in my hometown. Central Sulawesi still has a lot of things to do to recover from the disaster but I would like to take my last 10 seconds to extend my gratitude especially to Fort School Public Policy and also Graduate Character Service for bringing me back to my hometown and also for direct relief for most importantly giving a new hope to Central Sulawesi. Thank you and God bless you all. All right let's welcome Brooke. So I'm gonna start with a question who here has ever written an email? Now raise your hand yeah absolutely all right probably all of us right I think some of you might be writing ones right now I'm kidding but just think about how integral email has become we use it to communicate to apply to jobs to ask questions heck an email probably invited you to this very event yet if you've never sent an email it can present a major barrier so if this were an email I should have started with a greeting maybe dear judges maybe dear audience but then you have to introduce yourself so my name is Brooke Bossigal and I'm a senior at the Ford School. Two years ago my co-founder Ayakutma and I started an organization called Revive. It was 2017 and we are entering into the sixth year of the Syrian crisis while Syrian students were pushed out of classrooms and joined what's called the lost generation or a group of students who due to longevity of conflict have been out of school for five plus years I was sitting in this room in my second year of university reading about them now I went into policy because unlike other degrees where we would stay in that ivory tower studying the effects of the refugee crisis board students are equipped with the skills to roll up our sleeves and actually start something to go out and do something and make a change so we did recognizing limitations since we couldn't teach all of fifth grade or pay for everyone's tuition couldn't even really pay for our own we made it our mission to focus on those smaller things like emails cover letters job applications things that we take for granted but that present legitimate barriers to refugee students on a daily basis through revive we partner with organizations that are embedded in the community to conduct needs assessments and develop culturally relevant curriculum to date we've had five workshops in over four different cities in the u.s and turkey and are looking to expand to Lebanon in the spring so this summer I realized that individual change without institutional change is not simply enough refugee students could learn how to apply to colleges but if colleges couldn't learn how to accept refugee students then barriers like how someone could be fluent in five languages but maybe only proficient in English or requiring high school transcript from schools that have been destroyed by war present really serious barriers they inhibit enrollment and discourage applicants so moving forward through a partnership with a school of social work I'm looking to address the application process itself to make it easier for refugee students to apply to college now we skipped through a couple steps in our lesson but you end the body of your email with your request and a conclusion I urge you to share and learn what you have learned I urge you to share what you learn with those who have not had the same opportunities as you and learn from their experiences as well because what I've learned through my work is that at the end of it all we're sitting in this room sending emails for no other reason than circumstance and fate and the students I work with through revive deserve the same opportunities that we've received every bit as much as we do so we should give them that chance thank you for listening comma Brooke Bossigl and send all right this is one of our brief breaks again but back to geography so I want to take a moment to focus on our undergraduate students and through the hard work of the forest school and generous donors at the undergraduate level we were able to support 37 students across a variety of sectors on internships in summer 2019 and these undergrad internships were in five countries seven different states ten different cities and all policy sectors so we checked all our boxes when it came to nonprofit management advocacy local state federal government you'll hear from another undergrad here shortly but getting to miles again and our reach again at the Ford school so domestically at the undergrad level the furthest domestic internship was at a non-profit in San Francisco 2,358 miles from Ann Arbor and the furthest international undergrad internship was in Kazakhstan which is 5,811 miles from Ann Arbor so we're gonna get to some more fun stuff here momentarily such as me passing it over to herson my name is Herzon I'm a second year MPP and I'm from Chicago this summer I had the honor of working for Detroit public schools community district which is dedicated to serving all students in Detroit and I was assigned to the office of government affairs my experience can be summed up by one of my favorite poems by Tupac Shakur and it goes like this did you hear about that rose that grew from the crack in the concrete proving nature's laws wrong it learned to walk without having feet funny it seems but by keeping its dreams it learned to breathe fresh air long lived the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared you see the students of Detroit Chicago and other struggling districts are roses and yeah we have bruised petals but people need to learn to celebrate our tenacity and our willingness to grow you see at second grade I needed an individualized education program which meant I was a special ed kid since schools since my school like resources there were time students like me didn't have enough I didn't have a proper classroom to learn separately from the regular students so we had a jump from the lunch room basement and closets at times but outside were other factors that played a role like the local gangs like the poverty and violent in my neighborhood but thereby the grace of God a consistent work ethic and a strong family foundation I'm able to be here with you today you see I believe we can't separate politics from public education the politics of compassion and decency is needed and it is the least we can do for our future leaders what happened throughout my primary education was political and it should not be the norm that is why I was so motivated to spearhead dpscd's legislative agenda by helping launch their bill tracker using share point I had to compile all legislation introducing the education committees which was well over 2000 bills so every department head can follow and follow the legislation that was related to their line of work additionally I summarize bills that would directly impact the choice public education system these build these these summaries were sent to my supervisor to keep her in the loop of all the the specific bills necessary I'm proud to have worked for an institution that like me has overcome so much despite critics calling it a failure you see it's not true that dpscd mismanages funds in fact it's on its third consecutive year with a budget surplus the number of fully staffed schools is increased from 22 to 44 and that's since 20 2017 this year dpscd managed to decrease chronic absenteeism by 7% it may not be much but it's heading towards the right direction don't get it twisted we don't want handouts or pity just stop pointing at our bruised petals instead help celebrate our willingness to reach the sun before coming to michigan I was the assistant to the Illinois deputy governor and chief operating officer and I had some doubt that education policy was still my interest but I am happy to have been relieved of that doubt after my experience in Detroit thank you all right let's welcome aloka hi everyone my name is aloka Narayanan and I'm a second year MPP originally from sandy miss california some of my earliest and fondest memories come from the sandy miss public library my local favorite place in my hometown i have vivid recollections of walking in the seemingly gargantuan double doors hand in my mother's on my way to the next fantastical adventure that is whichever book i grabbed first my mom who is now retired was a preschool teacher who worked part-time when i was a kid while my dad worked full-time as an accountant mom was there to drop me off and pick me up from school every day read me read to me every night cook healthy meals for the family and volunteer at my school whenever she got the chance as a result of my parents stable career and incomes I enjoyed the privilege of a childhood oblivious to the threats of food and security and homelessness my parents continued investment of time money and attentiveness are the reasons that i'm here today most of Detroit's children don't have the same opportunities that I did growing up due to simple truths of economic disinvestment some parents work two to three jobs a day with barely enough time to sleep let alone take their kids to the library 60 percent of Detroit children under five live in poverty and only 15 percent of children are reading proficiently by grade three when i point to key reasons for why i'm here today it all comes back to early childhood education and supports that i received that's why i chose to spend my summer working on a city-wide grade level reading campaign in Detroit i worked with brilliant Detroit a remarkable nonprofit in the city that builds kid's success neighborhoods where families and children are able to build steady healthy stable lives the initiative i worked on is called 313 reads and it boasts a systems level approach to ensure that more children are reading by reading proficiently by grade three during my 10-week internship i worked with brilliant Detroit and poverty solutions at the University of Michigan to strengthen 313 reads collective impact model in three ways first i interviewed nonprofit directors in Detroit to assess capacity for expansion of early childhood services and possibilities to build stronger referral networks between them second i researched leading practices used by grade level reading campaigns across the nation and education experts here at u of m to track progress on community-wide literacy goals finally i built an evaluation framework informed by all of the above that would allow nonprofits and community leaders alike to see how well the city was doing at accomplishing all of those goals i feel empowered every single day by the sincere efforts of my parents to build opportunity for me the closest intervention to the comprehensive supports that i and others in my position have received is a collective impact model which is essentially a comprehensive model for collaboration 313 reads involves partners from early education providers to pediatricians and food banks promising progress of other collective impact grade level reading campaigns gives me the inspiration to continue doing this work in Detroit after graduation i certainly will remain connected to the city and find new ways to contribute to the rise of new generations thank you all right get to hear from me briefly again so at orientation if you're a member back a couple weeks three or so i know so much has happened since then we asked our incoming mpp's a couple questions if you're a call being in our space 34 to our tiny room asking about your career aspirations and interests so one of those questions that we asked you if you recall is what will you do this semester to position yourself well to achieve your career related goals so i just want to let you know that we do read those and i'm going to share a couple responses with you right now so number one read the weekly emails thank you for doing that and showing up tonight uh go to employer information sessions self-reflection start early to figure out what organizations i want to internet go to programs again coming here check try to develop relationships with faculty and alums who have experience in international policy and i will challenge myself to develop stronger quantitative skills i will push myself to ask for help attend as many info sessions employer events as possible so that's just a couple that we captured but we are ready to continue with our program so pranav good evening my name is pranav govindaraju and i'm a senior here at the ba program at ford i came to michigan from san jose california where i grew up in the heart of silicon valley in a family of computer scientists and engineers so as you can probably guess i grew up with a passion for anything but computer science and engineering instead in high school i focused my time on activities like debate where i argued about things like the dot frank act and the trans-pacific partnership and i was fascinated you see i wanted to learn how governments design regulations to account for things that are as unpredictable and as multivariate as the free market it was a desire to answer questions like this that took me here to the ford school and eventually led to me applying for an internship at the federal reserve now just for some background on the federal reserve board or the fed the fed is basically the central bank of the united states it operates under a dual mandate from congress to ensure long-term price stability and low levels of unemployment now the fed also has to maintain independence and this just basically means that they don't check their twitter now i was hired to be a policy analytics intern in the division of supervision and regulation and as the name suggests this was the body that was responsible for supervising and regulating financial institutions so basically if any of the nation's banks were breaking the rules it was our job to find out now when i got to the fed i was tasked with a project to investigate atypical fluctuations in the derivative notional balances of systemically important financial institutions and to assess their purported effect on capital surcharge requirements when i got there i had no idea what those words meant but essentially i was being asked to assess whether or not some of the largest banks in the world were making their numbers look better than they actually were and now when i found out the gravity of this project i was terrified you see not only was i being asked to assess the efficacy of a federal regulation i didn't know how to use any of the statistical programming software they gave me and i didn't even really know what a financial derivative was so i was scared but my apprehension soon gave way to excitement you see i was being asked to investigate some of the largest banks in the world i felt like steve karel from the big short and as an intern this felt like an incredible opportunity and now by the end of my internship i was asked to prevent to division supervisors and managers my findings and so i gave an hour long presentation with graphs some numbers and some more graphs to basically answer the question is anything going wrong with the banks my answer was i don't really know there's not enough information and that was okay because in the process of investigating i learned more skills than i ever could have hoped for i learned more about financial policy and about words that i previously didn't know the definitions of than i ever could have imagined and i was even able to make recommendations on how the federal reserve board can make changes to its existing capital surcharge criterion again more words that i learned the definition of and i felt like i was making a difference and now i may not ever be able to see that impact materialized in the real world while i can't tell you definitively that i made a positive impact this past summer i can't tell you that i learned while i wasn't out there in the community i was at a cubicle in front of a computer learning i learned more than i ever could have imagined and i like to believe that in the realm of public policy that's the first step now i don't know what my second step is going to be i know i want to continue working with economic policy but i don't know whether that's going to be in the government or in the private sector but what i do know is that with my experiences at the fed i'm ready to learn more i'm ready to face the greater challenges and that's exciting to me thank you i appreciate it all right let's welcome brandon my name is brandon pierce i'm a second-year mpp student here at the ford school studying education policy and analysis methods uh being my uh my internship internship search knowing that i wanted to be in education policy but really open to what that looked like i'd come from the nonprofit sector and pretty small nonprofit and so i was hoping to go someplace bigger either district or state level my search became a little more focused when my partner who had been getting her MBA in baltimore all year got an internship in boston and so i didn't know anyone in boston so i immediately talked to peter and peter was able to connect me with a couple of alumni and before i knew it the chief of staff at bps was sending all my contact information out to all the directors at central office and so within a couple of weeks i had secured a summer internship and so when i was at bps i worked on the team of recruitment cultivation and diversity and so this is a team of about 10 that implements and designs programs to recruit retain and develop educators of color in the district and this idea is is spent off research that proves that students of color do better when they have teachers that reflect their ethnicity and students of color make up about 60 of boston public schools and the teachers are roughly 80 white so these programs are actually the same programs that i wrote about in my public policy 510 paper and was like super excited about like what would that look like in detroit and so these like fellowship opportunities networking events ways for people that have been underrepresented in traditional teacher preparation programs to get access and become teachers at the district so as an intern i did a lot of capacity building at the district i was able to flex a lot of the skills that i'd learned in my first year here at Ford did some strategy memos around recruiting different demographics i designed a data tracking tool using excel and i can now really say that i'm like proficient in excel on my resume and that is going to be continued to be used for many programs and it's a program evaluation on different recruitment events i even downloaded stata onto my computer and i'd have it open and my team members would walk by and be like oh my god what are they making you do and i was like no no no i like this this is fun to me and so i was able to look at how effective this pre-screening process was at identifying high quality candidates of color and getting them into the pipeline faster and i was able to show that that it was making a significant impact there and my team was really wonderful i got to connect on many different issues so i looked at the new union agreement that had just gotten ratified there was a new superintendent and had a transition team coming in i got to learn all about the budgeting process that was about to get started but there's one conversation that i had that really sort of like was my turning point of the summer and that was with my director talking about sort of where the progress of these recruitment efforts have been over the last several years and and she mentioned that a couple years ago they had hired 100 of the african-american graduates at the harvard school of education that was one student and so it it really spoke to me like these these programs are so important but they can't have the impact that they need to have just at the district level and if it's difficult for boston public schools which is an incredibly well-resourced large urban district that pays their teachers six figures and you get a tenure after your fourth year teaching what chance does a district like detroit have a detroit where you know recruiting teachers of color isn't the biggest issue it's recruiting anyone to come fill a teacher vacancy in the in the building so my experience this summer really reinforced that the policies i'm interested are more at the state level and that's where i plan to continue my journey and years ahead thank you all right i'm going to deliver a pitch to uh just kidding on that one but i am going to share some more feedback from our incoming MPPs so one more question that we asked at orientation how do you want to use your degree in future endeavors and opportunities and here is some of your feedback so being able to use data to promote global social justice having worked on the ground in my field and seen the problems i want to use my degree to affect real change on a wider level than the individual gain policy and analysis skills to inform partnership development between the public and private sectors promote economic security and opportunity in detroit poverty alleviation gender equality and running for office travel the world provide for my family and my dogs and serve the public good avril come on down sending reports to ceo mary barra driving autonomous vehicles in the proving ground having meetings on a boat my name is avril pakash and these are just some of the highlights from my summer at general motors in detroit so my goal at the ford school was to specialize in the regulation of emerging tech i wanted to create economic and political infrastructure that allows regulation to keep up with the fast pace of innovation that spurs growth and here at ford i used the stpp certificate to explore the policy landscape of emerging technologies like autonomous vehicles because mobility impacts every aspect of your life from an individual to the community work family quality of life so you might have heard of gm um they're the largest automaker in the u.s. they produce vehicles in 37 countries and their branding lineup includes uh buick cadillac chevrolet and gmc so gm envisions a future of zero crashes zero emissions and zero congestion and they're committed to an all electric future and they're actually the first american automaker to mass produce an affordable electric car so it's a long been a dream of mine to work for an american automaker because the big three are such an integral part of what makes michigan michigan and this rule gave me a behind the scenes understanding of why so while environmental policy is not my career focus um the path to vehicle electrification rests on emerging technology and that experience allowed me to explore this policy area that's in my interest so based out of the renaissance center in detroit i was an intern for the global public policy team and i worked on the energy and environment portfolio so over the course of my internship i basically helped gm strategic planning process by uh addressing global regulatory changes some key regulations at the heart of my team's work included federal fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions standards so over my 12 weeks i had to examine california's greenhouse gas emissions modeling to clarify their assumptions i'd analyze federal fuel economy data to isolate market trends i also had to evaluate california's bifurcation or split from federal rulemaking you might hear about that tomorrow in the news um and i also had to monitor presidential candidates policy that affected gm's portfolio so this role allowed me to put my graduate studies in emerging tech regulation to practical use the fourth school emphasis on quantitative research and analysis allowed me to deliver impactful reports directly to ceo mary barra and the rest of the senior leadership team with confidence my internship included several aspects unique to the policy team i discovered a new legal strategy that gave gm a competitive advantage i also got to test drive their autonomous vehicles these would not have been possible on any other team within gm because global public policy is able to have touch points on such nascent issues that just aren't possible on business development or on the legal team for instance and we had our bi-monthly meetings on a colleague's boat i guess that was fun um the experience confirmed my goal to pivot into the private sector and it really opened my eyes to the multitude of opportunities and innovation that's present in the auto industry i really believe that combining business acumen with my passion for public policy can help me promote the constant innovation and stay true to my personal values and ethics of uh being ensuring equal access to opportunity in the digital age so thank you so much john good evening everyone my name is john martinez and i am here today partly due to luck and mostly due to a hardworking determined mother who wanted to provide a better life for her children than the one that she had my family was able to do the impossible break the vicious cycle of poverty which we like countless others have faced for generations my roots informed my devotion to the alleviation of poverty an issue that is driven by multitude of factors which i am prepared to do my part in addressing throughout my life before coming to ford i focused on uh mitigating health disparities in the city of detroit related to lead poisoning and asthma the number of roadblocks faced by families inspired me to come here this past summer i had the privilege to work for my community once again by interning for the detroit mayor's office whose mission is to serve though the residents of the city there i work for the lean team who focuses on supporting city managers increasing the impact of their programs through the use of such tools as a damaic framework which is a data-driven improvement cycle that stands for defined measure analyze improve and control we work on many issues ranging from simplifying procurement to improving emergency service deployment essentially it's the mayor's consulting team but saying the word consultant in the city is like saying voldemort at hogwarts you don't want to do that through the lean team i had the opportunity of working on one of the mayor's policy priorities supporting a workforce development pilot titled detroit job readiness event this pilot streamlined various services to bust barriers to employment such as expungement tutoring and gd attainment into one bundle this was made possible with an agreement with fiat christler to provide detroiters who participated in the program priority hiring for their new g-plant that opens next year i had a key role in crafting training staff and implementing this pilot throughout this throughout the summer by the end we were able to serve over 9 000 detroit residents through the program during exit interviews hope radiated from the face of these residents many of them told me that this was the first time in their lives that they felt that the city was working for them moments like this fuel my drive to serve and help those in need as we speak thousands of detroiters are applying for those jobs available to them thanks to the pilot which the city plans to expand and continue and hopefully serve as a framework for others to use my fingers are crossed that when the smoke clears and the g-plant opens its doors next year thousands of detroiters will be given the opportunity to break the cycle of poverty my experience this summer reinforced the vision i came here to pursue and reminded me the importance of working with a great team and a passionate mentor also to my surprise the dynamic nature of consulting might be what's right for me i know this won't be the last time that i play a role in working to improve the lives of those in my community thanks to the doors that ford is open to me thank you can we have all our presenters please stand and can we give them one more round of applause well thank you everyone for coming out supporting your fellow peers here at the ford school it was a very incredible evening that is continuing so what we are doing is we're going to ask everyone to clear the room and start the reception in the doors behind you so if we could have our presenters head out there once the room is cleared our judges will deliberate and we will announce right outside in five minutes


and we're on for the update at 3 p.m. today Tom will be in in just a minute the S&P 500 3955 and what's called 3956 up about one and a half percent of course this is one of these days where you have to know that there are some other trends going on in this case one of the one of it well actually the largest options expiration in over 10 years going on today so I'm not going to say that as a trend we're gonna get a big signal out here there may just be far too many people shorting into options expiration we were looking in the show earlier at 2 o'clock about you know at 80 percent chance you were gonna at least close above 3926 and some change that we got a little bit more here may just be when I look at the end of the day too many people shorting and that may be a thing that you want to look at and know that when everybody else has the same idea as you IE we're all going south maybe you just need to wait a few more days I've always had an opinion that goes back early on to my first days of shorting over 22 years ago and that is I'm going to be three hours early I'm gonna be three days early I'm gonna be three weeks early I'm gonna be three months early generally you're gonna be when you want to go short or you're thinking that it's a bearish market a lot of times a great thing to do is take an aspirin go walk the dog and tell something else happens because it you almost always get signals for a lower market right before you get squeezed out in a case you know NASDAQ up 2.2 percent again some of this may be a little bit of of icing on the cake from the Fed member being out at noon today talking the market up quite a bit now that will be the end of the Fed blabbing until their next meeting so we're gonna have a fairly decent quiet period without them both trying to talk the market up and down that may be a little bit of the market taking a breather here today knowing that these guys are in the rearview mirror volume is not all that exciting options roll over Monday and Tuesday big probably decisions coming Wednesday and Thursday on earnings be back in just a few minutes


In this presentation, we will enter a journal entry to close out the remaining balance in the factory overhead account. This is typically something that will be done at the end of the period, at the end of the month in our case. We want to do it now because I want to keep it close to some of the other types of journal entries that we've put in for factory overhead. So the story is this, what's happening here is it's the end of the month now. We're not going to have any more jobs. We're not applying any more information or any more costs to the factory overhead. And we're not going to, we've already allocated to all the jobs that we're going to for factory overhead for this month. If we look at the GL account then for factory overhead that supports this number, we could see, you know, there's kind of a lot of activity that happens in factory overhead because it's going to be that bucket that has everything else in it that we couldn't apply to the job. So that's going to include things like indirect labor. It included things like indirect materials that included anything that it was on the factory. We put in the factory overhead. Now our goal here was eventually to apply it to the job using some type of estimate. And we did so, we applied it out to the job, but the estimate was not exact. And again, you might ask like, why wasn't it exact? Why can't we make it exact? We see the number right here. Why didn't we apply out the 7,100? And again, the problem with that is there's a few different problems. But one is that we typically would apply it out as the jobs are happening, not at the end of the month. So in this particular problem, we kind of waited till the end of the month and did this in an order so we can see the costs going into factory overhead and then us applying them out. But we in practice oftentimes will be applying them out to jobs as the jobs are going. And therefore we wouldn't even know, say that this would be the number for the entire month's worth of factory overhead. We wouldn't know that as we're applying it to the job, the things like the rent on the factory, things like utilities, depreciation. Those things wouldn't be recorded till the end of the month. So all we can do is estimate, you know, what we think factory overhead will be at the end of the month. And based on that estimate use some type of ratio analysis to apply this information out to the job. And of course that's an estimate and it's not going to be exact. So we applied out 6,720 when the actual amounts, all the debits are the actual amounts added up to 7,100. We applied out based on our predetermined overhead rate 1.6 of direct labor. We applied out 6,722 jobs. We have 380 that we couldn't apply out to any job. We didn't know which job to put it to. So that's going to happen every time because it's just an estimate. So now our question is, well, what do we do with that? Because we want to start over next month. We would like the factory overhead to be zero next month so that we can start over and work through next month. So we've got to kind of clear this out. This is kind of like a forced temporary account here that we're going to have. And the way we're going to do that is we're going to clear it out to cost of goods sold. We're just going to force it to work. We're going to make it zero. And you might ask, well, why can't that seems not right? Why can we do that? And the reason is one, because hopefully this is a small amount. If it's a large amount, we might have to go back and do some reallocations to it. But if it's a small amount, then we can say it's not material to decision making. If it's not material to decision making, what's the easiest thing to do with it? To record it to an income statement account, because the income statement accounts will close out to retained earnings and they'll go away. They'll just be part of retained earnings after this time period. And we can kind of get rid of it in that way. And again, it's small, so it shouldn't affect net income or our decision making processes or distort our financial statements, hopefully. And therefore it'd be okay to do that. Why income statement account would we choose cost of goods sold? Because ultimately, that's where it would go on the income.