Community Relations - Social Development Commission - Regular Meeting

We are going to bring this Emerging Youth Achievement Advisory Council meeting to order. I am the chairman for today. Alderman and President Jose Perez is out of town, and I'm happy to fill in for him today. My name is Russell Stamper II. We have members with us today. We have Amber Dayes. We have Marcus Hogan. We have Steve Mayhem. We have Brad Krupa. We have, I believe that's all for, who was it? Brad, I said Brad. And then Mr. Ugo will be joining us. Yeah, and Brian, did I say Brian? And Brian Litzy. Brian's available to you. Hey, Brian. All right, so we're going to get started. With the review and approval of previous minutes, I'd also like to welcome our director, consultant, Ms. Bevin. How are you?

We're going to have to wait for the minutes because we still need Mr. .

Okay, we're going to hold them. Steve will move to hold the minutes at the call of the chair. Moving to number four, MMAC, be the spark presentation. Are they available? Come on up for the presentation for MMAC, Be the Spark presentation. Good morning, young brother.

Good morning, good morning.

How are you this morning? I'm doing well. How are you all? Good, good. Please introduce yourself for the record, and you have the floor. Bevan, did you want to introduce this organization and this gentleman? Sure.

Well, I'll introduce the organization we have not met yet. Okay, okay, okay.

Are you on the floor?

MMAC, so Bev and Christy Pivot Consulting. MMAC has a program called Be the Spark that focuses on young people, so we ask them to come and present to this body.

Excellent, excellent.

I'm going to pull this up, but you can actually control it.

Okay, perfect.

All right.

Just for all you young people, this committee is about supporting you all, building you all up, empowering youth, and then supporting the organizations that do that in the community that usually don't get the credit and the recognition that they deserve. So we developed, we established this committee to hear from organizations that we don't usually hear from. And the ones that have great presentations and are making a huge impact on the young people, we support and fund them. So far we've had about six to seven meetings and pretty much every organization that presented and some shape or form has been funded or supported so we so we are uh happy that these many organizations that we're learning over doing great work in the city of milwaukee so we welcome you and thank you so much for coming you have the floor young man thank you so much um don portis i have the honor and privilege of serving as the career pathways manager at mmac okay um

You said Dom? Dom.

Dom? With an M. Dominique is the name my mother gave me.

Okay, I got you. Yeah, so MMAC is the Regional Chamber of Commerce. It's an economic development organization. really committed to working with the business community, but our investment in education and our investment in young people is really, really strong because for a lot of our customers, our member organizations, and I'll dive a little bit into that in a second here, but A real desire from that community is a robust and thriving talent pipeline. And so young people, like you all in the crowd, having exposure and having experiences that expose you all to different career pathways, especially those thriving career pathways that are here in our own backyard, right? And so we want to kind of build up that brand familiarity between the community uh and that and the business community and the young people here so you all know what's available to you all uh and so we have uh some really like unique things uh or unique program that kind of works um uh or allows us to do that okay make sure i'm doing this the right way So just kind of touching on MMAC, kind of giving a brief overview. So the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, we represent over 2,000 businesses that employ more than 300,000 people across southeastern Wisconsin and beyond. We got about 80% of our member organizations are small to mid-sized companies. Startups, small to mid-sized companies, but we also have some of those larger wells as well. Corey Joe, please step in at any moment. Hey, Corey.

Should I let him do it? Good morning. Hi. Hello.

Thank you for coming down. Of course. We were getting started with Dom, but I think he was... Waiting and expecting. So thank you for coming. Yes, of course. And we're right into the presentation. So please introduce yourself and you guys can decide how you would like to proceed. But you guys have the floor in the presentation.

I am Corrie Jo Biddle. I'm the Vice President of Talent at the MMAC. Our division covers... three parallels under talent. So we talk about K through 12, which is Dom's expertise. And Dom has been on staff at MMAC for...

A year? A year. Okay.

He made a year last week, so that's why these overview MMACs, he's like, where's Corey? I saw it. These MMAC slides now. But I wanted to cover the MMAC slides just to give context to the work that Dom is doing. So I will do that. If you go back one, and then... Once we have the context for what MMAC is and what we do as an organization, it'll make more sense, our lens and our view on our relationship with K-12, which is all about connecting students to the employers, which are our members. So we have this unique relationship with employers and a unique ear to hear what they're saying around their talent pipeline needs. So our programs speak. specifically to that. And our intention is for it to be a complement to what already exists in the space and to partner where it makes sense. So that's where Dom comes in. But when I walked in, he was going through this slide. MMAC was founded as a business association in 1861. We have 2,000 members, and our members are businesses of all sizes, mostly small and midsize. We have... 99% of the Fortune 500 headquarters that are here, the Fortune 1000 headquarters that are here. So that 20% are the huge companies, but the heart of MMAC is the small and mid-sized companies. Just covering who our members are by industry. You can see by percentage, of course, it makes sense in Milwaukee that the majority of our members would be in manufacturing. So that's 17% of that total 2000 number. Then we have business and professional services. Finance and insurance, real estate and construction, communications and advertising and so on and so forth. So that's the industry mix, which becomes important as we're talking to students. So as Dom is going to schools and talking to students, he's listening to what they're interested in and what they are excited about and thinking about the members that we can connect them to and give them those opportunities.

Corey, how does a business become eligible for MMAC?

If they have an interest in membership, we have a full membership department and it really makes, it really depends on what their goals are. Our staff is a staff of about 40, 50 if you include the M7. So it's MMAC and M7, which give us the four-county region cover for MMAC and seven-county region cover for M7. And those employees, thank you, offer a suite of programs for Any of our members. So it's networking, convening, advocacy, education, best practices. It just covers the full gamut. We have a regular orientation where people can come and learn about what we offer. And sometimes it's a good fit for a business and other times it's not. But if it's a good fit, they would just talk to our membership department and join. I think the least expensive membership is right around $500. Okay. Yeah. Gotcha. So this slide covers our strategic priorities. This is, you'll find this in our overall strategic plan and all of the pillars, all of our programs fall under these three areas. Our area is talent, so about collaborating with employers to develop, retain, and attract The top talent, because that's the way that we're going to attract the top businesses to the region. Growth and livability are the other pillars, and there's departments and information on those, but we're going to zoom in on talent now. So in the talent department, there's three pillars. employer services. Again, we serve companies. So inside of each of those companies, there are HR departments, chief human resource officers, recruiters, people who work on belonging, benefits, employee engagement. It just runs the gamut. So we offer opportunities for them to connect with each other, learn from each other, and learn from national people in this space who can tell them, how can you be the stickiest, most attractive employer possible? So we convene them regularly around all of those topics. The second pillar is talent engagement. You can look at that like community engagement. Back in the day, we would have called it young professional services. So we started Fuel Milwaukee as a young professional. It used to be called Young Professionals of Milwaukee, and that started in 2001. Back then, it was all about the 20 and 30-somethings. It was the millennials. Now the millennials have grandchildren, so they have it – So I think the thinking was that the programming was meant to engage the people who were most at risk of leaving Milwaukee. Now that programming and all of our services have expanded beyond just young professionals to early to mid-career professionals. And what do they want? Because now everybody can work remotely, that people can move. There's lots of options for people of all ages. So all of our programming and talent engagement is about keeping them connected to Milwaukee and keeping them here. And then the third pillar, and after this, I'll give it over to Dom. This is a K through 12 career pathways. This is everything that we're doing to foster relationship between the business community and the employers and students and giving them as early as possible opportunities to be in a corporate space or on a corporate campus. on field trips and having conversations with professionals to really find out what they're interested in and what they want to do. That's where the name Be The Spark came from, and Don will talk a little bit more about that.

Awesome. Okay, Will, does anybody have any questions for Ms. Betta? All right, thank you. We've been joined by a member and my good friend, Ugo.

Yes. Thank you. And obviously very familiar with the work that you've done over the... Since, yeah, young professionals. So, yeah, over decades now. Yes.

One of our board members. Yes, absolutely.

Amazing. So, thank you for all the work. So, is it called Fuel Milwaukee now?

It's called Fuel Milwaukee now.

Yeah. So... Like Ronell and the Social X group, are they considered that group?

They're like a partner organization. So you have like Social X, Fuel Milwaukee, Urban League used to have their own YP. I think they're bringing it back. Milwaukee doesn't operate in that space anymore, but people will hear those names and think. But any of these, or there's new ones coming out all of the time, but the focus is different because the millennial cohort was so much larger, and then Gen Z is a little bit smaller, and they move a little differently than we did. They socialize a little differently than we did.

Yeah, they do.

All right, Don, you have the floor. Thank you. Career pathways matter. And again, we kind of touched on this earlier, but a strong regional talent pipeline cannot start after graduation, right? You can't be 16, 17, 18 years old and just starting to figure out that you want to be a doctor or a dentist or whatnot. We need to create that interest and that thirst a lot sooner. And so we have kind of this process of creating that awareness amongst young people, and then giving them that intentional exposure, not only to the businesses, but the individuals that work within the businesses, right? And so trying to create these real, tangible things for young people to see themselves in these roles that these folks have that are sitting in front of them. And really just like opportunity, right? I think the ideal, like the gold standard of what that experience is, is utilize and be the spark that will eventually tie into or lead into some sort of work-based learning opportunity. some sort of paid opportunity for a young person to get some hands-on experience. And we wanted to kind of create that spark, create the relationship between the school community and the business community. So the goal overall is just to help students understand what careers are out there, how to meet people doing the work, how to create a potential mentor in that particular industry that you may be interested in entering. I'm sorry. And so our portfolio kind of touched on this again, but the Be the Spark, we have traditionally done this two times a year, and so ideally one in the fall, one in the spring, where we would identify an organization or a particular industry, or it can be just a collection of just a ton of employers that are interested in working with young people or engaging with young people at the time. We'll reach out to a ton of different high schools, and we'll bring folks into a space and place. We'll break bread with them. But also, we will open up these career conversations so young people could not only hear about what these organizations do, but what role do you play in that organization, right? Because you may hear something like we energies all energy right you may not think about the HR opportunities that are there you may not think about the HVAC opportunities that are there and so really creating a more tangible picture for young people through these experiences and again it is it is not just a a lecture It is more of a dialogue so young people have the opportunity to engage and ask questions. What are some of those tips of the trade that we don't know about the industry that can help me? If you are a young woman of color and you are looking to enter an industry that is dominated by men, how can I have the conversation to say, what can I be preparing myself for? What thick skin do I need to have so I can actually thrive in here? It's not just about checking the boxes. It's about... creating that thirst and that desire for somebody to actually see themselves to and through, right? Teamship is a really, really unique partnership that we have in a lot of different high schools in the area. So it's a partnership with College Board that was formerly called District C. Where we would connect schools to businesses in the area, right? And a business will present a real world issue or a real world problem that they are dealing with internally. And the young people have an opportunity to work through that issue, do a lot of research. There are multiple touch points throughout the semester where folks from that particular business, we will refer to them as coaches, will come into the school and work with those students. And at the end, the young people have an opportunity to provide a solution and kind of like a pitch-it type of situation.

An employer might say, we're having a problem with turnover with Gen Z. What do you think we should do about it? And they would ask these high school students how to solve the problem. Then they come up with a solution and come back and pitch it to the company's HR people. And then they would implement all or parts of it.

Yeah. Have they done that?

Yeah.

Wow.

Working? Yeah. I think it's a lot of value that is happening for both the business community and the school. I think young people are... um constantly trying to see um how what we're doing in the classroom translates to the real world um and this is an opportunity that that that brings that that uh to reality um and again the business community can walk away with you know potential solutions that uh that really work right it's not just a a checkbox to say, oh, you know, we supported the K-12 space in our area, and we're going to go about our day. It's something that's like, we're actually a more efficient and a better company because of that. And young people are the catalyst to make that happen. And so when that becomes a reality from just an idea. I think that process of I can see myself getting the necessary credentials or degree or whatever precursor steps that I have to do to sit in that particular seat.

So are there college majors or are there college desires assisted with these conversations? Like they'll sit with the group and say, okay, you are an engineer, so I need to go to school to be an engineer.

I don't know if it's that direct, but it is, you know, the name Team Ship is intentional, right? And so there is a collection. It may be five to six students per team. And so there will be, you know, anywhere from five to six different pitches that are being presented. And because you are a part of a team, right, you may wear the hat of, you know, someone who may be an engineer. You may wear the hat of someone who may be an HR person. And so you are not, I guess, exclusive to one career pathway or post-secondary path?

Be the spark is more that. The more direct conversations about this is what I'm interested in school. This is what I'm really good at naturally. This is what I think I want to do and I'm going to talk to an engineer about that. I'm going to talk to a marketing director about that. That's be the spark. Teamship is more the confidence of knowing that you can present to ceos or heads of departments and that you've actually actually tackled a real world problem and people talk about all the time when the students in there they have two pitch events the beginning is where they hear the problem and they say this is how we think we're going to solve it the end is when they've solved it and they come to pitch what that solution is and the difference in the confidence from that first pitch event where they're kind of like twiddling and they're swaying and they're nervous. And that last one, after a semester of them going back and forth with the leaders, going back and forth with their coaches, they're standing up here pitching to the CEO, this is how you solve this problem in your company, with confidence. So I think the teamship experience is that What do you learn from being on a team? How hard it is to be on a team. And the confidence you get from being in front of somebody that would make you nervous normally, and they get past that so much earlier. Most of us are all the way through college and first job before we lose those kind of jitters. But in high school, they're having that experience. So they receive all four programs. All four of these programs are available to all of our, all of our members benefit from these programs, and each of them have a different suite of partners that we work with to make them possible. So our members, that 2,000 employers, can opt into any of these programs. But the young people can participate in all four? If their schools and their teachers opt into it, yes.

I'm going to try to speed through these last two, but the internship pipeline, I think, pretty self-explanatory. We always want to move students to a paid opportunity or a deeper opportunity to gain those skills. So any type of work-based learning internship is the ultimate goal. And then just like overall educational partnerships, we're not the only folks in this space that are doing what we're doing in terms of being a convener and a liaison between the business community and the educational community. So different organizations that are out there, ACE Mentoring Group, C-1, they are doing similar things and have similar efforts in terms of connecting K-12 education spaces to the business community for, again, pipeline that leads to some sort of work-based learning opportunities for young people. Just some data on the Be the Spark event. And so this one is kind of a snapshot from the first one that I was able to lead since I've been in this role. And so last spring we were, or not last spring, but in the spring we were hosting at MIAD. And so we had over 120 students that were engaged in a half day career exposure experience. We had about 15 regional employers that were there conducting these conversations. And so we had, not six, actually we had nine schools that were participating. So we had four NPS schools and then we had two charter schools represented as well. So the Seeds of Health Network as well as the Carmen schools were a part of the event as well. We had a really good time.

Yeah, MIAD gave us the run of the place. It was students everywhere in the whole college. Do you remember the schools?

Yeah, Bradley Tech, South Division, Milwaukee Marshall, both Carmen campuses, I want to say Ronald Reagan. Okay. What about North Division? North Division was not there, but I got some points of contact over there that, yeah, the new principal is a good friend of mine. Okay, cool. Yeah, no, we're definitely working on some stuff for next year. Gotcha. Yep. But looking to expand the work of Be the Spark and so having like I guess kind of one-off off-site career exposure events in addition to our Be the Spark cadence, but then just expanded workplace field trips. I like to call them field experiences. But just more employer hosted student experiences. A lot of times we also kind of are a bridge in terms of being able to welcome employers into different schools. There's a number of different advisory councils that I sit on that I am able to. use my Rolodex, if you will, to bring different folks from the business community to support different school communities. And then just stronger overall connection to internships and work-based learning opportunities. Was that it?

I think that we had a context slide. Go back once. We might have skipped it. No, maybe it fell out. Okay. There we go. All right.

Oh, I'm sorry. Obviously, we are always looking to partner with different organizations. Even with the be the spark, we are looking at doing, I guess, kind of like some scaled down versions that focus on some of the community-based organizations that have youth programming throughout the summer and trying to do some similar work with those community-based organizations but always looking to connect if you are a part of a school community that is looking for more support in terms of strategic partnerships with the business community please please don't hesitate to reach out

Yeah, I think Dom is the first person that we've had in the education department that actually comes from education. He actually is a teacher, so he's been a huge asset to MMAC. He's been a huge asset. He's so humble. But I think he's taught us a lot about how to work with educators and consider what their pain points are. So our approach and our programming works for them first. And that gives us better and more consistent access to students.

Thank you, Don. Thank you.

All right.

Well done, Don. Thank you. Okay. Do we have any questions by the committee? What about on the board? Anybody on the board, would they like to ask me to have any comments or questions?

Well, first of all, I want to thank you. Thank you for the work that you're doing. Thank you for expanding the work that you're doing over the years. Two or threefold. M3, I mean, I'm looking at four MPS schools. Obviously, how we can expand them. I was just looking at the broader network of not just the MPS schools, but the... university of milwaukee's you know systems um obviously mmac looking at the corporation side you mentioned m7 you know looking at not just the corporations that are here but as we're bringing you know whether it's here or yet you know companies that are that are coming here and or expanding you know we talk about attracting um retaining talent i think that plays a huge role in that and then last but not least you know, I'd be remiss if I don't talk about, obviously, the diverse business community. I think when you're talking about, as I mentioned also, whether it's NAMAC or the business council, having youth see successful diverse business owners that are here, right here in our backyard, I think gives a further, you know, motivation for them to say, this is what these type of education career pathways can lead to. So I just, so again, just kind of looking at, you know, as we're collaborating with those three areas, if you guys just want to take maybe a a deeper dive on either one of those?

Yeah, so M-Cubed and HERA have steering committees that I sit on. So our role there is not what we covered here, like where we have a lot of activity and we're actually like in there doing the work. For HERA and M-Cubed, for instance, if there are... micro-credentials on the Harris side, they're looking at where are we moving students as far as education and are we pushing them in the direction that's going to be marketable once they graduate. So increasingly students are looking for faster, quicker, different ways to get an education as opposed to a four-year degree, not that that's not important. But if that's not their pathway, here are some other opportunities. And HERA is deeply focused on that. So HERA is a convening of the 16 colleges and universities, including the technical college. When they're producing their micro-credentials, what is the curriculum going to be? What is important? Where should we be putting our money? We'll say, well, let us give you access to our membership. They might come to one of the roundtables and say, this is what we're thinking. And the business community can respond and say, no. that's not we don't have a problem with students having this competency we have a problem with this competency and then they'll change the curriculum so um our activity on those both of those steering committees in cube and um harrah we i think there's a vital part that we play it's just not as active so you're right to bring it up but i don't talk about it as much because we're not doing that work specifically we're more giving them access and convening the members around what that work looks like but you're absolutely right that's huge part i mean that

that visibility you know people don't know what they don't know that's right thank you um how's the makeup of the youth as far as diversity who's involved who's who we've been seeing you know black white what are our youth Are black kids getting an opportunity or are these white kids? What is the race within Yankee?

Yeah. Yeah. I would say it's diverse. I think it looks like the city of Milwaukee, right? And so just the schools that I mentioned, right? Bradley Tech, South Division. Yes, sir. Right. Milwaukee Marshall, right? The demographics are diverse. Folks that are from socioeconomic spaces that you qualify for free or reduced lunch. Okay. And so my approach through Be The Spark is an equity strategy in itself, right? The students that I'm intentional about wrapping my arms around or they are going into spaces in places where a lot of folks don't necessarily look like them and that is on purpose but that's not also to say that you know we can't invite a university school or a dominican high school or anything like that it's just Equity is really at the forefront of my approach personally. So a lot of black and brown students from schools that don't have the best representation or reputation, I should say. And I'm really intentional about challenging that um by putting these young people from these schools that don't have the best reputation in front of these employers to kind of shift that narrative because i may not live in the city of milwaukee and i may not have a a reoccurring touch point you know outside of what I see on the news or, you know, just some other negative take about what's going on in the inner cities of Milwaukee. And I allow the young people to shift that narrative on their own. I'm not here to dictate or determine, but I believe in those young people because they believe in themselves and they show and prove every time. Excellent. So in turn...

The businesses, do they reflect at any level some of the youth that are coming to see them? Are there any black CEOs or any brown CEOs that they can relate to?

I think the nature of these programs brings that out of each. If we're going to say we're doing Be the Spark inside of Northwestern Mutual, for instance, certain people are going to hear that a different way and be more excited about it because they see themselves in the program. I think you see diversity across the participants in terms of students and employers, but I do think that employees and leaders inside of the business community, they believe in what These programs can do, and they show up. Because they signed up for them.

Yeah. Right. And they invest.

Yeah.

Yes. Mr. Chair, I have a quick one. My first question is, how long has... Be the Spark been going on?

Be the Spark is 12 years old. This big relaunch under Dom is the first time that we've had this many students in one space in a couple of years. We were doing things virtually, you know, as everyone was the program started to shift when we were in the pandemic. So we were a lot dependent a lot on some of these other programs, which is why we started to do team ship, which had a virtual component. Once we got Dom on board, we really wanted to get everybody back in the space with a large number because the hoopla and the energy around these larger programs, I think is very, is valuable and it was palatable. So it's been around for a while, but it's taken different shapes and forms over time.

so then I guess my follow-up is I'm just curious if you've seen because I think there's benefits for everyone and I'm curious if you've seen the work that through be the spark if it's shaped curriculum you know if employers are working with or if companies are working with our kids and they're saying like these are the skills that you're gonna need to be in this industry I was curious if that those suggestions are reflected in what the curriculum looks like at Bradley Tech or whatever schools are coming before.

I want to say yes and no, too. And so I say yes because I think when you have these experiences and you have the opportunities to say, I don't know, like... what programming language are you all using? And you might say, oh, okay, we're doing something that's outdated, right? Like a teacher may hear that in that space and go back to the school and do the necessary things to make those adaptations to the curriculum. But also, I don't think it's a It's not an ongoing conversation enough to have the is this is be the spark influence in what's happening in a classroom enough. But I think there are other spaces in which that conversation is happening. I don't know if you want to talk about the lab Midwest partnership, but there are different things that. are happening right so like our we we had a partnership with some bucyrus dollars that allowed us to not only provide some training to some cte teachers or some career technical education teachers uh around like a manufacturing curriculum but also uh provide some equipment for those classrooms and we were able to pilot that at four different schools so saint augustine bradley tech um obama and yes Yeah, Milwaukee Academy of Science are four schools that have it.

Robotics equipment in each of those four schools. Those are good schools.

Yeah.

So I think there's, again, we talked with what's happening in the space and this work and those conversations. I think MMAC's work, I'm seeing the conversations around curriculum more in the tech colleges because I'm actually there. and I'm actually influencing it. I think others are doing more of that work around MPS and the other schools. I don't know that we're, MMAC's education committee is more looking at policy, so there's different streams, but I can't say that B to Spark specifically is that we don't have a direct tie.

That makes sense.

Thank you. Yes, Steve.

Where do you see that you can bring in more? And I understand the diversity and things of that sort, but where do you see that you can gainfully add additional students that gives them the same thing this base group is getting now?

Having more students participate in more programs?

Yeah, receiving the same.

amount of services that you because right now you seem to be at a good place with your numbers but if you were to you know increase what where would you see that yeah i think um dom touched on it a little bit so be the spark is sort of an umbrella it's a brand right so some of these larger programs it's huge effort students have to be there for half day but there's other opportunities for us to just give them field experiences where it doesn't have to be a full half day and it doesn't have to look like, so there's different types of programming that I think now that Dom is in place that can spur out of what we're doing right now and it doesn't require the same level of commitment, but it gives them the same valuable kinds of access, virtually, in person, it's teamship, which is a longer commitment, our career conversations, which is a longer commitment, But I think as long as we're partnering well with the schools and hearing what their pain points are, we really are just creating what works. It's nothing for us to say, well, you want to be an engineer? Let me call up an engineer and have them come to the school. We're just really looking to do whatever works because the employers really want to do it, and they want their access to the schools to be turnkey. And I think every company has a different level of involvement because they have different staff that are dedicated to this. So what we can do as a convener of those businesses and say, here is a suite of opportunities for you to get access to students and for students to have access to you. And we're just broadening that. And I think there's plenty of opportunities for us to partner and change and do different things if different things work.

Data-wise, I liked your dashboard, but is there something that, from what you've learned from these businesses, and I think that's what Alderman Stanford was roundabouting on, is that Is there are we learning that we're teaching curriculums that don't lead to that path to career? And is there a way for you to is are you do you have to ask for is a show where we should be aiming for some of these kids? Because I got I went to Washington High School and I was in the computer specialty. Had I known. that Fortran would have been obsolete in two years. Why did I take three years of Fortran? And so C++ was it, and still is, weirdly, that many years later. So is there something that you're getting, or is there a way for you to get out more information?

Dom, go back to that slide that had the CISA in the bottom left. CISA 1 Is responsible for informing the curriculum for all the career pathways for all of it's all of MPS. In additional districts to and additional districts, and the data that they use is informed by the research and data that we pull it may see is part of what we do as our partnership. with them and Dom is in constant communication with them and we present to them regularly and and help to inform what that curriculum looks like based on where the growth is where the need is and what the employers are saying you leaned in there so I knew you had something to say

I guess my question is that sometimes when you're close to it, you don't see it, but I think that would be valuable for us and even our staffers to understand where we need to be guiding our youth because we can't waste time. And sometimes I heard you say yes and no. with MPS and any other educational system. It's just getting with the times and is that practicum gonna be even beneficial towards our youth? Yeah, and I guess I will jump in and just,

I guess for me, I think what you shared about certain programs being obsolete, that's a constant challenge in the education space. I think for me it's more about how are we making the pipelines that already exist within the schools a little bit more efficient, right? So you said you went to Washington, it's an IT school, and so if I step foot into Washington as a freshman and I say, I'm going to declare as an IT person, I can't do that until my sophomore year, but is there a one pager that will walk me through it? My freshman year is going to be this, my sophomore year I'm going to have these courses, my junior year I'm going to be eligible for dual enrollment at MATC and UWM, my senior year I'm going to be a half day student because I'm going to have an internship You know, and so I think that process, like how that was very, very clean is not the reality at every school, right? And I think it's more about that and less about what curriculum is in front of them because that's constantly going to shift. And so how can we wrap our arms around the school community to allow the systems that they have in place to work more efficiently so more students can churn out in that particular career pathway. I think one of the challenges that the business community is coming to us with, just in all transparency, is there's just not enough students that are graduating with this particular skill set. And so one school may graduate four or five or six students in that particular thing, when the companies, they need a pool of like 100. so they can go through their process to select. So how can we increase the number of students that are graduating with the credentials in which the school wants them to graduate with So they can be those attractive, you know, talent individuals that that these businesses are looking for. Yeah, thank you guys.

Thank you for coming down. Presentation was awesome. We're going to follow up with some questions on how we can partner and how you would like the city support. All those young people in these four programs. So we thank you. This is the beginning and we look forward to a relationship.

Thank you. Thank you. All right.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right.

Yes. Okay.

Sure.

Yes. Real quick. Does everybody review and approve the minutes? Can I get a motion? So moved. Second. All right. Motion has been moved and second. Meetings are approved. Thank you. Mr. Mayhem will be attending from the virtual board. Thanks for coming down. Okay. Next, we have number four. MMACB, the SPARC presentation has completed. Thank you so much. Next, we have number five, Pearl for Teen Girls presentation. Pearl for Teen Girls, where are you? Come on up. How you doing?

Good morning.

Pearls for Teen Girls. I love that name.

Thank you.

All right, ladies, thank you for coming down. We're looking forward to your presentation. Please introduce yourself for the record, and you have the floor.

Good morning. I am Jasmine Deacon.

Okay.

Good morning. Dr. Tiffany Tardy, President and CEO of Pearls. Okay. Happy to be here. Excellent.

And I serve as Director of Program Services, and I wanted to start the same way that we start our group sessions with a check-in question. So everyone doesn't have to answer, but just something very simple. So what did your childhood smell like?

You have to be a teen girl, right?

No, you don't have to. I'm sorry, let me clarify. The question is to everyone. If anyone is available to answer, it's not gender specific.

It smelled like chicken and dressing and Sunday mornings or breakfast. It was clean. And incense.

Incense.

A lot of incense in my household. What about you, Amber?

I thought of two things. The first thing was just like a lot of grilled food. My dad would grill a lot, like every season. And then summer's up north in the Northwoods in the air out there, like pine trees.

For me, it smelled like black ice and leather. So I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. They had a leather interior car. We went to build a square. We went to all of the places. So black ice and leather.

And I know it wasn't a question, but I guess for me it was like what are the favorite smells that I think kind of similar jumped to holidays. Holidays jumped to mind. And so for us, we're... Parents came from Nigeria, so was Chin Chin. It's a Nigerian cookie. And when our parents made that, you know, the holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and then all the other holiday smells, stuffing and turkey. And then the other one that jumps up is just summertime. Summertime just has, you know, it just had a smell. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

My mom caught it outside.

That was a good question.

Yeah, sure. It's always food for me. It's catfish, fried catfish. Our family always did Friday fish fry, and it always takes me back when we have fish fry.

So I wanted to start it that way because that's how we kick off our group sessions, and it's the opportunity for us to find commonalities within each other instead of focusing on the different paths of life that we walk. So take a moment to kind of just relax a little bit, but then also the smell of outside, right? That thing, my mom, you smell like outside. but we have shared experiences. So I wanted to kick off by saying that Pearl started out in 1993 as a volunteer initiative where our founder, Colleen Fitzgerald, saw that there was a need for girls in the community. So she wanted to make sure that there was a space for girls to be able to focus on in the ways that they wanted to improve themselves, but then also opportunity to relate with their peers. So from that one group at Jackie Robinson Middle School, that one group, those first seven girls, it grew into where we are now, where we have 21 groups and five program coordinators.

That's awesome.

Thanks. Let me try that. So PROS is an acronym. It stands for Personal Responsibility, Empathy, Awareness, Respect, Leadership, and Support. And these are our guiding lights. We want to be able to hold girls and ourselves to be able to be models of our PROS attributes. We start every group session with our Pearl's Promise, and each one of the letters has an affirmation at the end of each one. So A is for awareness. I want to know more about myself and the world around me, for example. But ideally, we want to be able to give girls self-development tools so that they can show up as their best selves. Our group sessions happen one to two times per week, and we work with girls in fifth through 12th grade across the city of Milwaukee and surrounding areas. Our programming is 100% voluntary, so while girls are, while girls are, PEARLS is always ready for girls, sometimes girls aren't ready for PEARLS, and that's okay. So if a girl comes to a group session, one time she loves it, we invite her to come back. But if she's not ready, then she's always welcome to come back when she feels ready. We have an intergenerational model. So that means that we take pride in having adult program coordinators. But then with our associate staff members, it's comprised of three different roles. So we have... associate program coordinators. And those are people that have just finished college or are in college and they are paid staff members and they serve as near peer to us. And then we have our team facilitators and those ladies are in high school and they serve as near peers to the girls. So I like to give the example of I consume TikTok, but I don't TikTok. So we need someone in between that knows the dance, knows the lingos, to be able to anchor in the messages that we have for girls, and we wanted them to be able to help us bring it home. If you think about it, it's the same thing where your mom may say something to you and it just doesn't land, but you have a big cousin that says the same thing to you, and it just sinks in a little bit more.

Unbelievable.

That always frustrates me. And now as an adult, when I'm trying to impart all this wisdom, they do not.

It doesn't hit. So we need somebody to bridge the gap for us. Yeah, that's true. Our programming has a couple of different offerings. So we have our own research evidence curriculum that we operate off of, which I'll talk about in just a little bit. But then we also have our college and career readiness programming. And what that is is that we offer girls the opportunity to explore collegiate and career experiences as young as fifth grade. So they have the opportunity to see themselves on campuses or see themselves on large, Northwestern Mutual was mentioned earlier, but to see themselves inside of that building and have tangible experiences to drive home what they can be. In addition to those things, financial literacy, of course, support, and then our CCR team also helps with scholarship, application, any post-secondary success that girls feel like they're interested in. Our five amazing program coordinators, they carry between four to five groups throughout the week, so that means they're working with 100 to 125 girls each week. They're trained in youth mental health first aid, SMART goal planning, so every girl that participates in our program sets a year-long academic SMART goal, and we have checkpoints throughout the entire year to make sure that they're working toward achieving their goal. They are also trained in youth mental health first aid, mandated reporters, and of course we are a big support to our site partners and families outside of group sessions. Our curriculum has five major points that we focus on. So building relationships, which ideally was the example that I gave with the, what did your childhood smell like? So we have intentional activities around how we can find commonalities instead of differences. Loving myself, teaching girls to be able to feel comfortable with how they see themselves in the mirror. Striving to achieve, that is our goal setting curriculum. So it teaches girls to be able to have tangible milestones outside of setting there. year-long academic goal, but to be able to see a dream that they have and take it into bite-sized chunks. Striving to achieve, who am I forgetting? Helping hands in the community. Each one of our groups has a service project. So it is a project of their choosing. We don't decide for them. Some that we've done previously are... one school petitioned for a crossing guard because it wasn't safe for their peers to cross the street other has been bathroom beautification projects because of all of the graffiti and that negative messages that can be written on the wall but then also we have some girls that just love animals so we do bake sales to help girls um be able to help donate to um what is the name of the place humane society They love the puppies. And then I'm forgetting. So what is striving to achieve? That's it. Believe in the sky is the limit.

I'm forgetting.

How many programs are there?

So that's all a part of the curriculum that they do throughout each year. So the topics shift in each group. Yeah.

And the last one is our CCR piece. Yes. And that's just making sure that outside of doing tangible experiences in the community, that we're making time to have real talk conversations about what we need to do to be able to achieve whatever we want to achieve.

Mm-hmm.

In addition, we have two optional curricula that is based with our partners at United Way and Community Advocates. So we have one, Life Skills, that focuses on the consequences of drugs and alcohol and substance abuse. And then we have a sexual health curriculum to talk about puberty, hygienes, and what consequences of sex can be. Events. We do all of this work, so we have to celebrate. So girls, we do a holiday party each year to be able to celebrate one, just a year coming to a close. Our closing ceremony, which is our end-of-year celebration, we give out scholarships to girls, and then also we celebrate their work throughout the year by giving them awards for our prose attributes. We have a block party every year. That's just to kick off to the programming year. And then our goal party. We just recently went to Kalahari with about 75 girls to celebrate them achieving their goals.

The one thing I would add, too, is that also at the end of the year, we do offer multiple scholarships to our girls. So as they're preparing for post-secondary success, our Pearls Girl of the Year, again, that's voted on. There's a whole process that they go through, but then they're awarded an academic scholarship for college.

Awesome.

And our impact. So these are the data from our previous programming year where we were able to serve 1,020 girls. And we take pride in being able, we can only, our programming is for girls by girls. So we survey them often to figure out what it is that we need to do so we can curate programming that matches the current need. I'm going into my 10th year at PEARLS. I started out in direct service and Each time, I will say that I don't want to fall into my 2016 ways of facilitating group sessions, so it's important for us to have timely feedback from girls, even if so much as asking them at the end of each weekly group session, what did you think about today? What other things do you want to do? The main thing that we've been getting as far as feedback from our end-of-year survey is that they want more field trips and they want more food. So, Ms. Jasmine, I'm going to do what I can. But I'm really proud to say that 98% of our girls at the end of this programming year, which we wrapped up in May, but 98% of our girls said they would return to Pearl's programming and that they would refer to a friend.

Awesome. Oh, I kind of jumped ahead.

So this is just the percentage of our impacts from our 24-25 programming year. Those are just stats that I just gave that 98%. But I'll give you a second.

Yeah.

So so you mean they improve on how they feel about themselves and their peers?

That's correct. That's right. Yeah. So there's a few areas that we try to survey girls on to really see the impact of our programming. Some of that around some of their, you know, more tangible things like, will you refer to a friend? Other parts of it are about. Did you learn how to make stronger decisions or emotional regulation, being able to manage conflict, those different types of things we talk about with girls as well. What I love about PEARLS in my time here I always say that I wish I had a Pearls because it's the most holistic way and model that I have been able to experience in my career where all of the pieces of Pearls really say that if we focus on this girl building her own confidence and her own self-worth and identity, understanding who she is, Then we also then can start talking about all of these other pieces and aspects of life that that guide us. Right. So if I know who I am, then I will be less likely to succumb to peer pressure when it comes to drug alcohol. you know, early sex decisions, having a strong desire to be a steward of our own bodies and the way that we walk through life. And so that's why we say that we're building the future women leaders of this community, because I think it all starts at that core of who we are and our identity. And Pearls is able to really look at all of these different ways. And so if you're a Pearls girl, then you're less likely to get pregnant. You're less likely to be involved in youth violence in the city. You're having stronger mental health conversations. We're actually bringing mental health partners into our office space this summer, thinking about all of the data that we've seen in the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, speaking directly towards what's happening around mental health with our youth right now in our communities right here in Milwaukee. And so much of what our youth are asking for or have been asking for as they've been surveyed, outside of Pearls and within Pearls is trusted spaces, wanting to feel like they have safety and belonging. And those are the key components of the work that we do at Pearls. So we really want to think about what our work and role is in the overall ecosystem for youth in the community, which is why we're so excited to be a part of this conversation today, because it really takes a village. And I think we're one piece of that puzzle. But the work that we're trying to think about as we grow into our future is how we work with other stakeholders within the community to ensure that we are growing the work that we're doing. I'm so excited about the thousand girls that we're serving every year. And also we know that there's 50, I don't know, 50 plus thousand girls in our city that could be touched by pearls in some way. And the continued impact that we have in the 33 years is that we've served over 13,000 girls in our community who've gone on to graduate high school, go into post-secondary, opportunities go into career fields here within our city as well as across this country and world. So we really do believe that the impact of our work is much bigger than we're serving girls, right? It's really a part of how we grow our Milwaukee ecosystem, how we grow the future leaders, how we think about talent in our city, and even some of the aspects of our curriculum and thinking about how you give back to your community, right? Like what that looks like. It's all a part of the strategy of PEARLS. i uh i think i would leave with just as we're thinking about the future of the organization there's a lot of work that we're doing in our current strategic plan that's specific to we're calling it our neighborhood strategy where we're really we've worked with schools primarily and some community-based organizations what we're trying to do is kind of shift that some where we want to continue of course to work with schools but with a lot of the challenges that are happening within schools financially, et cetera, it has been, there have been more barriers to access for us to, I would love to be in every school in the city of Milwaukee and that's just not currently possible. So you can see where we currently are in partnership with and really, really thinking about how we go deeper in our relationships across some of these community organizations and our school partners and education partners, et cetera. But then also, how do we do this in a way that structural or financial barriers are not reducing the access to the actual girls in the community? So this is why we're really working currently. We're partnering with the Boys and Girls Clubs. We're working with a couple of their sites across the city this summer and into the next year. to, again, meet girls where they are. So going into community centers in neighborhoods where they can come from down the block from home and come to a safe space and receive PEARLS programming. And that's why Jasmine was saying also like growing in our field trips and opportunities to then bring all of those girls together because currently they'll have their sisters in a group of 25 to 30 girls at their school or organization where groups are. But we, again, are at 1,000 girls that we're serving. So how do we make sure that we are bringing them together across communities, again, so that they're connecting and getting to know and growing together? Excuse me. I'm sorry.

How many directors or facilitators do you have, again? You gave a number earlier.

So we have five full-time program coordinators, and then we have associate staff members as well. So those vary depending on points of the year, but... Currently, we're at one. We have our one team facilitator on staff this summer, but then also have space for a couple additional associate staff members.

So how does that breakdown happen? So when you say over 1,000 people, so do we have, I mean, how many touch points do we have for every? facilitator or staff member handles 50 or a hundred. I mean, so it's kind of some big numbers. I mean, how does that break down?

So, um, I mentioned that we have group sessions that happen once one to two times per week and our five program care program coordinators carry four to five, uh, group sessions. So the max capacity for each one of that, those groups are 25. So that means that that PC works with about a hundred to 125 girls per week.

Okay. So it's 25 per session? Mm-hmm. Okay. So it's not over one. Okay.

Mm-hmm. That's an excellent question. So example, Nicolet. We work with all of the girls that are in high school there. So we have a junior teen group, which is freshmen and sophomores, and we have a senior teen group. So that program coordinator would go on Tuesdays and Thursdays to Nicolet. So we know Tuesday, Thursday mornings, those girls can expect to have a group session from Nicolet. 1045 to 1145. That's my alma mater.

Well, and the one other aspect of our program that we did mention is our shorter-term drop-in experiences. So we have kind of our weekly groups that we do with girls, but then also, as Jasmine said, like wanting to make sure that we're meeting the girls where they are today. That model from 30-plus years ago has been what Pearls has consistently done. What we're seeing in our youth today is they have tons of other opportunities, and they're also just – I won't say shorter attention spans, but they are engaged in a lot of different things. So you don't necessarily see a girl that's going to come group after group after group, year after year after year, in which case we love when that happens. And we have, I think, a strong return rate, which is amazing. And also the thought process for us is then, how do we meet those girls where they are? And so if that is a one-term experience at a conference, when we were at the Go Girl conference a couple of weeks ago, or at one of our school partner conferences, or if we have school partners who aren't able to afford PEARLS, then we can go and do some of those experiences with girls on building a shorter term opportunity for them so that they can still focus on particular areas. So some schools may reach out and say that they're experiencing challenges with bullying with girls or something else with girls, and can we come in and do some programming with them, and we're able to do those things as well. So we have that kind of year-round programming, but then we also do some additional work with girls and wanting to continue to grow in that area as well because we've been seeing a lot of really great benefit from that from our school partners.

No, thanks. It seems like there's a wide range of topics and services that are very important that you guys provide. So can you speak to what type of... certifications or training or qualifications go into i mean these uh because i mean it's it's they're they're covering some important things that are that our young ladies need but i mean so i would assume how do you yeah you know this i mean i assume it's a very strict um interviewing process. Oh, sure. Yeah.

So they're awful. Our program coordinators are full time staff members are all bachelor's level full time professionals. And yes, they're all background checked all of those kind of standard procedures. But then we also have a number of trainings.

Yes, Youth and Mental Health First Aid training. So that basically teaches us how to be able to teach girls how to leverage all of the things that they have in their toolkit and to be able to leverage resources that they have on campus. We're mandated reporters because in our group sessions, of course, we share a lot of things. So we want to make sure that our... duty is to make sure that they're protected. We also make sure that our team is trained and understand how to identify an academic SMART goal. And then we also work in collaboration with our site partners, whether it's an educational institution or a community to find out in what ways that they see that their girls can grow and improve on campus. So we want to make sure that we don't, if a girl says she wants to get an A in gym, we're like, let's figure out something else. But then also we have the girls that are scholarly, so we push them to be more well-rounded on campus. And then there's things that come up throughout the year where we really need to stretch in. So going into this fall semester, we'll be doing a training on ADHD and how we can be a support in those things. We had MMAC in not too long ago so that we can understand all of the availability desk for girls when it comes down to the workforce that's here in Milwaukee. So we lean into same financial literacy and all of those things. We work with Secure Futures so that we can be able to help girls understand financial literacy. But I also want to make sure that while we have all of these deep topics that we work with, we also understand that we're in the business of building relationships, which is why we have strong partners so we can have them come in and speak directly to girls about the things that they're experts on. I think the only other, oh and then of course facilitation. So how to engage with girls. We keep that going on a weekly basis where we come together in our programming team meetings to figure out what our peaks are for the week and then our challenges and we come together to be able to say these are tools and strategies that we use that's worked previously. I get to throw in my 2016 ways there and they just edit it so that it worked for today.

Well, and then the other thing I would add is that we're seeing more desire from our team in learning around trauma-informed care, so we've been doing some additional trainings with them with TIC and doing another training this summer. I come from a higher education background, so it's key for me to continue to grow and educate in our team because The also added benefit with the PEARLS staffing and intergenerational staff is that we also have really great young professionals that are working on our team too. So we really do try to also think about them as an extension of our girls and making sure that we're helping them grow professionally as well as they prepare for whatever the next steps in their careers are as well. So we have monthly professional development series that we do across our entire team. And then the programming team also then has their own separate set of additional training and development that they do.

Mr. Chair? Yes. I have a quick one. I'm just wondering for Jasmine, since you've been doing this 10 years, like what do you think, my first question is like what do you think has remained consistent and then what has really drastically changed in 10 years?

That's an excellent question. What has remained consistent is that there's a certain level of charisma that we have to have and we have to be able to open up to girls in order for girls to open up to us. So the thing that has remained consistent is that if we show up as, if we don't show up trying to adoptify our youth, then they show up and they actually get the opportunity to be kids. So the more that we can be an example of that as we go into the many different schools and community-based organizations that we work with, as often as we can show that as a character trait, we start to see a change in that ecosystem. What have I seen change the most? Wow. Wow. Let me see if I can pick one thing. um maybe um interest i've seen interest change for career fields and the entrepreneur landscape is huge and i feel like that's something that we've been really intentional about making sure that we lean into so that girls can see business owners that are here in the city that are doing amazing things but when i was facilitating it was a couple of things it was law it was health care or it was engineering that was the main thing that we took girls on experiences for But now seeing that so many of them are making their own things and having their own LLCs and baking things as young as seventh, eighth grade, right? With, of course, the help of their parents. It's important for us to begin having those intentional conversations very young, too.

One last follow-up. Do you think that there's an interest in... learning through experience and not through school. I'm wondering if you're going to be an entrepreneur, do you still have a desire to go to school for business? Or are you like, no, I'm just going to learn by doing it or talking to other people? Yeah, let me start.

had that conversation actually a lot with partners as well and thinking about what our role is right because oftentimes that is the case and we've heard that from a lot of our youth of like I can I actually was just at one of our sites before groups ended at Howard Fuller and was having a conversation with one of our high school juniors who was talking about a business that she has a fashion brand and that she's doing all this great work and I'm like okay uh-huh and also I Like, what are we doing to finish high school? Because we also want to have that foundation, right? And a lot of times it is, I think, important for us as the trusted adults or supporters to also help them understand kind of how do you become that full-rounded, well-rounded entrepreneur. So some of our visits, we haven't scheduled this yet, but one is, for example, a lot of ladies interested in hair salon, styling, esthetician, etc., So actually taking them into a salon with a business owner to understand that there's all these aspects. Do you know accounting? Do you know taxes? Do you know all of these other things to make sure that you are equipped and prepared to do whatever it is that you want to do? Because, yes, a lot of times with the kind of quick businesses or quick things that we see online, it's like easy to say, oh, I can just go do this, which... Some, you know, maybe the one person can. And also, how do we make sure that we help set you up for success so that you have that foundational knowledge is the efforts that we try to have.

Yeah. To Tiffany's point, that is the beauty of being able to have tangible experiences. So we had a day with MATC where we talked about women in male-dominated fields, and we got to tour the trades before we met with a construction company that was run by women. That was one of the first steps at the cosmetology school. We're so grateful that their professor came out. You can't just be in your kitchen being a beautician. There's things that you have to, and the way that they leaned into that conversation and got to see the ladies that didn't make the choice to go ahead and go through the program and saw them actually practicing And the way that their eyes opened up, I'm like, we will be back because this is something that they really want. So those, yes. And even in group sessions when we're not out in the community, majority of our interactions through those, the building relationships and loving myself, those are all tangible activities where they're working with someone or they're working with someone or they're having to put together a proposal for a business or something that they want to do and being able to present it. It's just teaching them those small character building skills of if you have something, how do you talk about it with confidence?

That was an excellent question. There was one final piece I wanted to make sure we added, which was just specific to costs. So this is what we would share with kind of externally with partners who are interested in partnering with Pearl. So we do have a fee that our school-based partners opt into to have that year-round programming. This is kind of our sticker price for the schools, although it has deviated and changed much based off of what the school's actual program financial capacity looks like. So we definitely try not to, again, have cost be a barrier. But this actually, we're currently in the process of updating because as we, the primary dollars come from fundraising and so through our individual foundation sources, et cetera. But the actual cost of our groups are actually closer to now $40,000 per group of 25 girls a year. So we are fundraising as much as possible. We're also working to really secure more sponsors for the actual school partners because even the cost, which is a small fraction of the full amount of the cost, right, that the schools we ask to pay, they are not able to afford it. And we know, right, why, because it's so challenging right now financially across all school districts. And so we are really trying to think about creative ways of how we can continue to serve girls, which is what I was sharing before with working more within some of these community-based organizations, reducing actual school partner fees to as little as possible. But then that means then we have to subsidize that, continue to grow in reducing those costs for our partners. Yeah, so that's the last piece that I would offer is that one of the things that perhaps we were not facing earlier on in our work, we are seeing in a very different way as obviously the economy and so much has changed where there were budgets for these types of services. And I think that we have so many great pieces of feedback from our school partners about the value of pearls and they want pearls and Jasmine has list of probably a hundred plus schools who are not able to say yes to pearls and the majority of them are because of cost so that's something that as a leadership we're actively working on trying to identify solutions to reduce or eliminate the actual out-of-pocket costs for school partners to be able to have pearls in their schools yeah

Other than schools, is there like a summer program or a weekend after school program? Is there a location that I can send my daughter to?

So that's a great question that we didn't mention. So we are in those specific schools, but our Pearl's office, Hop Skip and Away, right there on 7th and McKinley, Monday through Thursday, 4 to 6 p.m., we serve any girl from the city of Milwaukee. So they can come to group. at our office throughout the academic year. And then we also then are hosting a number of different opportunities in the summer for girls as well.

So if the city was supported and you applied for some funding, how would you apply it? Would you pick a school or would it be before what you just stated?

So it's a great question. How would you apply some funding?

It's an excellent question.

Yeah, so the biggest kind of fundraising desire for us is specific to our school partners. Yeah, so really trying to get the cost to... close to zero as possible right subsidizing the cost for schools because um one of the things that just continues to not sit well with me is that we have schools who want pearls in their schools that we can't that can't afford us to be there um so we have been uh like i said working with some sponsors to um try to get some different corporate partners to sponsor said schools um but that would that would be exactly how we would apply those dollars is One, getting into more schools, which then also then mean that I need more staffing, right? To be able to, because the intentionality around our service is keeping those groups small so that there are actual real relationships being built that allow for the growth and development that we see in those girls.

Okay, and if a school doesn't have 25 young girls signed up, can you split like 15 here and 15 there?

That is an excellent question. I'm open to just about anything that they have, so I'd love to tell them we can create a pathway that makes the most sense to you. Because of how most budgets are set, it's like one of our partners, Journey House, for your example, they're also connected to Longfellow, but they have two completely different budgets that they operate off of. So the internal extra work that will go and I have no idea those behind the scenes, but I offer as much as I can because my goal is for us to get to where the girls are. So whatever is within their range, we're perfectly fine to do. We've also in addition to our drop in experiences, which are one time we've done short stints where we've come and we've worked with at the same group multiple times. Or even getting creative with a couple partners that I've been speaking with recently and like maybe we just do a semester of programming or we do a couple of group sessions in the fall and a few in the spring just so we can have at least some sort of touch base and be able to offer those girls the opportunity to come to our pearls office for group sessions.

All right. Thank you so much. Excellent presentation. We did bring some things. Hopefully you got something for us to...

Thank you all, yes. To connect on.

Do you have any more questions? All right. Ladies, excellent job. Thank you so much for having us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We will be in touch. Thank you.

Were you guys on MLK at any point? Yeah. So you're not there anymore?

We moved a year ago. Officially a year and next month.

Hey.

All right, all right, all right. Good stuff, good stuff. Okay, thank you for coming. Good morning, good morning. Let me introduce you. Number six, UMOS Latina Resource Center presentation.

Yes.

Good morning, everybody. Thank you for coming up. I appreciate your patience. Now we are looking forward. To your presentation. So you have the floor.

Thank you. My name is Mariana Rodriguez and I am the director of the Yumos Latina Resource Center. And first of all, thank you so much for giving us this opportunity to talk about one of many programs that we have, the Latina Resource Center, and that's RAICES, which is the youth program. targeting middle and high school youth in the city of Milwaukee. And today I bring my group, actually. We have Jennifer Rodriguez, who is actually the lead family specialist. And then we have, you wanna introduce yourself?

I'm Alan Mendoza. I am a youth leader in RAICES. In what? In RAICES. RAICES.

Our youth group is called RAICES, which translates to Roots. Roots, okay. Yeah, so we call each other Roots as well.

Okay, I like that. All right, Jesus. My name is Santiago Perez, and I'm also a youth leader at RAICES. Okay.

Hi there. My name is Diana Gonzalez, and I'm actually the manager from Health Promotions, also part of UMOS Social Services Division.

Awesome.

So today we wanted to really share with you, I mean, we really wanted to make sure that we invited our youth leaders who really play a really big part in what we do with our program, with RAICES. So which way do I go?

Do I just press or? Yeah, we can try that.

Okay.

Oh, sorry. There you go. Where? Go ahead.

Oh, okay. So really quick, UMOS, we are a multi-state organization, but our headquarters are here in Milwaukee. The Latina Resource Center is one program under the umbrella of the social services program headed by the Vice President Marjorie Rivera-Torres, who's joining us back here, And so we have multiple social service programs, legal, community pathways, and of course Latina Resource Center is one of the programs along with health promotions. And so the Latina Resource Center, what we focus on is we actually are a domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking program. And so we have intervention programs, we have housing programs for families who are facing housing insecurities because they're fleeing abusive homes. And we have programming for children who witness domestic violence or are sexually assaulted. And then we have a human trafficking program where we address both labor and sex trafficking around the state. One of the programs, of course, is our youth component. And that is more focused around prevention. How do we prevent the next group of young individuals from being victims? But also, how can we really support them to be leaders, to be the peers, to support their friends in education about what it means to be healthy? How do you support somebody who is addressing, who's facing some challenges at home or facing, might be in a relationship that it's abusive? And so we know that with teens, you know, it's prevalent. And when teens, when they start to form their initial relationships, they love deep, you know what I'm saying? And so they don't often have the information to best know how to navigate the challenges that they may be experiencing in their relationship, whether it's an a very over-possessive boyfriend or girlfriend, or there is a great deal of stalking. And a lot of the violence that we know is occurring are in the schools. They are in the schools. So RAICES is about really building up leaders, really getting them out there and getting a group of teens to support each other. So we actually implement two curriculums. One is Expect Respect, and the other one is Dating Violence. I'm sorry, Safe Dates. And they're all around prevention and focusing on healthy relationships. So before I go in there, I do want to talk about, I mean, Diana's going to talk about a very specific program for youth that is also about focusing on healthy youth. This is part of the component. And so, Diana?

Yes, thank you. So health promotions, we basically use service to community with different services. But under the youth-specific services, we have the tobacco prevention program. And this program is educating the community and the youth about the prevention, you know, the consequences of vaping and tobacco use, educating them and having this open space so that way they can learn about it, but also to go out and speak to their peers about the same thing, building that knowledge to the peers so that way they don't start. Two components is fact groups. That's where we share. We join just a group of Jews where we speak one-on-one like a good group. And they get that knowledge and they spread it out. The other component of that is where we partner with the Milwaukee Police Department and the cadets where they go out to the retailers and make sure they are compliant. and not selling to underage individuals.

Okay.

So that's a good leadership building for the youth so that way they know, hey, they have advocacy for them and they know they're doing something positive to the community. Oh, yeah. And besides that, we have good feedbacks from both adults and youth that they have a voice to the community and have that preventive part to their health and to their youth and themselves. Thank you.

So that program, at licensing committees, when businesses come up to renew their license, I ensure that that program is in every last gas station, convenience store, and liquor store in my district. So thank y'all. We've got to sign up for that. All right, cool. So that's y'all. I know you don't look like that because I could tell you're a kid right now. Maybe you dress up a little bit or what?

Something to kind of add to that program and just kind of the style of how it works really well. Again, they kind of offer, again, this kind of stakeout like plots. Okay. So, for example, they'll work with, you know, a youth that is a little bit more like older, so 17, 18, right? They'll go out, you know, into the stores and then they'll just try to go buy, you know, this product. And a lot of the times, unfortunately, the shop owners will not even check IDs and they'll be like, here's this product, right? And then the youth comes out, right? They have an adult with them and they're just kind of thinking, you know, they talk through the process of like, oh, my God, it was so easy. I just went in there. right like they didn't even like flinch so then um my youth again like we all kind of work together to kind of create that that system that plot of like okay how easy is it right and then where are we getting this stuff from like we've had conversations about like like honestly like things like time has changed right so like i was telling them like a few years like 10 years back i was in high school it was super cool to be smoking cigarettes but now it's like what are you guys smoking Like, right? Like, what are you guys? They're like, vapes, pens, vapes, pens, right? And it's even easier, right, to get access to this stuff. So these are the conversations that we have, right? Because, again, I think similar to one of the programs behind me, how they're like, we want to get the information from the teens. Like, we want to know what's going on, hear them out. Because times change. Like, again, cigarettes are gross now, right? But back then it was cool if you were smoking them, right? But now we're looking at tobacco in a whole different image. Yeah.

So when y'all do that, when y'all report on their record, then they get a suspension from you. Yeah. So you're helping the community. Because now I suspend them, and then they can't make money for 10, 20, 30 days, depending on what their record is.

So they're going to be more strict on it, too. So then they're not like, oh, we're not going to do this again. We're actually going to follow procedure, right? So it's those steps.

That's the ultimate. What you guys are doing, that's the end. It comes from us, and we hold them accountable. Yeah.

And for the last 30 days, we have completed 158 retailer checks.

You got to do what?

For the last 30 days, we have completed 158 checks on retailers.

All right, well, keep it up. From 8th Street to 51st, Locust to Valise. Get them all.

Well, I think the other part is, again, it's youth-led, too. So they are the group that is out there in the community. So there's a great deal of training and discussion, but they're the leaders. They're the ones that are going out there. And it's not just an adult walking in there with a little checkboard or anything like that. This is, you know, what these teens are helping us to address in the community. That's empowerment, and that is what we really focus on with the leadership. So RAICES is the other component, which is about healthy youth and healthy relationships. And so a little bit of the overview is that we empower youth through leadership development, prevention education, healthy relationships, and community engagement. And those are really kind of our primary pillars where they are really involved in making sure that they are reaching It's like the peer-to-peer conversations, presenting, talking, so that they are the ones that are leading and less voice of adults. And we've had a youth summit, actually. Santi spoke at the youth summit, and there was a great discussion around immigration. or police involvement in the community. And there was such great insight that's coming from the youth in terms of how do we form these relationships. Because if we don't have good relationships with our community partners, or at least the teens, they're going to be treated as suspicious, you know, and let's pull them over, let's talk to them, versus these are the young individuals who are leaders. and who are out in the community and know what's going on, and they are the ones that can inform us adults as to what we need to do better. So they are amazing around that. Again, the core pillars of our group, and we are funded by End Abuse Wisconsin. It's a program through the Department of Children and Family Services. It's a very small grant. Jennifer is really our only, you know, our only, youth facilitator, and we tend to do a great deal a lot for the support that we receive. So the leadership development, the prevention, education, everything, the community engagement, and advocacy voice are the things that Jennifer does in groups. So the teens participate.

So the group, right, like what does this look like in action? It really consists of we meet every Wednesday and my students come from all over the community, right? So then, for example, as we mentioned, we have advocates in the LRC, our Latina Resource Center, We have advocates and they work with these families. So then the first kind of wave that I get is references. Right. So let's say dad comes in. He reported a you know, he wants to do a restraining order on mom because mom was being abusive towards him and his teenage daughter. Right. So then we have an advocate working with dad to file that restraining order. But then I'm working with a teenage daughter to make sure that she knows what a healthy relationship in a safe space looks like. So then that's kind of the first wave, right? I work with references from my peers, the rest of the team. And then the second wave is really just students who come in from all over the community, like I mentioned. Alan goes to Bradley Tech, right? Or both of you, sorry. Both of you guys go to Bradley Tech. I have students from Reagan. I have students from San Agustin Prep, Georgia Tech. Angel Nantitas, we work really well with as well. I've done, yeah, so again, we have members from the community that come willingly. They come every Wednesday, and we'll do different programming. So sometimes I mix it up depending on, you know, the theme. So for example, Alan, do you want to tell them a little bit on what we did for like the week, like the month of Pride?

yes we attended pride fest and we had like a set up a display of what we had of our resources and just like advocating for ourselves and what we provide for the community so then we'll go out to the community and again they're the voice so I'm just sometimes I'm just sitting back they're doing you know they're doing the work

They're talking about, you know, the resources that we have, right? But the point is to kind of have them be introduced. This was their first time at Pride Fest. It was super cool. It was fun. But again, we were there with a mission, and that was to spread the message of the resources that we do carry. So it's, again, going back to that youth leadership component. So then, again, part of the students that come come from all over the community. But then I also go into schools, and I do facilitation. So then I'll do offer one time free workshops to just kind of get my foot through the door about the tobacco prevention, right? Or kind of, we did this really fun presentation at Howard Fuller and we did it a combination of what does tobacco smoking prevention look like and how does mental health go in connection? Because when we're going out, we met with Sanjot and Titus as well. We talked to them and we asked what's going on, right? Like, you guys are finding vapes. What are they telling you when you find these vapes? A lot of the students are saying, I smoke because I'm stressed. I'm on the city bus for a full hour every morning to get to school. I'm an hour back heading home. I'm stressed. I'm hitting that vape. So then we did that co-presentation on tobacco use, vape use, and mental health and what coping looks like. Just as a reminder, we could cope in different ways, healthier ways. So then Howard Fuller, again, those are some examples of different schools that we've been going into.

I think in a year we'll probably, I mean, in terms of outreach, the teens head all of that. Like I said, they do part of that is being involved in the prevention, the leadership, the public speaking. We have attended the teen summits that are headed by the Department of Children and Family Services. They are the ones, the teens are the ones that are presenting. on a topic, whether it's mental health, suicide, or what have you. Again, it is the way that the teens are leading the work in our community and how we're just there to empower them so that they can make a greater impact peer-to-peer and be more practical in terms of what we are asking them to do, and that is more community engagement and involvement. So the education piece of that, Santi, did you want to say anything about

community involvement yeah we actually with the teens we engage with them we set presentations and activities to let them know and spread awareness about mental health also about safe safe relationships how they may or may not look like it's just a good environment to learn in a non school like way

How long have you been with the program?

About like a year and a half.

He's a great guy.

Alan, actually, also, I mean, Alan, I mean, you guys want to talk a little bit about your experience. In terms of, you know, field trips and exposure to communities, I think we ended up going to the Black Holocaust Museum because we want to be able to make sure that we are being very inclusive and making sure that there are – Our communities are very similar in how we are addressing barriers. It looks a little different, but when we are building across to other communities and sharing, we can become one community and really address them together. We can be stronger. Yeah. And so-

A really cool example of the Black Holocaust Museum, like we went, of course, around Juneteenth, right? And then our tour guide was amazing. Again, big shout out to them. They were great. We did the tour. We kind of, you know, they presented to us and whatnot. And then my mistake, I ordered the bus like a whole hour later. So they were amazing. We're kind of hanging out there for a minute. But we were like, you know what? They gave us this space. So we had more of like a sit-down table conversation, right? We were like, you know what? We'll do our debriefing here. So do you guys want to kind of talk a little bit? Do you remember the conversations we had and the similarities of the patterns that we saw?

the black i think it was a great learning experience because well in my history class i didn't really learn much of what was presented there yeah yeah um i think it was a great learning experience because well what i learned there it wasn't really taught in my history class right and it was like we learned about the lynching of um of black americans we learned about there was like these green greenhouses.

Oh, the red zoning in Milwaukee, the red line zoning. So we talked a lot about that and how we still see that till this day.

Also, they got slavery all the way up to, Modern. Present day, yeah. Yeah, okay.

And we also, I think, something that the teams mentioned that really caught my attention too is that we saw a lot of the similarities and patterns of, for example, right now for the Latino population, right, a lot of the fear that we're seeing is off of the immigration and ICE raids that we're seeing throughout the country, right? So I know one of my teams, or a few of them, kind of had said that they see those similarities. with the slave catchers and then ice, right? And then how the migration patterns of how they would start off in the south and then they would kind of make their way up north, right? Similar to a lot of our backgrounds. So that was a really cool conversation that I was like, oh man, that's very true.

So I think, you know, so the greater impact that we want to kind of reemphasize again about the program is that, again, with RAICES, when we're looking at prevention of violence, whether it's community or intimate or dating violence, we know that there's a great deal of intersectionality where families are struggling. in so many different ways and aspects. And politically, kids are being impacted. And so when we are providing them the space to really process what's happening outside of our homes, we have to connect how all this plays out in the way that we form ourselves as healthy individuals. how we continue to work towards being healthy adults. And Raices at the end is really our goal, is about really talking about what that looks like versus always looking at the dimensions of what does violence look like. In our feedback that we receive, most teens can identify abusive behaviors. What they cannot identify is what it means to be a healthy teen. individual or how to support a friend who is experiencing challenges. Peer to peer development is really important and that's what we want to really build them up and so that they can be able to understand communication. You can argue. You can have differences without hurting somebody, right? And so these are some of the things that we have been really addressing, how violence has been playing a part in our lives, and that's why it's so prevalent. And so when we are bringing kids to these spaces and these museums, we are really getting into some deep conversations about the prevalence of that and what our role is to make sure that we continue to be healthy so yeah so that's um so that's the impact and um you know and again we are in in middle schools and high schools um and uh and so we definitely want to make sure that we continue to support the youth in all of the work that we do so yes what type of again what type of training does um so these are obviously some very serious

and important community issues that, so what type of training does your staff, do your volunteers go through for this? And then also, equally important, We have to be cognizant of what type of resources that you're giving to your staff and your volunteers when they're handling, because they're going to need some resources also when they're dealing with these important issues.

Yeah, what's really neat about this project is that, um, you know, uh, there's a great deal of training that is offered to, um, to the staff and how in there's monthly meetings with all of the funded projects. We're like 5 projects around the state that's being funded. there is a great deal of connection and interaction between all of the programs to provide support and training at least for the for the for the leaders part of the curriculums of what we implement in in the expect respect and safe dates they have components in how we can train teens into how to have these difficult conversations and the resources and how not to get in you know not to get involved but rather how do you support you know um a peer who may be disclosing and all the peers have um connections with our youth with Jennifer so that there's always conversations like if there's anything very serious that has occurred the teens are trained to communicate with the lead you know in terms of other things that we need that an adult needs to follow up the truth of the matter is is that teens are dealing with things by themselves And the kind of advice that they may give may not be always the best, or they might not even say anything to an adult. And so some of these topics like, you know, drugs, the use of drugs, or the fact that they might be in an abusive relationship. And, you know, or... pregnancy, some of these things, teens already know. They know what's going on around their circles.

So are your employees, do they have certifications? Are there educational requirements?

So when it comes to our advocates, yes. So when it comes to our advocates, they're all, again, college educated. They have their background specifically in those realms, right? I myself have my bachelor's. And then when it comes to, again, training and making sure that all my knowledge that I'm sharing with the teens is up to date, uh my you know my my team my boss they they offer really great opportunities for trainings that we are able to get right so then just like online trainings we'll go to seminars um i know there's a seminar coming up in texas that we're kind of eyeing right now um all within the topics of of youth leadership right all in within the topics of healthy relationship mental health so it's just again keeping sure making sure that like my you know my resume is always being updated with all these different kind of trainings and whatnot um and then again uh community partners those are really going to be our strongest suit so sometimes i might come up with um you know a situation that we're not too familiar with right uh we work with a lot of our neighboring uh partners like soju is one of our homes again we work with the city so we we work with a lot of different uh departments throughout the the city as well to just kind of do the whole You know, again, it takes a village for sure. So it's one of those.

We partnered with the safety and wellness.

Yeah, with Julian.

So we're great partners. So we definitely have those resources.

We're very open to collaborating. So again, there's always room for growing and learning and whatnot. So we definitely partner internally with the tobacco prevention and the rest of the team at UMOS, but also on a larger scale when those resources are available to us as well.

Thank you for that question. Thank you.

Where's your physical location?

On Chase, 2701 South Chase Street. Next to the Chuck E. Cheese. There you go. That's the headquarters of UMOS. So that's where we are. We have our own location there.

You guys give out support for families for housing too, right? Yes, we do. Okay. Excellent presentation. We look forward to working with you all. That's what this meeting is about. You'll get some follow-up from Mr. Crump or the President's office or our manager, Bevin, on how we can partner and continue.

Thank you.

We're here to support you guys. Thank you for what you're doing in my district and helping keep those businesses clean.

Thank you so much.

Anything else? Thank you, guys. Thank you. Thank you so much. Look forward to the partnership. Thank you. All right. All right, next we have Project Kindred Update. We have June 13th, MKE Love Recap, July 9th, Civic Love Programming, and then July 16th, City Hall Engagement and Scavenger Hunt. Bevan, are you presenting on these?

No, we have John Engle on.

Okay, yeah. And then Cliff, are you presenting on these? You and y'all are you are you working with y'all on this? Is y'all is y'all here?

I'm here. Hey, y'all. Yeah. Hey, how's it going? I can no longer share my screen of evidence.

Yeah, that's her. The screen is her.

Oh, the screen is her.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that.

Otherwise, you're going to disconnect this. Yeah.

What are you doing too much?

No, she has to present. Oh, I'm sorry. You know what you're doing? We practiced.

Are you practicing? Okay. All right. So, yeah, this is Project Kindred. Cliff, you got some open remarks? Or Beth, you got some open remarks to get us on the same page?

Yeah, so there was a June 13th event that Yaa is going to tell us about, and also the prep for the scavenger hunt, and then we have the change of time for the July 16th, where the scavenger hunt is going to take place. So I'll hand it over to Yaa.

I'm Clifton Crump. I'm the, what am I here again? I got so many titles.

Keep the staff of President Perez.

Mr. Chairman, committee members, as you know, Project Kendrick was just awarded $150,000 through the Black Grant Office. And again, these are the types of relationships that Like you mentioned, the entity appears for this body. They're impressive. They have a nice resume. They have ongoing programming. That group, Project Kindred, had not received any city dollars. Right. You saw a fit in President Perez to put that forward. They got funding. So this is really part of a big picture in a lasting relationship, we hope. That is kicking off this summer, June 13th. They had an event at the Kazi Center. It was a lot of youth that attended that. That's going to spill into the event at Marquette from, I think, July 7th through the 10th. where we hope some of the members come and help this youth create as they work towards their root cause. They're going to come up with questions to pose to city officials that then will come on July 16th. And then we'll eventually have our EAC meeting and talk about their root causes and how we can help assist them in solving them, which are all problems that the city faces. Excellent. All right.

Excellent.

Looking forward to it.

All right. We may proceed. Yeah.

hello is everybody is my screen sharing okay So, yeah, so as Bevan and Clifton said, we had an amazing event that was youth-planned, youth-powered on July 13th at the Kazi Center. 114 people signed our sign-in form. 70 of those people were young people, and the most age represented the most was age 17. And we had 30 partners come in, so they were hoping for 150 yes. We could have easily have had 150 guests, but we didn't have a sign up at the back door. And a lot of people were coming from a bike event that was happening outside in the park through the back door. So could be could even be more than that that attended. But the young people raised four thousand dollars on their own. through a youth-led grant with Milwaukee Succeeds and the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. And then the city supported the event with about $7,200. And then the educators supported with bags for the summer kits and $1,000. What we did learn was there was a bike event that was happening along the street that we believe kind of hindered. We had a couple of vendors that were like, it was such a great event. We enjoyed being outside. Yeah, that was the other event. There was a couple mixed up. We had invited some firefighters to come and offer to present their job opportunities to the young people. And they ended up at the bike event. So just making sure that we coordinate with 16th Street next year and make this a whole inside-outside event would be cool. And I do want to mention the young people. They created a command center while they were there. And every time I went in there, the main thing they had to say to me that they were So appreciative of the community leaders that came. So President Perez came and was, sorry, Shrinky Bakes. I don't know if you guys remember that from back in the day or, you know, putting the Flamin' Hot Bag in the oven to watch it shrink. So they brought something like that, Kraft, one of our vendor partners who was there. you know, playing with the young people and, you know, really getting in the mix and that's the type of stuff that they noticed. So not only were they very proud of themselves for putting on such a great event for their first time ever, but also that the community showed support the way that it did. Moving on to our root cause to action, at Marquette University coming up July 7th through the 10th. We are so excited for this. Our young people are excited for this. Marquette is excited for this. The 7th through the 8th, our young people, we're hoping to get between 20 to 25. We have three or four seats still open, so if anybody knows some young people that are interested in change, please send them our way.

Okay.

But the seventh through the eighth, they will be exploring issues in their community, things that matter to them, what power is, who gets to make the decisions, who's influencing, choosing if they want to highlight something good that happens in communities that they want to see more of. or if they want to address a harm or issue in Milwaukee that they want to solve for, they're choosing it. Then on the 9th, the EYAC is coming in to help them prep for their community day. You guys will come in, help them not shape their root cause, but help shape how they investigate that root cause. we are going to help them come up with questions, help them think about what they should be thinking about, you know, letting them, you know, bringing up things that they don't know they should be focusing on. And then on the 10th, We have our community day where community partners will come in, connect with them in the afternoon, and it'll be like a lightning round where community partners will move from groups. There'll be four different causes, or up to four different causes, I should say, because it's up to them to pick what they want to do. And then... they'll ask them questions and we're hoping community expertise helps them shape their solutions and we're asking for anybody who's willing to connect with young people to come in on the 10th you don't have to be an expert or industry expert or a c-suite level person to come in lived experience is also great in this situation So yes, like I said, you're not critiquing the cause, you're not telling them if it'll work or it won't work on the 9th, but you all will just come in and just help them with clarifying questions. maybe they're thinking about connecting with the department and you can guide them and let them know that that's a different person or connection you want to make there. Those type of insights are what we're looking for because we want them to leave the ninth with clear issue areas with strong investigative questions we want them to feel confident connecting with the community um with you know their questions and knowing they'll be able to ask probing questions to really get the answer that they need um and um yeah so just making sure that they're ready for the census what's happening with the eyc on the 9th And then for the city hall experience on June 16th, we've broken it down to the morning. We'll do an opening welcome. We're hoping to get a little government one-on-one going with them. There's no real formal EY AAC role at that time, but you all are welcome to suspend a day with us. So as your Um, calendar permits, if you're, if you're there, we're bringing donuts. So please, you can make it all. I love them.

Sure.

Um, and then, um, they'll go do their department visits, um, asking the questions, meeting the people, um, seeing the things. And then we have, and maybe Clifton can verify, but we do have chaperones. But if somebody was, if there's, you know, backup chaperones or if you would like to join a group, the more the merrier. Like I said, you guys are welcome. We did have an email go out to the department and asking, we had an email go out to the departments asking for the information, contact people, because it will be a quick turnaround between the 10th and the 16th to get that department visits portion set up for the young people. So we did have four departments respond to that, and maybe doing a reminder email might be good. And then lunch, there's lunch in room 303, the same room that we'll be in for the rest of the afternoon. And this will be where you guys will engage with the young people, seeing what they came up with with their visits, seeing how they're connecting it with what they discovered at Marquette. And then really helping them bring it together because after lunch, they'll be presenting what they've come up with, what they're thinking to the EY AAC meeting at one, same room, grill three. And then it'll be up to you all to say, you know, like that is a resolution or that's an annual event or, you know, whatever the, whatever or however you can support that solution, you would be, you know, letting them know what is possible and then you always either agree to work on it within the following months or agree to set up time to figure out how to work on it. That kind, you want to be able to leave with a tangible, actionable item.

Okay.

Thank you.

Mr. Chairman? Yes. And as always, the goal is to create some policy. So again, having policy that kind of starts with the youth, and then it goes through CED or public safety or whatever, then ultimately becomes policy for the city. That would be the grand goal of we get youth more involved with civic engagement.

Yeah, man, I can't wait for that, because in turn, they'll feel empowered, feel like they've developed a law for the city of Milwaukee. a lot of people don't know alderman right our job is to write laws right policy we're in the community and all of that but we're here to make sure things are fair and there's justice and uh to improve things that need to be improved so i'm looking forward to especially we need some assistance from the young people so i'm looking forward to implementing one two three or four whatever laws they can come up with so yeah let them know

Yeah, definitely. For sure.

All right. Let's see. Do we have any questions for Project Kindred and anybody? All right, y'all. Excellent. Thank you for the update. We're looking forward to the next two events. I know a couple of them are going to sign up for tonight, but I'm signing up for the 16th. And once you have a description of that day, please send it to me and I can invite as many orders as possible. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. All right. Next, we have the committee update. Who's providing the update? Is that you, Beth?

So we have Gabe Velez, co-chair of the data and research committee. That's going to give us an update. Awesome.

All right. Good morning, everyone. How are you all doing today? We're doing all right. What about you? Good, good. Thank you for having me again. It's always good to share and present. So as an update, you know, I think last time I shared a bit about the research we've been doing with some of the organizations receiving the Community Development Block Grant funding. We've sort of finalized that part of the report. We're moving ahead to planning the October 15th event. And what we're looking for there is to invite folks from other organizations in, and we're going to kind of pair a bit of some kind of a workshop and some developmental opportunities for those organizations, along with the kind of conversations about how they use data, what types of data they use, what kind of supports they could use. And so the idea being taking what we've learned from the community development block grant folks and then funded folks and then these folks and kind of bring it together for our next step, which is figuring out what we're going to develop just to provide support and what kind of recommendations we're going to make. Something else that came up in our last conversation was also trying to start to collect a bit systematically the types of technical assistance that are out there for youth-serving organizations. It kind of came up in our conversation that we don't necessarily need to reinvent the wheel around that, but it might actually be valuable and useful to create a coordinated list so that a youth-serving organization, if they're looking for a type of support around how do we collect data or research, if there's things that exist or even tied to funding opportunities, that there's an easy sort of centralized place for that. One other point that I want to mention is about two grant opportunities that we are looking to pursue and develop, and so we wanted to share here with this organization because we thought it would help sort of further the work that we're doing, We want to make sure that it is in line with the sort of expectations and hope the 1st is from the William T grant foundation and they have a research grant on improving the use of research evidence. And so this is a grant that we'd be maybe looking to do and it's specifically tailored around. evidence that they are sort of focusing with young people from 5 to 25 and working with research evidence for use by policymakers, public agency leaders, organizational managers, community organizations. So kind of exactly the work that we're sort of doing. And so it would be an opportunity to expand our resources. And so we're working with our committee to possibly develop our proposal. for that current opportunity. And there's a second that is being part of a learning community. So it's a national learning community, and it's run out of an organization called AISP, which I'm And what we're currently blanking on is the actual intelligence for social policy. There's a bit of a mouthful. But it's basically focused around city, county, or regional integrated data systems. And so it's focused around strong data governance, data use. And so again, that would be an opportunity for folks from our committee to sort of be part of a larger conversation around how can data be leveraged in this way. And so those are two opportunities. You don't either want to be guaranteed, but we wanted to share that we might be pursuing in order to further the work that we're doing, which I was kind of describing at the first part. okay are you actively applying right now because uh we can take a supportive vote or did you need some yeah from us so we we're ready to sort of move forward with it we wanted to make sure though that there weren't any concerns or issues with either of those the first one um because the william t grant foundation they do tend to fund more like directly um higher education institutions like marquette would probably be the lead but it would be for the commute work The second one directly asks that you have as a co-lead a government agency or a government entity. And so for that one, we would actually be asking you all to be sort of a co-lead.

What are we applying for? How much money?

The first one has two options, and we've been talking about this with our group. There's a shorter one, which is one to two years and $50,000, and so that would fund sort of the work that we're doing as a committee, like it would be able to really replace that. There's a larger one for $100,000 to $1 million over two to four years, and so we're sort of considering that, but that has to be a much larger scope. I don't know if we're quite ready for that with where we're going. The second one is not directly financial funding, but it's more like capacity building for the work that we're doing.

All right, so for the one you need us from, just send over the requirements and we'll get that going as soon as possible. Is there a deadline you're working with, Gabe?

So the first one is, I have these up here so I can double check. I believe it's end of July. Okay. The more sort of research-oriented one, the 50,000 one I was describing. And then the other one, they just put out the applications are due August 17th.

okay but if you get it to get up to us um and let us know what to what you need from us yeah all right okay thank you very much we should be getting questions any questions from the committee no all right any questions on the board thank you guys excellent information and you have our support on applying for those grants uh you guys have to go back to number seven we have some funding to approve uh number one five hundred dollars for the lunch for the scavenger hunt uh can i get a motion Amber, and can I get a second? Second. Thank you. We lost one? No, Steve is on the board.

One, two. Where's Steve go? He's there. We've lost Brian.

We lost Brian?

Yeah, we lost Brian.

One, two, three, four, five.

I mean, it is 11-20.

Okay. How can I, can I disapprove this? Contingent on something?

Yeah, yeah, we can, then we'll just roll over to the next meeting.

Yeah, I'm going to move approval contingent on having quorum next cycle, but in the interest of getting the money needed, we can get that ball rolling. Also, we have a presentation by our board member about the Strive Together June Policy Summit. Ms. Amber Dayes, would you like to present?

Yes, I prepared a very lengthy presentation.

Thanks. You did? Appreciate that.

Heck no.

You did or you did not?

We'll get this done quick. So I just wanted to talk to you guys about my experience in D.C. with Vincent Lyles through Milwaukee Succeeds. We went and attended the City Accelerator, and Bevan's pulling up the... handout but for you yeah it was a bunch of different like youth serving organizations that came together under strive strive together and we convene for the city accelerator you can see on the first page it kind of talks about like what the purpose of this was so basically is just groups that are coming together they call them pb pbps place-based partnerships um and government partners which is why i was there um to talk about cradle to career outcomes um and then on this slide number two that you have in front of you it kind of just talks about um Those shared goals so you know identifying some priorities that we wanted to focus on establishing like Co governance models Which just means like youth organizations are working with government to inform their policies And then just trying to find ways to leverage funding to support those efforts. I number three and on your page it just talks about the little groups that we were in the sessions that we did the one that myself and Vincent did was the cohort conversations and we just kind of talked about some of the barriers that folks were facing in education in education space and trying to work with government and we had a long conversation about how It's more difficult working within the realms of politics at the local level to get things done. And so we shared some best practices and some things that we found to work, which was a really great conversation. And I also got to brag on knowing Dr. Fuller. Everyone knows him and I'm like, I love him and he also loves me. So that was fun. And then the fourth slide here just talks about how we could clarify like one of the priorities that we want to work on and then try to find a way to reach that goal. through the ask and like the action item that we left with was just trying to come up with a 90 day plan for us as a city, but this body generally to identify a problem and then kind of work towards solving or at least work toward the progress of solving that identified issue in 90 days. And it gives us some suggested metrics that you can see on that eighth slide there. You know whether the city is listening and responding etc but So yeah, I think we can decide as a body if we want to or how we would like to help support in that 90-day effort so that Vincent and I or us can report back to the city accelerator To continue to do it to advance the work that they're doing there Yeah, so okay put that on the agenda to discuss a 90-day

Action plan. Hopefully it'll fall within budget time.

Oh, that's a good point.

We got July, August. Yeah, we got enough time.

Are we meeting in August?

Pardon?

Are we meeting in August?

We're not meeting in August?

Okay. Okay. So when's the next EAC? 7-16 is the next one. Which one? July 16th. Okay, cool. And I was just going to say, Mr. Chairman, to Board Member Daniel's point, Possibly we can take some of the things that come out of the root cause. Can be maybe a solve a problem that we can, yeah. So again, using the partnerships to, to continue to. Connect the dots and then ultimately, maybe these are the policy decisions that, that make it to this point. And then we try to elevate them.

Yeah, I think that's yeah, you're still there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, did you hear that? Why don't we just combine the 2? I love it. Now we've got an extra. uh emphasis on putting something for the city and you can report it back and it'll be a loss all in one a lot of the we're already doing a lot of the work so it's just kind of putting pen to paper so 100 okay all right thank you amber uh we uh we need a motion to approve funding for this uh event for reimbursement uh oh can i get a motion i don't think you can go on this one We still need a quorum.

No, but it's just as long as the- Yeah, again, same thing.

Motion to approve the cost for the events and hotel contingent on having a quorum. Right now it's approved. Hearing no objections, so ordered. Thank you, Amber and Vincent. Next, we have announcements and public comments. Would anybody like to make an announcement to the public? Would anybody like to make any comments to the public? Mr. Wright, are you here to make any comments or just bringing the young people down to experience City Hall? You got to come on up, brother. You got to come on up. Mr. Wright, you got to come to the table. Yeah, you're slower than you used to be. It's good to see you, Mr. Wright. Please tell us about the young people that you brought down here and how we can support them.

Well, I do want to, am I in a good mic? Yes, you're good, brother. I do want to keep a three-minute limit. Put the three-minute on. Yeah, put a three-minute limit, please. Start it. Right now. So we do have some young people from the bid that's part of the bid 32 in Lindsay Heights. And they have got some wonderful or have attained or been exposed to some wonderful experiences. But it would be really wonderful if they would share their experience.

All right, young man, introduce yourself for the record and tell us about your experience.

My name is Eli Morris. My experience here with the bid 32 has been a great one so far.

Okay.

We, you know, start off to get to know each other so we could. Just gets another community and stuff like that. So we walked around the community, cleaned it up, and we've actually been getting noticed a lot from just like cleaning around the community. Businesses want to talk to us. We talk to business owners to like, you know, see if they can help us out in the community to make it a thriving community again, like it used to be back in the day.

Excellent, man.

Good work. Good work. What about you, young man? Hello, everybody. My name is Aiden Fox, and I'm also part of Marketplace Bed 32 along with these people. Being part of this organization has really taught me a lot about what it takes to work as a team. As well as being a team player. And just like he said, as we were cleaning up, like, you know, our community, we started to like, you know, get noticed by a lot of people for our work, as well as our self motivation and self determination. And I'm proud to say that, you know, I'm in a position to where, you know, I could be like, you know, known all around the area. for like, you know, my motivation and my strive. And not to mention, we've also been like, you know, going around local businesses and supporting everybody. Excellent. Excellent.

Great job.

So I've got a question for you. Oh, hey.

Hi. Hello. My name is Celista Lawrence-Moore. One thing I really enjoyed about the bid is I really always been into designing, whether that be like areas and stuff. And one thing I'm really looking forward to is actually activating different spaces around our bid district. So we have a lot of parks and stuff that was supposed to be used in a positive way, but instead kind of negatively impacted the area.

Mm-hmm.

So I'm looking forward to redesigning it, actually making them, like we have a lot of spaces that can be utilized as community gardens, which could give back to the community and give them a safe space for their children to be at, learn about how to take care of the area and take care of the earth. I am a tree hugger. So I'm really excited for that. And I'm also really excited to actually be able to help plan out the designs and actually go out there.

Excellent, excellent, excellent. So the most important thing in the community is how you feel about it. And how you feel about it is through making sure it's clean. You can't get a business to come to a neighborhood if it's not clean. You don't feel... As respected in a neighborhood if it's not clean. So clean community, cleaning up your community is probably the most important thing you can do for your neighborhood. So while you were cleaning up out there, what did you want to see improve most to enhance our North Avenue?

Uh, we probably want to see, like, garbage cans or recycling cans. More garbage cans. Yeah, we noticed, like, on the side of the road, bottles tend to, like, you know, just go over there. Sure. And usually it's not even because of the people. It's just because, like, you know, Mother Nature doing its thing, you know, blowing stuff over. But we do need, like, more garbage cans. And, you know, some places that... A little more cleaner. There was garbage cans, but in places that were dirty, there was nothing to be found.

So guess what, man? You just knew that just by cleaning up the, let me just give you some politics. You knew that by just cleaning up North Avenue, right? Yeah. Two years ago, they paid this consultant 200 and some thousand dollars. And guess what he came back and said? Guess what he came back and said? We need garbage cans.

Isn't that crazy?

So you owe this young man some money then. So I got the big clean. And the big clean, part of the big clean was over 1,000, over 500 garbage cans. So you just let me know how many you want. And I tell that to all the aldermen. We place them around the city based on the city's pickup and route ability. So you just let me know how many you need and how many you want. And they got them down at the DPW building. Okay. The number one need, what the people need in the community is garbage cans so they can throw it away. Exactly. So the city owe you $250,000. But thank you all for coming down and doing that and sharing that with us. We look forward to working with you because that is in my district and hopefully we can spread it.

Something we noticed is that even when people do use the garbage cans, they'll start piling stuff on top because the city doesn't come and dump them. So sometimes they'll be like overflowing into the streets. Sometimes. Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah, so that's an issue, and they just got to get there quicker and improve their routes because that's what you want to see, people actually using the garbage cans properly. All right. Thank you, guys. I'm proud of you. We look forward to working with you guys. Excellent presentations. Thank you, Traces.

All right.

With that, that concludes our EAC meeting today. The next one will be July 16th, the big one. We will provide lunch, and the meeting will be at 1, discussion on how to improve Milwaukee and implementing some laws today.