Speaker 1: All the tutoring I did at that inner city school,
Speaker 1: I knew they got a free lunch. I knew it.
Speaker 1: I never asked them, what are you doing in the summer?
Speaker 2: Welcome to an army of normal volks. I'm Bill Courtney.
Speaker 2: I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
Speaker 2: I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in
Speaker 2: inner city of Memphis. And that last part is somehow
Speaker 2: led to an oscar for the film about our team.
Speaker 2: It's called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems will never
Speaker 2: be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice
Speaker 2: suits using big words that nobody ever uses on CNN
Speaker 2: and fogs, but rather by an army of normal votes.
Speaker 2: That's us, just you and me deciding, Hey, you know what,
Speaker 2: maybe I can help. That's what Kim impsch the voice.
Speaker 2: You just heard his stuff. Well, she found out that
Speaker 2: thousands of kids in her suburban community were going hungry
Speaker 2: in this summer. Kim couldn't look away from the problem,
Speaker 2: and she dove in. Her nonprofit Festa now feeds over
Speaker 2: eight hundred children in the summer. But as Kim puts it,
Speaker 2: they don't just want to help people live a little
Speaker 2: bit better in poverty. So they serve over eleven hundred
Speaker 2: people with after school tutoring in English as the second
Speaker 2: language classes to help their families escape pography. I can't
Speaker 2: wait for you to meet Kim right after these brief
Speaker 2: messages from our general sponsors, Kim Impsh, Welcome to Memphis.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Phil emcch pronounced impsh. What on God's green planet is that?
Speaker 1: My husband I actually have whole conversations about this. His
Speaker 1: family swears it's Swiss, but I understand that half of
Speaker 1: the people in Swiss speak German, so I think it
Speaker 1: was that side.
Speaker 2: So your husband has no idea.
Speaker 1: Really, I tease them that they have no idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're from an interesting place that I think
Speaker 2: when you grow up there you have to drink scarlet
Speaker 2: and silver juice. Just outside of this place called Columbus, Ohio,
Speaker 2: where they seem to worship a football team.
Speaker 1: They do, the Ohio State Buckeyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's a buckeye? Isn't that like a pea or something?
Speaker 1: It's a nut from a tree. It's a what it's
Speaker 1: a nut from a tree? I see comes off of
Speaker 1: a tree. And we also make them into candies of
Speaker 1: chocolate peanut butter, which are delicious.
Speaker 2: Are they really all? Right? Well, Kim imps everybody from
Speaker 2: the Columbus area. She's actually from Hillard, Ohio, which is
Speaker 2: a suburb. And fair warning, we're going to go through
Speaker 2: Kim's story, but you're going to hear some terminology today
Speaker 2: that you've probably never heard. And before I read all
Speaker 2: about you, I guess I probably knew this thing existed,
Speaker 2: but I wasn't really in tune with it. And I
Speaker 2: think not only the work that you do and all
Speaker 2: that you've all it's evolved, which obviously we're gonna unpack,
Speaker 2: I think is incredibly interesting, but just the genesis of
Speaker 2: it is eye opening and I think something we can
Speaker 2: all learn from. But before we get to that, as
Speaker 2: everybody knows, we're going to learn a little bit about you.
Speaker 2: Tell me about you, where you come from? And you
Speaker 2: and I, by the way, I don't know if you
Speaker 2: know my story, but you and I have something in
Speaker 2: very incommon in terms of the way we came up.
Speaker 2: But so go with little Kim. Where from what did
Speaker 2: growing up as Kim? What was your maiden names? Well,
Speaker 2: you go from Woods to ips. Oh my goodness, tell
Speaker 2: me about what Kim Woods looks like.
Speaker 1: Coming up, I grew up in Mammy, Ohio, a suburb
Speaker 1: of Toledo, and I experienced five divorces by my parents
Speaker 1: by the time I was seventeen, and growing up in
Speaker 1: a suburb, I had godparents who were from Spanish was
Speaker 1: their first language, and I was completely unchurched until middle school.
Speaker 2: The godparents was that from mom's friends, god's friends, Mom's.
Speaker 1: Friends, mom's friends.
Speaker 2: Yep, how did I don't know how, Jorn, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to ask, but I would think back then that
Speaker 2: having Spanish speaking friends was unique.
Speaker 1: I think about that often because you know in your
Speaker 1: childhood what is normal to you is normal to you.
Speaker 1: Right when you grew up and meet people as an adult,
Speaker 1: you realize it was maybe unique. So I think it
Speaker 1: was unique. My godfather was from Mexico and he became
Speaker 1: a juvenile court judge in Toledo, Judge Joe Flores, and
Speaker 1: so I remember every time he campaigned, we had these
Speaker 1: bright yellow shirts with the black writing vote for Judge Flores,
Speaker 1: and they actually he's passed and there's a street named
Speaker 1: after him in downtown Toledo. So he was very passionate.
Speaker 1: He grew up at the YMCA. He grew up that
Speaker 1: was the YMCA, was his extracurricular, his group of friends,
Speaker 1: his safe place, and of course then he wanted to
Speaker 1: give back and pour into young people. So that was
Speaker 1: definitely very left a huge lasting impression on me.
Speaker 2: Clearly, that's your godfather. So I am the product of
Speaker 2: five divorces on my mom's side and three on my
Speaker 2: father sad. So you said your parents had five divorces.
Speaker 2: What was that like for you?
Speaker 1: Yeah, very tumultuous, I mean, very life shaking, trying to
Speaker 1: figure out who's here, who's coming, who's leaving, lots of greed,
Speaker 1: lots of loss, and trying to navigate it and figure
Speaker 1: out where my place was in all of it, and
Speaker 1: who could be trusted, who could be depended on. It
Speaker 1: was rough.
Speaker 2: Did you experience in yourself an unwillingness to trust consistency?
Speaker 1: Hmm, that's a great question. I would say being expecting
Speaker 1: or being ready for the next big crisis became sort
Speaker 1: of a norm for me for sure. My last stepfather
Speaker 1: from my mom took us to church when I was
Speaker 1: in middle school, and that was definitely life changing for me.
Speaker 1: Because we didn't even though I had godparents and I
Speaker 1: had been baptized when I was two or three, but
Speaker 1: we didn't go to church. We didn't We weren't around
Speaker 1: people who were Christians, or I didn't know. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what I didn't know. And as he took us
Speaker 1: to church at a little Lutheran church in Mommy. Later
Speaker 1: on I learned that it was called youth group, but
Speaker 1: I just knew it was this group of people who
Speaker 1: were inviting me to hang out with them. And it
Speaker 1: was some youth leaders, some adults who actually were studying
Speaker 1: to become doctors. I don't know how they found the
Speaker 1: time to run this group, and then a bunch of teenagers,
Speaker 1: mostly from my school. But we hung out and it
Speaker 1: was a great community for me, and they started saying
Speaker 1: things to me like, oh my gosh, you are a
Speaker 1: natural leader and started honing my leadership. They said, you're
Speaker 1: smart in your studious you could go to college. No
Speaker 1: one my family had been to college. And I just
Speaker 1: loved being there. I loved going there. We went to
Speaker 1: Appalachia to retar coal miners' homes for a service trip,
Speaker 1: and I'll never forget I'm standing on the roof in
Speaker 1: the valley of the Appalachian Mountains. It's one hundred and
Speaker 1: ten degrees, no breeze, huge humidity, humidity. I'm standing on
Speaker 1: this roof, tarring this roof, and the owner comes out,
Speaker 1: little old man with white hair, with an oxygen tank,
Speaker 1: and he's praying for me on the roof. And that's
Speaker 1: when I learned that serving God is this three hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty degree circle where everyone has a need and
Speaker 1: everyone can give.
Speaker 2: That's kind of cool. Did that stepdad hang around for
Speaker 2: the rest of your life or was he another divorced person.
Speaker 1: They divorced, but I still have a relationship.
Speaker 2: With him, So clearly not affluent. Nobody's graduated from college,
Speaker 2: you said, Is that right? Right?
Speaker 1: My mom went to nurses training and so she was
Speaker 1: a registered nurse. She always had a good job. She
Speaker 1: could always find a job, and it was always a
Speaker 1: good job. So we I was never worried about food, clothing,
Speaker 1: or shelter. I wasn't worried about those things.
Speaker 2: Got it. So a little bit of chaos, a little
Speaker 2: bit of trauma, probably some disassociation. And the only reason
Speaker 2: I'm saying all those things is because I'm just projecting
Speaker 2: on you what I experienced, and you're shaking your head
Speaker 2: up and down. So I guess that experience growing up
Speaker 2: that way leaves those impressions. Church obviously became integral in
Speaker 2: how it formed the way you thought and clearly which
Speaker 2: I didn't know. The relationship with your godparents I think
Speaker 2: also was formulative, which is interesting. So what do you do?
Speaker 2: Do you go to college? What happens?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm in this Lutheran church going to this again.
Speaker 1: What I learned later was a youth group getting confirmed
Speaker 1: because in middle school and Lutheran religion, they're teaching you
Speaker 1: everything and I knew nothing. So it was perfect timing.
Speaker 1: But I fit right in with the other young people
Speaker 1: because they were learning it all too And I remember
Speaker 1: thinking to myself, I knew there was something else going
Speaker 1: on here. I knew it. I knew it wasn't just
Speaker 1: what I could see, that there was a bigger picture.
Speaker 1: I just felt like someone took me from the acorns
Speaker 1: in the forest up to the airplane level and it
Speaker 1: just completely fad and God just completely made sense to me.
Speaker 1: And so I'm sitting in this Lutheran church every week,
Speaker 1: and they had these cards about Capitol University, this little
Speaker 1: Lutheran school college in Columbus. Again, the youth leaders are saying,
Speaker 1: you should go to college, you should get a four
Speaker 1: year degree. You could do it, you have good grades
Speaker 1: in school. So I fill out this card at church
Speaker 1: and put in the offering plate, and Kathleen University starts
Speaker 1: sending me back in the day paper mail, and I'm saying,
Speaker 1: we would love to have you at our school. So
Speaker 1: as I get into college or get into high school,
Speaker 1: I think to myself, well, Capital University wants me, and
Speaker 1: I'm certainly going there. And I remember my guidance counselor
Speaker 1: had a meeting with me and she said, you know
Speaker 1: what are you doing after high school? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to Kaperney University. And she said,
Speaker 1: have you applied to Capitol University because I don't see
Speaker 1: any pain of work. And I said, well no, but
Speaker 1: I've been email or email snail mail corresponding with them
Speaker 1: for years. Certainly that's where I'm going in she said, well, dear,
Speaker 1: you need to fill out an application. It's a private college,
Speaker 1: so it's expensive. I don't know if your family can
Speaker 1: afford that. You need to fill out some financial aid,
Speaker 1: so she really walked me through it and encouraged me
Speaker 1: to go to other schools just in case I didn't
Speaker 1: go there, Like applied to other schools just in case
Speaker 1: they didn't let me in, And so I went. I
Speaker 1: applied to Kent State, but I never went to visit
Speaker 1: because I just knew I was going to Capital. So
Speaker 1: I got into Capital, and I say a lot that
Speaker 1: was a whole testament of God because my parents, my
Speaker 1: dad never was able to pay anything for my school.
Speaker 1: My mom was single mom at that time. She could
Speaker 1: pay a little bit, but she could not have paid
Speaker 1: the full amount of a private school. And they had
Speaker 1: said to me, if you keep your grades up, we'll
Speaker 1: make sure you can go here all four years. And
Speaker 1: so I got hell grants. I got scholarships from people
Speaker 1: that I wrote thank you letters to that I never met. Somehow,
Speaker 1: I went to college for four years and had about
Speaker 1: six thousand dollars worth of debt when I left. It
Speaker 1: was amazing, wow, And that was an amazing experience because
Speaker 1: I went to a new city, a much larger city
Speaker 1: than Toledo, and met tons of people who really were
Speaker 1: influential in my life. Professors and students and I didn't
Speaker 1: know what to study, but I liked economics and sociology
Speaker 1: and public speaking, so they said, well, why don't you
Speaker 1: just do all that? So that's what I studied, and
Speaker 1: I just enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: So what's your degree in?
Speaker 1: My major was economics and then had miners in public
Speaker 1: speaking and sociology.
Speaker 2: There's a minor in public speaking. That's very cool.
Speaker 1: I thought it was really fun because people said, you know,
Speaker 1: most people don't want to speak in front of people,
Speaker 1: and I said, I love to. So they said you
Speaker 1: should study that.
Speaker 2: Then, So what do you go do for a living
Speaker 2: out of college?
Speaker 1: What happens next economics? People thought banking seemed like a
Speaker 1: good next step for me. So I applied at Huntington
Speaker 1: National Bank and I worked there for eight years and
Speaker 1: again great experience. Met a ton of really wonderful mentors,
Speaker 1: people who poured into me and gave me advice on
Speaker 1: how to grow my career. Every nine to twelve months,
Speaker 1: I applied for another position and kept going in the bank.
Speaker 1: I went through a management training program. It just I
Speaker 1: finally got to corporate training and I loved it. I
Speaker 1: got to corporate training and I really figured out that
Speaker 1: I enjoy explaining something to someone. When I can see
Speaker 1: the light bulb go off and they get it.
Speaker 2: That's kind of like right now you with me, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: I get that. And now a few messages from our
Speaker 2: general sponsors. But first, our next live interview in Memphis
Speaker 2: will be on June twelfth with Father Mark Hannah. Father
Speaker 2: Mark and a team of four other civilians saved over
Speaker 2: fifty lives on nine to eleven, and the rest of
Speaker 2: us team died while trying to save more people. After
Speaker 2: nine to eleven, Mark became a Coptic priest and hence
Speaker 2: the father title. It's part of our lunch and listen
Speaker 2: series that we've been doing at Crosstown Concourses Myphis Listening Lab,
Speaker 2: and you can learn more at RSVP at Fathermark dot
Speaker 2: Eventwright dot com. We hope to see you there. We'll
Speaker 2: be right back. So the point is, you grow up,
Speaker 2: you overachieve where your life started and came from. You
Speaker 2: clearly have developed a faith that has helped guiding you.
Speaker 2: You have this interesting relationship with godparents, and I assume
Speaker 2: somewhere along here you get married, right yep? Is that
Speaker 2: banking time?
Speaker 1: Yeah? That was in college my very final year in college,
Speaker 1: I went home in the summers to live with my
Speaker 1: mom in Toledo, and actually my dad before he passed away,
Speaker 1: introduced me to who is now my husband for thirty
Speaker 1: one years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this impsh thing, Yeah, the m Sky. Yeah, what's
Speaker 2: the's name?
Speaker 1: Scott?
Speaker 2: Scott Scott, the m S guy.
Speaker 3: It must be pretty great to overcome that last name.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So we're just establishing all of this is to
Speaker 2: simply set up kind of who you are. You're a
Speaker 2: person who grew up with a broken family, a godparent
Speaker 2: you loved who had an impact on you stepdad. I
Speaker 2: don't know if it's one, two, three, four or five
Speaker 2: step parent, but one of them introduced to the church,
Speaker 2: and through the church, you end up in college and
Speaker 2: you do a good job there and you're in a bank,
Speaker 2: and you get married and you start in your family
Speaker 2: and you have this quintessential normal folk American life clipping
Speaker 2: or wrong up where they chocolate cover buckeyes. Yep.
Speaker 1: I had two children then, a daughter and a son,
Speaker 1: and living in Lydia and Jared they live in and
Speaker 1: we lived in Hilliard again, that suburb of Columbus, and
Speaker 1: just doing our thing.
Speaker 2: Doing your thing, lovely, rewarding, blessed, but like most people,
Speaker 2: fairly unremarkable, and nobody's really taken note of your life
Speaker 2: except you, because that's what we all do. Yep, A
Speaker 2: normal person, normal folks and Midwest living in an Ohio
Speaker 2: life and probably loving life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And then I was tutoring in the inner
Speaker 1: city at a school because one of my best friends
Speaker 1: was a principal there, and she basically was begging for
Speaker 1: people to come help because over ninety percent of the
Speaker 1: children got a free reduced lunch. They were facing poverty.
Speaker 1: She had some Somali Bantu children who came to town
Speaker 1: and they had never seen a flush toilet. They didn't
Speaker 1: know how to even use a bathroom. So she was
Speaker 1: just begging people from her life, her church, to say,
Speaker 1: would you come and help tutor mentor these children? They
Speaker 1: need more grown ups in their lives who can just
Speaker 1: love them. So I'd been doing that for a seen years.
Speaker 2: Pepe speaking of children who probably came from trauma. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Samoian children uprooted from Samoya, dropped in Ohio. And here's
Speaker 2: a toilet. This is toilet paper. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 2: the world is nothing like what you've grown up to
Speaker 2: and let's be honest, Samoia is not the safest place
Speaker 2: in the world, so they'd probably seen all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So I had been volunteering there for some
Speaker 1: years and then.
Speaker 2: This again in your unremarkable normal life, but just doing
Speaker 2: some gift back at this.
Speaker 1: Point, Yeah, because after that experience in Appalachia, we went
Speaker 1: back and started a teen crisis telephone line. As teen
Speaker 1: I just service and my religion went hand in hand
Speaker 1: for me from day one. And so I'd been again
Speaker 1: volunteering in this inner city school and that was two
Speaker 1: thousand and six. I was starting back in the school
Speaker 1: year and I thought, well, I guess I can do
Speaker 1: that again. And I felt like God laid in my heart,
Speaker 1: bring your neighbors with you. And most of my neighbors
Speaker 1: were just like me, Caucasian American women who had been
Speaker 1: raising their children for many years, and most had not
Speaker 1: gone back to work yet, and so I felt like
Speaker 1: God was asked me to bring them, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if they're going to want to go,
Speaker 1: so I put it off. Finally I asked them. They
Speaker 1: all said yes. So I drove them in my van
Speaker 1: every week to tutor in the inner city. They weren't
Speaker 1: comfortable driving themselves, so I took them with me and
Speaker 1: we tutored. And then my dad died suddenly the Monday
Speaker 1: before Thanksgiving of two thousand and six, suddenly, and we
Speaker 1: had been estrange. She was an alcoholic. I didn't really
Speaker 1: get to say goodbye. It was pretty had a lot
Speaker 1: of grief with it. And one of the women that
Speaker 1: I was taking with me to tutor, she came to
Speaker 1: me in December and she said, what do you think
Speaker 1: happens when someone dies? Because her mother was diagnosed with
Speaker 1: stage four cancer and was terminal, and she knew my
Speaker 1: dad had just died. And I started telling her about
Speaker 1: my faith and where my hope comes from, and what
Speaker 1: I believe happens when you die, and what God had
Speaker 1: shown me about my dad, and so we had this
Speaker 1: whole conversation, and I said to her, there's this thing
Speaker 1: at my church for people have questions, and you sound
Speaker 1: like you have questions. I've been a Christian since middle school.
Speaker 1: I still have questions. Would you want to come with me?
Speaker 1: It's called Alpha. It's dinner. We can kind of get
Speaker 1: away from our kids and our husbands and just have
Speaker 1: a night out once a week and have dinner. Would
Speaker 1: you want to come with me? And she said, yes,
Speaker 1: I would want to come with you, and so we
Speaker 1: started that in January. It's eighteen weeks and accumulates in
Speaker 1: this Holy Spirit Retreat at the end. And I thought,
Speaker 1: she's not going to want to go to the Holy
Speaker 1: Spirit Retreat. She's completely on churched lady. I thought that'll
Speaker 1: seem too churchy for her. And she called me and said, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to go to that weekend at the end,
Speaker 1: and I thought, okay, we're going. So we went to
Speaker 1: the weekend and they challenged her, you know, after eighteen weeks,
Speaker 1: lots of discussion, lots of information, would you want to
Speaker 1: just say a prayer that goes something like this, God,
Speaker 1: if you're real, show me, like, show me that you're real?
Speaker 1: And she said I'd like to do that. And then
Speaker 1: they said, to people like me who'd been a Christian
Speaker 1: since middle school, maybe you'd like to pray God light
Speaker 1: my heart on fire in a whole new way. And
Speaker 1: I thought, okay, I've prayed a lot, but I haven't
Speaker 1: prayed like that. So I said that prayer. March thirty,
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, and I went home and didn't
Speaker 1: feel any different, went back to work Monday, didn't feel
Speaker 1: any different. And then on March fourteenth, so eleven days later.
Speaker 2: I believe you remember the dates.
Speaker 1: So powerful, the dates. God has used those dates again
Speaker 1: in my life, that's while they're ingrained in my brain.
Speaker 1: It was a Saturday, March third, by the way, and
Speaker 1: so March eleventh, I learned that there were twenty one
Speaker 1: and fifty eight children in my suburban town who are
Speaker 1: getting your free reduced lunch. And I was completely blown
Speaker 1: away by that.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about that. This is the at the top,
Speaker 2: I said, there's a phrase it kind of turns the
Speaker 2: national narrative a little bit on its ear. And is
Speaker 2: this what is it? Suburban?
Speaker 1: What do you call it suburban poverty?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that doesn't sound right. It's supposed to be urban
Speaker 2: poverty and white flight to the suburbs and everything's okay
Speaker 2: in the suburb. And what you discovered is suburban poverty. Yeah,
Speaker 2: why don't you explain that?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 1: I was sitting at a wooden desk in my house
Speaker 1: when I called the school district and said, how many
Speaker 1: children get a free lunch in the suburb? Of Hilliard,
Speaker 1: the ninth largest school district in the state of Ohio.
Speaker 2: And they satuted a suburb of Columbus, a university town,
Speaker 2: which typically means fairly affluent, well paid, clean sidewalks, no blight,
Speaker 2: and then a suburb of that place should be really nice. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they said, well, good news, it's only fourteen
Speaker 1: point seven percent. And I said, well, I stayed economics,
Speaker 1: you can do a lot with percentages. How many human
Speaker 1: beings is that, because we're not talking about ballpoint pens here,
Speaker 1: we're talking about people, children with faces and names. And
Speaker 1: they said, well, we'll have to call you back. And
Speaker 1: they called me back and said, well, it's twenty one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty eight. And I was shocked. I was grieved.
Speaker 1: I felt a call in my life in that exact
Speaker 1: instant to do two things. One love, serve and feed
Speaker 1: the children facing poverty in my town body, mind and spirit.
Speaker 1: And two bring the community with me.
Speaker 2: Tie the unchurched lady that went through the eighteen weeks
Speaker 2: and said the prayer to the story, she.
Speaker 1: Was really involved and helped. I mean, as this started
Speaker 1: happening in my life, I mean, she cared a lot
Speaker 1: about it. Is she has become a Christian. She's been
Speaker 1: involved in women's Bible study for years and years and
Speaker 1: years now. And her son even went to a Christian
Speaker 1: college in Michigan and she was she's been an encourager
Speaker 1: to me since then.
Speaker 2: That's pretty incredible. All right. So I'm no economist. You are,
Speaker 2: so I gotta be careful with what I say because
Speaker 2: you'll probably come up with some fancy economic statistic metrics
Speaker 2: that makes me stupid. But here we go.
Speaker 1: Two thousand and what or two thousand and seven?
Speaker 2: No, No, twenty one hundred and.
Speaker 1: Oh fifty eight children suburban?
Speaker 2: Yeah, out of if that's fourteen.
Speaker 1: Percent, it's about sixteen thousand total students.
Speaker 2: Okay, twenty one hundred and something is a big number,
Speaker 2: But when you think of it, out of sixteen, that's
Speaker 2: one in eight. One in eight suburban children are growing
Speaker 2: up in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and now it's much higher.
Speaker 2: It can't be true.
Speaker 1: It's much higher. Now it's over thirty percent.
Speaker 2: But hang tight, that cannot be true. The news doesn't
Speaker 2: say that. I know. The images we see all day
Speaker 2: every day about children in poverty look like stuff on
Speaker 2: the inner city, Memphis and Queens and Albuquerque, pick a town,
Speaker 2: and the movies depict heavily black and brown high schools
Speaker 2: where there's poverty and gangs, and that's where the free
Speaker 2: lunches are, not in suburbia.
Speaker 1: That's what I thought too.
Speaker 2: And this is two thousand and seven. So you said,
Speaker 2: I'm going back what you said. Immediately you decided three
Speaker 2: things that you wanted to do here, which was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I felt like God was calling me to love,
Speaker 1: serve and feed those children body, mind and spirit, and secondly,
Speaker 1: to bring the community with.
Speaker 2: Me right there. Yeah, okay, So what happened when you
Speaker 2: told mister.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I couldn't. I was so obsessed thinking
Speaker 1: about it. That's how I knew it was the answer
Speaker 1: to that prayer eleven days prior, because I was I couldn't.
Speaker 1: The last thing I thought of when I was falling asleep.
Speaker 1: The first thing I thought of when I woke up
Speaker 1: in the morning was could this possibly be true? And
Speaker 1: what am I going to do about it?
Speaker 2: Why are you?
Speaker 1: I asked myself that for about a decade, Why me?
Speaker 1: And I feel like God showed me that Why me?
Speaker 1: And it ties back to that community that the church
Speaker 1: youth group provided for me. God taught me about the
Speaker 1: aces study. Now is lovely science that proves it. But
Speaker 1: a loving, supportive community like that can heal people from
Speaker 1: their trauma. And that's what God, you know, to heal.
Speaker 2: How would you know? How would how would the child
Speaker 2: who grew up in trauma healed by a church community?
Speaker 2: How would you know?
Speaker 1: That?
Speaker 2: It's a very personal thing, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the blessing you don't know you need that
Speaker 1: you get exactly at the right moment of your life.
Speaker 1: And and he showed me. I taught you that community,
Speaker 1: and I healed you in it, and I want you
Speaker 1: to create that exact community for thousands and thousands of people.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back your story. But I'm just going
Speaker 2: to tell you. People will have hatted me on the
Speaker 2: back and congratulated me. They've actually made an Oscar winning
Speaker 2: movie about it. I speak around the country about it.
Speaker 2: I've written a book about it, and people always want
Speaker 2: to pat me on the back about all this football
Speaker 2: coach and stuff that I've done, and I don't I
Speaker 2: still don't think people really get it. I tell them
Speaker 2: it has been the salve to the trauma that damn
Speaker 2: near broke my spirit. I know you do I can
Speaker 2: hear it and see it in your face when you
Speaker 2: talk about this. And we haven't even gotten into it yet,
Speaker 2: but I completely get why you. But I want our
Speaker 2: listeners to understand why you're crying. I'm sure it's okay.
Speaker 2: You still feel it all, don't you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so do I.
Speaker 2: So do I. It's something about that kind of trauma
Speaker 2: that you learn to cope with and deal with and
Speaker 2: compensate for, but you never fully get over it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Just layers of grief. And I think that's I
Speaker 1: as an adult. There's so many people, for so many reasons,
Speaker 1: that carry around layers of grief for all kinds of reasons,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a connection point that builds really deep
Speaker 1: relationships with lots of people.
Speaker 2: For sure, so irety stricken, suburban kids. It's one thing
Speaker 2: to know a number, it's another thing to have a face. Yeah,
Speaker 2: will tell me about how that happened.
Speaker 1: So I used my really big mouth to tell as
Speaker 1: many people.
Speaker 2: You have a minor in it, you're supposed to use
Speaker 2: your big mouth. You were, you were.
Speaker 1: Educated in how Yeah, teachers, you didn't.
Speaker 2: Answer a question. I'm sorry, I what did Scott say? Oh?
Speaker 2: Because I know what my family. You have two beautiful
Speaker 2: children and a husband who loves you have been married
Speaker 2: to for thirty years now but less back then. But
Speaker 2: still I have the same Did they under stand what
Speaker 2: they were bargaining and reckoning for when you decided you
Speaker 2: were going to love certain feed and bring the community along?
Speaker 2: I mean, what was their initial reaction?
Speaker 1: I don't think any of us knew clearly where this
Speaker 1: was headed. But I had said, God, if you're going
Speaker 1: to get a hold of my heart for this, you're
Speaker 1: going to need to get a hold of my immediate
Speaker 1: family's hearts for this, because being a wife and a
Speaker 1: mother is of utmost importance to me and I'm not
Speaker 1: going to sacrifice that for this. So I would not
Speaker 1: to get a hold of their hearts too. If you
Speaker 1: really want me to do this, and that has definitely happened,
Speaker 1: it is I say all the time, it's been a
Speaker 1: family affair. They have been with me, arm in arm
Speaker 1: with me from day one and still are after eighteen years.
Speaker 1: So I can motivate people, I hope around things that
Speaker 1: are really important in life, but I can't motivate those
Speaker 1: three people. The only explanation is that God drew them
Speaker 1: as much as he drew me to this cause.
Speaker 2: So but a face to it. Now, Okay, you're awakened
Speaker 2: to this. Yeah, you feel like it's an answer to
Speaker 2: a prayer. So now you feel called. You have a
Speaker 2: goal that just popped in your head to love, serve,
Speaker 2: and feed and bring the community with you. But right
Speaker 2: now it's numbers. How does it first start becoming a
Speaker 2: face and fully with the backdrop understanding that you very
Speaker 2: deeply in your soul feel this because you know what
Speaker 2: that trauma is.
Speaker 1: I worked part time for a church, so that's the
Speaker 1: timing of that was really perfect because it's a big church,
Speaker 1: one of the biggest Lutheran churches in the country, and
Speaker 1: so I had a reported directly to the senior pastor.
Speaker 1: So I started straight away saying to him, I feel
Speaker 1: his call in my life. There's this huge problem in
Speaker 1: our town. I feel called to do something about it.
Speaker 1: And he was like, okay, let me know what you
Speaker 1: figure out, and so gim me abreast and so then
Speaker 1: I wrote, I went to the Chamber of Commerce, learned
Speaker 1: they were twenty two churches in town. Because I thought,
Speaker 1: we'll bring the community with me. What does that mean.
Speaker 1: I've always served at my church but it didn't say
Speaker 1: bring your church with you. In my mind, it was
Speaker 1: bring the community with you. So I wrote letters to
Speaker 1: twenty two churches and said, here's the problem I found
Speaker 1: in our town. Twenty one hundred fifty children facing poverty
Speaker 1: getting a free lunch and then hungry all summer. Because
Speaker 1: I never asked Bill. All the tutoring I did at
Speaker 1: that inner city school, I knew they got a free lunch.
Speaker 1: I knew it. I never asked them what do you
Speaker 1: do in the summer.
Speaker 2: That's the big question. Oh my gosh, when you just
Speaker 2: said it, it's huge. Great, they get a free lunch
Speaker 2: during the school. What do they do during the summer.
Speaker 1: It's twelve weeks. It is twelve weeks that it's gone.
Speaker 1: It's a one in fact is friend reduce lunch is
Speaker 1: the second best way we feed people in our country
Speaker 1: after food stamps. It works great now, it's breakfast and lunch.
Speaker 1: It's lovely, but it stops for twelve weeks in the summer.
Speaker 1: And that's where I knew the gap was in understanding this.
Speaker 2: Then I learn when they are gathering food, what kind
Speaker 2: of food is it? Yeah, it's cheese puffs and whatever
Speaker 2: you can get your hands on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the Oh they're ugly underbelly. Yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: unhealthy food in the store. I mean it's the cheap
Speaker 1: stuff at the cheapest grocery stores that the family can
Speaker 1: spread along the summer.
Speaker 2: So the question is not just rhetorical, what did you
Speaker 2: find out that these kids do? What were not unrhetorically
Speaker 2: what did you find out that kids do? Poverty stricken
Speaker 2: kids from the suburb who depend on that free lunch
Speaker 2: probably the best meal that get the day, what do
Speaker 2: they do during the summer? Not rhetorically, actually what did
Speaker 2: you find out? Well?
Speaker 1: I found out in the urban city there were these
Speaker 1: things called free summer lunch camps, and in fact, in
Speaker 1: the inner city where I had been tutoring, there were
Speaker 1: two or three within walking distance from the school where
Speaker 1: I was shooting. So a child could choose, I could
Speaker 1: want to go to this one or this one, and
Speaker 1: they could get them their hunger needs and likely camp
Speaker 1: needs met in the urban city. Then I looked in
Speaker 1: suburbia and there was nothing, literally nothing. Then I did
Speaker 1: some research. I learned that the Brookings Institute had done
Speaker 1: a study in two thousand and five that showed there
Speaker 1: were more human beings, children and families living in poverty
Speaker 1: in the suburbs than in the urban cities in the
Speaker 1: United States of America.
Speaker 2: Okay, when I read that, I was like, what come on?
Speaker 2: There are more poverty stricken children in the suburbs than
Speaker 2: there is the urban areas in our country.
Speaker 1: Since two thousand and five, they proved it was that.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: I met a historian one time and I said to
Speaker 1: him all of this, and he said, Kim, do you
Speaker 1: ever watch HGTV? I said, of course, Guilty Pleasure. He said,
Speaker 1: you ever watched the European version? I said, of course,
Speaker 1: Guilty Pleasure. And he said, so in Europe when you're
Speaker 1: watching that show and someone's in England or France, what
Speaker 1: city are they in? I said, Paris and London. He
Speaker 1: said exactly. He said, no, the people on the show
Speaker 1: have money, otherwise they wouldn't be on the show. And
Speaker 1: they're in the biggest cities in those countries. That's where
Speaker 1: they're looking for their housing. He said, Europe is older
Speaker 1: than America. Money started in the inner city, it moved out,
Speaker 1: Doubt and Abbey, it's moved back in. He said. Our country,
Speaker 1: United States is young. This is the first time we've
Speaker 1: ever done it. When we started our country, money was
Speaker 1: in the inner city. Then it moved out suburbia, and
Speaker 1: now it's moving back in. So wherever wealth moves, poverty
Speaker 1: moves in the opposite direction.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's interesting. So what this historian is telling you
Speaker 2: about economics macro economics of our country is money moved out.
Speaker 2: Now money is moving back in, and it's leaving behind
Speaker 2: poverty in suburbia.
Speaker 1: Right, well, and pushing poverty out of the urban cities
Speaker 1: or school is wrong.
Speaker 2: It's not leaving it because money's coming in. It's pushing.
Speaker 2: It's gentrification.
Speaker 1: It's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: It's now I'm coming up with the phrase. But it's
Speaker 2: almost what it's reversed. It's almost completely mind shifted. You
Speaker 2: think of gentrification as coming into some historical or older
Speaker 2: community building, making the building is so expensive that the
Speaker 2: people have to leave, Right, But here's the question where
Speaker 2: do they go? That's right, And you're saying they're getting
Speaker 2: pushed into quote suburbia, right, Is that that's really the fact.
Speaker 1: That's it, that's it, that's right.
Speaker 2: And so where are the kids from Hillard being pushed
Speaker 2: from Columbus? Is that really it? Yes?
Speaker 1: Yep, and all the other suburbs around. So there are
Speaker 1: another nine ten other suburbs around Columbus And it's the
Speaker 1: same way. In fact, all the lovely little lines that
Speaker 1: people draw on maps. So half of the children who
Speaker 1: live in Columbus City proper go to suburban schools.
Speaker 2: Why, how how does that work? District wise? I would think,
Speaker 2: if you're registered for a district, how do you go
Speaker 2: to suburban school?
Speaker 1: Yeah? It's all these lines on maps. So the suburban town,
Speaker 1: for example, Hilliard is about fourteen zero point seven eighty
Speaker 1: nine square miles. That's that's it. It's a tiny little town.
Speaker 1: The school district is sixty square miles.
Speaker 2: The Hilliard school district is four times the size of
Speaker 2: the town itself. Right, So is it bringing in poverty
Speaker 2: stricten kids into the school system.
Speaker 1: Well, that's so the map of these school districts, it
Speaker 1: used to be where the school and the city were
Speaker 1: perfectly lined up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the families and the community were around it, right,
Speaker 2: and we have.
Speaker 1: Lost that, right, it's much The school districts are much
Speaker 1: larger than the cities, and so they encompass a larger
Speaker 1: geograggraphic area, and so you have some children living in
Speaker 1: Columbus who are facing poverty, who go to Hilliard schools.
Speaker 1: But you also have apartment complex, trailer parks, duplexes, which
Speaker 1: again I think is lovely city planning quite honestly, because
Speaker 1: mixedosoeconomic environment is really healthy for everyone. But in that
Speaker 1: scenario in suburbia, there are people who live in the
Speaker 1: city of Hilliard who are facing poverty too. So it's
Speaker 1: not just the Columbus children, it's also some Hilliard children.
Speaker 1: But again it's that regentrification of the urban community that
Speaker 1: is shifting a huge population shift in our country.
Speaker 2: All Right, the study test, as it pertains to you,
Speaker 2: is Columbus Hillard. But this to be true than in
Speaker 2: Memphis and South Haven and Little Rock in North Little
Speaker 2: Rock or Jacksonville or I'm just trying to pick places
Speaker 2: I know, but pretty much every urban area has a
Speaker 2: suburban area. And you would argue then that this population
Speaker 2: shift is happening in all of these areas across our country,
Speaker 2: leaving poverty stricken suburban children.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's what Brookings Institute has shown. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just a study on Columbus. It was a national United
Speaker 1: States study that showed that poverty had moved from not
Speaker 1: one hundred percent. Let me be clear, there are still
Speaker 1: poverty in urban cities for sure, but their point is
Speaker 1: there are more human beings living in poverty in the
Speaker 1: suburbs than in the urban cities, which again is an
Speaker 1: enormous populationship that our country has not seen before.
Speaker 3: Well an example where your kids are at. I think
Speaker 3: there's actually a decent amount in Arlington and Alexandria too,
Speaker 3: outside of DC. Really, there's actually amount of poverty in
Speaker 3: Arlington and Alexandria.
Speaker 2: And when you think of Arlington and Alexandria.
Speaker 3: Well, there's nice there's nice areas there too, but there's
Speaker 3: also a lot of poverty.
Speaker 2: There's both. Yeah. I would just think when you hear that,
Speaker 2: you're like, really, because you think of young white professionals.
Speaker 3: City school districts are actually not good in a lot
Speaker 3: of Arlington and Alexandria.
Speaker 2: Really yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I challenge people to just call their school district. I mean,
Speaker 1: as a tax beayer, as a parent, you can call
Speaker 1: your school district and say how many children get a
Speaker 1: free reduced lunch not percentage but number of human.
Speaker 2: Beings and you might be shocked.
Speaker 1: I think you'd be shocked.
Speaker 2: I'm shocked. I'm standing here beside myself. I am shocked,
Speaker 2: all right. So that sets up the facts about the problem.
Speaker 2: We still hadn't put a face to it. We still
Speaker 2: hadn't figured out what love, certain feed and bring the
Speaker 2: community means in Kim's world eighteen years ago through today.
Speaker 2: And we will learn all all of that and more
Speaker 2: in Part two that's now available to listen to. Together, guys,
Speaker 2: we can change the country, but it starts with you.
Speaker 2: I'll see in Part two.