Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Bill Courtney with an army in normal folks,
Speaker 1: and we continue now what part two of our conversation
Speaker 1: with Kim Im? Right after these brief messages from our
Speaker 1: general sponsors.
Speaker 2: So I wrote a letter to the twenty two churches,
Speaker 2: and six called me and said, we want to help ad.
Speaker 2: What do you want us to do?
Speaker 1: Do we need to call out the other sixteen that
Speaker 1: didn't know I'm kidding, go ahead.
Speaker 2: They started coming some time, but I've just been right away.
Speaker 2: Six called right away, and one church said we actually
Speaker 2: knew about this problem, but we didn't know what to do.
Speaker 2: And the other five said, we were shocked, just like
Speaker 2: you were, Kim. We didn't know there was even a problem.
Speaker 2: And so they said, what do you want us to do?
Speaker 2: And I said, well, clearly, I'm going to say up
Speaker 2: a free summer lunch camp like they like what exists
Speaker 2: in the urban communities for the children, and so how
Speaker 2: about if you help with that?
Speaker 1: Are the urban city free lunch camp things? Are they
Speaker 1: typically city run or are they private organizations too?
Speaker 2: They're usually nonprofits, so whether it's a religious organization or
Speaker 2: a nonprofit a city community center, they're usually run by nonprofits.
Speaker 2: Many of them are under the USDA Summer Food Service Program,
Speaker 2: but they yes. And the concept in my mind was, oh,
Speaker 2: I could just receive a free lunch and hand it
Speaker 2: to a child. Okay, I could do that.
Speaker 1: That seems easy, but nothing is easy safe. I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting though, that you said that, like in the
Speaker 1: urban areas, there were three different places children growth on
Speaker 1: the suburban none. But here's the thing, and that's why
Speaker 1: I asked if it was like a public or a
Speaker 1: private nonprofit. You said nonprofits they went where the need was,
Speaker 1: but the need has shifted, so now there's no one
Speaker 1: meeting the shifting need, which I found upon really interesting.
Speaker 1: And so you get these churches to meet this need.
Speaker 1: What do you need? And you said, well, I'll just
Speaker 1: get a free lunch and give a free lunch. It'll
Speaker 1: be easy. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I have to say, I feel like I'm
Speaker 2: the perfect person to say out loud, there literally is
Speaker 2: no such thing as a free lunch.
Speaker 1: That was econ one O one first day.
Speaker 2: I think, literally there isn't. So I uh so I
Speaker 2: recruited about eleven people. There were twelve of us to
Speaker 2: help and sort of lead this as volunteers'.
Speaker 1: Six five churches. Six churches, Yeah, yep.
Speaker 2: And like I found a man who had just retired
Speaker 2: at our church, that senior pastor I reported to connected
Speaker 2: me with him, and he said, you had me at
Speaker 2: hungry children. What do you want me to do? He
Speaker 2: ran an international company, had just retired. He brought to
Speaker 2: retired and with him.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 2: There was a stay at home dad that joined us,
Speaker 2: some other moms that I knew from the community who
Speaker 2: joined us. So there were this group of twelve people,
Speaker 2: just volunteers who wanted to feed children in our town.
Speaker 1: And so in the summer, yes, when they didn't have
Speaker 1: a free lunch, got it.
Speaker 2: And again I learned on March fourteenth, and summer starts
Speaker 2: in June, so of course I needed to start this summer.
Speaker 2: So we uh.
Speaker 1: April May June. You had three.
Speaker 2: Months, Yeah, three months months, four.
Speaker 1: Churches, twelve people who love serving, feed twenty one hundred
Speaker 1: kids and bring the community with you. No problem, Yeah.
Speaker 2: No problem. And again, we weren't an organization, so we
Speaker 2: don't own a building, We don't have a board of directors,
Speaker 2: don't we don't. I mean I kind of pictured myself
Speaker 2: slapping together peanut butter and jellies out of the back
Speaker 2: of my van, which my children will tell you is
Speaker 2: insane because I don't. I'm not I cook because I
Speaker 2: need to eat. I don't cook for any other reason.
Speaker 2: And quite honestly, once I started this, my husband started cooking,
Speaker 2: my children would honestly say to me, how are you
Speaker 2: feeding people for a living when you hardly are cooking
Speaker 2: for us. So the fact that I'd be called to
Speaker 2: feed people is the irony is insane. Truly, I'm not
Speaker 2: a foodie. I'm the opposite of a foodie. So then
Speaker 2: I learned, well, you could order in, and I thought,
Speaker 2: that's perfect, I'm going to order in. So we and
Speaker 2: none of us, by the way, had ever seen a
Speaker 2: free lunch program because we didn't know about this the
Speaker 2: summer previous, so we couldn't go visit one, and so
Speaker 2: we just pictured in our minds what it could look like.
Speaker 2: And long story shore we found a strip mall. We
Speaker 2: would walk around the city kind of praying, like, where
Speaker 2: should we have this? It should be at a place.
Speaker 2: And the superintendent, one of the assistant superintendents of schools.
Speaker 2: He had worked in Columbus and he knew poverty better
Speaker 2: than I did. And he said, Kim, if I was
Speaker 2: going to do this in Hilliard, I would go to
Speaker 2: this intersection right here because there's a bunch of apartment
Speaker 2: complexes and the children could walk to you. So we
Speaker 2: just walked that intersection, the twelve people and I looking
Speaker 2: for any space, and we found strip malls and none
Speaker 2: of them were full, and so we thought, well, we
Speaker 2: could use an empty storefront of a strip ball. So
Speaker 2: there was a grocery store, a local grocery store that
Speaker 2: had gone under and it was the anchor of this
Speaker 2: strip mall in this intersection, and it was empty for
Speaker 2: eight years. So we found the out of state property owner,
Speaker 2: who was a woman living in Chicago. She'd only been
Speaker 2: to Columbus once to sign the papers to buy the
Speaker 2: strip mall. And I found her and she took my
Speaker 2: call amazingly, and I said, I'm this lady in this
Speaker 2: town who wants to feed twenty one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: eight children this summer. Would you let me use one
Speaker 2: of your empty storefronts for free? Because I don't have
Speaker 2: any money. She said, I have two children, and I
Speaker 2: can't imagine if they were hungry. So yes, So we're
Speaker 2: kidding just like that. We never met. I couldn't tell
Speaker 2: you her name right now if I tried. Wow, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: So she and she said, well, how about the end
Speaker 2: unit because it had been a pizza shop, so you know,
Speaker 2: lunch pizza. You could use that. Now if I lease it,
Speaker 2: then all bets are off. I'm going to have to
Speaker 2: say you have to stop. And I said, well, I'm
Speaker 2: just going to risk that. I'm going to pray you
Speaker 2: don't lease it for twelve weeks of the summer. And
Speaker 2: so she called me back. So we figured out how
Speaker 2: to order lunch in under Columbus Parks and wreck. They
Speaker 2: said they'd sponsor us and they'd send us the food.
Speaker 2: We started recruiting volunteers. We started telling families, we're going
Speaker 2: to be at this intersection at this strip mall, come
Speaker 2: at this time every day for ten weeks and we'll
Speaker 2: serve lunch. And I'm at the grocery store personally, just
Speaker 2: doing my shopping and I get a call from the
Speaker 2: strip mall lady and she says, Kim, bad news. I
Speaker 2: leased the pizza shop. You can't run it. And this
Speaker 2: was Memorial Day weekend and we're supposed to start the
Speaker 2: first week in June lovely. So I hung up the
Speaker 2: phone and I just started crying there in the grocery
Speaker 2: store with my cart. And I called that first volunteer,
Speaker 2: the man who was the retired CEO. His name is John,
Speaker 2: and I called him and I was crying, and he said, Kim,
Speaker 2: are these happy tears? Are sad tears? I said, they's
Speaker 2: sad tears and he said, what's going on? I told
Speaker 2: him and he said no, I'm gonna pound on your desk.
Speaker 1: Bill.
Speaker 2: He said, no, you call her back and you tell
Speaker 2: her we are feeding hungry children and we need to
Speaker 2: use a different one of her empty spaces. If we
Speaker 2: can't use that one, there's other empty spaces in her
Speaker 2: strip mall. We need one of them. And so I
Speaker 2: called her back and call her Dy. She knew it
Speaker 2: was me. She took the call and I said, no,
Speaker 2: I have to feed hungry children. Can I have a
Speaker 2: different space? And she said, well, what space do you want?
Speaker 2: And he's over here saying to me, ask her for
Speaker 2: the old grocery store the cart storage area, And I
Speaker 2: said what he said, the cart storage area, It's like
Speaker 2: a thousand square feet. So I said to her, could
Speaker 2: we use the cart storage area of the old grocery store.
Speaker 2: It's a thousand square feet and she said, yeah, you
Speaker 2: could use it.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So a church donated those cafeteria style tables you see
Speaker 2: in a lunch room of a school, ten of them.
Speaker 2: They fit perfectly in the current storage area. And so
Speaker 2: early June we started free Summer Lunch camp. And the
Speaker 2: day it started, I had to drive maybe three miles
Speaker 2: to the lunch site and it took me about forty
Speaker 2: minutes because I drove two miles an hour. Why because
Speaker 2: I was having a total tantrum fit with God in
Speaker 2: the car.
Speaker 1: What was that all about?
Speaker 2: I was telling them I didn't want to go. Why, Well,
Speaker 2: because I knew, I mean, my skill set is to
Speaker 2: rally groups of people administrative. I can vision cast and
Speaker 2: get her done. And I'd done that, and I knew
Speaker 2: if I went there and I had to look into
Speaker 2: the faces of the children, that my life would never
Speaker 2: be the same. And I was scared about that. But
Speaker 2: you will, Yeah, I felt like, you know, God like
Speaker 2: let me tantrum, and then he just said to me,
Speaker 2: I know, go and so I went, dragging my feet,
Speaker 2: but I went and we were both right. So I
Speaker 2: looked into the faces of these beautiful, amazing, gifted, talented children.
Speaker 1: Hungry children.
Speaker 2: We're hungry, but very similar to the amazingness of my
Speaker 2: own children. And I knew my life was never going
Speaker 2: to be the same because I just I had a
Speaker 2: love for them that I couldn't explain.
Speaker 1: Did you ever go hungry?
Speaker 2: I am. I never went physically hungry.
Speaker 1: You were close. If you're coming up in a five
Speaker 1: times divorced thing, you're not that far away.
Speaker 2: I would say that's probably true. I didn't know that
Speaker 2: as a child, though. I never Yeah, well.
Speaker 1: These kids also didn't know they were not supposed to
Speaker 1: have lunch on summers, but it doesn't make it right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, first day.
Speaker 1: Just to know what the first day was.
Speaker 2: Well, we honestly didn't even know if anyone would come.
Speaker 2: I mean, we put flyers, we had grassroots flyers all
Speaker 2: over town, We had an article in the Columbus Dispatch,
Speaker 2: all these things, but we just really didn't know. We
Speaker 2: didn't have registration, We didn't know who would come. And
Speaker 2: we served two hundred and forty six children that summer
Speaker 2: with over one hundred and seventy volunteers, and they just
Speaker 2: they walked along the edges of the strip mall, and
Speaker 2: they just came to us and ages, oh, babies to
Speaker 2: eighteen year olds, babies, moms brought their children, their littles
Speaker 2: with them. They would sit and help their little ones eat,
Speaker 2: they would chat with us. We realized very quickly. And
Speaker 2: then the library came and said, hey, we really want
Speaker 2: to expose this demographic of children to books. But guess what,
Speaker 2: they don't come to the library. Could we just come
Speaker 2: and bring the summer reading program here to your lunch site?
Speaker 2: We said sure. Another church, a woman who's one of
Speaker 2: my dearest friends now pastor Irma. She brought her youth group.
Speaker 2: She said, we heard you were feeding hungry children. We
Speaker 2: brought face pain and balloon animals. We thought, maybe we could,
Speaker 2: you know, do something on the sidewalk after they leave lunch.
Speaker 2: So quickly we could see what camp could look like,
Speaker 2: and quickly we realized that simply handing food to a
Speaker 2: child might help them live better in poverty, but it
Speaker 2: was probably not going to help them out of poverty.
Speaker 2: And we couldn't look in the faces of our new friends,
Speaker 2: these beautiful children and their family.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: Our exact neighbors, I mean children were saying my children.
Speaker 2: The volunteers. Children were saying, oh, I know, I know
Speaker 2: Mohammed from school. We go to the same school. I
Speaker 2: mean they knew each other, The children knew each other.
Speaker 1: Were these Smalian kids?
Speaker 2: You know they were children from It's interesting.
Speaker 1: I knew when I say Samalian kids, let's be candid
Speaker 1: Samali refugees.
Speaker 2: We came to understand over the course of the summer
Speaker 2: that they were children from all over the globe. I
Speaker 2: knew that we would see all different beautiful skin tones
Speaker 2: and ethnic groups and cultures and races and religions. I
Speaker 2: didn't anticipate that we would meet parents who were foreign born.
Speaker 2: That surprised me. I didn't know that until the last
Speaker 2: day when we threw a big party and the children's
Speaker 2: whole families came. When I heard the accents of the parents' voices,
Speaker 2: when I saw their clothing, that's when it hit me, Oh,
Speaker 2: you weren't born in this country, not one hundred percent,
Speaker 2: but the majority.
Speaker 1: What does that look like?
Speaker 2: Especially what nations just it it literally is the United Nations. Then,
Speaker 2: when we started saying, you know where, what's your family's
Speaker 2: country of origin? Where where was your where were your
Speaker 2: parents and your grandparents born. We were blown away.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. That had to have been. I
Speaker 1: gotta be careful here as we think about the vitriol,
Speaker 1: and I want to be real careful from both sides
Speaker 1: of the aisle regarding immigration and everything else, and all
Speaker 1: we have dealt with, and in fairness, not only this administration,
Speaker 1: but the Ford administrations before this one. I have a
Speaker 1: real thing on the whole immigration deal. As you're sitting there,
Speaker 1: feeding hungry children and meeting these families and parents and
Speaker 1: people and everything else, did you have maybe some and
Speaker 1: I don't mean ill willed, preconceived notions, but did you
Speaker 1: have some notions that you thought you understood about our
Speaker 1: culture to destroyed? In that moment?
Speaker 2: You know, I realized that there was a huge mosque
Speaker 2: in Toledo, and I grew up not ever knowing one
Speaker 2: Muslim person. And I remember the first day that I
Speaker 2: had a significant conversation with a Muslim mother. And it's
Speaker 2: strange because I even have a picture of it. Someone
Speaker 2: just happened to snap a picture right before the conversation.
Speaker 2: But she was walking to me, straight to me, because
Speaker 2: I was in charge of this lunch program, and she
Speaker 2: had a question and I remember thinking to myself as
Speaker 2: she approached me, Oh my word, I don't know what
Speaker 2: I have in common with this woman who is walking
Speaker 2: toward me and I'm about to have a full conversation with.
Speaker 1: She's wearing a head dress or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yep, And I just thought, I don't have any life
Speaker 2: experience to prepare me for this moment right here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you're suburbanite, white Christian mommy with a van
Speaker 1: with a van with a minivan.
Speaker 2: I've never lived outside of Ohio, who's no ever left
Speaker 2: the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So what was that chat? Like?
Speaker 2: I felt again a whisper in my ear from God
Speaker 2: that just said, I know, go just she's a mom
Speaker 2: like you. Just talk to her. And we talked, and
Speaker 2: she had questions about her children, and I introduced her
Speaker 2: to my children because they were right there. And we
Speaker 2: had a full, really great conversation, and I felt like
Speaker 2: I had things in common with her beyond what I
Speaker 2: could have dreamed or imagined. Quite honestly, that is not.
Speaker 1: What Sinn and Fox tell us we're supposed to do.
Speaker 1: What is wrong with you? You're so weird, Kim, you know,
Speaker 1: being human?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like, you know, there's a lot to
Speaker 2: my Christian faith. But love God, love your neighbor is
Speaker 2: a pretty key verse for me, and I feel like
Speaker 2: once I've mastered those two things, I'll go on to
Speaker 2: the next. And my neighbor. I mean, I've asked dozens
Speaker 2: of five year old kindergarten does when I say neighbor,
Speaker 2: what does that mean to you? They can explain it
Speaker 2: really easily. To me, It's that person right there. It's
Speaker 2: the person who lives right next to me. It's the
Speaker 2: person who lives above me, beside me, below me, who
Speaker 2: goes to school with me, who's driving the car next
Speaker 2: to me. Those are my neighbors. And so you know,
Speaker 2: those two calls on my life, love, feed and serve
Speaker 2: your neighbor, and bring the community with you. It's just
Speaker 2: pretty simple. I mean, it's complex, but it's also simple.
Speaker 2: And I came to realize that all of the children,
Speaker 2: all of the volunteers, all of these people were my neighbors.
Speaker 2: And I didn't know most of them before this.
Speaker 1: Twenty one hundred or so of which we're living in poverty, yeah,
Speaker 1: and hungry. So that's first year, yep, take us through it.
Speaker 2: So at the end of the summer, the parents said
Speaker 2: at that party. What are you doing next? We like this, literally,
Speaker 2: what are you doing next? Because this was amazing. This
Speaker 2: didn't feel like charity. We didn't feel ashamed and embarrassed
Speaker 2: to pull up here. Our children couldn't wait to come
Speaker 2: every day, and they didn't have to come. It wasn't school.
Speaker 2: What are you doing next? And I said, well, maybe
Speaker 2: we'll come back and do this next summer. How about that?
Speaker 2: And they said, that's lovely. But we have and you've
Speaker 2: identified a significant issue this summer, hunger. It is significant.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. But the parents said, we have
Speaker 2: another really big problem we want to talk to you about.
Speaker 2: I said, okay, and they said, we believe in education.
Speaker 2: We know education is our children's way out of poverty.
Speaker 1: We get that, which is why we're here in the
Speaker 1: first place.
Speaker 2: That's what they said. That's why we're here. No, that's
Speaker 2: why we came as a refugee.
Speaker 1: We're so bad. Everybody listening to us would understand. People
Speaker 1: are not uprooting their families. Listen. Of course, there are
Speaker 1: bad actors and YadA, YadA, YadA. It's the smallest, smallest
Speaker 1: percentage people are not uprooting their lives and walking away
Speaker 1: from everybody they know look like, worship like, and speak
Speaker 1: like and risking life and limb to come to this
Speaker 1: country because they're trying to get free crap. No, they're
Speaker 1: doing it simply because they want opportunity for their kids.
Speaker 2: The same exact things I want for my children.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you a question, Not you, yes, you,
Speaker 1: but everybody listening, every parent out there, ask yourself this
Speaker 1: question right now. If you are surrounded by gang violence
Speaker 1: to the point that you were afraid to go outside,
Speaker 1: you could not find enough money to put a roof
Speaker 1: over your head other than a dirt floor, and you
Speaker 1: feared for your children's life, and you knew that just
Speaker 1: to make ends meet by your child's twelfth, thirteenth or
Speaker 1: fourteenth birthday, they would have to quit going to whatever
Speaker 1: kind of remedial education they were getting and go to work.
Speaker 1: If you knew that that was the existence for you,
Speaker 1: and probably generationally the only opportunity for your children and
Speaker 1: their children, would you try to do something different? Would
Speaker 1: you be willing to live that way your whole life?
Speaker 1: If there was opportunity elsewhere, would you take that risk
Speaker 1: to better the possibilities for yourself and your children? Would
Speaker 1: you and I mean, I think every parent would say,
Speaker 1: of course, I'd do everything I could, even though it's
Speaker 1: rought with misunderstanding and cultural norms and desperation and everything else.
Speaker 1: I would do that for my children. So it's not
Speaker 1: at all surprising that you met people that said we
Speaker 1: need help with education, because the whole reason they're here
Speaker 1: is to try to better their lives. The vast, fast,
Speaker 1: fast majority.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a restauranteur who works closely with me
Speaker 2: as a mentor, and he says it this way. You
Speaker 2: know what if if bomb started going off in my city,
Speaker 2: in my state, in this country, and I'm out.
Speaker 1: In Hillard where people started dropping bombs all over you.
Speaker 2: And I had to gape and leave this country and
Speaker 2: start over with my wife and my children and not
Speaker 2: know the language or the culture or have any connections
Speaker 2: in that country, would I want someone to help in
Speaker 2: any way? And I think that's that's what it comes
Speaker 2: down to. I mean, I know families, a beloved family
Speaker 2: to me if I call them my family of ten,
Speaker 2: but they're from Africa and they came as refugees after
Speaker 2: living in a refugee camp for eleven years.
Speaker 1: And eleven years in a refugee.
Speaker 2: Camp or they left the Congo and were in Burundi.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, and that's that's civil war and ethnic cleansing,
Speaker 1: which is.
Speaker 2: Still going on today. And they got the magic golden
Speaker 2: ticket from the UN, not Australia, not England, the United
Speaker 2: States was the golden ticket and they got it and
Speaker 2: they got to come here. So so yeah, I think
Speaker 2: the parents said yeah, which is comparatively from infinitely better.
Speaker 2: And so when the parents said, we believe in education,
Speaker 2: we want education for our children. We are going to
Speaker 2: this great suburban school district. But guess what, Kim, they
Speaker 2: said to me, our children are falling behind in this
Speaker 2: school district, unlike yours. Kim, And I said, why why
Speaker 2: in a great school district are your children falling behind?
Speaker 2: They said, because of our own illiteracy, lack of English,
Speaker 2: lack of knowledge, work schedules, and lack of technology they
Speaker 2: were naming the fourth utility back in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2: They said, those are the reasons we can't help our
Speaker 2: children with homework. And they said, Kim, how much do
Speaker 2: you help your child with homework? And I'm thinking, you know,
Speaker 2: the ten o'clock run to Walmart for the poster board,
Speaker 2: A lot and they said, we can't help our children
Speaker 2: with homework. They're falling behind in school every year and
Speaker 2: they're not gonna be able to compete or catch up.
Speaker 2: Could you help us with that? We can't afford a
Speaker 2: private tutor. And I thought, okay, that makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: That falls under love.
Speaker 2: Serve, Yeah, and feed the educational mind of the children,
Speaker 2: because we'll start with the body. If you're hungry physically,
Speaker 2: you can't learn, but once that need is met, feeding
Speaker 2: the mind is next for the longevity of the thriving
Speaker 2: of this beautiful child. And so I had again tutored
Speaker 2: for years, but I never ran a tutoring program, and
Speaker 2: I'm not a teacher or a social worker. So I
Speaker 2: was like, let me get back to you on that.
Speaker 2: Let me look into that. So I went back to
Speaker 2: the volunteers and the team, and again we had one
Speaker 2: hundred and seventy more volunteers as summer, and I said,
Speaker 2: how do we run a tutoring program that's free effect.
Speaker 1: We're still in the basket area in the abandoned grocery store.
Speaker 2: Well, we'd moved out because she just said for the summer.
Speaker 2: So now we had no physical location at this point,
Speaker 2: and so I spent the whole fall trying to figure
Speaker 2: out how do you run a tutoring program that's again
Speaker 2: effective about effective and helps children with their homework, but
Speaker 2: also safe for children above reproach. And so I figured
Speaker 2: that out and in January of two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: we started after school tutoring and homework help. And I
Speaker 2: went to because in Ohio it's kind of chilly in
Speaker 2: the winter, so I didn't want to be outside, and
Speaker 2: I went to one of the biggest apartment complexes in
Speaker 2: that intersection and I went to the manager and said, Hey,
Speaker 2: can we use this leasing office and do some tutoring
Speaker 2: after school? And she was like, uh, who are you again?
Speaker 2: I said, yeah, I'm just this lady. Did you like
Speaker 2: here children going to summer lunch camp? That was me?
Speaker 2: And she's like, who do you work for? I was like,
Speaker 2: not really, anyone that would help you trust me better.
Speaker 2: So I said, We're gonna bring volunteers. Background checked volunteers
Speaker 2: will be here in your leasing office. She said, how
Speaker 2: about one afternoon a week. We'll see how this goes.
Speaker 2: And so we started after school tutoring every Wednesday January
Speaker 2: through May of two thousand and eight, and in about
Speaker 2: two months. We had so many children we could not
Speaker 2: pack them in like sardines in this leasing office. So
Speaker 2: we started praying for decent weather in Ohio on Wednesday afternoons.
Speaker 2: And I'm here to say that from March until May,
Speaker 2: it didn't rain on a Wednesday afternoon, and it wasn't
Speaker 2: bitter cold. So we would take half the children outside
Speaker 2: and blow some steam off, play some soccer and jump ropes,
Speaker 2: and tutor the other children and then flip them half
Speaker 2: and half. We had over one hundred ohly smokes. Again
Speaker 2: scratched an itch. And so then the next summer we
Speaker 2: went back to summer lunch camp and we had two locations,
Speaker 2: this time one in a church, one across the street
Speaker 2: in a different strip mall. And again half day camp
Speaker 2: now to official half day camp. And very quickly children
Speaker 2: we noticed translating for their parents to talk to us
Speaker 2: this whole time, you're kidding. Very quickly, and then parents
Speaker 2: started saying, where can we learn English? Can you help
Speaker 2: us find a place? We are desperate to learn English.
Speaker 2: Can you help us find someplace?
Speaker 1: Nah, but maybe we create it.
Speaker 2: And we looked around. In fact, today Columbus is the
Speaker 2: fourteenth largest city in the country bigger than San Francisco.
Speaker 2: I like to tell people because my mom lives in
Speaker 2: California and a fastest growing in the city or in
Speaker 2: the country, fastest growing city in the country, Columbus. And
Speaker 2: there are so few adult English programs that four percent
Speaker 2: of foreign worn people can find one.
Speaker 1: Really, so what did you do about that?
Speaker 2: I found a couple English programs, and God bless them.
Speaker 2: It was a lovely, caring human who ordered some books
Speaker 2: online and were like, I'm gonna give this a whirl. Again,
Speaker 2: God bless them. But it was sort of like Laura
Speaker 2: Ingall's Wild or one Room Schoolhouse, which there's a reason
Speaker 2: we don't do that. Fuck, there's a reason we don't
Speaker 2: do that. It's like perfect for two people and too
Speaker 2: hard and too easy for everyone else. And so I
Speaker 2: again didn't want And here I'm again families are in
Speaker 2: pover tea food on the table for their children. They
Speaker 2: want to learn as fast as they can. Lower Engle's
Speaker 2: one room schoolhouse is not fast. It's the slow boat.
Speaker 2: And so I started saying, well, we could do better
Speaker 2: than that. What if we found a way to do
Speaker 2: better than that? And there was one English program in
Speaker 2: our town that I had sent people to that the community,
Speaker 2: a technical school was running with a church adults only English.
Speaker 2: I had sent some parents there. They came back the
Speaker 2: next summer and I could have a little more conversation
Speaker 2: with them, So I thought, oh, I think it works.
Speaker 2: I think the class is pretty good. So I went
Speaker 2: the summer of two thousand and eight to see that
Speaker 2: class because after summer number two, we were going back
Speaker 2: to do after school homework help and I didn't know
Speaker 2: where to go because we ran out of space at
Speaker 2: the leasing office. We had to go somewhere bigger. So
Speaker 2: I went to the church that we ran summer camp
Speaker 2: in and said, could I do it here? The pastor said, yes,
Speaker 2: we built this to be full, and it's empty more
Speaker 2: than it's full, so come and bring as many people
Speaker 2: as you want. And so we started doing that and
Speaker 2: I went to see the English program at the same time.
Speaker 2: And when I went there, I heard these wee small
Speaker 2: voices in the hallway, miss cam and I turned around
Speaker 2: and I saw a ton of children from the summer
Speaker 2: because that's what they called me, and they were hanging
Speaker 2: out at this English program in the church nursery by
Speaker 2: themselves while their parents were learning English. And I'm a
Speaker 2: mom first number one, and I thought, that does not
Speaker 2: look so good. You know, like twenty children ages two
Speaker 2: to fifteen hanging out in church nursery by themselves, night
Speaker 2: after night. Not bad things could happen. I mean from
Speaker 2: toddler's falling over and six year olds not being able
Speaker 2: to find something to do in getting bored, and fifteen
Speaker 2: year olds I'll be able to get their home. We're done.
Speaker 2: So I went to the leaders of the program, but
Speaker 2: the English classes looked good. So I went to the
Speaker 2: leaders of the program, the church and the technical school,
Speaker 2: and I said, what's going on here in your nursery
Speaker 2: and they said, yeah, it's kind of a problem. We
Speaker 2: have all these children because parents don't have a sitter
Speaker 2: or family to watch them. And I said, so take
Speaker 2: me down the path. What happens? They said, people start
Speaker 2: and then they quit. I said, okay, what if we
Speaker 2: brought our after school tutoring program and we combined with
Speaker 2: your adult English program and we took care of all
Speaker 2: the children. And they said, oh, thank god, yes, please,
Speaker 2: could you do that? That would be amazing. And so
Speaker 2: we said we'll care for the children babies to eighteen
Speaker 2: year olds you teach English and we'll work together. And
Speaker 2: the church and the school, the technical school had been
Speaker 2: working together for ten years. Had fifty five adults coming,
Speaker 2: which is the biggest English class I had found, by
Speaker 2: the way, well three four different classrooms. We started in
Speaker 2: the fall. By January of two thousand and nine, one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty one adults were coming.
Speaker 1: Because they had a place for their kids. Phenomenal. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back. Let me ask you something as I'm
Speaker 1: listening to this story, because we got more to go,
Speaker 1: but I want to ask you this. One of the
Speaker 1: biggest gripes cultural gripes is you know, we're a nation
Speaker 1: of immigrants. We want people to come, but you know
Speaker 1: what they need to assimilate to our culture when they
Speaker 1: get here. My question is, if you don't speak to English,
Speaker 1: you don't know the culture, your kids are kind of ostracized.
Speaker 1: Exactly what can you assimilate to? However, if you see
Speaker 1: a program like this that's caring for your children and
Speaker 1: you're learning the language. An interviewer and an attorney are
Speaker 1: supposed to adhere to one basic fundamental, which is never
Speaker 1: ask a question you don't know the answer to yet,
Speaker 1: and so I'm breaking that right now because I really
Speaker 1: don't know the answer to this. But I'm curious. As
Speaker 1: you see these adults and families go through the English
Speaker 1: classes and go through these programs, do you see them
Speaker 1: become quote more American assimilated because they're able to have
Speaker 1: you seen a cultural shift at all?
Speaker 2: Like someone said to me, it's like eating like beef stew,
Speaker 2: where you've got chunks of beef, chunks of potatoes, chunks
Speaker 2: of carrots, but it's all in this really delicious broth
Speaker 2: called stew. I would say people keep the parts of
Speaker 2: their culture that they love that define who they are
Speaker 2: as a person. They add on things from our amazing
Speaker 2: country called the United States of America into that.
Speaker 1: Because see, I think that's awesome. And I don't think
Speaker 1: that's any different than the Italians and Irish that settled
Speaker 1: here one hundred and fifty years ago. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's any different than the large Swedish community that is
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin and Minnesota. From they I think as a
Speaker 1: bunch of MutS, the melting pot we are. We're always
Speaker 1: When I asked you what your name was, you said
Speaker 1: it was Swiss German. You're an American but you still
Speaker 1: honor that culture and that heritage. And that's what you're saying.
Speaker 1: These people are doing.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: What's the difference except that they're from Africa not Asia,
Speaker 1: I mean Africa not Europe. There's no difference. And the
Speaker 1: until we see that, we're not being all we should be.
Speaker 2: In my mind, yeah, my Mexican godfather we had Tamali's
Speaker 2: most times when we went to eat at his house.
Speaker 2: My mom's Polish. I still get pudo y at Easter.
Speaker 2: I mean, these are parts of who make us who,
Speaker 2: the parts that make us who we are. And they're beautiful, amazing.
Speaker 1: But they're not anti American. They're just part of our culture.
Speaker 1: But if we can learn the English and our children
Speaker 1: can grow and become educated and become tax paying members
Speaker 1: of society, then the quote assimilation looks like the very
Speaker 1: thing that quote assimilation look like one hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: just from Europeans.
Speaker 2: That's right. And let me be clear, people are that
Speaker 2: I have met in the last eighteen years are desperate
Speaker 2: to learn English and learn how and feel you absolutely
Speaker 2: learn how our education system works, and our medical system works,
Speaker 2: and our legal system works. And they're desperate to learn.
Speaker 2: In fact, I've had a women who I've become friends
Speaker 2: with who say to me, I want to hang out
Speaker 2: with more Americans because I want to learn, I want
Speaker 2: to understand, I want to know more. The curiosity is there,
Speaker 2: and it's beautiful. It's people are hungry.
Speaker 1: Being from one culture and being an American are not
Speaker 1: mutually exclusive.
Speaker 2: I agreed.
Speaker 1: So it's so interesting that we're having this conversation on
Speaker 1: the heels of simply wanting to feed some hungry kids. Right,
Speaker 1: It's phenomenal where this goes, how deep this can go.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've gone from feeding a few hungry kids
Speaker 1: to cultural assimilation, which is one of the things that
Speaker 1: our country is struggling with right this very second. Okay,
Speaker 1: you keep saying eighteen years, get me there.
Speaker 2: So we partnered in that way for about four years.
Speaker 2: We ran out of space at that church to run
Speaker 2: what became a three generation family English program, so we
Speaker 2: moved it to what is my home church again, one
Speaker 2: of the biggest Lutheran churches in the country, which has
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty eight thousand square foot building. We
Speaker 2: moved it there in twenty twelve and it just exploded.
Speaker 2: We kept serving free summer lunch camp. We started adding
Speaker 2: adult English to it in two thousand and nine, though
Speaker 2: I just I had met with hundreds of people in
Speaker 2: Columbus trying to figure out how to structure this, how
Speaker 2: to put some infrastructure around it, and about eighty people
Speaker 2: said to me, you need to start a nonprofit. I
Speaker 2: thought I should just go under another nonprofit's umbrella, economic brain.
Speaker 2: I didn't think the world needed another nonprofit. Quite honestly,
Speaker 2: I thought we should like work together better. But they
Speaker 2: all said, wait, suburban poverty, hundreds of volunteers, no Bill bilding,
Speaker 2: and you're running serving hundreds of people, will squealsh you.
Speaker 2: You need to start your own thing. Because it's so
Speaker 2: unique what you're doing and how you're doing it. You
Speaker 2: need to start your own thing. And so most of
Speaker 2: them said they'd help me. So in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: we started our own nonprofit called Serving Our Neighbors Ministries.
Speaker 2: People called us SUN Ministries for sure. We rebranded to
Speaker 2: FESTA twenty twenty one, but we got some infrastructure because
Speaker 2: I started feeling like, if I follow the turnip truck,
Speaker 2: what happens? How does this continue to sustain? And so
Speaker 2: we just continued to all through the years build real
Speaker 2: relationships with each other. So volunteers with children, families being served,
Speaker 2: relationships that went far beyond the lunch camp or the
Speaker 2: family English program where people met, that went into their
Speaker 2: own living rooms, into the parks, into the PTO meetings.
Speaker 2: People building relationships across every line of difference you can
Speaker 2: think of.
Speaker 1: You mean, bringing that community alone, that's it.
Speaker 2: That's what it was. And the community coming that whole
Speaker 2: piece isn't sprinkles on the cupcake. It's the sugar and
Speaker 2: the cupcake. Because if children get education and food and
Speaker 2: then they go into a community, a workforce, a school
Speaker 2: district where people don't understand them, have prejudice against them,
Speaker 2: that's not that helpful. So if they go into those
Speaker 2: places and they know someone because that guy came in
Speaker 2: and taught business skills at their summer lunch camp, and
Speaker 2: now they need a job and they're asking him to
Speaker 2: hire them, that's great. That's all the better. And so
Speaker 2: we knew that the volunteers, just like me standing on
Speaker 2: the tar roof, needed to be prayed for. The volunteers.
Speaker 2: I mean, the surgeon gener says, American epidemic is loneliness.
Speaker 2: I mean, the volunteers need relationships with their neighbors, people
Speaker 2: who look different, sound different, but have a lot in
Speaker 2: common with them.
Speaker 1: Oh, we talk about almost every episode that the payoff
Speaker 1: all of this is you get a thousand times more
Speaker 1: out of it than you put into it. And that's
Speaker 1: what you're saying, you know, moving into the most recent
Speaker 1: of the years, tell me about Ukrainian and Afghany families.
Speaker 1: That's crazy to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, whoever, wherever the problems in the world,
Speaker 2: wherever we see those problems, we then within the next
Speaker 2: year to three years see those people at our programs.
Speaker 2: And so we had in the very beginning we had
Speaker 2: lots of Iraqi refugees, really lots of Iraqi in fact,
Speaker 2: more than Somalian refugees. By the time we started, we
Speaker 2: had more Iraqi refugees and heard all kinds of stories
Speaker 2: of you know, dads who knew English helping the American soldiers.
Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden it became really dangerous
Speaker 2: for them to be there because they got found out
Speaker 2: and had to get moved so they wouldn't be killed.
Speaker 1: And I know that happened with Afghany.
Speaker 2: Same thing. Oh my gosh, we had eighty that December
Speaker 2: of twenty two. I think December of twenty two, we
Speaker 2: all went home for our Christmas break and I felt
Speaker 2: like God was saying, You've got to let Afghan families
Speaker 2: into this family English program. And by then, Bill, we
Speaker 2: had over seven hundred people coming to one program.
Speaker 1: Seven hundred. You know, the next time you squinch up
Speaker 1: your face or look down your nose at somebody that
Speaker 1: looks like they might be from Iraq or Afghanistan, you
Speaker 1: might run to remember that it's very possible to the
Speaker 1: member of their family saved Americans lives by translating for
Speaker 1: our troops.
Speaker 2: It is true.
Speaker 1: You better get your arms around the facts about that.
Speaker 1: And I will tell you the oddest thing in the
Speaker 1: world is retired American military service people that served in
Speaker 1: Afghanistan are the very first to stand up for these
Speaker 1: Afghanistani people.
Speaker 2: We have a donor who was in the Marines, and
Speaker 2: that is why he donates to.
Speaker 1: Us because of as Afghanian interpreters and the people that
Speaker 1: he made friends with. Another thing, boy, I'm well off
Speaker 1: your subject. But another thing I learned there were a
Speaker 1: very big misconception is when we were in Afghanistan, there
Speaker 1: were far more Afghanistans fighting than there were American military personnel.
Speaker 1: And once we left the country and abandoned it, especially
Speaker 1: in the way we did, all of those people's guns
Speaker 1: were taken from them and they ended up being the
Speaker 1: enemy of the state and were hunted. They thought alongside us.
Speaker 1: We left and left them in their families to be hunted,
Speaker 1: and now they end up in the Lord, Ohio with
Speaker 1: hungry children, not knowing how to speak English. Literally, we're
Speaker 1: not supposed to do something about this. Literally, you know
Speaker 1: these things to be true. Yes, you serve these people.
Speaker 2: That's it I mean. And so that Christmas I thought,
Speaker 2: oh gosh, well, we had eighty nine people that we
Speaker 2: let into the program that January, even though we were
Speaker 2: full and had a waiting list, and it was nine families,
Speaker 2: eighty nine people.
Speaker 1: Holy Oly Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: And there were some families that were from rural Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: like you said, helping our soldiers. And we had to
Speaker 2: start in our adult English part of the Family English program.
Speaker 2: We have seven classrooms, six levels of English, and two
Speaker 2: of the true beginner classrooms. One is if you're literate
Speaker 2: in another language. One is if you're not literate in
Speaker 2: any other language.
Speaker 1: They were illiterate in everything.
Speaker 2: We had Afghani refugees who were from rural Afghanistan who
Speaker 2: couldn't read or write in Pashto their language. Wow, and
Speaker 2: they were farmers, I mean they they didn't. We even
Speaker 2: learned over the months of getting to know them in
Speaker 2: the beginning that they didn't have the mental construct of
Speaker 2: a calendar.
Speaker 1: Living in suburban Ohio for goodness sakes, can we want
Speaker 1: these folks to quote a smolite right, They're just trying
Speaker 1: to get through a day. Yeah, And then we throw
Speaker 1: their kids in an American school and say, hey, learn
Speaker 1: free education. What's wrong with you?
Speaker 2: Right? Right right? And we watched in Ukrainian I mean
Speaker 2: same thing. We do this registration night in the falls
Speaker 2: when we start our family English program. And again, let
Speaker 2: me be clear, at this point we take eight hundred
Speaker 2: people in our large program. People start coming hours before
Speaker 2: to get registered. And there was a Ukrainian couple two
Speaker 2: years ago and they were at the beginning of when
Speaker 2: I had to start a waiting list, and the wife
Speaker 2: started crying because they were so desperate to get into
Speaker 2: an English program. And I said, We're opening a second
Speaker 2: site in two weeks. Here's the address. Come to that
Speaker 2: one and then long story short, they got into the
Speaker 2: second program, and every single time I saw her at
Speaker 2: that program, biggest smile on her face. She would come
Speaker 2: and hug me, thank you, thank you. The camaraderie that
Speaker 2: people have with one another, with a Ukrainian, with an
Speaker 2: Afghani with Iraqi theship. Yeah, the relationships that people build
Speaker 2: together because they have a common life experience of moving
Speaker 2: to America.
Speaker 3: Speaking of the registration line, given you went there, can
Speaker 3: you talk about how you always make sure you're at
Speaker 3: the registration line and why?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So now our three generation Family English program picture
Speaker 2: picture your own family bill, so infantstagrandparents. Everyone comes to
Speaker 2: the same place at the same time, and every single
Speaker 2: person in the family gets the education they need to
Speaker 2: go from surviving to thriving. So babies, toddlers, and preschoolers
Speaker 2: get preschool. Their best way out of poverty is to
Speaker 2: be ready for kindergarten. Kindergarten through eighth grade, get homework, help.
Speaker 2: Two year olds to eighteen year olds get dinner every
Speaker 2: night that they come. Eighteen year olds are teen interns.
Speaker 2: They're gaining work experience. Second to eighth eighth graders run
Speaker 2: their own business inside of the program and then adults
Speaker 2: have seven levels of English, so they're exactly where they
Speaker 2: need to be to learn as fast as their brain
Speaker 2: can learn English. So that's what the three Generation Family
Speaker 2: English Program model is that we have honed since two
Speaker 2: thousand and nine and want to scale. So when we
Speaker 2: start registration, clearly we could do online register. We choose
Speaker 2: not to because we want to serve the people who
Speaker 2: are struggling the most in poverty and you have to
Speaker 2: be able to get to our location to come anyway.
Speaker 2: So we have people come in person and in ten minutes.
Speaker 2: The last two years of opening our registration, we have
Speaker 2: brought in eight hundred people, which is full for that program.
Speaker 2: And I, as the founder, stand at that line to
Speaker 2: start the waiting list line. Quite frankly, my coworkers just cry.
Speaker 2: They just they can't.
Speaker 1: Do it, and so I bes you have to say no.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we have to say no to another five
Speaker 2: hundred people.
Speaker 1: You could serve fifteen hundred, thirteen to fifteen hundred a year.
Speaker 1: What's prohibiting you from opening more?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we have a second site and we are
Speaker 2: serving one one hundred and sixty six people right now.
Speaker 1: Again, do you take a second to realize what you
Speaker 1: just said. You fed eighty kids one summer, yeah, one thousand?
Speaker 1: How what?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: How much?
Speaker 2: And sixty six people were in our two family English
Speaker 2: programs this school year.
Speaker 1: Are you still doing the summer feed?
Speaker 2: Yeah? We saive about eight hundred children and then parents
Speaker 2: with adult English in the summer.
Speaker 1: Yep. How many volunteers over one.
Speaker 2: Thousand a year in Pillard, Ohio. Yeah, it's Columbus wide
Speaker 2: now because people come from forty eight countries and forty
Speaker 2: nine zip codes to come to our programs because there
Speaker 2: isn't anything else like it. They are desperate and they come.
Speaker 1: Please tell me someone wants you to scale those elsewhere.
Speaker 2: That's what is on my heart. We want to scale
Speaker 2: it across the country.
Speaker 1: How does that happen?
Speaker 2: We have started to teach other communities how to do this.
Speaker 2: I don't think I need to run them all, Bill,
Speaker 2: I can just teach other people. We spend five years
Speaker 2: with the AmeriCorps Vista program documenting everything we do and
Speaker 2: how we do it. Because clearly, when you bring people
Speaker 2: in from ninety one countries, including the United States, into
Speaker 2: the same space, whether it's a gymnasium to play soccer
Speaker 2: or an adult English class and you just hope it
Speaker 2: goes well. It's not quite that easy, but we have
Speaker 2: written down how we create the environment that's built on respect,
Speaker 2: built on honor, built on relationships and community. So we
Speaker 2: have started teaching other communities how to do this. We
Speaker 2: taught Springfield, Ohio last year.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Howled were you and you were
Speaker 1: standing on that roof, tarn.
Speaker 2: It, I would say fifteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny two things that you mentioned in our
Speaker 1: short talk that were really obviously imprinted on your mind.
Speaker 1: What country was that in? Where were our appalationships? I mean,
Speaker 1: what state was that in?
Speaker 2: We were in West Virginia.
Speaker 1: West Virginia is a West Virginia man with an oxygen
Speaker 1: mask on when you're fifteen years old, slopping tar on
Speaker 1: his roof, and a Mexican godfather. I just wonder if
Speaker 1: without those two, one was a long term and one
Speaker 1: was kind of an instant influence on your life. I
Speaker 1: just and of course, your your stepdad taking you to church.
Speaker 1: I mean, isn't it weird how three separate, very innocuous
Speaker 1: seeming events culminate themselves into what becomes one's life's work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't underestimate the power you can have in
Speaker 2: someone's life, whether it's one moment or days and months
Speaker 2: in years, it's to encourage another person, to serve another person,
Speaker 2: to see another person, really see who they are and
Speaker 2: care about them is hugely impactful.
Speaker 1: After eighteen years, you have to have kids that you
Speaker 1: served those first couple of years that are now adults,
Speaker 1: that you know. Tell me a story, tell give me
Speaker 1: a heartwarming they were hungry and you fed them and
Speaker 1: what they're doing now. Story. I know you have to
Speaker 1: have those.
Speaker 2: I have so many that I in fact, I love
Speaker 2: your job here, Bill, because just to talk to people
Speaker 2: about their stories is pretty much my life dream. I
Speaker 2: love stories. I love people's stories. So you have a lovely,
Speaker 2: lovely role here that I am honored.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. But Alex is the whole reason I
Speaker 1: do all this.
Speaker 2: Alex love.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was minding my own business about two
Speaker 1: years ago when he came up with this idea and
Speaker 1: told me it would take about two hours a week,
Speaker 1: which is a complete another lot, but anyway, tell me
Speaker 1: so there, Thank you, by the way. That's gracious say,
Speaker 1: but it's you just talk to cool people and let
Speaker 1: them tell their stories and trust stay out of the way,
Speaker 1: which I do a poor job of. Oh, shut up,
Speaker 1: you've all the day, Hey, Cassius, would you pull the
Speaker 1: sheet back so he's no longer in the room. Shut up.
Speaker 1: It's like the Wizard of Oz. He's the guy back there, right,
Speaker 1: it's an irritating dude behind the hurtin Go ahead, would
Speaker 1: you say so? Yeah? Shut up, She's about tellus a
Speaker 1: cool story.
Speaker 2: There's a young man that I am just over the
Speaker 2: moon proud of who I met when he was in
Speaker 2: elementary school. In fact, he's the star of one of
Speaker 2: our videos. So in twenty twelve, he was in elementary
Speaker 2: school coming to our summer lunch camp with his siblings
Speaker 2: and his neighbors and just a lovely, lovely young man.
Speaker 2: And he was part of eleven children at one of
Speaker 2: our summer lunch sites who came to me. Actually the
Speaker 2: leader that summer said to me, Kim, the children are
Speaker 2: getting They're just I'm trying to swim upstream. They're swimming downstream.
Speaker 2: Every activity I plan, they they poo poo it. Will
Speaker 2: you come talk to this group of about eleven children
Speaker 2: with it, who are sort of spearheading the opposite of
Speaker 2: what I'm trying to accomplish here.
Speaker 1: So I buttholes, which is what kids are.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was like, okay, let's chat. And she said
Speaker 2: you know them, she was just hired for the summer.
Speaker 2: She said, you know them better than me. So I
Speaker 2: sat down with these eleven children and they're sort of
Speaker 2: second to fifth graders, and I said, you know, what's
Speaker 2: the deal. Why why are you not really wanting to
Speaker 2: do the activities we planned for you this summer? And
Speaker 2: they said They looked at each other and they said,
Speaker 2: we're bored. I said, okay, I respect that. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm not a teacher, I'm not a social worker. I
Speaker 2: plan these activities, but you know I didn't get it.
Speaker 2: I didn't get it right. So what do you want
Speaker 2: to do here? Because we're going to be together every
Speaker 2: day for the next seven weeks. What would you like
Speaker 2: to do here at camp if you don't like the
Speaker 2: things we planned because we could do that. What is it?
Speaker 2: And they kind of looked at each other. I said, no, seriously,
Speaker 2: I'm seriously asking you and they said, well. They started
Speaker 2: brainstorming and they said, well, what if what if we
Speaker 2: ran a restaurant? What if we what if we ran
Speaker 2: it ourselves and made the food. And I said, well,
Speaker 2: who would you serve? And they said maybe the younger
Speaker 2: kids at camp, like the kindergarten and first graders. And
Speaker 2: I'm thinking I order lunch every day. I don't think
Speaker 2: that's gonna work. So I said, well, you know, that'd
Speaker 2: be fun. But like, what if I brought you real
Speaker 2: customers that you could serve, like the mayor and the
Speaker 2: head of BMW Financial Services and the guy who sells
Speaker 2: insurance down the street. What if they have to eat lunch?
Speaker 2: What if they came to your restaurant to eat lunch.
Speaker 2: I brought you real customers. And they started just squealing.
Speaker 2: They said, we could use our family recipes and we
Speaker 2: could do the whole thing. We could run it again,
Speaker 2: second to fifth.
Speaker 1: Grade, fifth graders, fourth graders second to love it.
Speaker 2: And I said okay, so when would you like to start?
Speaker 2: And it was the Monday before fourth of July and
Speaker 2: we were closed for fourth of July. And they said, well,
Speaker 2: how about how about next Monday? And I said in
Speaker 2: one week and they were like yeah. I said okay.
Speaker 2: So I told the leader of the camp, this is
Speaker 2: what they want to do. Will you help them do it,
Speaker 2: and I'll go find people to come eat. So I
Speaker 2: called on my friends and said, you know, will you come.
Speaker 2: I don't know what you're going to find, but you
Speaker 2: should come. So we that day. We came back down Monday,
Speaker 2: and one of the little boys met me in the
Speaker 2: hallway and said, welcome to Taco Bell Junior, Miss Kim.
Speaker 1: Taco Bell Juniors.
Speaker 2: And I was like what what and they said, it's
Speaker 2: Mexican restaurant. And I said, okay. He was in a
Speaker 2: three piece suit and it was July.
Speaker 1: That's hilarious.
Speaker 2: So they started a full restaurant. They had like the
Speaker 2: plastics silverwhere in the napkins with little turly ribbon on it,
Speaker 2: I mean the whole thing. They had music, they had
Speaker 2: some of the best beans and rice I've ever had.
Speaker 2: I mean it was great. And so that exploded. So
Speaker 2: this young man was one of those inventors of what
Speaker 2: we now affectionately call Taco Bell Junior at our company.
Speaker 2: And he grew up and he became a teen intern
Speaker 2: for US, which we affectually call orange shirts because we
Speaker 2: buy them orange Veesta T shirts. And so he was
Speaker 2: a teen intern with US and volunteered and served the
Speaker 2: younger children at camp and family esl and then he
Speaker 2: got hired at McDonald's and got a paid job in town,
Speaker 2: and he started believing that he could do more. In fact,
Speaker 2: like I said, he's in one of our videos with
Speaker 2: a microphone like this in front of him, and I said,
Speaker 2: someday you're gonna have a microphone because he just picked
Speaker 2: it up as a young child and started talking on
Speaker 2: our video. No practice was amazing. And so he decided
Speaker 2: he was going to go to college. Lives in the
Speaker 2: trailer park, the least expensive place in all of central
Speaker 2: Ohio for a family to live, and so he applied
Speaker 2: himself at school, got good grades, applied to the Ohio
Speaker 2: State University, got in. He just graduated two years ago
Speaker 2: with a double degree in mathematics and meteorology microphone and
Speaker 2: kept working at McDonald's. He was working there all through school,
Speaker 2: and because of the things like the PELL grant, he
Speaker 2: was able to go to school with no payment. He
Speaker 2: banked all the money that he made at McDonald's because
Speaker 2: he didn't need it for school, and he could live
Speaker 2: at home while he went to college. And so when
Speaker 2: he got out of college, he decided to buy a
Speaker 2: house and he bought a house in Hilliard with a
Speaker 2: pool in the backyard. And he's twenty two years old.
Speaker 1: And what's he do now?
Speaker 2: He still works for McDonald's. He's a regional manager and
Speaker 2: they have treated him well and he's very happy there,
Speaker 2: and so he stayed. He has stayed.
Speaker 1: Without showing up for a free lunch one day. What
Speaker 1: do the demographics say he'd be doing now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean he's clearly the first person in his
Speaker 2: family to go to school to dream of something much bigger.
Speaker 1: Can I ask a question? Yeah, what's more American than
Speaker 1: a house with a swimming pool? Warris regional manager for McDonald's.
Speaker 2: Isn't it the best?
Speaker 1: It's the American literally?
Speaker 2: And he I asked him, what do you love about
Speaker 2: your job? And he said, I love because you know
Speaker 2: you've been to McDonald's. You've got adults and you've got
Speaker 2: teenagers who work there. He said, I love to work
Speaker 2: with young people and pour into them and challenge them
Speaker 2: about what they could do and what their dreams are.
Speaker 2: And clearly English is not his family's first language. Spanish is,
Speaker 2: and so he's able to be completely multi lingual in
Speaker 2: this franchise's business, which helps tremendously on every level.
Speaker 3: McDonald's actually a great business. Most field don't know this.
Speaker 3: I've interviewed the former CEO and the chairman and two
Speaker 3: thirds of their executives had their first job at McDonald's
Speaker 3: and rose up within the company.
Speaker 1: The thing is, though, this kid grew up in a
Speaker 1: trailer and suburban poverty, so the phrase we now need
Speaker 1: to normalize in suburban poverty and showed up one day
Speaker 1: at a vacant grocery store for free launch and look
Speaker 1: where it is now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: If there is any better way to love servant fee
Speaker 1: to human being them out and it goes far beyond
Speaker 1: the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Speaker 2: That's it. That's it, and the relationships that get built.
Speaker 2: The French said he still has today with so many
Speaker 2: of the children he spent all of his summers in
Speaker 2: school years with at Our programs are thick and beautiful.
Speaker 1: How do people hear more about FESTA?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you go to our website or contact me. So
Speaker 2: our website is we are Festa dot org.
Speaker 1: And uh we are Festa dot org.
Speaker 2: Yea, we are fested dot org. And our phone number,
Speaker 2: our address, everything is on there ways to contact us.
Speaker 2: But like you said, we want to scale this across
Speaker 2: the country.
Speaker 1: We can't. How do people find you?
Speaker 2: Oh it's k and then my last name emch at
Speaker 2: Werefesta dot org. We can't find anyone else doing three
Speaker 2: generation family English across the country. We're working with a
Speaker 2: national group who's also searched and they have not found
Speaker 2: it either. And so we know that every major city
Speaker 2: needs this and we can teach it to them.
Speaker 3: What's so cool about that part of it, too, Bill,
Speaker 3: is so many people cannot go to these literacy classes.
Speaker 3: There's nobody to watch their kids. So I mean, the
Speaker 3: three generation it's just so huge.
Speaker 1: It's just amazing that just from a I found out
Speaker 1: that these kids don't have anything to eat during the
Speaker 1: summers has evolved into what it is today. And it
Speaker 1: just speaks to just go across the street, open the
Speaker 1: door and try, and you never know what can evolve
Speaker 1: and happen as a result of the effort. And the
Speaker 1: person behind all this is the daughter of five divorces,
Speaker 1: who grew up with trauma, who had no family that
Speaker 1: ever really been to college, who stupidly went to college
Speaker 1: because she got one piece of mail from a questionnaire
Speaker 1: she left in an offering plate, who was living the
Speaker 1: two kids and married life, working at a bank, who
Speaker 1: simply felt called to love, serve, and feed their neighbors
Speaker 1: and bring their community along. And now look at the
Speaker 1: lives that are being changed. If it is not the
Speaker 1: quintessential story of what an army of normal folks is
Speaker 1: supposed to be about, I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1: Do you allow yourself when taking stock of the last
Speaker 1: eighteen years, do you allow yourself celebrate what you've done?
Speaker 2: I think I love most to celebrate with my friends,
Speaker 2: the families that I've met through through doing this. I
Speaker 2: mean that gentleman I called in tears at the grocery store,
Speaker 2: who said call her back. You know, he became a
Speaker 2: father for me. His one of the men he brought
Speaker 2: with him, John and Bob were two fathers to me. Man,
Speaker 2: God knew I needed that. I'm going this summer for
Speaker 2: a month in June to Jordan with a family I've
Speaker 2: known for twelve years through through this nonprofit ministry work,
Speaker 2: who want me to come to their country and meet
Speaker 2: their family. And it's an honor of my life. So
Speaker 2: that's the way it looks like to celebrate. My Thanksgiving
Speaker 2: dinner table is full of children and families that we serve,
Speaker 2: we have served and gotten to be in close relationship with.
Speaker 2: And I think the biggest joy for me is watching
Speaker 2: families thrive, seeing when we meet them, whether it's depressed
Speaker 2: and sad and full of grief and not enough food
Speaker 2: on the table, to running their own restaurant and employing
Speaker 2: ten other immigrants to work for them. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: the celebration for me, to watch people thrive.
Speaker 1: I'm in all of you. It has been just an
Speaker 1: honor to meet you. And somehow I kind of believe
Speaker 1: that you are going to scale this. It just doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like you.
Speaker 2: Have a stop but I can't not stop it.
Speaker 1: And anybody who wants to support Kim or learn more
Speaker 1: you know how to go there now. And anybody who's thinking,
Speaker 1: my goodness, this would be great in the community. You
Speaker 1: have an email address, reach out and I would imagine
Speaker 1: you're the kind of person that would say, come see
Speaker 1: what we do. We'll teach you everything.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And like Alex said, there might be people are
Speaker 2: who have an ESL classroom, a one room schoolhouse, or
Speaker 2: even a couple, but they see their students drop off
Speaker 2: and quit through the year, or they might be doing
Speaker 2: an after school program and seeing foreign, boring children coming
Speaker 2: to their after school program and they just want to
Speaker 2: figure out how to put the whole thing together. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's the family model. I'll say it this way. It's
Speaker 2: not it doesn't. I'm not lost on how amazing it
Speaker 2: is that people from Eastern culture, which I consider the
Speaker 2: whole world except for America and Europe, which is all
Speaker 2: the countries that we are serving.
Speaker 1: Except for Australia, New Zealand, but the rest of.
Speaker 2: The whole complanet Earth, so who love hospitality so much,
Speaker 2: who are so dedicated to family, would come to America
Speaker 2: to teach us to keep families together. And this family
Speaker 2: model of serving the whole family together is so simple,
Speaker 2: but yet we've missed it pretty categorically in serving people,
Speaker 2: whether it's workforce development or anything else, we've missed keeping
Speaker 2: the family together and serving them together. And that's the
Speaker 2: model that we've perfected, and we just want.
Speaker 1: To scale kim imps, I'm still don't know they I'm
Speaker 1: saying it right. You're doing great, Bill, founder of FESTA.
Speaker 1: What an amazing legacy you've left on your community, and
Speaker 1: there's just so many lessons to have been learned from this,
Speaker 1: starting with suburban poverty and all the way through all
Speaker 1: the lives can be affected. You're awesome and I just
Speaker 1: can't tell you how much. Thank you for joining me
Speaker 1: and telling your story.
Speaker 2: Oh Bill, it's truly an honor to be here. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much for inviting me. Thank you, It's.
Speaker 1: It's by honor. I'm just sorry you had to spend
Speaker 1: so much of the time with Alex. Alex Alex is great,
Speaker 1: but I got to have somebody to poke it, right.
Speaker 1: I can't poke my guests, so what have I got
Speaker 1: to do? Thanks for being here, Kim, Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: and thank you for joining us this week. If Kim
Speaker 1: mch has inspired you in general, or better yet, to
Speaker 1: take action by starting something like Festa in your community,
Speaker 1: donating to them, or something else entirely, please let me know.
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear about it. You can write me
Speaker 1: anytime at Bill at normalfolks dot us, and I promise
Speaker 1: I will respond. If you enjoyed this episode, share it
Speaker 1: with friends that on social subscribe to the podcast, rate
Speaker 1: and review it. Join the army at normalfolks dot us.
Speaker 1: Consider becoming a premium member there any and all of
Speaker 1: these things that will help us grow an army of
Speaker 1: normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. Until next time, do what
Speaker 1: you can