 Nancy, what's the purpose of today's open house? To give the community a chance to come in and see what we've been doing. We started with five students, February 4th, and we're up to ten students now, and we want them to have an idea of what the program's about and for students to be able to share the work they've been doing. Get to see us as a resource for the community. Give us an example of what the program encompasses overall. It's a very comprehensive program. It's targeted to students ages 16 and a half to 24 who've already left school. So there's an academic focus on GED preparation and post-secondary education, but 40% of the program is also job readiness, particularly gaining construction skills. We have jobs for main graduate specialists who help students learn how to interview, write resumes, do a skill assessment, make a match between their interests and their skills with possible employers. What are some of the challenges that the students come into the program with? You could pretty much name it, and at least one of those students will have that challenge across the board. There are issues with substance abuse, anger management. One or both of those may have gotten them in trouble with the law. They may just have not been interested in school and decided to leave and haven't really been doing anything. Homelessness can be another concern, so it's a pretty wide range of need. What does a program like this provide that a regular public school system perhaps can't provide? We have a lot of flexibility in how we're able to provide programming, and our ratios are very different. So you might have six staff to 20 students, and it just provides an opportunity to structure things in a way that students' needs can be responded to very quickly. How do students come into the program? Come in through referrals from case managers, corrections officers, alumni from other youth build programs, or just an awareness of family members looking for alternatives for their children. Describe a typical day for a student here in the program. The days alternate. On a classroom day, they would spend their day alternating between a jobs for main graduates class, math and science, and humanities. And those academic days tend to look pretty traditional. To pass the GED, they have to be good readers and writers, and that's a big focus of what we do. On the jobsite days, they would be working on rehabbing affordable housing for the Bitterford Housing Authority. So they would do some pre-training here, and then once they're past basic safety training, they can go on the job and work on the demo. We haven't started rebuilding yet. We're still doing demo. Another part of our component, our program, is community service. So in the afternoons, we'll work together on joint projects for community service projects. How long does the program last? How long does a student in the program? That varies by the student. You have some students who really can come in and be very focused, and in six months be able to complete their GED and really demonstrate some consistency and job readiness and gain employment. Other students that may take them nine months to a year really can vary with whether or not they're able to follow through on the commitment to the program. What did the town of Bitterford start this grant process? Basically, the impetus was actually from learning works itself. They had started inquiring about maybe doing some of the things they did in Portland in the Bitterford area because there was a lot of similar needs. So I ended up connecting with Ethan Strimling, and we thought it would be a good idea if we worked together on something. So they encouraged us to put in an application to this grant, and lo and behold, we actually got the grant. So it's worked out unbelievably well. And what are some of the needs that this project will serve? Basically it's just another tool in the toolbox, I guess, to keep kids interested and young people going in a positive direction. There's all kinds of reasons why people drop out of school or go down the wrong path. So this is just another way for them to get them back on track. As part of this program, they'll be also doing some work for the housing stock in Bitterford. Talk about that a little bit, please. Basically what we've done is we've set aside two units in one of our buildings that we had planned to do renovation work on. So we've basically incorporated that into the program where they're going over and they're actually going soup to nuts in terms of the renovation of those units. And those will be rented to moderate to low income families or individuals. So it gives them a chance to see from the ground up what it takes to get a unit back online and then eventually they'll see a family or a person living in that unit. So I think it's a great experience for them. Ethan, give us a little bit of background of this program here in Bitterford. Well, we run at LearningWorks. We have an alternative high school up in Portland called YBA. And Bitterford Housing Authority applied to the Department of Labor to try to create another high school down here. And they reached out to us and said, won't you come down and help us to put together our school? Why don't you do the educational component and we can do the housing component. Build a great partnership that way. So what this school is, it's an alternative high school. It works with kids who've dropped out of school age 16 to 24, helps them get a GED, helps them get some job skills, helps them get some mental health services to be able to deal with some of the tough stuff that's going on in their lives. Ultimately, the goal is to build a little more stability, help them find a way to create a foundation to support themselves and their family down the road. What did you learn in a program in Portland to help you develop a program here for Bitterford? The biggest thing is the relationships between the teachers and the students. If that relationship is successful, everything else will start to fall into place. I mean, there's lots of technical things that you've got to deal with in terms of computers and walls and buildings and all this that we're dealing with. But really fundamentally, what's going to make this program work is the connection that the teachers have with the students. And so far, it's really been phenomenal. You're just seeing very good attendance rates, even though it's a small group, you're seeing very good attendance rates, which is not usual for a group like this. This is a group that's used to dropping out and not really a high level of participation. So it's great to see. What period will this funding cover? This funding covers, basically the program is about 30 months, this programming will really cover the next two years of solid programming for these kids and then about six months of follow-up after that. So basically 2013 through 2015. And what happens after that? Well, hopefully they'll be able to secure additional funds from the federal government to continue the school going. But for those individual kids, we'll do follow-up services and continue to try to work with them as they're continuing on their life journey. Hopefully, after two years, we'll be able to get additional funding from the U.S. Department of Labor and then hopefully with the partnership with the Bitterford Housing Authority, be able to continue. In your experience, what's the biggest change that you see in students between the time they come into one of these programs and leave? You know, the biggest change is really their own self-awareness and their own self-value. They spend a lot of time in their life with people saying to them, you're not going to make it and feeling like a failure over and over and over. And this is a place where they're really going to feel success. Yes, it's going to be clear when they don't do well. We're going to have conversations about it, but they're not doing well. The behavior of not doing well is not a reflect on them, right? It's not that they're not good. It's the behavior was not good. So let's change the behavior and they can start to feel some more of their self-worth. So really the most important thing we'll see is the self-worth of these young people just rise by the minute. Thank you.