 for today. We have Sheila Reed, who is an outwitch representative for Bernie Sanders. And she's worked with Bernie in this capacity since 2017. And she focuses on Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. I've known Sheila a long time. And ever since I've known her, which is decades now, a lot of people hold certain ideas about equal rights and social justice. Sheila is, she's walking the walk completely. She has fought for women and children and for human rights in the state of Vermont ever since I've known her. In the past, she worked as a legal aid attorney. I think that was when I first met Sheila. And she's been an advocate for victims of domestic violence. In fact, she was the director of St. John's Berry's umbrella organization, which defends the rights of women in court. She is a lawyer. And she's also worked as a legislative advocate for an organization called Voices for Vermont's Children. It's a statewide child advocacy organization. In a way, they're lobbyists. And they're trying to work with people in the legislature and the state senate to pass laws that are favorable to women and children of the state. So this job that she has for Bernie is just perfect for Sheila. And however, I want to say before we start that Sheila's job for today here at Oli is to talk to you about her work as an outreach representative and as an employee of the US Senate, not as someone who's involved with Bernie's political campaign. In fact, she can't. She's not allowed to do that. As she says, there's a firewall between her role working for the Senate and anything that has to do with political, his political fortunes in running for president. So we can't talk about that and she can't take questions about that. And also, the other thing is she's about to hand me a statement that has to do with the news that Bernie had hard trouble and had some stents put in today. And this is what she's allowed to say and people can know about at this point. And I quote her instructions. During the campaign event yesterday evening, Senator Sanders experienced some chest discomfort. Following medical evaluation and testing, he was found to have a blockage in one artery and two stents were successfully inserted. Senator Sanders is conversing and in good spirits. He will be resting up over the next few days. We are canceling his events and appearances until further notice, and we will continue to provide appropriate updates. So that's probably all you're going to get in the media as well, as far as I know. OK, now that we've dispensed with that, I just want to mention our next program coming up at Oli, which appropriately, given everything that's happening, is about voting, because there is no right to vote in the United States, is the question. And free professors from Norwich will talk about it historically, including how the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and state laws have defined, interpreted, limited, and ignored this important Democratic Corp cornerstone since 1787. And it will bring us right up to the present moment, which is certainly an interesting one. What else can I say? Anyway, here's Sheila. Hi, everybody. You'll have to forgive me. I just heard about a half an hour before you did about Bernie, so I'm a little distracted. But we're going to go forward with this today. I see one of my favorite people over there, Dave, who was on the board of Voices for Vermont's Children. And nice to see you. And I just want to start out by giving you a little bit more information about me so you know where I came from on this job. As Amy told you, I've been an advocate my entire career. I had shared Bernie Sanders' politics at age 18 way before I knew he existed. I got into law school by writing an essay on redistribution of wealth, which I actually found it the other day. It was very interesting to read a 21-year-old version of what that meant, but felt really strongly about it. So I spent many years, I mean, I'm retirement age, and looking toward retirement happily in about a year, year and a half, I think. But spent 16 years of civil legal work on behalf of low-income people, three years domestic violence, as Amy said, 17 years as a legislative advocate. And I retired from Voices. And frankly, Donald Trump was elected within a few months. And I was sitting in my nice little living room in Rygate, Vermont, in front of my fireplace, obsessing about the situation, reading the internet to the point of ridiculousness, and decided I'm not ready to retire. I need to do something else. Happened to pick up a seven days. There, in the seven days job ads, was an ad for Bernie Sanders' office. And I said, now that's where I want to work. And you'll be happy to know there's no ageism in his office. I was pulled right in. And at age 64, started working for Bernie. It's been a great experience. And I wanted to tell you today just a little bit about what I've done in the Northeast Kingdom. One of the things, when he interviewed me, he said, I live in Rygate, which is in the Northeast Kingdom. And he said, you are perfect to run the St. Johnsbury office. Now, at the time, I thought I was going to be on Church Street in Burlington with all the cool people. But the story of my life, if I ever do a memoir, I'm going to name it Hinterland, because I'm always sent out to the rural areas, probably because I'm from rural Wyoming. And I just sort of, they just sense it, I think. The first summer that I worked for Bernie in 2017, he called us all together. And he said, this is what I want you to do this summer. I want you to go out into our communities. And I want you to find people that don't come to town halls. Frankly, people not like you. People that don't come to events and gatherings. And I want you to get out there. And it's not going to be easy. But I want you to talk to them. And we sort of set up a little survey that we could start with, with people, just to break the ice, some questions, how they felt about various things in our country, that sort of thing. And he said, you just got to knock on doors and go out there and do it. And of course, we're split up. There's seven of us. And we're split up by geographic areas. I'm my area is the Northeast Kingdom. So I went out by myself quite a bit. And I got these DC staff people into Vermont. And they went with me. It was a great experience for them. I took interns. I took anybody who'd go with me. Does anybody know Phil Fermanti? He went with me one day. That was a great day. Because we were in the Newport area. And everybody knew him because of his father, the doctor there, that sort of thing. So it wasn't campaigning. And that's what I, as Amy said, I cannot campaign for the senator. And in fact, right now, I can't do it this summer. I couldn't do it this summer because it could be misinterpreted as campaigning. So there's some very strong ethics rules around the work we do. And we can't do any new events this fall because it might be misinterpreted. We can only continue to do the events we normally do, like the senior holiday meals, that sort of thing. Because we've been doing those for 20 years. We can keep doing them. And so what I did that summer was went into the Northeast Kingdom, split places up. And one day I'd go to a mobile home park. One day I'd go to an affordable housing complex or a housing complex. Someday I just took rural roads and just walked down the rural roads and talked to people. And sometimes I just went into the small villages in the Northeast Kingdom and talked to people. And I can tell you this one thing. I have done a lot. I've had a very long career. This is one of the greatest experiences of my career. It was amazing and wonderful. And I am so glad I did it. I think everyone should do it. And I understood why Bernie had us do it. And one of the things that I learned is if you ask people to talk to you, they'll talk to you. And if you ask them questions, they'll gladly answer your questions. And I'm a very good listener. I've always been a good listener. This honed my listening skills immensely. And it is extremely powerful to people to have someone truly listening to them. And just the amazing information I got from the people of the Northeast Kingdom that summer, I'll never forget. And I just was going to talk with you a little bit about some of the things I learned. I have a feeling most of you have already learned these things in your lives, too. I think the most important thing I learned that summer was the importance of community. A shabby, one-room building can be the glue that holds a community together. And I can use Gilman, Vermont as an example. Anybody been to the senior center in Gilman, Vermont? I went into the senior center in Gilman, Vermont. It looked horrible from the outside. I mean, grungy, really not an interactive place. I opened the door. It was March. It was cold. It was miserable outside. Opened the door, and there is this big, warm room filled with people exuding community and care and the smell of delicious food. And this woman was cooking for everybody. There was a group of junior high-age kids in there doing dishes, and they had walked over from the school. Gilman has nothing. I don't go there someday, if you haven't been. All right now it has is a Head Start office facility, I should say. And the school, unfortunately, most of the kids are now going into Lunenburg because of Act 46. So school's even being closed and then houses. It was an amazing experience to go to this senior center. And the sad, sad thing is that about two weeks later, the senior center was condemned. And in fact, they told me, yeah, we're going to have to have the center inspected because we feel like the back of the center is kind of falling into the Connecticut River. And I said, you guys, seriously? And he said, so we're going to have this guy come in and look over the building. And two weeks later, they were banned from even going back into the building. Presently, a group of people from the area are trying to figure out what to do. I tried to get them to use the old church that's sitting there and get the preservation trust involved. But they just said, we're not up to that, Sheila. So they're looking to bring a double-wide trailer in across the street because they got some land there. And they're going to try to just put that in there and use it. I think generally what I learned is senior centers are absolutely vital to our communities. And it does not escape me that we're in a senior center right now. And older Vermonters do participate in activities and meals put on in community senior centers. And we must do all that we can to keep these places viable. And you may wonder, why are you even saying this? Well, I was at this kind of high-end meeting recently where actually a professional said, I think senior centers are a thing of the past. There's not as many people coming to the meals. Yada, yada, yada. So I think it is extremely, because I have been in the senior centers in the Northeast Kingdom. The Barton Senior Center, that was almost close to. In fact, it was close for a short time. It's in the basement of the municipal building. Who's been there, anybody? It's freezing cold. They really need to do something about the heat. There's no doubt about it. But lots of older Vermonters live in that neighborhood and are able to walk over there and have a meal and play bingo, and they have square dancing and music there at night. These places are vital. And that kind of community is vital in the Northeast Kingdom. What I learned about housing, and I cover housing for the senator throughout the state. So I have been in the high-end assisted living facility over on Lake Champlain, where literally people are having a happy hour when I was in there. And they looked, it was beautiful. It was absolutely beautiful and a great place for people to live. Those are not the places that you have available in the Northeast Kingdom. And if you did have them, no one could afford them anyway. What I learned is that many, many older Vermonters live in substandard housing, terribly substandard housing. None of this, I'm sure, is surprising to any of you. It's rickety porches, small, carved out spaces in a large house. That's what I've found when I visited people. And the interesting thing about that is that those small, carved out spaces are really cozy and warm and perfect for that person to live in. I mean, they have their stove, they've got their table, they've got their chair. And I really strongly believe that we in this state have got to face the substandard housing crisis and do more than just build new affordable housing. And I go to ribbon cuttings. I think I have three ribbon cuttings on behalf of the senator in October. I mean, the housing community is doing wonderful things in this state. They're really great. And they're building beautiful, affordable, lovely, apartment-style housing, mostly in the South and over in Chittenden County. But people want to stay in their own homes. They want to stay in the home where they raise their children. They want to stay in the home where they have their garden. It's their community. And that's where they want to stay. And we have got to do so much more. For example, right now, the USDA has these grants that people can apply for to do repair on their homes. Guess how much money you get from this? Guess what the maximum is? Anybody have any idea? $7,000, that's the amount you can get from the USDA. So I asked a couple of USDA people when I had a meeting with them. One of them said, in 30 years I've worked for the USDA, this amount has never been increased. So maybe someone could build a wheelchair ramp. And maybe someone could fix their bathroom with railings, that sort of thing. That's about it. And there's just so much more we need to do in the area of housing right now, especially in the Northeast Kingdom. The other thing, and I hope I don't sound, please forgive me if I sound elitist when I say this, people have way too much junk. I asked my husband if this would go. If this would go, he said, yeah, you can say that. But Amy knows Carl, so. And the reason I'm concerned about it is not because, I mean, yes, people are criticized for having all this junk around their house. Well, you know why they do? Because they can't afford to get it taken away. When you're living on the very edge of poverty, the last thing you can do is pay $3 a bag to have your garbage taken, or pay someone to come get it. There's simple economic issues here that we could fix. And I do know, I've talked to a lot of people, I know some towns are looking at this and saying, we need to start picking up, figure out a way to pick up people's garbage. And I mean, this would make, I walked into a lot of houses where, seriously, there were massive bags of garbage everywhere on the porch because the people, they had no transportation and they had no money, to no extra money, I should say. Homelessness, you are probably aware that there are homeless encampments throughout this state. Yep, and there are people living in tent cities on the edge of almost every one of our mid-sized communities in this state. One of the things I've done, I actually go and talk to them and they love to talk. They're a very strong community out there. I found a group of them at a picnic table behind the Depot Square Apartments in St. John's Berry. They inform me, there are squatters in the Depot Square Apartments in St. John's Berry. Homeless people come in at night, get in, and go to the empty apartments. They're renovating those apartments. They've got to figure out what they're going to do about this because they've got an entire group of people. And a lot of the newer affordable housing complexes do have space for maybe six families who were recently homeless. So they can actually take care of some of the situation by doing that at the Depot Square. But that's how a lot of people were staying warm in St. John's Berry. And it's just all under the radar, of course. So I really believe, based on what I've seen in the homeless population right now, is that we need to develop a family-first model of housing. Does that ring a bell with anybody? That's the expression that's used. And it basically means that you let someone into housing, regardless whether they're sober. Because most of this kind of people are homeless because they weren't allowed into any kind of affordable housing or assisted living or halfway housing because they weren't sober. And some of the people, like Salt Lake City has is a model for this. And I happen to actually know the person who works there. They bring the person in and then provide wraparound services, that sort of thing, after the person is into the housing. And it's made a huge difference. Child care, let's go the other way. The care of our youngest children has become a major issue in the state of Vermont. And rural Vermonters especially have very few options for caring for their kids. I spoke with a young mother in Canaan who told me we just don't have child care here, essentially. It's not available. She told me she could not work because there was no place to send her children at that point. Shortly after, I was in Guilford, which is literally, these are the two opposite points of the state within a mile of the border, not even a mile, half a mile. A young mother in Guilford said to me, I cannot find child care. And that means I can't work and I can't go to school. It is a serious, serious problem in this state. And what are we doing to our young parents and their children when we do not have access to child care for them? And you can ask Dave, I've worked on this issue before for many years. We haven't solved it. We haven't even come close to solving it. It was actually better when my children were born in the 80s. It was actually better in those days. There was more available for young parents. And I think this is what I want to get to as my main topic here. And I call it the safety net. When I started my career after law school in 1979, there was a safety net for low-income people in this country. Families had access to public assistance, food stamps, WIC, housing assistance, Section 8, that sort of thing. And you might say to me, but those programs still exist. It's true. They still exist. They still have access to those programs. But the attitudes have changed. And the programs have been reduced. And we had what was called, quote, welfare reform. I call it quote, welfare reform, end quote. And during those years, low-income parents who are struggling were basically forced to work in order to get any kind of benefits. It's really been the results have been catastrophic, in my opinion. Vermont pushed back against quote, welfare reform very hard. And I was actually working in the legislature during those years. We tried everything we could to make sure that some of the better aspects of our public assistance programs stayed in Vermont. And a perfect example is there was this program for secondary education. For reach up is what we call our welfare program. For reach up participants. And we saved that by using state money. The federal government ended it. But we saved it by using state money. Unfortunately, as the years have passed, Vermont, too, has become less compassionate toward poor children and their families. It's a very sad thing to have to say, but I have witnessed it myself. For example, we implemented a five-year lifetime limit for reach up in this state. We held out for many years, and we implemented it. And that has caused, I've already talked to school people in Newport who said she can see the results of people reaching their lifetime limit right now. It is, we initially refused to do it, and we did it. And my experience in the state house was the last few years I was there, there was just so much less compassion. I mean, I had people saying to me, well, frankly, I don't care if it's children that receive reach up. Their parents need to get a job. And always before that, if I talked about two-thirds of recipients of reach up are children, this is what we're trying to, that's what we need to say. And people would go, oh, right, oh dear, that's terrible. You're right, but I couldn't even get that. We've hardened our hearts, not us, somebody out there. Some people in power have hardened their hearts against low income people. And what I've learned, it's not good for children to have parents who have no money. The programs used to pull families out of deep poverty, that's what we call it, where you're below the federal poverty line. They don't do that anymore. And parents, basically, we're withholding resources from low income parents, forcing them to work in community service or menial jobs, sapping their strength and their resilience. And in the end, it is their children who suffer most. And believe me, I have been in several of the community action agencies, these are wonderful places, and seeing the kind of work that reach up parents have to do. And we're talking folding, thrift shop clothing, and that sort of thing. In order to receive very low benefits, we have not increased our benefits in many years for low income families. And just to show you an example of what could be and what was, I know a young woman. She's no longer that young, actually, in the Northeast Kingdom, who I knew at the beginning when she came to a lot of voices events when I was over at the legislature. She was left with three children. She got out of an abusive relationship was left with three children, no job and no money. She was able to apply for four reach up, get it. And she was able to go on the higher education program, get a college degree. At this moment, and she's a proud, she would come in here and be with me if she could, she is a successful, well-paid professional in the Northeast Kingdom, who is on the city council and is doing everything she can to make the lives of other people in her community better. She is like the perfect example of a person that we need to be assisting. Transportation, massive, massive problem. And I'm sorry to be so doom and gloom here, but massive problem, especially in the Northeast Kingdom. And I've driven with Meals on Wheels drivers a lot, so all over the place. And the places they go are places where people cannot get out because they no longer have access to transportation. This is people living in their own homes with limited or no access, and Meals on Wheels struggles for funding, as you probably know, delivers meals and sends frozen meals for days that no deliveries are made. This is a very simple program. It doesn't actually cost a lot of money. It has massive benefits. It reduces social isolation, improves safety, and provides at least one nutrition meal a day to people. And often, the Meals on Wheels drivers, the only person those people see during the day. They still struggle for money. They've had to start doing all sorts of fundraising, that sort of thing. They should be handed a massive amount of money every year from the federal government. I really believe that the erosion of the safety net has made the struggle of low-income rural Vermonters even more difficult. Yet there is a resilience there and a strength. Family remains very important. Rural communities keep track of their elders. Frail and disabled Vermonters are not left on their own anywhere. And it's really great to see this, the importance of community. My work as Prasinder Sanders has also further strengthened my long-held belief in the power of compassionate and generous government. And this is where I'm sure you hear Bernie talking about it all the time. I mean, the importance of funding our government programs so that we can care for those among us that cannot care for themselves. And even though it's been, for years, we've had trouble keeping some of these programs going, we will keep them going. With climate change rapidly increasing, we need more people like the Vermonters I have met in my work. People who live in modest homes without overusing resources. People who focus on their communities and help out their neighbors. People who honor the beauty of this special place. People who can use and deserve to have so much more of the resources produced by this massive country. That's what I've learned. I'm happy to take questions or just start a discussion on this. That's it. Thanks. A lot of us are working on the first childhood experiences and how they make life long effects, mental illness, and sickness unto death. Do people want me to take a picture? I think I can keep it louder. One of the things that's happened is that the adverse children's experiences are caused by poverty, homelessness, and stigmatization from the labels on the clothes and that being part of the meal program. So when we talk about not being able to provide for the children, we're also then creating an adverse experience for them to have to sometimes suffer both building, social exclusion, and other things. And so to sell the reason for those services to keep the families alive, afloat, and with home, I think it's really important to realize that there are lifelong results that are negative from those experiences of our children. So my question is, thanks. Well, and the equity coordinator in the Orlees County school district was talking about that very thing. I met with her recently, just the bullying of low income students. So just that alone needs to be stopped. Yes? I'm interested in how can we find funds because we know the needs are really immense. And one of the things that I'm worried about is that all of us pay fewer taxes, and now that we don't even have to pay taxes on social security, where are we going to get the funds to be the compassionate state that we want to be? Well, and I guess I should have said to you, what I do is work for the federal government. So Bernie calls me in and says, OK, Sheila, what's going on in the Northeast Kingdom? And that's my chance to tell him what I just told you. And he definitely, he tries everything to bring more money into the federal aspect of these programs. For example, right now, he's working on the Older Americans Act. It's going to be reauthorized soon. He has 39 other senators with him working to get much more money put into it. And it's a very hard time right now, as we all know, with our government and in the Senate, because he's outvoted. But that he is working on. So we have the money to take care of all of these issues. I mean, we are the richest country, as Bernie would say, the richest country in the history of the world. That's what he says every chance he gets. We could do this easily with federal money. State-wise, yeah, we could do it in the state, too. Priorities need to change. Brenda. I do able to get some of these people to come to the legislature and get their story or go to Washington and tell their story as Bernie ever did that. As often as he can. Great idea, too. And they, things like the, do you know the Northgate housing complex in Burlington? It was a place that was going, when Bernie was the mayor of Burlington, they were going to sell it to condo developers. And you may have heard his famous, he said over my dead body, that was his response to when he found out that they were going to sell this place to condo developers. So they put together a package, a funding package and now the tenants run the entire complex. It's funded, there's lots of affordable units there. It's just, it's a model. And the reason I'm telling you this is tenants from Northgate come to DC once, probably every couple of years to talk to Bernie. And he, of course he loves it. They have photo ops and the whole thing, but they come to explain what they have done and what needs to be done throughout. So I think that they, you know, people do come. The young woman I just told you about, the success story, she's here as much as possible and allows her name to be used as a success story because it's so important. Yeah. I hope it will be a problem. I'm from all the massive donations that will come to just send away because we don't have enough volunteers to process them. And we have, if you had a full-size van, I would say to my sister, just dump this all in, make sandwiches, things that are not, you don't need refrigeration and just go up there and pull off the road and what people take what they need. There is enough to go around. I think it's getting it there. Yeah. I mean, I did, when I was on the island, we would go into Central Park in the end. They loved to boil the eggs and bring the eggs because they would not be happy if they didn't bring eggs. But that just like made such a difference to these people. And we would go to women's shelters and bring food and clothing and I don't know. I feel it's just a matter of spreading the wealth. Well, and... A lot of people are generous, they would give. Right. And what I'd say is we need to spread the money. We need, people need to have, I mean, they've done studies that show that families in deep poverty who are pulled up just out of deep poverty, the well-being of children is massively improved. And that's money. They need the money to spend themselves to support their families. And as we know, jobs are a little bit scarce up there. So, you know, more jobs would be great. But in the meantime, let's deal with our safety net and fix it. Yes. Is there a separation of the qualifications from low-income housing as opposed to affordable housing? They're pretty much the same. Maybe what you're thinking of is they call it mixed income and that many of the new complexes that are being built and funded are mixed income housing, meaning that they'll have the recently homeless, they'll have very low-income people and then they'll have people who are a little bit above and people who can actually afford the rent. So they try, they don't want to just ghetto-wise people. They're trying to stop that too. One of the things, you were talking about the vitality of these senior centers, and you followed it and this came to my head with problems of mothers with childcare. Has anybody thought about bringing together these women who need childcare and senior centers? That's a fantastic idea. Not that I know of, so I have a new idea to take back. Thank you. Because, go ahead, sorry. Well, I was, another idea I was thinking is how cities have sister cities. What about if senior centers had sister senior centers? So how about if we organized one of the trips here to go up to the senior center in the Northeast Kingdom and for a work fee? That's a great idea, wonderful idea. I mean, all of these things, this is the power of community, which definitely is, I have learned in this job the immense power of community. I wonder about the idea of young mothers in a rural area getting together to take care of each other's children. Right. As far as I know, not a lot. There is some cooperative childcare by parents, but not as much, and part of it is because of the transportation issues. And I mean, that's one of the things. There's a new organizing group in the North, they're called NICO, Northeast Kingdom Organizing. And their biggest, they did surveys, et cetera, and decided the most important issue in the Northeast Kingdom is transportation. How we, if you have any ideas, let me know because solving that is going to be a major issue. There's RCT, Rural Community Transport, but they mostly just do medical transports, so you have to be Medicaid eligible to use it. So there's just lots of young parents who just need to get someplace and don't have access to transportation. I have another question. Yeah. The question is based on my experience as a guardian at Lightham in Caledonia County for many years, and it has to do with the Department of Children and Families. And my understanding is that they're terribly understaffed, and so all the children that are feeling the impacts of poverty, social isolation, bullying, et cetera, and as he had said for the first question, when it does to children over time, there are a lot of children that are acting out, you know, and that are in trouble and that are being neglected in families where there's problems with substance abuse and so forth, and what's happening to that whole situation from your point of view? And you know, I don't work with a state anymore, so I can't, but I mean, they just need more resources. They need more resources, resources. We need to put more money into the Department of Children and Families so that there are more people working there and dealing with these issues. And also my understanding is more and more children are affected, you know, and can't function and so even, you know, by these conditions. Yeah, absolutely. Dave? Sheila, I'm a new obituary reader and I'm aware that even in this room, there are some amazing life stories that the people have. Yes. To have a senior center that has a list of names and nothing else, to me it's not at all representing what a senior center can be. So I would think that as you go up and down knocking on doors and listening to people, you wind up sometimes hearing part of the story of their lives. A lot, a lot. If you have the time to listen. Yes. And so it may be one of the ways that will save, inspire, and move in an intergenerational way people to not be afraid of being really old, being past their peak, having needs, hoping they don't have to eat pet food and all the other things that are part of being aging. But that they are in a place like Japan, many of them would be international or national treasures. That's how they would be respected and seen. So maybe we need to find out a way to find our own national treasures and have their story be up on the walls in the picture so that we don't have to wait until they're dead to say, boy, that was an amazing life. I'm gonna go to that funeral. It is amazing how you say, wow, I didn't know that about him. And after, you know, in his obituary or that, yeah, it'd be great, great idea. Great idea. I hope, let's see, I got to take notes after this to put these down. You didn't notice when you're talking to people? You think to them? A bit. And you know, there's some, there's privacy issues, of course. So you have to, and, but, you know, Bernie's really took to social media as you may have noticed. Many of you use Facebook and Twitter, but he really asked us to interview people, turn them into like Facebook videos. And I actually, you can look on his website. I turned the two young women, the woman from Canaan and the woman from Guilford into a video. And so you've got, first you got the one, the woman from Guilford is a, she's a farmer. And she's talking about how she really wants to go to college, but she can't. So we turned that into a video. And then we talked to some of the people from the childcare services division about it. But that's the kind of thing we are doing, trying to get out more stuff on at least Facebook or on the senator's website. Anything else? I guess I would just point out the resource of parent child centers on the state. Yes. That's, that's a private nonprofit, which also does get some money from Medicaid and some money from the state. Yes. But that's a place to start organizing things like, you know, what about if we have a grant to have like an Uber driver in every parent child center that would get paid not by the transport person, but by the department of transportation. That's a great idea too. What about, I know Mary Blankey 30 years ago had gathered, sent transportation, brought young mothers in and had a young mothers group to try to give them a sense of being less isolated and telling their stories and writing and illustrating their own books for their children. So different projects like that can be considered part of the, really what parent child centers want to do and are set up to do, basically you sort of need grant writers. But that's a place to start making sure there's plenty of support because that's a place for families, mothers and children where a lot of this kind of work is really what their mission is. By the way, the parent child center model is Bernie's favorite model, you know, he always brings it up. And often they're co-located with Head Start, which is his other favorite model of course. So yeah, a lot of them actually have Head Start within the parent child center itself. Are there a lot of parent child centers now? There's seven I think. Yeah, seven. I think seven. Yeah, Dave used to, tell us about it, Dave, you used to direct one. Well, I was one of the, mostly it's really bright, smart women. It's always one of those lean-down men that try to learn a few things about the real world. And I worked there long enough that one of the smart women started Project Harmony and Martin, and so I wound up being in charge. And so I was trying to bring innovation in. Anybody who had a sick child, they could bring it to work. You know, anybody who wanted to could form their own coalition of workers and share not a 40 hour week, but maybe a 30 hour week, but give childcare to one another. And so the parent child centers are places where innovation can occur and creativity can occur and should occur. So it's a pretty amazing network, that's all I'll say. It's right. Well, I don't know. I mean, I think it's, there might be as many as 13. Yeah, no, there's not one in our county. There aren't enough. Okay, I don't know. There aren't enough. There should be more. How does one go about it? How are you doing? Well, I mean, you can support eight ones that are here. So there's a very good one, Lee Lover for years in Montpelier. There's one in Northville. There's one in Springfield. There's one in Addison County. There's one in Newport. There's one in Orange County. In Orange County. And down in the city. The main thing to do probably, if you were interested in getting involved would be to call the Montpelier parent child center, go talk to them and see, and they have information, because they have a network. The directors meet regularly and they have a network and they like collaborate on different projects and they do get grants. So that's the way to get involved. Yeah, and in the Northeast Kingdom, Northeast Kingdom Community Action runs the parent child center. And they have, they're based in St. John'sbury at the old Lincoln Street School. And actually, I think up in, oh, they now have some play groups, et cetera, in Newport at that old immigration place. Remember that they have right on Main Street. They have that building. They painted the rooms, put some indoor outdoor carpet on it. I mean, that's all they can do and started to play groups there. And then they also have Head Start there. And they're moving their Head Start to a better facility. I mean, I should tell you, the other place, and I actually sent Bernie there. I said, you have to see this. I got a call one night. Bernie wants to go to some childcare places. Said this is where he has to go. The Hardwick Head Start facility, who's been there. It's in the basement of a, maybe it's a Masonic temple, maybe it's some place, it's completely windowless, the place above, you know, those places are. And it's in the basement and this has no windows at all. It's one stuffy, dark room. There is a tiny kitchen, you know, where they create meals for these kids. They have got to get out of there. So it's become one of our biggest goals is to get them out of there. And maybe get at least a room in the school, like in the grade school. At least a room there would be better. Yes. About 50 years ago, I got together with a group of young mothers and we were complaining about how we could have worked school and home, whatever. And we decided to have our own parent child center. And we, it took a lot of work, but we all grew from it. Learned a lot and the community between us was wonderful. The only, the two things is that we were educated people. We were used to dealing with the government person, the bureaucracy, the whole thing. So you need another layer of help. Yes, you need consultants. They have the smarts and the energy and all that, but they have somebody coming from somewhere. Yes, exactly. I think it's help especially with bureaucracy. Did everybody hear that? Yeah, I'm just wondering. Oops, do people want this? Oh, go ahead. Yeah, why don't you, you know, use, just use this, or I could repeat it. I just want to say, it's been incredibly useful. Conversation, I think, because it refers to me that you know that young children and grandparents people are at age of a natural affinity. Kids love, I don't know any kid who doesn't love his grandparents. Right. And grandparents, I know whatever I see, go shopping or something, I see a kid, I just mill. I mean, I said absolutely love kids. And so I think to work on that angle is very good. Anything you can do to bring them together. And to come and work in the U.S. What's good for grandparents is good for kids. And what's good for kids is good for grandparents. Do you want to hand that to her back there? Since we're talking about childcare, I'd like to put in the plug for family daycare, which is a great model for serving rural communities. Licensed family daycare providers who can take to six kids or an adult. They're, it's a very isolated job. People tend to work 10 to 12 hours a day on their own. And support systems, including volunteer visitors from the senior center would be big help and reach very tiny communities. Does anybody hear that? Plug for family. Does everybody know what she means by family childcare? That's the person that stays in her own home. Usually it's women, always women. And takes care, brings a few other children in. And that's the care I use for my kids in the early 80s. Sadly, and I didn't go into that much detail, but one of the things we've done in Vermont is discourage, were you a family childcare provider by any chance? I was an administrator. And I think the regulations in Vermont have gotten very strict, and it's become prohibitive for many people to do it because there's so much bureaucracy. There isn't enough support from the childcare system. Right, so many folks, many fantastic work. Right, many of them have gone out of business. And that's one of the reasons we've got such a huge shortage in the rural areas right now. Oops, sorry. The mic is gone. Hello? Oh, it just died, I think. Weird. Yeah, I think it, no, no, there it is, sorry. Anything else? It is 2.30, when I started this job, they said, never take more than an hour of anybody's valuable time. So like, if you go meet with somebody, make it one hour. Anybody else? Well, thank you so much. Thank you, I should say, when Amy asked me to do this, it was great for me because I, she said, you know, I kinda wanted you to talk about what you do. I said, what I do? I'm used to talking for the senator. And it was great, I kinda looked at it all. That was a very good sort of life review for me. So, thanks a lot. Take care, bye. Thank you, thank you.