 All right, welcome everyone. Welcome to Innovation by Innovators. This is the second in our three series, speaking series, as part of RIASFA, Rhode Island, American Association for Public Administration, sponsored event. And I first want to thank those that helped the event together. So Sasha, Zapata, Vicky, Walters, Chris, and Sarah, did you have anything to do with it? I'll take right forward. Shantower, Shantower. I think she's outside. OK. And Lee Koo, who has organized all of our logistics and our food. Bronzino, who has helped us with all of our technology. And just a few introductions. So as you're aware, Dr. Hall is under the weather. And as much as he really wanted to be here, he's actually convinced that maybe it would be a good idea just to stay home and rest. And so he's not feeling too well. And since he's not here, there won't be any lead or PA 503 tonight. So I know some of you are heartbroken that you're not going to have your research methods last until the very end. But don't worry. He'll figure something out. You'll be hearing from him. And you can thank Lee for not giving you the word earlier. We actually thought it was a good strategy. Well, if we don't tell him exactly that it's canceled, maybe they won't come at all. So then we say, what are we going to do with all the food we ordered? So of course, we're going to be there. I forgot. So for those of you who don't know me, most of you do, I'm Dr. Katrina Norbell. And I teach in the NPA and also the MS Leadership Programs. And I am the advisor to all of the MS Leadership students. And I will be teaching some NPA, at least one NPA course coming up in the fall, and two actually, and also this conversion. Leisure courses. And I say that because we have some special guests with us tonight. We actually decided that we would combine our graduate open house with this habit tonight while we're having this event so that prospective NPA and prospective leadership students might get a taste of some of the things that we do in addition to just coming to class. So for those of you, if you're here as a prospective student, I know we had some that had to leave. But if you're here still as a prospective student, raise your hand. I'd like to raise a hand. Raise that hand. Well, what's been really great about having it here is not only did you get to hear from our graduate admissions director and his staff and from me and from Lee, but you also got to talk to Aaron Chesky, who was one of our adjuncts of teaching and health administration. And you got to talk, most importantly, to our current NPA and our current leadership students. So you're going to get a lot more from what it's really like to be in the programs from then than you would probably get from the rest of us. So welcome. We're glad to have you here. And I would like to take a few minutes. I've got a few housekeeping notes that Lee gave me. And I'm going to make sure that I cover. First is, and I think you've gotten several announcements on this, make sure you sign in. Janet, did you have the list? Yeah. OK. Because we want to make sure you get your extra credit. And sometimes when you get to the end of the term and you might need that one or two extra points to kind of push you over the minus to the plus sign or the B plus to the A minus sign or whatever it might be so that it can make a difference. And I've already mentioned that the process can't. Before we get started, too, I want to recognize Sasha, please stand. I'm sure you're rolling your eyes. Come up here, please. I'm static. So Sasha actually applied one of our programs through the, we call it NASA, but I'm going to tell you what it stands for. The network of schools of public policy affairs and administration. And the reason I had to read it, because they just changed the name. It used to be NASA stood for the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, but they changed their name to be more in line with the networking that occurs and the collaboration that occurs now more with public administration, public affairs, and all of the work that we do collaboratively. So anyway, Sasha applied for the NASPA, is it Batten? Batten, that's what I was going to say. Sometimes it's pronounced differently. The NASPA Batten's due to simulation competition on food security. And so she worked together with the team in Columbia. And when did that occur just recently? Yeah, it was on February 25th. February 25th. Her team won. Yay, congratulations. Tell everyone here what that was like, what the experience is like, what you learned, what your team did, and a little more information. So there were eight universities across the world that held this simulation on the same day with the exception of China holding it the following day. So there were three universities outside of the US. So that was the one in Columbia, one in China, and one in the Netherlands, with over 400 graduate students participating. And each university had teams that were split into worlds. And you were assigned regions, such as Southeast Asia, South America, East Africa, West Africa, and you were provided information on their food security issues, whether or not they were suffering malnutrition or were they producing enough GDP to maintain food security in their countries. So basically, we were all assigned a region and were given projects that we needed to assess to determine whether or not they would positively impact that region. And every simulation round, there was four rounds, you would have to analyze the data and see if it negatively or positively impacted and make decisions based on those impacts. So after that was done, there was four rounds of simulation. We each got split back into our world teams, but we got to work together as a whole and we had to put in a 10-minute presentation to a CEO in what project we would suggest on solving the global hunger issue and submit memos as a health project officer, an environmental project officer, and an agricultural problem officer. So my team decided that you can't solve the global issue of hunger with one choice. It's based on every region because they've all suffered from something different, but you can have an idea and adapt that idea to every region. And that would be based on results-based financing because you want the outcome to be positive. So we submit that to the Super Judges and they chose that Columbia was the global winner for the competition. So it was exciting. A lot of the students at my university were from different parts of Columbia, some from the coast, some from the mountains, and then I was the only student from the United States. There was a student from Mexico on my team and a student from Puerto Rico. So it was really great to see their backgrounds and how they applied, what they were reviewing, and the language barrier actually wasn't an issue for some of them. They actually didn't English pretty well, so they were really excited. They actually wanted me to do the presentation in English, but I don't know. I was like, you guys can practice, it's okay. Yeah, it was a great experience. So the picture that we saw was of who? Of who? So it wasn't the larger one or was it the smaller one? Large. So the larger picture was the one with everybody, so both teams, but there is one of just my two. So we're going to want to make sure that the larger university community is aware of it and we get a nice write up in the university and we can use that. We love this. I was kind of broadcasting that. I'm just going to hide my words. No, no, no. The other thing I wanted to mention is next week is spring break, as I know most of you know, but Dr. Hall, if he's well enough, and I'm sure he will be by the end of the week, and I will be going to the annual NASPA conference. So the national, I'm not NASPA, sorry, NASPA, the American Society for Public Administration for having our annual conference down in Atlanta. And it's also an opportunity for students to go graduate students sometimes also submit research presentations that can do it as a team or an individual. So I would encourage you to think about that for next year. There's a, you know, typically you have to have submission in the fall. The conference is always in March and it's usually coincides with our spring break at the end. But part of that too is we have, there's a group of graduate fellows that's part of NASPA and our George Lelante here who said a great few years ago now was one of our, and this is chosen from the leadership of NASPA. But chooses the various graduate fellows to be part of that group. So George, you want to tell them a little bit about that experience being a graduate fellow? Sure. How they might consider it? Yeah, the PhD process involved being nominated and Dr. Hall nominated me and you had to write an essay on the topic of their choosing. It might have been Public Administration in the 21st century. George, I was a millennial, the generational issues of millennials getting to the workforce. He was chosen and I got the award in front of fellowship. So with that, with that being the registration for the ASTRA conference as well as the hotel foundations and I just needed to present my essay or presentation who was excellent for networking. He moved from all over the country, all over the world. And I still communicate with other fellows as well as other people who are involved, very much involved with NASPA. Yeah, so you stay connected. It's a nice place to connect with your peers across the country and actually someone across the world and you tend to stay connected throughout your professional life. So if any of you are interested in applying, let us know. Let Dr. Hall know. Let me know. So we can write a letter of recommendation. Are there any students going to ASPA this year? George, you're going to go? Yeah, I was invited to be in a five-member panel of the ASM Museum for Police and Race Issues. Excellent. So it's for practitioners. It's for students and also for academics. There are thousands of people that go to this thing. It's huge. In fact, I printed off the program because I'm one of these very tactile people. I still like the paper, so I can write all over it. And I didn't do it both sides. I was like, well, I forgot. And so the thing is like this thing. If I look at it, I think I used to have a ring of paper to see the program out. So it's going to be a nice time. So we just learned that Dr. Hall is going to be awarded one of the Presidential Awards. So on Sunday evening, he's going to receive an award from the President of ASPA for all of the work that he's done cumulatively through the years to promote ASPA in Rhode Island. But more importantly, all of the work that he's done as an academic to build our program in the MPA and also the leadership. And then the work that we've done in the community as well that he started with the academies at Tolman High School and Shay High School and the work that we've done collectively through the years to get those folks involved in the public service. So that's going to be a nice award. All right, so tonight we have two speakers. We're going to start with Maria. So Maria Kasparian is the Executive Director of ADESIA. And I thought you were based in Providence, but now I see you moved to North King's Town. So are you now affiliated with URI? No. We're just closer to that now. So I'm just going to read this to make sure that I don't miss anything. So with the mission to help treat and prevent malnutrition for the world's most vulnerable populations, ADESIA produces a range of fortified, peanut-based, ready-to-use foods and partners with humanitarian organizations as well. So Maria has also brought a colleague with her, Freeman Somerville. So I think we'll hear from Freeman as well tonight. Since March 2010, ADESIA has reached over four million children in 48 countries. In addition to making high-quality, we call them RUFs. RUFs. ADESIA innovates, educates, and advocates to help end the crisis of malnutrition for 220 million children worldwide. And I just keep calling you, Maria. I hope you don't mind. With the exception of Dr. Hall. We're all very much on the first-aid basis here. So Maria has been with the organization's its inception of February 2009. Her prior experience includes ecology and conservation work in Madagascar, education and public health-focused Peace Corps service in Bangladesh, and capacity building at a rural development in India. She works closely with many international institutions and has followed shipments to Guatemala, Haiti, Niger, Ethiopia, and Sudan. She is passionate about drawing attention to issues of malnutrition and the lifelong positive impact of the nutrition of a child's life. Maria holds a Bachelor's of Arts degree in international relations from Brown University and a Master's degree in public administration in international public service and development from Rutgers University. That's some nice colleagues there. So with that, we welcome Maria to the podium. And we will introduce and hear from our second speaker, Megan Gravey, when Maria is finished. The lovely, the whole presentation, I was very inspired as well. The security project, which is also a very related to my presentation. I was a part of the ASPA, I was a part of ASPA myself. I was a part of something called PASA, which was Public Administration Students Association. Does that still exist as well? Well, our RIAS, the chapter, basically is made up of students so we didn't see the need to also have a student association as well. I'm glad to be on campus. Energy is good to be here. So I wanted to say thank you to Dr. Hall, even though he's not here. Thank you to Dr. Norval. Thank you to the chapter of the American Society for Public Administration, as well as thank you to Lee and Chantel, who have been in touch with me for several weeks. Thanks for getting me here. So as they mentioned, my name is Maria and I'm the executive director at Edecia. And my link to MPA is I have an MPA from Rutgers University. And we had different tracks there and my track was International Public Service and Development. And I kind of fell into that by accident almost. I was a Peace Corps volunteer and Peace Corps is linked up with several different masters programs that the schools have relationships with Peace Corps. So you can do your masters first and then Peace Corps or vice versa and there's scholarships associated with it. So that's kind of how I found it. I really didn't know what an MPA was when I went into it, to be honest. I heard about MBAs but an MPA, which is actually, as you all know, there's a lot of similarities. The main difference that I see is that working in the public, government or nonprofit sector, you have many more bottom lines and you have social causes to think about in addition to your financial bottom lines. But a lot of it comes down to similar things and similar needs to keep an organization alive and thriving and growing and innovating. Anyway, before I get started, I'm going to just tell you what my plan for the next 20 minutes is to first give you a little background on my professional path and CDCO's what we do as an organization. Second, we're going to show a 10-minute video that takes you to the field because I think the best way to really take you there and show what we do in its fullness is to take you to the field and my colleague Freeman, so he's featured in the film. It goes to the film. It takes place in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Freeman is originally from Liberia and he has worked with us also since near our inception in 2010 and he gets to go back and see where some of our products were going. So you'll see that second and then third will have some time for Q&A. So please don't be shy if you have any questions and I'll also hang around a little bit after if anyone wants to chat. So before I start, how many people have heard of Plumpy Nut before today? A couple. Okay, just got to see who my audience is. Okay, and how many had heard of Odysseia? Probably didn't hear of Odysseia, but you didn't hear of Plumpy Nut. All right, great. So Plumpy Nut is a ready-to-use food which means it doesn't need to be refrigerated, it doesn't need to be cooked. It just gets opened and eaten by the world's most severely malnourished children. So this is kids who are starving. This is kids who are way below where they should be for height and weight and are on the verge of starvation if they don't have an intensive intervention like this. And it sounds like a goofy name that's ready-to-use food and that's what we refer to it as, but actually it's because that was the innovation. The fact that it is ready-to-use is huge because it's used for home-based care and a hospital-based care. So previous to having a ready-to-use solution, kids were hospitalized and in clinics they were often and are still often not in good condition, don't have enough room, don't have enough health workers and they were using therapeutic milks that were reconstituted to treat the kids. They had to stay in that hospital for usually about 7 to 10 weeks for full treatment and that's really impossible for a family, fields, animals, whatever at home and you have to go with one child to stay in the clinic. So this was invented in the late 1990s to overcome those challenges. And it was invented by a French company originally and nobody believed that I could work at first to treat these kids at home and it took work from NGOs especially Doctors Without Borders was one of the leading voices on this to actually trial it out in the field and again innovate in not just a product but in a process to say not only does this work actually so many more kids get better because parents can present them earlier, they know they don't have to stay in a clinic they can go, they can get a week supply go home and just come back to make sure the child is getting better which usually they are over 90% of the time kids get better within a matter of weeks. So that after that happened NeutroCEP started licensing out this technology to other factories mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa where a lot of the need is and they have so there's a factory in Ethiopia in Niger, in Faso, in Madagascar and then there's Rhode Island so we got involved in this because we were actually first working to help set up a factory in Tanzania and in doing so learned a lot more about how the US government operates in terms of food assistance and food aid and realized no one was doing this in the United States and yet there was a pile of funding and grants that were available specifically to a non-profit food manufacturer who could make these kind of foods in the US with all US ingredients and made 100% in the US those were criteria of these funds and no one was making it in the US so we saw that as an opportunity to try starting in the US and this was in 2009 I graduated in 2008 finished my master's and this was in 2009 I met the founder, some of you have met really by my happenstance which happens in life and very soon after was working based out of her home in a spare bedroom we were just looking for grants looking for opportunities researching thinking about what we might hire what business plan and trying to write our first USAID grant which ended up winning talking about it so that was in 2009 fast forward to today we have an 85,000 square foot factory which is based in north king's town since july we have 70 full time employees we operate 24 hours a day 5 days a week we have reached more than 4 million children in over 48 countries and it's been an incredible journey and continues to be so nothing is stagnant the first time that the idea came out that we were going to move to a bigger facility it seemed crazy as well that was 3 years ago and now we're in our facility and it seems obvious that we needed to do that and that takes us to the next level so that's a little bit about adesia pause on the adesia part and talk a little bit more about my path I mentioned Peace Corps and the MPA program and it's like you have a startup there's no one path to do anything and there's no one thing you have to do or can do with an MPA there's so many different things of course I would say don't be afraid of a startup if something crosses your path or if an idea crosses your path it can definitely be the more intimidating option I mentioned that USAID grant everyone we spoke to told us you will never win you have no history with USAID you don't even have a factory you're saying you can make these foods and you have a plan but you don't have a factory if you have a vision and you have an idea of how you can get there and you believe you can get there then go for it because no one really knows what they're doing in anything everyone is figuring it out as they go I learn that when I work with UNICEF and the UN agencies and USAID and sometimes you realize I know as much as they do I just as much as anyone there so that's a lesson I learn repeatedly and continue to learn don't be shy at the time is anyone familiar with the Presidential Management Fellows program at Rutgers it was a big deal it's still a good program but they had encouraged all of us you can only apply when you're graduating you might want to look into it if you're interested in going into government the process took more than six months to go through as it was a government process I think they have mainstreamed it a little bit since then if you get accepted you do behavioral tests and you do a logic test it's a whole process so I had applied to that before I started with EDCF it wasn't EDCF then it was Naven and I in her house but before I started the startup and then so about four months then to working on this project which is now EDCF I got an offer through the PMF and for working at the CDC in their global AIDS office and man I hemmed and hug it was one of the hardest decisions professionally I've ever made and it was there was there was the safe decision with the predictable path which was not a wrong decision and then there was this hope of what we were working on and obviously parents, professors anyone else was like pointing to the right answer or what they saw was the right answer and it wasn't a wrong answer it would have been an amazing thing as well but my gut feeling was we have something here we started something I was excited we had the idea we hadn't hired freaking yet but we had the concept that we also wanted to hire from the refugee population in Rhode Island the concept we wanted to do tours and visits and be a window to the bigger world in Rhode Island I grew up in Rhode Island I had a really good feeling about wanting to do something like this in Rhode Island it was also 2008 so for all of those reasons I ended up turning down that PMF position which in retrospect was the best thing I ever did and stuck with this and it's continued to challenge me and our team every day, every day since then but I just wanted to share that because you'll probably be faced if you already haven't been probably haven't been as well with those kind of decisions where you're weighing very different things and neither is wrong but think about what kind of organization you want to work with and for as well is it government, is it nonprofit you drive more in a larger organization you drive more in a smaller room really make a big difference talked about a little bit at the beginning as well but this idea of MPA and MBA and for-profit versus non-profit is something I thought a lot about in the last seven years, eight years as well so Addicia is a non-profit but we are a social enterprise so we operate much more to a normal business model than a lot of other non-profits that said any non-profit or any government office for that matter has to have a budget, has to have revenue streams, has to have a reason for being in a reason to be sustainable so I have realized that the business skills matter just as much if not more than any of the softer non-profit skills we are constantly needing to evolve and change and find new revenue sources so we work primarily with the UN agencies right now, we work with UNICEF we work with WFP we work with USAID right now there's a lot of uncertainty in all of that there's a lot of uncertainty in terms of international aid funding and we realize we need to develop a whole new revenue stream that's separate from that that can help us weather the storms that might be coming over the next few years and also ideally also help us cross-subsidize our humanitarian work so our latest project right now is to also launch a commercial line of products that's going to be in the United States for various populations across the age spectrum in the US that would become, right now it's underneath the DCF but the idea is that once things are launched and selling, that would snap to be a for-profit that actually cross-subsidizes the non-profit and helps that be more sustainable and lets us have more than four main customers that's a good deal so that's something to look out for over the next the next months actually we should be launching our first product by the fall so when I see the title of innovation right away and that's one of the reasons we actually took a lot of time and a lot of investment to build this new facility that we're in now because we have a whole area in it that's the innovation lab so we have a research and development kitchen where we can cook up ideas we have a quality laboratory and we have a pilot line and so those are great concrete things but symbolically as well it's showing we've made the investment in innovating and in saying okay we're going to build for something we're not doing right now but we need to do and we want to do in the future so that is that is it and I invite you all to come visit us if you haven't been we are our set up for tours we have, Screamin can attest around the production space there's a lot of glass so you can, everyone in the office can see everyone in production and vice versa and so that makes it really easy to do tours where people can walk around and see everything without having to suit up and actually so you'll see our production and then in addition to production sorry just mentioning education and advocacy is something that we do so we actively do student tours and we have rotary clubs and Girl Scouts and everybody in between and then we do advocacy and lobbying in Washington as well around policy around food and nutrition policy and we've been able to have an impact with other groups we're often with the consortium and you realize the voice matters if you get active on something and again you are the experts if you're in that field you are the experts and you can actually impact what's going on in congress to some extent we also are part of the network of suppliers that I mentioned so we have a partner in Ethiopia in Niger in Madagascar in India in Haiti and Burkina Faso and we do different projects with them depending on what's going on with Haiti we developed a product for school kids we got a grant from the USDA to develop a product for school kids and to pay for a research study that would trial it out in the school so we get to do fun stuff like that and after it was launched we then transferred it to the factory in Haiti for school kids in Haiti and we passed that on to them and yeah last but not least our fourth thing is the innovation and research so that I already talked about I think we'll show the video then I'll take you to the field it is a fairly emotional video at certain points so that everybody knows yeah we're good can everybody see okay? we need to turn the lights on so we can see that at the UCR our focus is really all about nutrition and looking at ways that we can treat and prevent in the world's most vulnerable populations we manufacture our UTF which is a ready-to-use therapeutic food it's a peanut paste mixed with powder, vegetable oil, sugar and most importantly myodincy minerals one of my favorite things to do in the whole world is to come to the field to see firsthand how the work that we're doing is impacting people on the ground so we decided on this trip to surprise Freeman who was a refugee from Liberia and bring him back to this country for the first time in decades he left during the war my name is I was born and raised in Sierra Leone I joined in this year as the distribution logistics manager I always see an extra bright light in his eyes when we're shipping to Sierra Leone or West Africa I wanted to bring Andrew back to his country and allow him to see the impact to about 46 countries and we're really dealing with countries that are fairly poor to begin with but have an emergency on top whether it's a refugee situation the earthquake it's a drought a war we've got a really elevated level of crisis where children and families need support any kids here right now go check she looks so tiny she does not look though is she bringing her hair because she's sick her hair is blonde not a lot of energy her eyes are closed see how weak her eyebrow is 7 pounds little girl is 8 months old she weighs about 7 pounds which is how much one of my daughters was at birth 10 so she's she qualifies we have stocks here so we have to see if she has the strength now to be able to eat something take a little, little bite if she can eat this it's really a great sign her mom's brought her here at time but I guess she's come really far away to get here so I'm glad she made the long walk because she'll be okay these obsessions come in from the government to know what they need to do to change their lives for you two to know how to really care for someone you really need to get that information from someone and they need that support radio plays a huge role good afternoon we have with the study agents what's the question malnutrition is something that we really know how to prevent what we need to do more of is communicating to mothers what should they be feeding their kids what will make them know the healthiest that they can be the most important component is really getting out to the rural areas that workers are trained to go house by house and look for children who are severely malnourished and let those mothers know that we have a solution and it's really easy and most of the time if your child doesn't have complications they're able to go home with their mothers and for me that's one of my favorite parts because you're empowering mothers oh my goodness okay you might win the cute prize what's your name she's titty toe titty toe in our world she is seven months seven months and she's thick we have her coloring his arms come into the water get him from the outside and she gets the juice you just have to come into the kitchen and that's the energy we got to know her that she seems to love it so she lost one of her twins it's hard to hear you know we miss one right especially when they're twins I know that's like having twins I can't imagine losing one so this one's on RETF now how long three weeks okay what she brought her during the year she told us not to look like this she told us that you see it's still the moon just three weeks ago she came in at 3.7 kilograms so about almost 8 pounds and she gained 0.3 and then 0.4 each week she's been gaining and her appetites have you did good very good and they keep them for us in your eyes, desperation for a better life they are looking at us and they help us you see kids they're dying you look at that, oh baby all you say is desperation you know that I keep nothing up to go that way they're so it's just unfair I have children myself but I can't imagine what it's like to just see them fade to death like that you see when you come back and you see how far we've come with these children it's finally good to see that the hard work is bearing fruit you don't have to be rich to really touch a life here you can grow up to be a future leader of this country it can change this world with all these kids that are lined up here there's a good number of them that are going to make it and that want to be there every step of the way it is overwhelming but it's also really hopeful these kids are getting better and just we saw this being used on the video so this is measuring the child's arm here so that you can also see it the kids that we're making products for their upper arms and the ones you saw in the video 10 centimeters their arm is like this that's the sad part the good part is within 7 weeks their arm is like this and they get better so fast when they get treatment so these kids are getting better and I don't know if you want to say anything closing for a minute hi Jo hi I'm from West Africa Nigeria I came here as a refugee and I'm a national institute I've been stroking the refugee camp before coming here because we have war in my country and it was horrible people take that in a case like 8 years old I had a chance to begin and come killin I had like 6 world fasher in a small Nigeria fighting one another and every day the fasher to get him by all streets this one was a little plain and I got a lot of advice that you know you have a lot of you know when you put in straw to get him back so Freeman you were in refugee camp every coast and in Shikana yeah I was in Africa and you actually saw this product they are first right before you work with them after that you give them some of the background every morning you know the doctor will take children and every day because of my money I go to 6 8 it's not distributed to the people and the children even though they see some other point when you see them running you know that something came here now I came to America my mother far from me through refugee so I was able to come here I went to national institute I went through Dorcas Dorcas International partner with them maybe when they were there they said when refugee went with the company at the beginning of the company they took me there and I started learning how to put there the recipe together I learned how to cook the food I was too glad because for me I meant to be clean I don't like that I don't like dirty things I started cleaning the place oh you cleaned so much I said here because I was there I saw a case it's food to lay so I made sure it's clean I was too happy to be with the company you know I said one day in my life I was so good and happy to be with the company now I'm standing here to see the place where I came from this was just in April right? yeah where are you from? America thank you all so if you have questions or Maria or Freeman now is the time yeah we don't have like specific always ongoing volunteer activities but things come up actually the best thing you could do if you're interested to be in the loop and aware is to follow us on Facebook and Instagram and when we have events going on or if you want to host event yourself that's like something we always do or just like case by case whatever comes up I'd love if everyone followed us and we'd post some interesting things and keep everyone do you have a single larger source of revenue? it's our we sell our products to UNICEF the world food program and USAID those are our three biggest sources of revenue that covers the costs of our production and then we seek grants for the secondary activities so for the education and advocacy for the research and development and also to send products to places that are not connected directly to UNICEF work through program or USAID those are the big three food production costs subsidized by does that have the grants work? the grants subsidized the cost for you to produce the food and then you can sell it at a reduced price how does that work? sometimes it depends on the grant so with certain corporations or family foundations we have relationships with that's the case sometimes the grant is targeted for a specific thing like to help us we had one donation that bought us a robot that we needed for and we had one we had one donation that was specific to send product to a clinic in Sudan that couldn't get product from UNICEF so it depends on the grant and opportunity but most of the time the orders from the UN agencies and USAID cover the full costs of the product most of the time I just have kind of like three questions the first is how old do they have to be to receive to be able to use that? six months and then my other question was do they have you done any research on whether or not they have to come back again or malnourishment that's just that age so there's a child is most at risk between six months and five years of age and even that range most at risk between six months and 24 months because it's when you're you're weaning up or weaned off breast milk and you need complementary foods that are highly nutritious the body and brain are growing so rapidly at that time so that's your really most at risk during that age once you're past five you're much less at risk for this to happen that your body starts wasting and you start losing weight like that in many countries it depends on the context in many countries there's like a second program you graduate out of this and you're supplemented with something else for a while and then you usually like a stepped out program but it really depends on the country in the context then we work with partners we don't do all that there's other partners that do that just someone else it seems like the peanuts and nuts are the primary ingredient do you have to do you encounter as many net allergies over there as you do here and so do you have any net allergies unheard of net allergies are a developed industrialized world phenomena so it's in the US, Europe and Australia they exist in other places they're virtually unheard of and even if someone was pre-disposed to have that kind of allergy the children are so immunocompromised and weak their bodies not going to raise an allergic response to something like that even if someone was pre-disposed nobody knows exactly why this phenomena but they think it's in the US like at a community level we are oversanitized we are not exposing ourselves to enough dirt and germs at a young age and then our bodies are responding to other things but fortunately we don't have to worry about it what kind of a model did you use to learn about that and what type of markets are you looking to go into once it gets off the ground and gets established that's a big, that's a long answer so we're still it's not fully all defined yet but that organization will likely be like a B-core because a lot of the majority of the profits will go back into ADCF from that organization what markets so we're gonna start we'll do a launch online first and then looking through grocery stores and also pharmacies like CVS for our initial products and potentially also hospitals and channels like that but there's more to be TBG still what is your goal in terms of making that your overall budget are you looking for for that to fund 50% of your overall budget not initially it's more like incremental we're looking for it to support I can talk more later incrementally more and more each year would be the hope but I don't have a lot of concrete numbers yet because we're still developing it it's probably gonna lose money first it's a date yeah, on average 3 we'll have 3 a day and it's all there if you're talking about severe nutrition which is what you saw in the video it's 3 per day on average for 7 weeks so 1 box that we make is intentionally 150 packets that is 3 a day for 7 weeks so at ADCF when we're making boxes we have our financial metrics we also always have our number of children reached metrics 1 box and we make about 20,000 boxes a week is some others at home with the box or just she usually gets a 1 or 2 week supply so she still comes back for checkups to make sure that the child is progressing and usually and that the child is the one eating the product if the child is, then the child is usually progressing and if the child is not progressing that would be a reason she would have to stay the country of ADCF is close to my heart I'd like to hear more about what you guys have done you can talk more after as well but we have a partner in Haiti so we have a local producer called Medin Food for Kids based in Capatian and they supply most of the needs for Haiti and we ship there just when there's like extraordinary emergencies so you've done a lot of work there in the wake of the earthquake that was actually our first place we ever shipped to was Haiti so we set up, we were getting set up right when the earthquake happened natural disasters is one thing but how do the epidemics and stuff affect your operations it must be such a... so this video we actually sent a lot to Liberia Sierra Leone and Guinea post Ebola in partnership with USAID because it caused a huge spike in malnutrition because families were cut off from farms and markets were closed and normal access to food was not normal during because of Ebola so during and post-anidemic there's often a surge need and a surge effort and these clinics they were visiting were a lot of the post Ebola results and a lot of it is cyclical to I mean this is an El Nino here there's a lot more drought this year some of it is climate change related I mean there's some of it is predictable and some of it is just a emergency based I want to be respectful of time I think Eric had a question I'll stick around a little bit if anyone has any other questions for myself or for Freeman well thank you so much so thank you a little thank you on behalf of all of us thank you so an appreciation for your time with us enjoy your presentation thank you very much thank you it's a okay we appreciate that you're here with us from one of our own graduates Megan joined the YWCA Rhode Island Chief Operating Officer in 2011 she's responsible for the day-to-day operations of the organization which has four campuses an annual budget of 2.8 million Megan has been recognized by the United Way of Rhode Island Spark Young Leader Award 2016 Providence Business News 40 Under 40 Award 2016 Roger Williams University Young Alumni Achievement Award in 2011 and our own John W. Stout Outstanding MBA Student Award in 2008 Megan we are very anxious to see what you are doing at the YWCA and the innovation that is occurring within that organization and your husband Eric is with us so first of all I want to thank Dr. Hall for the invitation to come here today it's great to meet Dr. Norwell and Maria and Freeman wow everyone was just crying and that was incredible and I am so inspired not only by the work she did worldwide but the fact that she's driven out of the way for being here tonight and talking about the work you do at ADESA I thought that tonight I would tell you all a little bit about how my career has progressed since I graduated from Roger Williams in 2008 and even just being in the building tonight I can't believe that it was almost 10 years ago I feel like it was a blink of an eye so like Dr. Norwell said I'm the Chief Operating Officer YWCA Rhode Island and I will talk to you about the work that we do and a lot of the innovative work that we're doing here in Rhode Island I joined the agency as Chief Operating Officer in 2011 I was 26 years old which is something innovative in itself having a young woman at the head of an organization and you know in my free time I really invest a lot of that energy in community leadership and on the board of United Way of Rhode Island I currently serve as its secretary I'm the founding member of the Young Leader Circle which is a group of young people here in Rhode Island in their 20s, 30s and 40s that are committed to the mission of United Way and create opportunities for other young people to network and get engaged and giving, advocating and volunteering and then of course for fun you know I love work-life balance as well I love to cook and read and ski, exercise and it's really great to have my husband here with me tonight to do things like this together so you know he hears a lot about what I do so it's great to have him in the room tonight instead of hearing the other side of it as well so today is International Women's Day and the theme internationally is people for change so to me that theme really speaks to innovation and so I thought that I would spend some time this evening talking about how YWCA Rhode Island embraces innovation because you really can't create change and be bold without new ideas, new devices or new methods YWCA Rhode Island is the third oldest YWCA in the country this year we're celebrating our 150th anniversary of creating positive change in the ocean state so I think that just our age alone speaks to the fact that we're always embracing innovation and what our agency looked like freedom is very very different from what our agency looks like today our mission is to eliminate racism, empower women and promote peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all we do that by standing up for social justice helping families and strengthening communities as it was mentioned our organization has a $2.8 million budget annually so here in Rhode Island that's a mid-sized nonprofit organization we have locations in Wood Socket that's where our headquarters is there we have a child care center and before and after school program that supports working families we offer care five days a week at 6.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and we serve 200 children every single day we have a full-size gymnasium that's actually home to a USA gymnastics academy we have really awesome young athletes who have big dreams really like anything from being a college varsity athlete to competing in the Olympics we have a semi-pro volleyball league a competition that I am nowhere near talented to participate in but you see them on the court and it's really incredible we have a program called Parenting and Progress that provides wraparound services for teen moms we provide transportation to and from the YWCA where they can work on their GPD we provide lunch, child care on site and really connect to them to any basic need that they would need to fill in Central Falls we have an 8 room permanent supportive housing facility for women who are transitioning of homelessness we have a carriage house that was built in the late 1800s and it's the future home of our Rosie's Girls program we have a community center that's currently leased to the Noelle Leadership Academy a high school for pregnant and parenting teens because we know that in the 21st century we want to create alternative pathways to education in addition to our GPD program in one socket this charter high school in Rhode Island that serves both boys and girls that need an alternative to the traditional high school setting just two years ago we acquired the Nickerson Community Center that's Providence's oldest non-profit located in the O'Neill section of Providence it's a 36,000 square foot community center and I'll talk a little bit about the services that we're offering out of that location and how it really speaks to innovation we have 98 employees at YWC in Rhode Island, we're an extremely diverse workforce we have individuals that represent all walks of life and it's really just such a pleasure to work alongside the team every single day with the work that we do so I thought tonight in talking about innovation and speaking about innovators there are four keys people, programs, property and perspective and I thought I would make real life connections from the work that we do at YWC Rhode Island to each one of these areas so I guess we'll start with people almost six years ago when I joined YWCA our workforce was aging there were no young women in the organization holding positions of leadership and so my CEO really saw that as an older and if they wanted to consider retirement, life in Florida golf in the summer there were young people to step up and hold leadership roles so I think right off the bat that's a great example of innovation thinking differently let me bring in more experienced people to run the show around here let me find young people who we can train who we can embrace their energy but also create succession planning so that the mission of YWCA was saved for another 150 years in addition to intergenerational leadership my CEO has over 20 years of non-profit leadership experience and she and I work tandem as the leadership team I also wanted to sort of say that in our agency we've hired people for specific roles and as our agency needs have changed, their roles have changed significantly for instance our director of communications became our director of operations in the Central Falls campus where we had a leadership meet there she's now our director of operations in the Providence campus as we were building up the operations there and so I share this because as an agency changes to meet the needs of society meet the needs of your work that may mean that you need to change and that the role that you came in to do may not be the role that you're currently doing or the role you'll be in the future we're constantly challenging our employees to think outside the box and that means learning new skills that means challenging yourself and that also means doing something that you may not be experienced doing and I think that it's really created opportunities for advancement in our organization that the job that you came in to do may not be the job that you will continue to do or the job that you're doing in this moment so those are my thoughts on people and innovation I think it's important to add that we're asking more of everyone every single day and it's really to meet the changing needs of the non-profit sector so that's a great segue to talk about some of our programming and I could talk and talk and talk about our programming but I'm going to sort of zone in on a couple of our innovative programs that I am very very excited about and I'll start by talking about one of our programs that we're not actually running right now which speaks to the changing needs of our organization you know and really if you're not evolving then that's an issue so four years ago I had the opportunity to create and host YW She Shines Radio it was a radio show that aired on Saturday mornings on W0011240 anyone from Moonsocket, North Smithfield, Lincoln area it's a real go to AM radio station for the Northern Ireland community it reaches 96,000 households and every single week I had the opportunity to go into the studio with women who are making a difference in Northern Ireland it was incredible it was the best 45 minutes of my week to be in the studio with Governor Romando Lieutenant Governor Roberts really like at the very beginning when Northern Ireland was developing a health system having Christine Ferguson come in and talk about what that meant young women, women who had new ideas women who were trailblazers for politics in Northern Ireland it was so much fun but then I talked about innovation because we have to think about radio for a second it's not necessarily the absolute place that young people go for their news right and we started to look at She Shines Radio and as much as it was so fun and a way for our organization to connect with women who are making a difference we really had to evaluate this program and say is this really where we want to be spending an hour of our time a week, our media money is this where we want to be so I use this as an example of the last day that we recorded She Shines Radio after four incredible years almost 200 consecutive episodes it was a hard day but it was a day that I knew we had to have to be innovative and to really look for new opportunities to promote our work in the community so then I'll talk about two programs that we're currently running that involve young women so the fantastic Girl Tastic Code Company is a program that we have that takes middle school girls connects them to education around computer science gives them real life skills connects them to mentors in the field and then also connects them to opportunities for higher education what we're really doing is creating a pipeline for young women here in Rhode Island so that they have the skills they need to be successful in careers in computer science there's not a lot of organizations doing this work right now and we really think this is something that not just in Rhode Island but other states throughout the United States will be interested in modeling there's also our Rosie's Girls Program Rosie's Girls is after Rosie the Riveter and it exposes middle school girls to non-traditional trades and career paths so that we're creating the opportunity for middle school girls when they're just starting to think about what do I like to do what do I want to have to think about high paying careers that are also rewarding and create opportunities for advancement Rosie's Girls is the highlight of my summer every summer and they wanted to speak about some of the field trips that we've gotten to take these girls on four years ago we spent an entire day at the fire academy here in Rhode Island where the girls get to meet female fire recruits and also find a uniform, hold the fire hose and learn about what they had to consider if they wanted to consider a career a non-traditional career for women in fire the year after that we traveled to the municipal police training academy where the girls get to meet the current recruits for all the different municipalities and think about what are the requirements if I want to be a police officer this is something that you can start thinking about anymore in 18, 19, 20 to start thinking about these opportunities when they're in high school as early as middle school when they go into high school they're thinking do I want to take a course in criminal justice do I want to do an explorer program with my local police stations that I can get into college and study criminal justice and when I get out of college I'll be ready to have an internship last year we spent an entire day at the Rhode Island Air National Guard base learning about career opportunities for women in the military the military is one of the places in this nation where women get equal work for equal pay so why not stop thinking about it in sixth, seventh, or eighth grade there are so many pre-defining factors that you don't even think about if you want to serve in the military now I don't serve in the military but let me tell you I left that day thinking there is still time for me to consider a career in military service but you know things like visible tattoos being physically fit and it's courses in high school so that your position for a career in the military it's just so incredible it's so much fun and it's great to see these girls embrace these career opportunities and look forward and see that state police woman or see the woman in the military and say that's me, nobody's stopping me, here I go so it's been great to talk about programs our workforce is diversifying we need more women in leadership positions of power or planting that seed with these middle school girls in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade so that they will be the woman in that process and so you really can't have people in programming without some property and so at YWC Aver Island we have nine different buildings we have roughly about eight million dollars in physical assets I'll use two examples, one that speaks to our community center in the Onlyville neighborhood of Providence I mentioned earlier that we acquired the Nickerson Community Center just two years ago Providence's oldest nonprofit was just about to shut its doors in the Onlyville community this community center was incredible and they were meeting so many basic needs for their neighbors in Onlyville food bank, clothing bank employment opportunities, childcare the list went on and on so let's stop and think about the month of January when you open up your heating bill you never really want to open the bill you think you did okay but you don't want to blow you out of the water think about opening up a heating bill for a 36,000 square foot community center that is open 12 hours a day and offering seven days a week you absolutely have to be innovative with property right now when it comes to the nonprofit sector so YWC Aver Island had the opportunity to work in Nickerson Community Center's board to evaluate the programming that they had on site to look at what the opportunities were to bring revenue into that building and I am so proud to stand here today and say that less than two years later the community center is absolutely flourishing we have a childcare there's a before and after school program the Noelle Leadership Academy has a campus there to serve pregnant and parenting teens there's an artist colony that is operating on the second floor and I'm probably forgetting it's the home of Rosie's girls in the summer we provide summer camp programming to mitigate summer learning lost over 200 youth from the Oneyville neighborhood the list goes on and on and so it looks different than it did two years ago but because we were willing to approach it and think okay so you know what is here and what could it be we had a before and after school program operating in a totally different place than it's currently operating we had administrative offices in a place and we thought you know this is good for us but what we need to do is find an opportunity to create revenue in this space thus the artist colony so thinking about being innovative and with property is so important to stay in age and then I also want to speak to the 54 acres of land we have in Coventry it's in western Coventry on the Connecticut line and this opportunity was part of our acquisition of the Nickerson Community Center it was one of their assets that we had the opportunity to take over and if you want on a field trip out there you'd see that it's land and there's not a lot going on there because this is a huge opportunity for our organization and right now we're thinking about what can we do there what will work there and what will be a long term solution for that land that not only serves the mission of YWCA but gives back to our statewide community so if that brings me to my fourth P we talked about people we talked about programs and we talked about property I really want to talk about perspective because as a non-profit leader it is so so important to keep perspective of the changing needs of society and so I'll use 150 years of YWCA where an island is an example 25 years ago we had a booming homemaker center at our Winsacket campus it was a great opportunity for women in the community to come together to learn critical skills I guess at the time sewing, cooking you know things that were really valuable to running an effective and efficient home today we have girls with hammers power saws, power drills learning coding meeting women from non-traditional careers and it's all about perspective had we continued to try to operate our homemaking center we probably would have seen our attendance decline our revenue decline probably our agency sort of slowly not be relevant anymore and so perspective is so important as a non-profit leader to look at what is there, where things are going and how can you be at the forefront of it and if that's Dr. Hall just shining in I just want to say hello and thank you so now I want to bring all this innovation and I want to say too that I think of myself as a hard worker I think of myself as a community leader but innovator isn't something that necessarily comes to mind so this was a great challenge for me to step back and think about what we're doing at YWCA and how so much of it is innovative so I want to connect this back to the knowledge that I gained at Roger Williams University and the MPA program like I mentioned I was class of 2008 and when I entered the program I had very limited work experience I graduated college in December and I started the program in January so it's a real honest assessment of the work experience I have and so in the classes now you guys are going to have to help me out here a little bit data and methods that's still 503 right drove me a little crazy working with diet, because I'm not going to laugh there because it's a challenging class right and you're working with numbers doing evaluation it's sort of an uncomfortable round to be working in especially for people that are driven by social innovation I will tell you that every single grant we apply for and Maria backed me up here everyone wants to know how you're going to measure if your change is working how you're going to know your innovation is making a difference so it sounds like 503 got cancelled tonight which sounds like a good night off why to your career path a lot of non-profit mini grants you know they want the pre-test and the post-test survey that's kind of a lazy answer they really want you to be meaning innovative about how you're going to get community feedback and then once you get that feedback how you're going to calculate it and quantify it and be able to not only just give anecdotal results that you know your program made a difference but that you can prove that in some way shape or form you're moving the needle ethics is you know an important class as a part of the NPA program because it's how we know that new ideas are acceptable right like think about that it defrains what comes to mind more for girls does not mean less for boys we're thinking about the work we're doing at YWCA to empower young girls how do we know the work we're doing is ethical how do we know it's acceptable and what the foundations that you're writing in your ethics class as a nonprofit leader in government as a leader especially when you're making decisions case studies that was actually my favorite class in the NPA program but it's the knowledge that we have that helps us build our ideas on it so think about some of the case studies that you're reading and then you talk about I think it was a spring class is anybody in case studies right now I don't even know if case studies is still being lost call it case studies probably like pragmatic practice and nonprofit administration so you know you never want to go out and reinvent the wheel and so case studies and case studies in your own organization mentor case studies in your own life or how you sort of get those innovative ideas I know I was doing this and I know what happened so what am I going to do differently what can I do more and what can I do better case studies are what help us make our prior mistakes and also help position us for success so then the last class that I'll invoke is leadership because leadership gives you the skills to communicate your vision it gives you the skills to build your team and it really gives you the skills to implement an idea and that's all how you make innovation a reality so in closing I'd like to thank all of you for being here I mean just pursuing a master's degree in administration pursuing a master's degree in leadership shows your commitment to yourself it shows your commitment to your career path it shows your commitment to Rhode Island and here in Rhode Island we need more innovators because the world is changing around us every single day so I encourage you to stay in touch I have some cards here become a fan of YWCA Rhode Island on Facebook check us out on Twitter please add me on LinkedIn to anyone who is considering a career in government and nonprofit leadership really in anything if you want to get affected as a volunteer join a board please send me a message I'm happy to help you and really happy to support the MBA program in any way and as you complete the program please stay in touch with Dr. Hall Dr. Norrell because the more of these stories that we come back and share and we talk about how our master's degree in public administration is making a difference in our own careers, it strengthens the program it strengthens the university and I just can't thank you enough for the opportunity to be here tonight to talk about innovation Thank you, thanks for Megan Is your organization associated with the YMCA or was it at any point in time? So YWCA and YMCA came out of history at a very similar point in time but we're totally independent and operate independently here in Rhode Island There are other states whereas the non-profit environment has become more challenging YWCA and YMCA have come together because the work we do is similar but our missions are very different and then I also wanted to know do you have I don't want to say any men working with you but are there men working? we have it's a great question but one of the things they didn't talk about YWCA and Rhode Island operates the largest veterans transitional homeless shelter it's located in the Olneyville neighborhood of Providence we serve 100% male veterans there's 50 beds individuals who are honorably discharged from the US military any branch of service for whatever reason end up homeless maybe it's a substance abuse problem maybe it's hope they were living with their nephew and their nephew moved into their in-between places to go and so there are 50 men in that program there are boys and girls in our before and after school programs I will tell you that our leadership team is 100% female but there's a lot of great men in our organization that I've been privileged to work with what's the name of the vets program? Gateway to Independence yeah and if anyone knows a veteran in their life that's struggling I know I talked to a couple of people here that have affiliations with the VA just referring them to 211 which is United Ways Hotline as a way to find Gateway to Independence Google and Gateway to Independence or trailer 37 at the VA Medical Center all can help veterans get connected to our program at YWCA there's no cost the only qualification is that you're currently experiencing homelessness and that you are anything but dishonorably discharged from the military in 2003 I was an AmeriCorps member in Arizona and I had the opportunity to collaborate with YWCA out there and I became a trained facilitator on unlearning racism which was a great program I still think about it often do you guys still have that going? Is that a program? Absolutely do and will in the last legislative year but the city of Rhode Island established a domestic violence prevention fund another idea of innovation preventing domestic violence here in Rhode Island so YWCA is a recipient of funds from that fund and in the next couple weeks we're going to be rolling out a two part series the first is three eight hour day training in racial justice so our trainers are trained at the YWCA in Madison Wisconsin it's going to be open to anyone who works with young women in your agency and it can be relatively broad so it's three days of racial justice training and then two excuse me two days of a training called girl circle and so this program is to build resiliency and empower girls and so what we're hoping is that by opening up these free trainings to organizations in addition to our agency that work with young women we'll be able to help empower young women build resiliency in girls and then hopefully prevent intimate partner violence in middle school girls here in Rhode Island so thank you Is that an application process so it's an emerging application process if you become a fan of us on Facebook there's no cost to attend and all the information will be available there I would love to have anyone who's interested involved we're going to be training I think between 25 and 50 trainers in Rhode Island you see what I see when I came my son after school program I was running there and he was like not really perfect but later on he started really very well at 133 Dilling Street that's the same location so a lot of the work we do is to mitigate summer learning loss but also extend the school day not the traditional kinds of learning overall though we're in innovation one more time because I must be getting at least a dollar for every year the term innovation so kids in chairs looking at chalkboards isn't innovative learning we have a steam engine program at our 133 Dilling Street where we're increasing use appetite for learning through hands-on activities and science and engineering technology and math and these activities are building 21st century skills so the youth will be successful in the workforce but I agree to hear that your son is a part of one of our programs hope to see him back employment application how about that and actually Freeman mentioned Dorcas International Institute DC Rhode Island founded Dorcas International Institute Youth Pride we were the first home of Travelers Aid which is now crossroads for Rhode Island 150 years in the small states which are well alive any other questions thank you so much on behalf of Dr. Hall and myself I want to thank all of you for making time this evening to come and make our speaker series and we look forward to having you all again assembled in May for public service week and we've got the members of the Riasca chapter currently working on the programming now most of them are assembled here Chantel keeps disappearing but she's been involved in that too and any of you who would like to be involved in helping the Riasca chapter put together a programming for this year and continuing into next year we'd love to have your input ideas thematic ideas and with that I would normally say at this time it's time to go to class but you're off the hook this evening so thank you for coming