 All right, we're going to get started everybody. If you could grab our seats, especially those folks in the back, come on, have a seat. All right, good evening, everyone. I want to welcome everyone to the kick off for the 2016 Davis 1,000 Mentors for Youth Challenge. And thank you so much for joining us this evening. My name is Lucas Fraerichs. I'm a member of the Davis City Council. This challenge first began as an effort of collaboration between the City of Davis and the Davis Joint Unified School District. However, we quickly realized that in any endeavor, but specifically one that calls upon the community to provide up to 1,000 mentors, new mentors for our community's youth, we would need to enlist the partnership of numerous other community groups to help us achieve our goal. We have several other institutional partners, including the Yolo County Library, of course, who is hosting us this evening, as well as the Davis Chamber of Commerce, as well as some specific nonprofit community programs that provide opportunities for mentorship, including Citrus Circuit's first robotics team, the Interfaith Rotating Shelter of Davis, and writing buddies. And we also have some community media partners in the Davis Enterprise and Davis Media Access. So let's give all of those partners a round of applause. Thank you for that. You will hear stories this evening from many of these groups. And as we build momentum for a successful 1,000 Mentors Challenge, I want to first recognize some of our local elected officials who are also supporting this community effort. From the Yolo County Board of Supervisors, we have Don Saylor and Jim Provenza. From the Davis Joint Unified School District Board of Trustees, Susan Lovenberg, Barbara Archer, Madhavi Sundar, Alan Fernandez, and Tom Adams is on his way. And then my colleagues on the Davis City Council, Mayor Pro Tem Rob Davis is here. I saw him. There he is. Council Member Brett Lee and both Council Member Swanson and Mayor Dan Wolk are unable to attend this evening, but are very, very excited about this kickoff effort in the year ahead. So before moving on in our program, I would like to plant a seed for you all. And that is an old African-American proverb, which originated in the United States during the days of slavery. And that saying is each one teach one. Each one teach one. I think that's particularly poignant as we launch the kickoff event just days after we celebrate a national holiday dedicated to a mentor and champion for justice in the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. So each one teach one. We really hope that that becomes your mantra for the year ahead as we kick off our 1,000 Mentors for Youth Challenge. Thank you again for being here this evening. And I'll now call up TJUSD, trustee Susan Lovenberg, who's going to do the rest of the MCing for the evening. Thank you, everybody, for being here. It's great to see such a wonderful turnout. And certainly, not everyone who's going to participate in this 1,000 Mentors Challenge is here in the room tonight, but this is a fabulous start. And it helps us spread the word. So thank you for being here and for participating and getting us off to the right start. So the city and the school district, as you all know, are really powerful allies and support of youth in our Davis community. From the classroom to our parks and our play fields, our institutions and programming really do strive to put children first. And we do this in partnership with the community, as Lucas mentioned. There's a wide range of local businesses and community organizations that partner with us and have developed programs to engage volunteers and help youth access opportunities and realize their potential. This social capital ties to family and friends, involvement in civic organizations, service clubs, faith-based community, arts and athletics. All of this has a powerful effect on the sense of belonging that we feel in our community. You need me to talk louder. Can we turn up the microphone? OK, I will talk louder. And thank you, Judy. So social capital has a powerful positive benefit on both adults and youth in our community. And research tells us that mentorship helps build the social capital and helps close the opportunity gap that some of our youth may feel. Having a mentor increases a young person's chance of graduating from high school and attending college, avoiding risky behaviors, and developing self-confidence and resilience. In the 2014-15 school year, the Davis School District served 8,626 school-aged children. 21.7% of those students participated in the free or reduced price lunch program, which is an indication of their fragile socioeconomic status. And that percentage has been on the rise in our school district over a number of years. So there are more children, more in need of the support that we can provide them. So today, the school board and the city council are joining together to launch this 2016 Davis 1,000 Mentors for Youth Challenge. And we're encouraging you to step up and to participate. Many of you are participating already. You'll be introduced tonight to some new ways that you can engage. And you can also just be ambassadors in the community for this kind of effort, because it's the work that you're already doing. So we're going to introduce you to a few of those programs tonight that are having a powerful effect on our kids. And the community leaders who are spearheading them. And these will be opportunities for you to contribute in a time and a way that's most convenient for you. So tonight, I'm going to kick off the program with an introduction of both an adult mentor and a youth who has been mentored to talk about the power of mentorship that's happening already in our community. And then we're going to introduce you to those various programs through the rest of the evening. Our program will end at about 7 o'clock. And it will finish with that call to action the way that you can participate. So I want to start by asking Ed Lewis to come up and talk to us about his experience as an adult mentor. As a current mentor or volunteer, I'd like you to think about your own mentoring experience. People that have mentored you, people that maybe helped you pursue a career and how important that mentoring relationship was. For me, it was my college instructor, Louise Dean, who when I was in graduate school allowed me the opportunity to come into her class and be a student teacher. She was there. She listened to me. She listened to all my complaints and problems. She gave me good advice. She helped me develop skill areas. And I went on from that experience to become a college instructor. As a college instructor, I had free time. And my son was going through elementary school in the 90s. So I volunteered in his classrooms from kindergarten through sixth grade, three hours a week. And I became a mentor to children initiating a storytelling program that led into writing their own stories. I did that at Fairfield Elementary School in second grade. And there were three boys in particular that really were struggling with writing. They didn't like going to the writing area. They were at a kindergarten writing level. And I found that they were really interested in the stories that I was sharing with them. And so at one point I told a story and then all the children were gonna go to their writing area. And I stopped the story before the ending and I said, okay, now go to your writing area and finish the story for me. Those three boys were so fascinated in that story that they wanted to write. They didn't have the skill, but they wanted to learn how to do that. So since I was there on a one-in-one basis with them, I worked with them throughout that semester, they're the whole school year. And what they really got out of that was someone who gave them the one-on-one attention. Someone who cared for them, someone that has some specific skill to help move them along their writing level. And by the end of that year, they were at this second grade writing level. So that mentorship is so powerful and so important. Currently, I'm retired and I was looking for things to do and I read about the writing buddies program and then the dialogic reading program that they have here in Davis. So I volunteered for those programs and we're currently doing the dialogic reading and we completed the writing buddies program and where each of us, and you'll hear a lot more about that so I won't give you all the specifics, but I connected with a second grade boy, there was 17 of us, and I connected with him, he was my writing buddy and we did through storytelling and artwork, developed a wonderful book that had his stories and my stories in it. And what he benefited from was that one-on-one connection. And his teacher came to our graduating party that we had and she thanked us profusely. She said, this is just one of the most amazing programs that I've ever seen here and what is really important for me as a classroom teacher, you volunteers came into this with a program, you had goals and objectives, you had training, you knew what to do. I didn't really have to train you, I didn't have to take all my time to do that which I don't have and so I really appreciate that. So I would like to challenge all of you to pursue your own mentoring, however that is, just making that connection with youth. I know I'm a new member of the Davis Odd Fellows and when we have our next meeting, I am going to propose a new committee that will be something like Let's Mentor, maybe you can come up with a good title for me and I'm gonna get as many mentors as I can to get involved in this fantastic program we have and I hope you all do the same. Thank you. Thank you Ed and thank you for your work with our students. So I'm gonna introduce now Susan Kirby who is the Internship Coordinator for DaVinci Charter Academy and she'll introduce our youth who has been mentored. I'm Susan Kirby and I'm the Internship Specialist at DaVinci Charter Academy and for the last five and a half years I've had the great privilege of placing students in internships in areas, careers that they would like to possibly study at the university level, things they'd like to be involved with after college. In fact, one of my interns is here tonight. Will's back there at the camera. Davis Media Access is a great partner with us with our internships. But for the last five and a half years we've placed over 300 students in our business community at the university level and in nonprofits and talk about a great mentoring program. I think it's a great one because not only do our students get the mentoring from the business community we make those connections and they turn around and come into the classroom and share their expertise with our students. So it's a great opportunity for mentoring students and I'll put in a plug here. If you own a business or work in a business where you think you might be able to host an intern please come and see me because that's how I find a lot of these internships. But I'm pleased though to introduce Ophir Safan. She did an internship last fall at Acorn Vet Clinic and they're another one of our great partners. We've had a student there every year for the last four years and she's gonna tell you a little bit about that experience and what it involves and how she's grown through that. So, Ophir. So hello, I'm Ophir Safan and I'm a junior at Da Vinci Charter Academy and so ever since I was a little girl I've always been really interested in animal. I'm gonna be a veterinarian and so when I came to Da Vinci and heard about the internship program I was really excited to get in on that and so Ms. Kirby helped me find an internship at Acorn Veterinary Clinic and so from the beginning of the experience there it was really nice. Everyone there was really welcoming and accommodating and I had a lot of different responsibilities such as I cleaned the cages and the exam tables after the animals had been there and I got to watch a lot of the things that the veterinarians did and I did summary stocking and I had a really great experience with that last semester and so I actually asked them if I could continue in with the spring semester and then two weeks later they offered me a job there and so now I am a veterinary assistant there. Thank you. And so now because of that I get to have a lot more responsibilities so I get to restrain some of the animals and I pull vaccines and I actually have started administrating them and I take temperatures and dogs on walks and it's just been a really great experience just being able to have that experience while I'm still in high school. Like a lot of clinics they take in interns from colleges and so this was really great to be able to have that for myself and it's a really great experience that I think will be really beneficial to me after high school as well. Thank you Orphear, that's a good example of how a volunteer experience can turn into paid work. That's really cool. We're gonna hold the microphone just so we can get the full power out of it. Next I wanna introduce librarian Patti Love who is Yolo County Librarian, Patti Wong. I was trying to cross that with Scott Love who is the librarian here at Davis Public Library and so Patti's gonna speak on behalf of both. Great, no, no thank you Susan, thank you. And in some ways we are interchangeable. Only I'm a little shorter than he is. Well welcome so much to the Marielle Stevens Davis Branch Library. We're so happy to be partners with all of you. We have a lot of programs as you know here at the library that benefit our young people but one of the things I think that we're striving is to create a culture of youth development in all of our library programming. That means there's intentionality and not only for young people to participate but also to engage in the service and development of those programs to benefit everybody. So that's part of a key difference that we're trying to make with our young people. Many of our youth that have been volunteers and have participated in the programs have gone and been mentored in colleges and there's a lot of college and career readiness that we do here. Several of our students locally from Davis High were recently involved in a Maker Box program where we brought them in and actually had them really think broadly and they created Maker Boxes that we moved throughout the county. A Maker Space program in a box so that anyone can use that program. One of the things they did was not only did they create the program with a lot of mentoring and coaching from all of us but they used it with young people. So there was a lot of cross mentoring that was going on. So that's an example of some of the great programming that we're doing. Scott's always available for engagement. If you're looking for a neutral space, a great fun space actually to bring and meet your young people, come here. We'd love to have you. So thank you very much for being a part of our program. Thank you Patty and thank you to Scott and Patty for hosting this event today and for being partners in many different ways. So I would like to introduce Robbie Fanning now. Robbie and her husband Tony who are volunteers who spearhead the Writing Buddies program. They're gonna tell you about the program and how you might be able to play a role. Well Tony and I are thrilled to be a part of the Thousand Mentors for Youth Challenge. We moved here, we retired here about five years ago from the Bay Area and we had always volunteered in elementary schools there. We were surprised when we got here that it was not easy to break into the schools when you don't have a direct connection. We didn't really know anybody here and we didn't have a kid in school. But after about a year we were able to volunteer at Birch Lane and then we moved to Montgomery and then because we were at Montgomery then we were able to bring Writing Buddies to Montgomery. And rather than tell you with words at first what Writing Buddies is, I'd like to just click through our slides here. Go ahead. Basically we are one grown up. Go ahead. One kid writing, one more, one more. We train volunteers, buddy pairs write together. We publish and celebrate. And then we have a party at the end. Just leave that out. So let me tell you in more detail what that means. We bring in 25 to 28 volunteers into a second or third grade classroom at Montgomery School. We write together once a week for six weeks. And then we produce a book of stories, both as Ed said, the adult and the kid's stories. And at our celebration publishing party some of the volunteers share their passions and their hobbies and Ed told us great stories the last time in all the kids dancing. We train the volunteers. We have a two hour mandatory training. They don't have to be teachers. They don't have to be writers. They just have to be people that like kids. We call it no anxiety training. We have pre-training sessions and post-training sessions with our children. With the help of the principal and the teachers we help, we introduce our volunteers to the specific school, the nature of the school, the nature of that classroom. And the particulars of the children. We put a lot of energy into matching the volunteers with the children and then they write together each week. The volunteers write a story at home and bring it in and then the kids write a story on the same topic. As I said, at the end of the six weeks we have a party. Our writing buddies has been in Davis for three years now and after our next session we will have reached about 200 children. Our next session is in the third grade at Montgomery in February. Good news, bad news. All the slots are filled by returning volunteers. And we have that unique situation of having too many volunteers for writing buddies. So we are developing something that we're calling the Buddy Corps. We're working with Montgomery School right now. And we're stealing, our last teacher gave us this great line, a good heart and a little training. So we're setting up a two part training for people who would like to work in one of four ways with the school. One would be working directly in the classroom. It can be any subject. It doesn't have to be writing, art, science, math. An example of that right now is that we have, I think four or five people who go into the kindergarten once a week and set up the Chromebooks, the computers for the kids and work with them. And I think Ed is one of those people. Secondly, you could help the teacher not be directly in the classroom but help the teacher in a clerical way, all those things that they really shouldn't be spending their time on. One teacher has asked us to type up the stories of the kids and bring them in for her. One teacher wants bunny ears cut out. We need cupcakes baked. We need, especially need drivers or field trips. Field trips have really suffered in the schools. Not enough money for the buses. A third way is to help at all school events. And for example, tonight is family math night at Montgomery. And we have, we usually have eight to 10 volunteers helping at family math night at the stations so that the parents are freed up to play the math games with their kids too. And the final way would be donating time or materials or money if you hear that the school or a classroom needs help. And for example, the sixth grade at Montgomery was not gonna be able to go to environmental week in December because they didn't have enough warm clothes or sleeping bags. So our volunteers pitched in about $450 and those kids went to environmental week. It's very proud of our volunteers. Our training for the Buddy Corps shows how to register with the new system that Michael Lamb has set up, the volunteer system and going into the school. There's a new system for registering in the schools. How to be a good volunteer, how not to bother the teacher and how to relate to young children. If you're interested in helping in the Buddy Corps you know somebody who might be interested. Tony has a clipboard you sign up and we'll send you information. You know his reach is at, the one thing we forgot to do is we're writingbuddies.org but mail at writingbuddies.org and I believe we have a resource list in the back and we're all listed on that. So tell your friends. I would like to recognize that I didn't think that there would be some of our volunteers but Danielle is here, she's a Writing Buddies volunteer and she's also helping at Pat Wynn. So I've told you how it works but I haven't told you why Tony and I do it personally. And it's sort of a selfish motivation to tell you the truth. One thing is the kids are so much fun, they're so funny and energetic and it rubs off on us and keeps us young. Secondly our volunteers are the most wonderful people and Davis I'm sorry, they're not here. So I don't know, I don't know about you guys but I'll give you an example. I mean you just have big hearts. Ed was an asparto this morning telling stories to first graders up there. So we love our volunteers, we love to be around them. But last it really feels good to make a difference in a kid's life, just a teeny difference and you can just float around all week on that. So thank you very much. Thank you, Robbie and Tony, you're doing really great work. I wanted to just, because we did introduce Michael Lam, Michael if you wanna put up your hand. Michael is our school district teacher on special assignment who is working with our new volunteer raptor system and that's part of the reason why this was an opportune moment to launch a challenge like this. It's a new system where we're able to create volunteer profiles. So if you're interested in volunteering in Davis schools Michael has iPads that you can sign up on the online form. He also has paper copies of the form. Can somebody hold up the little resource sheet that? Thank you, Patty. So this has got all of the email addresses for the different programs and also the links to the programs but you can go online and you can say I would like to volunteer in these schools for these sorts of activities, provide an email address and then when there is a need at that school that aligns with your interest, you'll get an email saying we're looking for volunteers at this time for this sort of activity. So the system is in the process of coming online. It's at four sites now. By the end of the year it will be at all school sites. And that's gonna allow us to keep track of the metrics of the success of this effort. We know how many volunteers we have in the system now and we'll be able to look and see how many have joined over the year. And that's not the only way that we're monitoring the number of volunteers who are participating but it's a good way. And it also allows you, the district also, when you go in to volunteer, you'll be asked to show a picture ID and it swipes you through a system where we're able to check and make sure that there's no reason why you shouldn't be volunteering in our schools with our students. So, and then we know you and you're part of our system and you're welcome at every campus in Davis. So I wanted to go on then just to the next program that we wanted to highlight. I have to say one of the pleasures of working on this, putting together this challenge and with this community members was visiting some of these programs and seeing them in action. It was a lot of fun. I got to visit Writing Buddies a couple of times and the Dialogic Reading Project that's led by Martha Beatley, who most of you know was a reading specialist in our district for many, many years and always a youth activist. So Martha, if you wanna talk about your project. Thank you very much. So the focus of our Dialogic Reading Project is vocabulary and content knowledge because sometimes students, particularly those from lower income families find it difficult to understand the complex academic texts that are part of the school curriculum, particularly after fourth grade. So we focus on that vocabulary to try to help them and of course, we want them to be curious about the world and really love reading. Many of you have heard some of the recent publicity about this study done by Hart and Reisly, the 30 million word gap. What these researchers found in a longitudinal study was that children from advantaged homes hear about 30 million more words than those from lower income homes by the time they're four. So we know that children coming into kindergarten come in at very different levels of preparation and so our Dialogic Reading is trying to help those students make up that gap. We do have one little program in the preschools because we know that earlier we can help them with their vocabulary development the better but our particular Dialogic Reading Project is focused in transitional kindergartens who are our youngest students and kindergartens. And so the reason we have chosen to read picture books is because picture books are powerful in so many ways. There are 50% more rare words in well-written picture books than in conversation even between college graduates. So obviously authors are choosing very descriptive words, maybe unusual words to give children exposure to these words and vocabulary. So that's one reason we use picture books. Another is that because of the beautiful illustrations it's those help depict and explain the new vocabulary that we are trying to introduce. And then thirdly, it's a lot of fun. Okay, the next we just have some pictures. So we have about 50 volunteers in our Dialogic Reading Project. We are at three schools, Montgomery, Koromatsu and Patwin because those are the schools that have transitional kindergartens and we're specifically focused on the very youngest students. We try mainly to foster conversation and dialogue about the characters in the books, the action and the sequence of the stories. We use open-ended questions to encourage creative thinking and problem-solving. We read both fiction and non-fiction books that are related to the themes that the classroom teachers choose and are presenting to the children. And we strive to expand children's knowledge and understanding of the world. So I also have a clipboard and if you are interested afterwards I'd be happy to talk to you and my home email is on the list as well. Thank you so much. Thank you, Martha. So now we'd like to turn to the Davis Chamber of Commerce and Christina Blackman is with us to talk about some of the work that you're planning to do with schools, I think. Hello, like Susan said, I'm Christina Blackman. I'm the CEO of the Davis Chamber of Commerce. I'm also a lifelong resident of Davis and had the good fortune to grow up in a community that there are a lot of mentors available. I have three children that have gone through the school system while I have one still going through the school system. And I just actually started with the chamber about 12 weeks ago but I've been a very long time volunteer for the organization. Actually chambers in general throughout Yolo County. And one of the ways that I got involved with the chamber was through the school business partnership committee with the Davis Chamber of Commerce and the educational committee with the Woodland Chamber of Commerce. And what that committee was comprised of is basically business owners and people in the community as well as educators. And it was to bridge that gap and bring them together so that we could actually foster school career days and career fairs and job shadowing. And one of my jobs in my previous career was a financial literacy program. So I was really interested in getting out into the community and building those relationships. So our committee for the chamber sort of fell apart a few years ago. And so one of the first things I did is revitalize it. And I recruited the lovely Susan Kirby to chair that committee. And we're actually already gaining support and getting people on board. And they're trying to figure out what that committee, what their goals and objectives will be. But we're really excited. The chamber has been had the good fortune of working with internship programs with DaVinci and also with the university. We typically have about five interns at the chamber consistently. And we look for ways that we can engage more students to come in, learn some soft skills. If you talk to business people, that's usually what they're looking for is the soft skills. So we let them work with the community and answer phones and learn how to do some graphic design and just different business like behind the scenes stuff. So we're really excited. We're glad to be a participant in this program. I think it's gonna be fantastic. And let us know how we can help more. Thank you, Christina. And thank you for revitalizing that program at the chamber. I know Susan's gonna be fantastic. So the next program that we wanted to talk about, obviously faith-based communities offer lots of opportunities for youth and to connect youth into the community. So we have Ben Hoffner-Brodsky, who has been involved with the interfaith rotating winter shelter. Ben, where did you go? Oh, there you are. Thank you. It's gonna talk about the opportunity that he's had to learn about working with adults. Hi, my name is Ben Hoffner, and I am an associate board member at the interfaith rotating winter shelter. And I've also been an intern with youth leadership Davis for two years. So I'm gonna talk about my experience with youth leadership Davis and what kind of an opportunities the shelter poses for mentorship and for students. So the interfaith rotating winter shelter for those of you who don't know is a winter shelter that is a group of local religious congregations who volunteer their space up for a week or two every season for various community members who don't have a home to stay there and to receive a hot meal. It's trying to pose an innovative approach to homelessness that's really centered around the community and around volunteers. Now this started about nine years ago and one of the first things that we realized is that this isn't just a great opportunity for the guests who come through the door, but that the volunteers who are coming are being able to learn skills in leadership and in management. Essentially it's the perfect opportunity for high school students. So from that came youth leadership Davis. Youth leadership Davis is a group made up of high school students and a few select community leaders who act as mentors. These 15 or so students have the opportunity to learn the leadership skills from volunteering with the shelter and even getting to run the shelter with the assistance of their mentors. What we found is that anybody can learn how to pass out a sleeping bag or dish out a hot meal, but that it's only with mentors that you can learn to appreciate the morals behind this effort and to understand how to approach problem solving from an innovative way. That these mentors were able to bridge the gap from children to reach adulthood. And they're doing this through a community-based effort like IRWS and youth leadership Davis. Now youth leadership Davis itself is a very mentor-based effort. We usually have one to two mentors who come in on a weekly basis and these students aren't just going and volunteering at the shelter. We're then coming back and analyzing what we've done and analyzing the significance of helping the homeless and what we can learn from the homeless and from this effort. So our mentors are allowing us not just to help the community but to develop as individuals. And it turns out that this really works. A survey in 2014 found that individuals who are mentored are 78% more likely to volunteer in their community. It's only because of mentors like all the faces I see in the room today that we're able to have these efforts and that we're able to offer up beds to the homeless and for students like myself to learn from these efforts. So while it may be kind of cliche, I just wanna thank all of you because for every one of you who is out there volunteering, there is a student who is learning to become a leader. And if every single one of you can volunteer, we're gonna have a generation of students who are becoming leaders. So thank you. That was fabulous. That was a Da Vinci presentation. And a powerful program. So next up we have the World Class Citrus Circuits Robotics team. We have our faculty advisor, Steve Harvey and two of his students who are gonna talk about their program which involves both youth and mentors. Hi, I'm Steve Harvey. I'm the head coach of Citrus Circuits. Team 1678, first robotics team. And we've had a storied history that culminated in us winning the World Championships last year, actually earlier this year. Which is a great thrill. I have to say it's been a heck of a ride for me. I kind of fell into this with Jan Maisel, a teacher at Davis High School about 11 years ago and it just grew and I've kind of watched the students take off. But I think what makes our program really powerful is that it is a mentor-based program. It's student-led. So we have student leaders on a leadership team and they're captain and co-captain. And they run the meetings and they decide what directions we go in. But mentors are heavily involved in every aspect of our work. So we have currently about 60 students and 15 mentors. And I think one of the great aspects of our program that is self-sustaining is that we're a peer-to-peer educational program. So what I mean by that is that we have an electronics team, we have a programming team, we have a mechanical team, we have CAD designers doing their work. I'm not an expert at CAD design. I'm not an expert at programming. I'm not an expert at most of these things. And so if I was trying to teach all of these different kids, all these different skills, it would be absolutely impossible. So what's happening is the senior kids who have learned are teaching the younger kids. And so I have two of my younger students here, a sophomore and a freshman to talk to you about the program in terms of what mentors are doing and how it impacts them. So I'll hand it off to you guys. All right, for me, I'd say definitely not only students have been successful mentors for me, but as Mr. Harvey said, how students teach other students how to do things, I'm a programmer on the team, and I've been taught so many things from all of the other students on the team, programmers and other students alike about how to do different things. Along with that, I think mentors provide the driving force, like not student mentors. So adult mentors, many of you who may be here today and Mr. Harvey and Richard McCann, they provide the driving force for our team because every year when we're building our robot, the students feel satisfied with what they're doing, but the mentors push forwards and they know that we are not ready, that we are going to do something wrong and so they just keep us going. And so that I think is really what mentors are very valuable for. Also, mentors on our team are professionals and so if they're mentoring, they actually, they really know what they're doing. So, and most of the time we don't know what we're doing, so it helps that they have the skills and the knowledge to teach us and let us know when we are making a mistake because especially on our robotics team, if you make a mistake, it's either gonna hurt the robot or hurt yourself, so it's helpful to know when you're making a mistake and also what mentors provide is they also, not only their knowledge, but they also share their passion for what they're doing. So, most of the times when students are, students listen to the mentors as they talk about what they love to do with that passion can rub off and hopefully those students might pursue a career that they're passionate about and maybe become a mentor themselves and spread what they love and enjoy in life. So, also learning in a collaborative environment helps the students be ready for college if they want to be an engineer. So, an engineering environment involves working and collaborating and communicating ideas and what our team provides is that sort of basis and spreading ideas and communicating while if you were to study engineering in college you would be reading out of a textbook and not quite getting that kind of, the experience of being able to listen to other people and share ideas and build off of those ideas to create something great. Yeah, I can definitely second that, that being around mentors, many of them who are in college right now at UC Davis has both inspired me to go to college. I'm definitely going to college and it's given me an insight on how it is to be in college because sometimes they're doing homework but if we've got a question we can ask them and so we've definitely, I could not do anything without a mentor. And I also have Richard McCann here as one of our mentors and he wanted to say a few words also. So, I'm going to speak more as a testimonial for not only our program but for others who want to become mentors or are thinking about being mentors. First off is how much you get out of the program. I started mentoring because I was participating in my son's programs of various kinds, baseball, youth leadership, scouts and robotics but it's evolved into a relationship with the students, with the kids that's brought a lot to me emotionally and you'll find a lot of rewards from doing that. You just don't realize what you get out of this program until you participate and you see, for example, at the end I remember at the end of a little league season a parent coming up to me and telling me how much better the season that his kid had this particular year than the previous year because of the effort that I had made to try to involve him more in the little league season. You get that sort of great reward from being in the program but the other thing also to think about is what do I need to bring as a mentor to this program? Well, when I started robotics, a robot ran on unicorns and rainbows. I just, I don't know anything about electronics or about a robot's run. I know a little bit more about it now but seriously I did not bring any particular skills. When I was doing baseball, I didn't know anything about baseball, I'd never played baseball and I learned how to become a hitting coach and a pitching coach in little league because I kept one step ahead of the kids. And that's what you learn. And so it's the same thing that any of these programs, there's a lot of things that are required in these programs, for example, our program costs more than $100,000 a year so I'm actually involved in the fundraising for this program. Many of you have these business skills, things like that to help not only our program but other programs. There's other programs that have similar budget needs that have similar logistic requirements in their programs and so you bring things to the programs that are more than just what you see on the surface. And so I want you to really consider mentoring our program and other programs to provide that kind of support. There's many of these things, these teachers, he had to raise all the money by himself before I showed up. And now he, basically he shows up wherever we tell him to show up. He's in fact, he's sleeping, I've seen him sleeping in his office. Seriously, the teachers don't need to be out there raising money for these programs. It's us, as mentors, as a community, you need to gather up and help fund these programs and deliver these services to the kids, so thank you. Yeah, so just one last word. We always love to have more mentors on our team. Barbara Archer's husband joined us last year. You don't have to have any special skills. You may think it's all technical but a lot of it is not technical. It's a lot of it's just working with kids and getting them motivated. So if you wanna join us, we're on the road to a repeat this year. Well, one of the things I love about Citrus Circuits is that you're also teaching the kids those business skills about maintaining a program like this if you're interested in supporting them there at the Davis Farmers Market almost every Saturday, willing to talk to you about their program and get you engaged and take your contributions if you're so inclined. So the next program that we wanted to talk about and the last one of our mentor programs is something we've sort of loosely titled Music at Montgomery, Montgomery Elementary Bridge Music Project. I don't know if all of you know Hiram Jackson who's coming up now. Hiram is a parent in the district and has been for quite a number of years but he's been just intimately involved with the Davis School's music program and a huge advocate and has taken it to the level of that is seldom seen even in communities like ours. So Hiram if you could tell them about your program. Thank you. The Music Project at Montgomery Elementary is really piggybacking on another fantastic mentoring program which is Davis Bridge that we don't even really get to go into a lot of detail. But it is a, the bridge program itself tends to focus on student enrichment in math and reading skills. There were a number of students participating in Davis Bridge who may not necessarily have strong home support for school work and the like who also were not necessarily participating in representative numbers in the elementary music program. My particular alignment, his affiliation has been with the orchestra. And there weren't, there was under representation throughout the district particularly in, as I noted in demographic data in 2010. In addition to that many students from the Davis Bridge were not matriculating into the Harper Junior High Orchestra program. So it took a couple of years but in about 2012, if we, I don't know if there's another slide there. I was finally able to gather up some volunteers from two different sources. The UC Davis Music Department, their music majors were available and interested in mentoring opportunities as well as the, some of the high school orchestra students were also interested, have come after school to Montgomery four days a week and practice with students at least once a week. That's our goal, to help support their efforts and these are some of the pictures of those students participating. But we're always looking for additional volunteers to do this and one of the rewarding things to see every year is students who were participating last year see them continue into the following year and then privately inside I'm going yes. And then eventually to see them matriculate into the Junior High and Secondary Orchestra program. So in 2012 there was just a handful of, in fact of string students in the Bridge program. I think it may not have been more than 10. And this year there's more than 30 students from Davis Bridge participating. That's just in strings. And so there is broader participation, broader demographic representation in the Secondary Orchestra program and I've been able to begin with, I'm not normally a band person so I kind of went out of my comfort zone to start tutoring or seeing that students in Band and Bridge were being tutored there. And so I hope to see that grow. We have maybe a couple of students this year and if this pattern follows, then in a few years it will hopefully be just as large. And so the goal is to see that the music program in our Davis schools is representative of the entire demographic population of students. Thank you very much. So I wanted to ask Hiram too to talk about the Mariachi Band that you participate with. So a small ulterior motive is that my wife and I direct a student Mariachi Band in the Davis schools and they're in all the different secondary sites. And so when we do find some particularly enthusiastic kids at Montgomery, then we invite them to join our Mariachi Band and so it is a, it has, that came at maybe a year or two later from, but it was more or less a continuation of this project. And they're available to perform for events and activities. About a year ago they performed for the California School Boards Association Conference in San Francisco and we were all in the front row and we were so proud, that was great. Thank you, Hiram. So we could go on and on and on about wonderful programs that are available. These are just a few of the things that you have an opportunity to connect into. You may well know about others and so we're inviting you to let us know about those so we can help promote them and ways for people to connect to them. What we wanted to do now was, I did see Tom come in, my colleague Tom Adams on the Davis School Board who has a special communication from Superintendent Tom Torlickson and some information about what the California Department of Education is doing. So thank you everyone, good evening. First of all, I just want to say on the back table there on your way out, you'll find our, thank you Lucas for passing it out. There's a letter from Superintendent Tom Torlickson to the City of Davis and the Davis School District acknowledging their community as one rich in volunteerism and supporting this effort. And I just want to quote one line from it because I think it's so fitting for seeing everyone here. It says, your community already enjoys a high level of volunteerism. You have a rich pool of talent and resources available. Keep moving forward and reach higher. I think that is really what we are about tonight. But I also want to say this effort also had an influence on me in terms of my own work. As you might have seen in the papers, I was, I am now the Deputy Superintendent for Instruction and Learning Support at the California Department of Education. And one of the duties I now have is to be part of the leadership group organizing the statewide STEM conference. And we all know that STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and math. And in the past we've had some really great conference presenters. But this year we won to stress an important theme, the theme of equity. And here we decided that STEM for this conference is gonna stand for students, teachers, equity, and mentors. Yeah, so when it comes time to submit proposals to present at the conference, and that is October 9th, 10th, and 11th. 9th, 10th, and 11th, October. You can put that in your calendar. I'm looking forward to seeing some proposals from Davis to show how the mentorship of this community has advanced STEM education and has actually shown us to be not simply a shining star, but a guiding star of mentorship and equity. So thank you. Thank you, Tom. I'm gonna introduce Barbara, who's gonna take it over here. I did just want to, Yolo County Board of Education member Shelton, yep, slipped in after we did introductions. So he's joining us tonight. After Barbara does our call to action, if we could have our presenters and city council members and school board members come up, we wanna do a photo op and Don and Jim and Shelton. That would be terrific. And then have an opportunity when Barbara finishes to talk to the people who've been presenting and learn more about their programs. Good evening, everyone. I get the easy job. I get to thank everyone. I wanna especially thank the students who are excellent examples of mentorship. Warned my heart to see O'Fyr who I've known since she was five years old when she was in my son's kindergarten class. And here she is working at a veterinary clinic. So thank you to the students. Thanks to the community members and community organizations. And thank you to my colleagues on the city council and the school board. So just real quickly, I wanna hold up this handout again. This has all the contact information for the organizations who presented tonight. And then we have our email contact. The organizations that talk to you tonight are only a sampling of the many opportunities that we have in Davis to mentor youth. And so if you are part of an organization that wants to get on board with our challenge or you have questions, please avail yourself of this email like us on Facebook where we have an active presence. And we really hope this is a call to action for everyone. This should be on your New Year's resolution list to make a difference in the life of at least one youth. So with that, I just wanna thank everyone for coming. This is a wonderful turnout. And thank especially Susan. This has been her baby and without her it wouldn't have come together. So get out there and mentor.