James Pond on Creating a Home Library
James Pond is the President & CEO of the Governor’s Early Literacy Foundation (GELF), where he has led long-term strategies to strengthen early literacy in Tennessee since 2019.
About James Pond
James Pond is the President & CEO of the Governor’s Early Literacy Foundation (GELF). Under his leadership, GELF has become a statewide thought leader, completing its strategic plan two years ahead of schedule, doubling public and private funding, expanding programs, and tripling its team. Previously, James served as Executive Director of Veteran's PATH, spent 12 years fighting global sex trafficking, and served eight years in the U.S. Marine Corps after a decade in corporate management. He holds a master’s degree from Fuller Theological Seminary, is a member of Leadership Tennessee Class IX, and lives in Gallatin with his wife, Athena. They have three adult children and two grandchildren.
About the Governor’s Early Literacy Foundation (GELF)
The Governor’s Early Literacy Foundation (GELF), founded in 2004, is Tennessee’s statewide leader in early literacy, serving children from birth through third grade. GELF runs Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, delivers K–3 summer book programs in partnership with Scholastic, supports families with caregiver resources, and brings books to communities through mobile Book Buses and Storybook Trails. The foundation also unites literacy nonprofits statewide through the OWL (Opportunities with Literacy) initiative, sharing best practices and fostering collaboration to strengthen reading outcomes across all 95 counties. Families can also access Booker's Treehouse, an interactive hub with activities and resources that complement the books children receive
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Speaker 1: James Pond, president and CEO of the Governor's Early Literacy Foundation. Welcome to Signature Required.
Speaker 3: So honored to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker: So it's abbreviated GELF, which I kinda like that abbreviation. It's memorable.
Speaker: Uh, but I really don't have much understanding of what. The Governor's Early Literacy Foundation does your role, so for anybody else that's never heard of it [00:01:00] before, what do you do?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Governor's Early Literacy Foundation is a nonprofit organization. We were started and founded by Governor Bredesen back in 2004, um, in an effort to really meet the early literacy needs of, of Tennessee.
Speaker 3: When I came on in 2019, we went through an entire evaluation of kind of how the foundation might be able to grow, and we really looked at two central ways that we could meet the needs of early literacy in our children and families. And that was through building home libraries and building communities through literacy.
Speaker 3: And so, uh, we changed the name from governor's books from Birth Foundation to Governor's Early Literacy Foundation. It's really taken, and to your point, uh, GELF is a little easier to say than j.
Speaker: This is a topic that Carli and I care a ton about. Um, there is overwhelmingly compelling evidence that. Your reading level, if you're not reading by third grade, your [00:02:00] economic future is virtually sealed. You will not escape where you come from almost certainly. Um, and so it's a really, really important topic that, um, I wonder if you just give us a little bit of history.
Speaker: Did Bressen do this while he was in office? Was this, uh, a part of a, an appointed position? Like how has this evolved over time?
Speaker 3: Great question. And, um, there's a little bit of, of mystique to some of this because of, uh, some of the characters that are involved. But Governor Bressen really had a vision for how do we meet early literacy needs here in, in Tennessee, and what could we be doing?
Speaker 3: And the conversation that was happening at the time was from the time a child's born until they're five years old, you've got this ability to really imprint on a child. Um, seeing books and hearing, you know, vocabulary, um, having books read to you. Having that tactile experience with a book could have a profound impact on, on children.
Speaker 3: Um, Dollywood at [00:03:00] the time had been running Dolly Parton's imagination in a library in about nine counties with some level of success, but really couldn't take it to scale. And so there were some conversations that were happening about how could this go to scale and how could the state of Tennessee really benefit from taking something as profound as Dolly Parton's brand and helping bring that to every child in the state.
Speaker 3: There was a senate bill that created the foundation and then there was a separate funding for the Imagination Library to happen. And it was actually a really genius move on Governor Bredesen's part because it could have been something that was state funded. He could have named it after him. And there was some suggestion it should be called the Book from Birth Foundation.
Speaker 3: Um, and he declined for two really key reasons. One, he wanted it to live beyond himself and he didn't want his name on it. And second was he wanted it to be a 50 50 public private partnership where there was ownership in each county to really take control of, um, these are our children that we're serving.
Speaker 3: And [00:04:00] so it is a 50 50 public private partnership. We manage the state's, half of that for all 95 counties across the state. And then each county has an entity that manages the other 50% of that. And so it has been around for 21 years existing under that model and has been highly successful doing such. Hmm.
Speaker 2: We've been really lucky in our state to have governors that care about literacy. Mm-hmm. I know Governor Bresson, governor has 'em, governor Lee, like a lot of the first ladies initiatives have been around literacy in early childhood. So tell me what makes this special that it has transcended. I know you said Bresson didn't name it after himself, but how have you guys evolved with technology and the new learnings that we're finding about literacy in kids to keep this relevant administration after administration?
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, one is, this is one of the least controversial things you can be talking about, you know? Yeah. People
Speaker 2: don't get mad about teaching kids to read. No,
Speaker 3: no. You know, you want to talk about, the you know, vaccines or something else. You've got some controversy, but when it really comes down to it, I think [00:05:00] literacy is a bipartisan issue.
Speaker 3: Um, it's actually a nonpartisan issue and, um, and I think each governor coming in has seen the value. I'm not only continuing this, but under Governor Lee, we were able to almost triple our impact and, um, triple the, the, the, weight and impact of what we do as a foundation. And so I think that, you know, for Governor Bredesen, there was obviously value, um, for Governor Haslam when he stepped in.
Speaker 3: Um, Crissy was such a powerful first lady. We call those the Camelot years. Um, she was very close to the foundation. I think she helped really elevate. What was happening with the foundation and, and the work that we were doing around Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. And I remember in 2019 meeting with Governor Lee and talking to him and, um, he had asked me, you know, what do you foresee?
Speaker 3: And I kinda shared with him a little bit about the vision that I had for the foundation moving forward. And he said, I just want you to go out there and make some, some big dents in what we're doing around literacy. So I, I think, you know, even as [00:06:00] we are coming up on an administration change, um, whoever our new governor is, I think will also find some real value in, in what we're doing as a foundation.
Speaker 3: And it also helps, I think, elevate the state of Tennessee. There's a lot of, first this foundation has had, which I'd love to share with y'all that make Tennessee a really unique place.
Speaker: So how. Is it distinct from what Dolly Parton has done? And how do you think about those two things? 'cause I, it feels in a way that it could be competitive with one another, but I'm sure it's different.
Speaker: So how do these things work together?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so one of the misunderstandings most people have is that the Dolly Parton Imagination Library is a program, it's a program that is paid for by Tennesseans. For Tennesseans. I think most people might think that Dolly Parton gives these books away, or that she somehow, you know, pays for them.
Speaker 3: They're not this, this is a program that is supported by the State of Tennessee. It runs, um, you know, about $25 a child per year, taxpayer funded, taxpayer funded. Okay. And so, well [00:07:00] really it's a, that public private partnership. So a lot of it is, it is just individuals who really care about literacy. It's our state that values it and it has a set aside that is delineated just for literacy.
Speaker 3: So I, I think there's, there's that portion of it. And so it's, it's really a program that we do. It's not something that competes with anything else. And so what we've done as a foundation is really looked at where there were other opportunities to serve children during those vital years as they're learning to read before they read to learn.
Speaker 3: And so we saw two really key opportunities as I stepped in in 2019. We were providing this amazing program for all of our children from birth to five. But there were two other gaps. One was, um, care. A parent is a child's first teacher, and so you have the most influence and and impact on a child's learning journey.
Speaker 3: If we could reach those parents and give them resources they could use, that would be powerful. The other was that kindergarten to third grade are really, really powerful years that if there's not built on [00:08:00] success of a child continuing to have access to high quality literacy materials. Being encouraged to read, having visibility of, of what literacy actually looks like during those years.
Speaker 3: That can be the fallout. You can have a child who is very kindergarten ready and by third grade they have no interest. Mm-hmm. We've also seen where children are not interested by third grade. Beyond that, you've got an eighth grader who doesn't care about reading any longer, so you don't have a lifelong learner.
Speaker 3: You might have a proficient reader who can read, but if they don't read, it's like Mark Twain said, there's no advantage of our person who can read and doesn't read.
Speaker 2: So did I read correctly that you've been working with Scholastic to serve these kids that are kindergarten through third grade? And when I read that, all I could think about was the Scholastic book fair.
Speaker 2: You know when you bring that pamphlet home and then you go and you like take all your allowance money and buy all the things. It was the highlight of my career as an elementary student. And so I remember
Speaker: those days, those were good days. They were
Speaker 2: so you can almost smell like the grilled cheese sandwiches in the cafeteria when you [00:09:00] shop.
Speaker 2: That Scholastic booklet.
Speaker 3: Yeah. With the, with the Clifford Plushies and the, and the fuzzy pencils Plushies. Yes. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: James is probably about to crush all that down and be like, it's all digital now. Doesn't exist. Pamphlet's been obsolete for 10 years. Like, yeah. N
Speaker 3: no, it does all exist. And one of the, one of the powerful things that we were able to do here in Tennessee is, um, we had been working with the state of Tennessee on how we could serve kindergarten through third grade students.
Speaker 3: And, uh, met with Speaker Sexton and we had been talking about the value of what could happen if we were able to continue providing kindergarten through third grade students with really high quality reading materials and resources going into 2020. The state said, we really wanna make an investment in this.
Speaker 3: We want to make this, this launch by March of 2020, that was all off the table and there was no spending happening. We ended up with a pocket of money as COVID kicked off through some of the eser dollars. We went to Scholastic and said, you guys have never delivered books into the homes of [00:10:00] children. It's always, always been schools for the book fairs.
Speaker 3: And I said, how would you guys like to change your model and start delivering into homes? So we were the first organization, the first state to ever have Scholastic books delivered into a child's house. So we were able that. just within that short period of time to serve about 67,000 kids, uh, at the beginning of COVID.
Speaker 3: And then as things began to open back up again, we had conversations with our legislature and they said, well, we can't do this all at once. Why don't we do it year over year? So we're gonna do rising first graders, rising second graders, rising third graders, and then we'll kind of roll this program out.
Speaker 3: Uh, we were also the first foundation to ever roll out a statewide caregiver engagement program. So we were serving almost a quarter of a million. What is that? Parents and caregivers. What is that? So what we did is we worked with Parent Power. They had a program called Ready for K that was a text base app that sends an SMS on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday that are age and grade appropriate texts to parents to give them some skills, knowledge base and activities that [00:11:00] they could do with their kids.
Speaker 3: We thought one 98% of Tennesseans have a smartphone. So getting an SMS text is completely possible. Second, we were concerned about the retention rate 'cause all of us get texts from businesses and we, we kick stop pretty hard. Um, this has an 89% retention rate, so that means that 90% of these parents continue to get these texts.
Speaker 3: And we get comments year over year of these have been the most meaningful pieces of information and knowledge and activities that I can do with my children that actually are helping me become a better first teacher to my children. So we've been doing that now for the last four years.
Speaker 2: So you're texting caregivers, do they have to opt in or did you somehow,
Speaker 3: through
Speaker 2: some Spidey way, get all of the phone numbers of every parent with a small child at home?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we did. We learned a really powerful lesson, uh, very early on as we were experimenting because we tried, uh, a process of having parents opt in. Um, teachers are already busy enough, [00:12:00] parents are already busy enough. Giving them one more thing to opt into was just too challenging. So what we did is we worked with the school districts and we said, would you do an opt-out process with your parents?
Speaker 3: And so they actually will screen parents, um, asking if they wanna opt out, they can. It's a very low opt-out number. And so then everyone will just receive a text that says, Hey, your child is in, you know, whatever grade or, and they do, you wanna receive these texts? They press C to confirm and then they start receiving the text.
Speaker 3: And it's been a, a, a really powerful program, uh, to see parents involved with across the state.
Speaker: That's a much better business strategy. It's like send C to confirm that you care about literacy. Alternatively, if you don't care about your child's literacy and kind of think it's overrated, then feel free to opt out,
Speaker 2: opt out, send a giant X.
Speaker 2: Yeah,
Speaker 3: exactly. Exactly. And we do the same thing with kindergarten through third grade. The, the, the book program and, uh, the opt out rate is, it's below it's sub 1%. You know, I just can't imagine a parent saying, I don't want my child to have really great. Books that they could read over the summer. [00:13:00]
Speaker 2: I'm curious.
Speaker 2: Tell me, I'm always looking for tips. What are some of the things, the tools, like I have a 6-year-old, what is a tool or an idea that might get sent to me if I opted into this?
Speaker 3: So one of the texts you might see for a 6-year-old is, um, you know, the next time that you're doing dishes, have your child count how many forks and spoons and knives are going into dishwasher.
Speaker 3: Um, if you're in the grocery store, have, have your son identify, um, how many orange things they see and name them. And those are building those vocabulary literacy skills that are helping them, that when they sit in front of a book just amplify their ability to, to learn and enjoy reading as a, as an activity.
Speaker 2: See. I love that because I've said on the show before too, we had three kids in three years, and then just when they were starting to pull themselves together, we had another kid and then COVID hit, right? I studied children's literature in college at Vanderbilt. It's always been near and dear to my heart, but I found myself so in the weeds as a parent that daily trying to sit and read and keep everyone alive [00:14:00] felt like too many things I had to do, and gosh, do I wish somebody had just said, Hey, you're already doing dishes.
Speaker 2: You're already shopping for groceries, you're already sorting laundry. Here are ways that you can build literacy and find motor skills and things like that, as opposed to putting one more thing that I felt like I was failing, which was let's sit and sing Kumbaya and read a story on the couch together.
Speaker 2: That never happened. And I think it led to a lot of mom shame for me for a long time that that was hard. And so I really love what you're doing there.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And, and, and you're bringing up something that's really powerful. You know, here you are an educated, engaged, involved parent, and you still had struggles.
Speaker 3: And, and I think everyone needs a leg up. The other thing that we recognized is here in the state of Tennessee, we have a number of grandparents that are their primary caregiver. Mm-hmm. So imagine if you are intimidated or I'd be intimidated if I'm a grandparent, well, I guess I am a grandparent. It, it'd be pretty intimidating to sit down with a book and what do I do with this thing?
Speaker 3: And how do I know I'm not screwing it up? I don't want to, I don't wanna do something that's gonna be at a deficit for my [00:15:00] child. Mm-hmm. Or for my grandchild. And so I think this is just one of those tools that we're putting in a toolbox that just makes it easier and just starts to feel simple. It's not complicated.
Speaker 3: It's actually really easy stuff.
Speaker: James, we've gone through a little bit of what Guelph is. Uh, let's talk about your background and some of your history. So, who is James Pond and where did you come from?
Speaker 3: Dun. You, you know, I, I'm really jealous of folks who know what they wanna be when they grow up. They go to college, they do that, they pursue a career.
Speaker 3: Uh, my career looks like a giant squiggly line. Um, growing up I had a lot of, uh, very hard blows.
Speaker 4: Where'd you grow up?
Speaker 3: I grew up in California.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: I grew up in the, uh, the Bay Area. Um, had a family circumstance that, uh, my father was taken away from us. Uh, my mother became unmoored is probably a kind way to put it, and just wasn't able to handle having kids at home.
Speaker 3: Uh, my mom and I fought all the time and eventually I was unwelcome at home and was told to leave. [00:16:00] Um, I was a homeless teenager for about four months, lived on the streets, um, learned to eat outta trash cans and cafeteria leftovers. And, um, one day encountered, uh, my English lit teacher who knew that I was, um, not doing well, and he invited me to, uh, live with him.
Speaker 3: So, as a sophomore, middle of my sophomore year, I had about a 1.2 GPA, um, was on the verge of probably going to jail. I'd been arrested for inciting a riot and all kinds of other. Problematic teenage things. And, uh, he brought me in and he said, there's three rules. One, you can't tell anyone that you're living with me.
Speaker 3: because that wouldn't be kosher as a teacher at the time. Two, you can never miss another day of school. So I, I can't tell you the number of days I went to school, sick strep throat, or a fever or whatever else, whatever cooties I had. Uh, and then third, we're gonna read and we're gonna read a lot. And he gave me a renewed love and passion for books that I didn't have.
Speaker 3: And I, I didn't realize [00:17:00] how much that means. And I think that's the, the flip side of this literacy journey that we're on, is that if we're concerned just about a child's proficiency by third grade, we're missing something really powerful. I wasn't a strong third grade reader, but I'm a voracious reader now because someone gave me a passion and a love for books that I could see them being a transformational power in my life.
Speaker 3: Um, couldn't go to college after high school. I did graduate with a 3.86. Go, which I'm very proud of. That's a big turnaround. That's a, that's a huge turnaround. That's a big turnaround. Um, I, I was forced my junior and senior year to take all AP classes. So this teacher that I, I had been living with, um, helped me pick my classes for the next year.
Speaker 3: There was no slacking, there was no woodwork or, uh, commercial art in my future. Uh, and just in order to get my grades up, but I had taken the SATs. I came home that night and, uh, there was an envelope sitting on the, on the table and he said, you know, kid, come take a seat. And he said, there's two [00:18:00] conversations we can have.
Speaker 3: There's one where we open this envelope, we have a conversation about that, or we don't open the envelope when we talk about joining the military. And, uh, so I ended up joining the Marine Corps 18. Uh, served eight years working in intelligence and special operations. Traveled all over the world and, um, got out.
Speaker 3: Didn't know what I wanted to do. I worked as a private investigator for a while, um, swung my hand at a couple of different things. I even tried being a loan broker, which my chief financial officer will die if she ever knew that. Um, I have a hard time just juggling three numbers at a time. But, um, eventually got involved in corporate business.
Speaker 3: Worked in corporate business for 10 years. And in 2003, my wife and I had, uh, three young kids. They were, uh, 15, 12 and nine at the time. And, uh, we watched a dateline special called, uh, children for Sale. It was about kids that were being trafficked in Southeast Asia. And so, uh, we did what any normal family would do.
Speaker 3: We, uh, quit our jobs, sold everything we owned, and we moved to Penan Pen. [00:19:00]
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 3: And, uh, lived in Cambodia. Uh, we set up programs for sex trafficking victims for girls between the ages of nine and 17. And, um, help them to heal from trauma, find a future, get an education, learn to be the, um, young women that they were designed to be.
Speaker 3: And so, uh, worked in human trafficking about 11 different countries over 12 years, and kind of realized like, this is my life. I really want to just give back to the world. In 2015, um, I worked for a veteran service organization that, uh, helped veterans find alternative therapies. Um, instead of using, you know, drugs, medication, alcohol, uh, helping them find, um, mindfulness-based practices to deal with pain and trauma.
Speaker 3: And then in 2019, this came into my view and, uh, I just have such a love for books and their ability to transform our lives that, uh, this has become my future. So for the last seven years I've been doing this and it brings me just tremendous joy. [00:20:00]
Speaker 2: I have to ask because I just, it is foundational to my faith and my belief that the Lord doesn't waste any hard thing, and that even though you had a squiggly line, as you say yourself.
Speaker 2: I would imagine that there were pieces of that puzzle along each step of the way that led you to do this work and advocate for kids and caregivers Oh, absolutely. To bring literacy the forefront. So what do you think, besides your love of books and that incredible teacher that taught you that books can change your life, what do you think you learned from being in service, from trying to end human trafficking, from all that that makes you uniquely qualified to do this?
Speaker 3: Gosh, that's a great question. Qualified boy. That's, that's tough. I don't think anything qualifies us. I, I, I'm flawed and trying to put myself together every day, but I, I think, you know, hard things really do become a teacher. I, I think, um, seeing children having value regardless, th this work has been tremendously eye-opening to travel [00:21:00] across the state from very rural places in Tennessee to very, you know, metropolitan places.
Speaker 3: And to see that children are children or children. You know, we like to think that, you know, Memphis is different than Nashville. Nashville's different than Chattanooga, but, uh, kids are kids. They all have value. Um, when they learn to read, it opens up a possibility in their life. And I think if we can begin to value kids from just that perspective, it could open up a whole lot for us as a, as a society to see children, not just as a a dotted line of a proficiency score, but a person who's gonna be in society, living right next to your kids and my grandkids, and they're going to be the future leaders of, of our country and our businesses, and the places that we live and work and breathe.
Speaker: James, we've got a lot of really incredible backstories on the podcast, but that is sensational and I have to ask some questions. That's cool. I cannot let you out of here before I learn some about that story. So, um. To go back [00:22:00] to the beginning of your story, did you have siblings that, uh, were at the same time going through what you were
Speaker 3: later in life?
Speaker 3: They did, uh, they continued to live with my, my mom. My, um, my brother struggled, uh, he was a part of a, a gang. And, um, when I was a young married marine living in Fallbrook, um, just outside of Camp Pendleton, uh, my brother came to live with us as, as a dependent until he could join the Coast Guard. So he joined the military and moved on with his life.
Speaker 3: My sister, uh, later, and I actually saw this paperwork this last weekend. Um, I sued my parents for custody of my sister and we finished raising her from the time she was 15 until she finished high school. So, um, yes, I have siblings and they've been, uh, an intimate part of my life since then.
Speaker: Are you the oldest?
Speaker: And those are two? What's the age gap between, uh, three
Speaker 3: years between me and my brother and seven years between me and my sister. Wow. And, uh, gosh, I was unprepared to be a parent at 22 years old, especially parenting
Speaker 2: teens. [00:23:00] And you really jumped into the deep end,
Speaker 3: especially when it's your sister.
Speaker 2: Yeah,
Speaker 3: yeah, because the, 'cause the no, no crap factors really narrow.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Your wife must be a saint of the Harlem.
Speaker 3: She, she is beyond a saint. Yeah.
Speaker: And we hear a lot of these stories of a really influential person that has come along that the Lord puts in your path and that teacher
Speaker: Um, can you tell us any more about that dynamic? 'cause I don't wanna do anything that Yeah. Uh, puts anything outta bounds, but just, I think it's so heroic. Mm. What happened and risky and. Incredible. And so I just would love to learn anything you can share further.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I, you know, I've been, it's interesting 'cause he's very, very old and a little bit senile and so it's very hard to get a lot of, um, history.
Speaker 3: But I, I can tell you that, um, he's of Syrian descent, uh, his great grandfather was one of the last [00:24:00] Sikhs, uh, in, in Syria at the, at the time. Um, he. Had a tragedy where he lost his son at a very early age. And, uh, I think he was just living vicariously through wanting to care for other kids. I, I found out afterwards, uh, that there's about 13 of us that over the years, over the decades that he had, uh, had taken in and helped many of them, uh, won his world class surfer.
Speaker 3: Uh, one of them is an actor that if I named them someone would know who that was. Um, but people that have, have achieved things in life and so I feel a very strong sense of gratitude that, um, he reached out and gave me an opportunity that I otherwise wouldn't have had.
Speaker 4: Hmm. That's an incredible, incredible story.
Speaker 2: I like what you say about risk. 'cause I was literally reading commentary on the book of Esther today and it just said, leadership is never without risk. Hmm. You always lead from the front and you always have to go first and do the unthinkable. It's only in retrospect that it [00:25:00] looks incredible. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2: Right. Because you turned out and you're here on this couch. But yeah. That is really scary. To take a kid that is two steps away from jail, bring them into your house and give them these three rules outta nowhere. And I, um, but leadership is really powerful and it's not without risk. And I think that that has played out in your lifetime and time again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I, I love that and I actually lead that way. I, I think a lot of times you look back and you go, wow, that was pretty cool. It didn't feel cool at the time. No, never. It felt very scary. Very nerve wracking. Never. That's right. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: And I just can't help. But further in your story, when you talked about you've got a family of your own, you see the Dateline special, is that what it was? Mm-hmm. Dateline special Children for Sale, pack up your whole family and move overseas. Give me some description of that. Like what was your wife's reaction to that, your kids' reaction to that kids and I mean, what.[00:26:00]
Speaker: Exposure or context? Did you have to move to Asia? Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I had had some, um, connections at the, at the State Department, having worked in intelligence for a number of years. And I had been out just long enough that I still knew some folks. So I contacted them and I said, Hey, I saw this Dateline special.
Speaker 3: Is this real? Or is this just a bunch of media hype? And, um, he said, no, it, it's real. I can actually connect you with some folks in Cambodia. You should go see it for yourself. I took a team over there for 13 days and we assessed the situation, met with folks what's needed, what's happening at the time, what we thought, where there were a lot of foreign pedophiles that were traveling overseas to abuse children in other countries.
Speaker 3: And so we had thought what was really needed was kind of like a witness protection program. Get these kids safe long enough to testify against their, their predators. What we discovered when we got there is that these are young girls that really wanna move on with their lives. They want their lives back.
Speaker 3: They don't wanna be seen as, as this, this [00:27:00] victim or this thing, this identifier. They just wanna be people. And um, so we wanted to create programs that were about restoring that for these young girls. I came home from that trip. It delays at the airport, all that. I got home at like one 30 in the morning.
Speaker 3: My wife meets me down in the, in the foyer of our house, and, um, she said, uh, I know we're moving to Cambodia. Can we talk about it in the morning? Oh my gosh. Oh man, this woman knows me so well. In fact, on this podcast, she said, if you clear your throat, I know exactly what's going on. So, um, but uh, the next morning we, we talked as a, as a couple and had said like, this feels like a profound calling.
Speaker 3: Like this is something that we should do. Uh, but we needed to talk to the, the kids for. For any parent who has more than one, you know that if you get them in a group, they're like wolves, they will gang up on you. So we divided and conquered. Yeah, we divided and conquered. So we, that's so wise. Took each one of them.
Speaker 3: Uh, my [00:28:00] daughter was a freshman in high school and that morning that I was having that conversation with my wife, she said, man, I'm, I have the best friends. I'm having the best year. I never wanna move. Oh gosh. It's like, oh yeah, this is not gonna go well. But she, um, she was just such a beautiful human. She said like, I just feel like this is what we need to do.
Speaker 3: Um, my son made a really interesting, um, observation. He said, if this is about you and mom going to do this, like, I don't wanna be a part of it, but if we get to be a part of it, I'll, I'll do it. And so, um, my son and my youngest daughter actually, uh, did a lot at the shelter working with girls. Um. He ran a sports program and did like soccer and volleyball and other things to, you know, just be a great human being.
Speaker 3: And, uh, then my youngest daughter, who was nine at the time was like, if it has elephants and monkeys, like, I'll go. So we, we, we worked on that. I, I think we, we may have oversold it, but uh, they were all in involved and engaged and, um, I think while it was difficult and [00:29:00] challenging, you know, we left with one-way tickets and, and 15 suitcases and, uh, it was, it was an experience.
Speaker 3: It was life changing and, um, I think they're different for it. We're different for it. Um, I think the girls that we got an opportunity to serve are different for it.
Speaker 5: Hmm.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: How do you. Feel that your time there was completed, like that's such a significant turnover, I guess. You all homeschooled while you were there?
Speaker 3: No, our children had the privilege of being able to go to an international school. Okay. Which was really powerful. And 37 different countries there. Our kids got a very powerful education, had wonderful, wonderful friends. It's, you know, you're in the right place when kids get together because they need each other, not because they're trying to be up to something or doing an activity.
Speaker 3: It was that they really cared and needed one another and had really deep friendships that they still have to this day.
Speaker: Yeah. And so how did you know that the time was closed?
Speaker 3: Y you know, any good leader knows when [00:30:00] they've reached their maximum capacity. When you've done the, the, the work, what we wanted to do is we wanted to be on the forefront of really helping people understand what do girls need in, in care.
Speaker 3: I think there were a lot of theories around, you know, they need this really intensive therapy and they need all these other things. These are kids, these are, these are kids that just want their lives back. They wanna play, they wanna be normal. They wanna do things that, that kids do. So we did a lot traveling to other countries, helping folks understand like, here's what these survivors actually need.
Speaker 3: And then right around 2015, there were some transitions. We could just see the world of, of kind of counter human trafficking, moving in a direction of thinking about policy technology, things that just were not in our wheelhouse. And I, I knew it was time to step out and look for where I could use my leadership skills in some other way.
Speaker 2: With all those changes in the marketplace around human trafficking, is that what made you look outside that for your kind of next career pivot? Because [00:31:00] there is so much to be done here around that same issue. Yeah. What led you to literacy?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so real quick, while we were here in the US we were getting really heavily involved in working in, um, other states around trafficking of American girls here.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. And so we had done some work in Chicago, in the Bay Area and, and this is
Speaker 2: before you left,
Speaker 3: okay. Yeah, in Oregon and then here in Tennessee. That's what brought us to Tennessee. And so, um, really thinking through that issue, once that kind of began to culminate, we knew it was just time to make a shift.
Speaker 3: Um, I looked at where I really wanted to spend my energy and I realized having been a Marine Corps veteran. Knowing so many other brothers and sisters who had served, we'd just been in a two decades long war, um, where fathers and sons were serving together in Iraq. That there's just, there's something very heartbreaking about that.
Speaker 3: I really wanted to, uh, give back to them. Um. After doing that for a few years, my, my wife, [00:32:00] politely and lovingly said, um, I just wanna be a grandma. Can you do like a normal job? And, um, so, uh, this is as normal as I can get. And so when this job came up, I applied, I, I waited four months. I heard nothing. I, I thought they had hired somebody else for the position.
Speaker 3: But the more I thought about it, the more I was really intrigued by this idea. Uh, books really are transformational. I, I'm sure each of you could name a handful of books that have had a profound impact on your life. And I really wanted to give that to, to other children. So when this opportunity came up, I just saw this as a really, really powerful way to, um, use my leadership skills and to continue making a difference in the world and give my wife a normal job.
Speaker 2: What are those books for you?
Speaker 3: Oh gosh. Um, right outta the starting gate, um, Moby Dick was given to me by my teacher when I left for the Marine Corps. Uh hmm. You're gonna make me tear up, um, [00:33:00] profound book on, um,
Speaker 3: letting go of hatred and resentment. Um, yeah, that was quite, so I got to read it while I was on the North China Sea on ship.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And so, you know, it was just like these, these moments, the, the ship was loud enough and we were in birthing areas so I could just like cry in my pillow at night, you know, this like 18-year-old kid, like just not wanting other marines to see me losing it.
Speaker 3: But it was just this moment of like realizing like, I can either go down this road, I can just keep being angry and resentful and hating the world and trying to kill that whale for whatever it was, or let it all go. And it was just like this moment of like, okay, yeah, I'm letting it all go. Don't need this in my life anymore.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 3: So that was a profound book in my life. A book that I'm taking our team through right now is A 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership.
Speaker 3: Also a really powerful book about just learning to own your own stuff [00:34:00] and, uh, live your life in a way that's more powerful and aligned. Um, what else? Oh, gosh. You've got me stuck. Give me, oh, I love it because I,
Speaker 2: I love to read Yeah. So much. And I always love hearing what other people are reading because Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think for me, stories I didn't think I liked to read for so long Yeah. In my life. And it was one Christmas and I was, gosh, I was probably 12. It was one Christmas, and friends of our family gave me the first three Harry Potter. And it's a cliche of my generation I guess, but I got them for Christmas and I had finished all three before Christmas break.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Ended. And it was the first time I stayed up all night to read something. It was the first time couldn't put something down because the picture in my head
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That I was creating was better.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: Than what I could see on the tv. That's right. Or experience elsewhere. That's right. And then the community impact of that was I was really close to my great Grandma Mary.[00:35:00]
Speaker 2: Yeah. And she was going blind at the time and I would call her all the time and we would chitchat. Feisty. Feisty. Yeah. Woman. Like the best of the best. And I started buying audio audiobooks and I would send her what I was reading so she could listen even though she couldn't read them. And I would read them and we would talk about the characters together when I called.
Speaker 2: And it was the first time I could see, 'cause I love people. Yeah. And not only am I. Enjoying reading, but I could share that with people across time and space. That's right. And generation. And so that was profound for me because it was the first time.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Um, one of the things that I, I would say to your listeners. And, and viewers is, if you are a reader and you're reading a bunch of nonfiction, start picking up some fiction books.
Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3: I, I know a lot of folks are like, oh, there's nothing in there for me. But I've learned from literacy experts in doing this work that it's triggering a different hemisphere in your brain.
Speaker 3: It's triggering other things that are not getting stimulated. If [00:36:00] you're just reading a self-help book or a business book, or a biography, it is, um, intrinsically important for us to be stimulating all of those other areas of our brain. It helps to build empathy, creativity, um, positivity, self-reflection, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, just huge benefits.
Speaker 3: So pick up some fiction, pick up some good, just it doesn't, it doesn't have to be good fiction. Make it bad fiction. Just, just
Speaker 2: read it.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes. I'm, yes. Get yourself as much exposure. I'm that, yeah.
Speaker 2: I am the queen of not loving nonfiction. Mm-hmm. Because. I don't know. I, we went through school. I too got my master's degree.
Speaker 2: I love theology. Right? And so I love to read scripture and I love to read books about scripture. Mm-hmm. And Tim Keller is my jam. And Okay. The books that make you think all the time. Right. But if I'm gonna sit and I'm not learning something, I don't wanna read what a bunch of other people say. I wanna read a story.
Speaker 5: And
Speaker 2: I've kind of, shame is not the right word. I've been embarrassed about that in myself for a long time because all the smartest people I know [00:37:00] love nonfiction. But I do find as I have to process complex thoughts about my childhood or about raising kids or what it means to be a woman in this day and age, I process while I read novels in a way that it probably took me to almost 40 to be able to say out loud that I am a better person when I'm reading a book.
Speaker 2: And this month has been insane in our family, kids all over the place and doing all that. And I haven't picked up a book. And I can see the ratcheting of exhaustion in me go faster when I don't have a story. In my hand. Mm-hmm. And I have, I can really see the tie between my mental health and time to read.
Speaker 3: See, and you're bringing up this, that is extremely profound because I, I would say to you that y you know, you, you said people who are really smart read non-fiction. Mm-hmm. But it's, it's really about developing intelligence and fiction develops a different intelligence. You know, it's, there's, there's three brains, right?
Speaker 3: Your stomach, your heart, your gut, I mean, your head, your heart, your gut. And when [00:38:00] we think about reading fiction, it, it works through all of that process. And so you're developing just a different kind of intelligence. And I, you know, my wife is a big fiction reader. Uh, my oldest daughter, big fiction reader, 200 books a year.
Speaker 3: Wow. And so, you know, these are extremely smart people. It's just a different kind of, of smart. And so, you know, I tell people read fiction is good for you. I'm, I, and I'm, I'm trying to take my own advice and I'm, you know, really integrating a lot more fiction into my life. Um. But I would encourage folks pick up some, some fiction books.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. It's good for you.
Speaker: Well, this conversation has made it crystal clear why you are a great leader for the Governor's Early Literacy Foundation. Uh, something that, like many of individuals that we get to talk to, that their life in some way to a nonprofit, it usually is some type of full circle moment for them.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. That's the why [00:39:00] behind choosing nonprofit, because nonprofit in so many ways is hard. You wear a lot of hats and are generally under-resourced and undermanned mm-hmm. And misunderstood and all kinds of different things. So if we can bring it back to the foundation work mm-hmm. As president and CEO.
Speaker: There's a lot of things that a president and CEO has to do in any organization, but in a nonprofit where you're wearing a lot of hats, walk us through some of the hats that you're responsible for. Yeah, because I can clearly see your passion, and I just wonder how that translates into how you get to live it out day to day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, you know, at a very high level it's, it's setting vision, driving change, right? Where are we going? What's the horizon that we're aiming for? Um, so there's always that, that piece of leadership, but it's really developing a team. I think, you know, there are leaders that lead a company and so they're thinking about how the [00:40:00] company functions, what's the bottom line?
Speaker 3: Where's our profitability? And I really look at how do I invest in people? How do I help human beings become the best human beings? Because those are the people that do the work. If I want excellent work, I need excellent people. I don't need excellent work. If I'm driving to the work, I'm missing out on the development of the human beings that are spending time and the vast majority of their week committed to, to this work.
Speaker 3: The, I think the third part of it for me is really looking at all of the mechanisms of what's happening in the literacy front. A lot has changed in the last six years. Mm-hmm. I think a lot of how we're viewing education is, is shifting. I think a lot of how we're looking at literacy is shifting. Um, we're having a lot of important dialogue around what literacy is and how it works and how kids should be learning to read and why they should be learning to read.
Speaker 3: So I need to be a little bit of a fortune teller and a trend watcher and looking at where is this all going so that I'm [00:41:00] making sure that our foundation is moving in the right direction to really resource children and families in the best way possible. Um, and then there's the business side of it. Um, I came into nonprofit work as someone who spent a lot of time in corporate America.
Speaker 3: I was very unfamiliar with how, um, dysfunctional a lot of charity work is and I was very fortunate to come across the work of, uh, Dan Palata, who wrote another pivotal book I've read called uns Charitable and, uh, was really about running non-profits like a business. And, uh, I have an executive team and a leadership team, um, that we have the purview of being able to look at the work we're doing as a charity to run it like a business.
Speaker 3: And as a result, we've been very successful at, at not having to, um, you know, rattle our tin can to, to get support, but to really just be doing some phenomenal high quality work that's attracting, I think folks that wanna support what we're doing.
Speaker: Can you just give us a scope for the size for whatever is publicly available?
Speaker: I [00:42:00] know there is some support from the state, so just help us understand from a, you know, annual budget at a, a headcount of employees, a reach, like just give us some boundaries. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I'll give you kind of a start and finish. Um, when I came in, in 2019, we did, uh, one program serving about 280,000 children.
Speaker 3: We're about four and a half million dollars in annual budget, uh, with three people. We are now serving almost 600,000 children, 250,000 parents and caregivers. We have 70 storybook trails, 50 book buses across the state. Um, we now have 18 employees and we've got about a $25 million budget.
Speaker: Hmm. What, what are, what are book buses and storybook trails?
Speaker 3: Oh,
Speaker: great
Speaker 3: question. So we really wanted to create communities through literacy. When I started traveling in the state and looking at Tennessee, it used to be known as the education state. And so we wanted to create a culture of reading. I wanted people to go places and see books as a very, very normal thing that we do.
Speaker 3: It's not a [00:43:00] special skill, it's not magic. It's just something that everybody should be doing. So, um, storybook trails are outdoor reading activities. We put child height templates of children's books at about a quarter to a half mile length that families can walk, read a book together outdoors, which is a great activity to be doing together.
Speaker 3: Book buses came about, um. Really thinking about how do we reach hard reach children in our, in our state, particularly in rural Tennessee. But as we began rolling this out, we realized there's a lot of book deserts. Mm-hmm. If you spend any time in Memphis, there are no libraries or bookstores in a lot of these neighborhoods.
Speaker 3: So we're looking at how do we create mobile libraries that communities could take on and be able to take those books and resources out and create that book shopping experience for kids anywhere they were in the state.
Speaker 2: It takes you back to the Scholastic book Fair. There is, there is nothing like shopping for a book.
Speaker 2: And it was one, my mom was a single mom for a long time and my mom and dad lived in different states and she worked really hard and I remember the one thing she would never say no to [00:44:00] was a new book. Yeah. We would have to say no to other things, but we never said no to a new book. That's amazing. And so I, my kids' library is my favorite part in our house right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I am, I agree with you. Not all kids have access to that. I'm lucky that I had a mom that figured out the resources and now I'm, we're carrying that forward. But, um, your heart does break and it does move you to action. Yeah. To try to make sure that every kid has access to quality reading material that, not just that they have to, but that kind of lights 'em up.
Speaker 2: Like, you know when a kid memorizes the book and they're reading it in front of you mm-hmm. Because they know the words and they wanna get to the punchline. Like it's magic. Yeah. It's real life magic. Yeah.
Speaker 3: One of the things that we learned too is there's sort of three factors. One is when children have a, a home library of 25 books or more, and the, the magic number that we're aiming for as a foundation is for every child in Tennessee by the time they reach third grade to have a hundred book library.
Speaker 3: There's profound [00:45:00] research around the likelihood of graduating from high school, um, and other health social outcomes. That having that hundred book library is an advantage. So access is, is one piece. Second is, is modeling. When they see people in the home, not only reading with them, but reading your own book while your children read their book, is modeling for them.
Speaker 3: That as an adult you value that as an activity. It's important that it, that it be modeled. And then the third part of it is really interesting Um, and particularly for boys. Boys have a really hard time finding out what do I wanna read? What do I like to read? And so if we can create something that gives children choice that they can, they can select a book that they really wanna read, not that we want them to read or their teachers want them to read, but that they love, that will have a, a life impacting difference.
Speaker 3: That, you know, having access to books, seeing it modeled, can't provide for them is that ability to choose it for themselves.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. So we've talked about so many things that you've added, book buses and storybook trails. Tell [00:46:00] me a little bit about Owl Fest. So.
Speaker 3: Owl Wolf Fest was, was a really powerful moment for us as a, as a foundation.
Speaker 3: We'd come into a little pocket of money that was title $1 that we're gonna go back to the federal government. And the, the, the Department of Edit asked us, is there anything that you could use this for? And we said, absolutely. Give us like a couple of weeks, we'll come up with something. We started meeting with different superintendents across the state.
Speaker 3: We met with a couple of superintendents in, uh, Memphis, Shelby County schools. And during this conversation we said, if, if there were resources, what would you want for your school? And they, they bantered, it was a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and, oh, if we could do this pd, and it was like, oh, this is all boring.
Speaker 3: Finally, Dr. Rogers and Dr. Benham, um, just, I love these two human beings. He said, I know exactly what I want. I want every poor kid in all of my priority schools to go home with an arm full of books for themselves. I was like, that we can do. So we put together, um, what's [00:47:00] called Owl Fest. So it stands for Opportunities with Literacy.
Speaker 3: And it is a book shopping experience. It is just like a, it's better than a book fair. It's better than a book fair. And what we do is we, um, serve every child from pre-K through fifth grade and all of our priority schools across the state for kids to come in and pick six books of their own for their own home libraries at no cost to them.
Speaker 3: And it is a phenomenal experience. It's one of the only direct service programs where my team works these events, serves these children, and gets to interface with the teachers, the superintendency administrators, and the children that we're serving across our state. And it just has a. Profound impact.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of work. It's four weeks of hard pushing. They're there right now working events, and it's tough work. It's long days, but it is a profound interface with our why as a foundation and what we do.
Speaker 2: So if people are listening to this, you're saying your team gets to interface with that. You have all [00:48:00] these events.
Speaker 2: If people are listening and they feel that stirring, like, yes, books matter to me and I wanna help, but I don't know that Do, do you want, if you had your magic wand, right? Like is it money, is it time, is it connections? Like what if somebody's listening and wants to help? What do you need?
Speaker 3: Yeah. Um, all of those.
Speaker 3: Thanks. You, thanks for setting that up. Yeah. Money, time, commitment. And I, I would say it in this way. I would say it's, um, it. As a foundation, because we function as a charity. The more money we bring in, the more impact we're able to have, which is wonderful. Um, we love having volunteers. Fest is something that we're looking to do every year.
Speaker 3: If there are companies out there, if there are families out there that say, Hey, I'd really like to commit some time to this, we can set you up with some dates and timeframe for when this is all coming together. We would love to have volunteers out there. 'cause while our team does this, it's an amazing event to bring a community around this.
Speaker 3: So whether you run a small business or a major company, we'd love to have your involvement. And then I think it's connections. [00:49:00] One of the things that, uh, we've set as a foundation is Governor's Early Literacy Foundation is the best unknown. Uh, literacy organization in the state of Tennessee. And so we would love to have more people of, um, influence that know what we're doing, the power of what could be accomplished, because we believe in rowing together in the same direction.
Speaker 3: Uh, we started another initiative as a foundation. It's called Select, it stands for the Statewide Early Literacy Education Collaborative of Tennessee. And what it is, is it is we act as a container for early literacy organizations all over the state to come together and have conversations, dialogue and collaboration that really help us begin to row together in the same direction.
Speaker 3: So we bring in literacy experts, we create panels, we share each other's work, really helping to create a cohesive movement because we're this piece of it and there's all these other pieces and we, we want to come together, be a generous foundation that is there to [00:50:00] really be. A, a, a good partner to everyone that's doing this work across the state.
Speaker 3: 'cause there's a lot of organizations doing some very heavy lifting to make sure that children have access and the ability to read.
Speaker: James, we wrap up each podcast with, uh, a couple short fill in the blank sentences. So I'm gonna read you a prompt and give you a little blank at the end. You can fill it in with a word or a short phrase that you feel like completes the thought.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker 3: Okay. Alright. Make 'em make 'em short. Alright.
Speaker: There you go. There you got it. You got it. Number one. Yep. The biggest key to helping kids read is blank.
Speaker 3: The biggest key to helping kids read is helping them fall in love with books.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. Number two, when a child builds a home library, they also build. Blank.
Speaker 3: When a child builds a home library, they build a ladder to their [00:51:00] success as a lifelong learner.
Speaker: And number three, Tennessee is leading the way in literacy because blank
Speaker 3: Tennessee is leading the way in literacy because they believe in it and invest in it and take the action that's needed to make progress.
Speaker: It's really a great privilege to have you on here, James, because your story is a level of full circle that you can only have when you have experienced the types of things that you have from a young age. You possess authenticity to spend time with you here. Is to see the impact that literacy has had on your life.
Speaker: And I think you'd probably say, but at least from my [00:52:00] perspective, saved your life, uh, certainly made it very different than what it was likely on the trend to be. And for you to be able to now sit in the seat that you sit in and impact hundreds of thousands of kids, what an incredible multiplication of your gifting.
Speaker: So, uh, at least in your effort to be able to have GELF, uh, more known across the state of Tennessee, we are thrilled to give you that megaphone and to help you become, uh, a little bit more well known for the really important work, uh, that you're doing. So thank you for telling your story and having the opportunity to.
Speaker: Shine a light for how other people can make big decisions, bold decisions in their family to do something. And who knows, maybe this is somebody's dateline, right? [00:53:00] This could be a dateline moment for somebody. Uh, at least they don't have to move to Asia in order to be able to participate,
Speaker 2: or do they? Yeah.
Speaker 3: Just kidding. Well, thank you. It's very, very humbling to think about it in that perspective, but I I, I appreciate the opportunity to be on with both of you.
Speaker: Thanks, James. Yeah,
Speaker 3: thank you.
Speaker: James Pond, president and CEO of the Governor's Early Literacy Foundation. We spent more than half of the podcast on his story.
Speaker 6: Hmm.
Speaker: I mean, he has an incredible journey that if you look at the probability that he's sitting here in this chair, I mean, it's below 1%.
Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And. A couple,
Speaker: as we often see significant moments in life, divine appointments, mentors changed everything.
Speaker: And I love [00:54:00] the theme that we see for people coming back full circle that what was going on early in their life, the Lord is using, even if you don't realize it for decades, for something that you're gonna be needing to know or being able to draw from, you know, when you're 57 years old.
Speaker 2: yeah. I just think so many of us want to sell ourselves short and count ourselves out and be like, oh, I am disqualified from service because this happened to me, or I went through this, or I have this experience in my background.
Speaker 2: And I just think every adverse experience is a fresh opportunity to make an even greater impact. His story. Brings power to what he's doing today. His willingness to do hard things and have a growth mindset and say, you know what? I am challenged, so I'm gonna go make a difference in Cambodia today, and I'm gonna come back and serve veterans, and I'm gonna help make [00:55:00] literacy a priority in our state would never have happened if he hadn't had to overcome so much in his early childhood and young adult life.
Speaker 2: Like it all works together. Hmm.
Speaker: I love when we get to talk to nonprofit leaders that talk about the magnitude of the impact. I mean, he started off with 3 employees already influencing hundreds of thousands of kids. Now they're at 17 employees and they have multiplied the number of kids of their impact.
Speaker: They have book buses and I think book trails, all sorts of stuff that they get a huge amount of impact per headcount that. Nonprofits uniquely are capable of, like nonprofits are capable of tremendous paralysis and waste and mismanagement and lost dreams. But gosh, when they get it right [00:56:00] and GELF here is getting it right, man, the return on investment with them is substantial.
Speaker 2: I really appreciated his discussion about it being a nonpartisan issue. Like, I don't care who you vote for and what your background is, kids need to learn how to read.
Speaker 5: Mm-hmm. And
Speaker 2: everyone should care about that. It is not just a social impact issue, but it is, to me, I think it's a faith. Issue. How can we expect kids to read the word of God if they do not know how to read?
Speaker 2: So I think it is a social impact issue. I think it's a compassion issue. I think it's a faith issue. It's also a huge economic issue. Mm-hmm. I mean, how can we expect the next generation to lead and step up and be business owners and politicians and parents if they don't have these skills and we aren't equipping them.
Speaker 2: So everyone has a stake in making sure that kids read.
