KIMBERLY TISSOT: all right. We are going to get started and we're going to start with talking about community interactions, how you want to really start looking at these soft skills. Let me get the right slide up. ROBERT HAND: we need our slides. KIMBERLY TISSOT: all right. Perfect. So it's very important to teach CLA participants how to serve and how their behaviors really impact the quality of impact they can make. Soft skills are very important to go over and some of the soft skills that we talk about, and you can see on page 78 through 85, we talk about dress. I know that when I first came to our center I went to our SILC meeting. That was one of the first days and it was terrifying, actually, because there were individuals with disabilities that were on the SILC who were not trained and there was one gentleman in particular I just remember him and he was wearing his pajamas. And we were representing the disability community when we serve on boards. This is what the point of CLA is. A lot of times people have never met, unfortunately have never met professionals with disabilities. Our CLA grads should all be professional and representing the disability community on the highest level. So we need to look at this. We need to teach people how to dress for professional boards. So sometimes what our staff does is they dress in suits and what they would wear to a board meeting to demonstrate, but you can do this in a number of ways. Show them different professional attire and then have a group discussion about it. Tone of voice is something that we also, yes, sir. AUDIENCE MEMBER: the only thing that I would say about dress is I think you have to be somewhat, you want to dress professionally, but you don't want to overdress for your group. And a lot of times what will happen is, I mean, that tends to make you stand out more around the table than what everybody else is. And so I always feel like you've got to try to dress appropriately into the group that you're working with. KIMBERLY TISSOT: absolutely. So kind of meeting the group's dress code standards. That would take some time, but maybe for the first meeting you might want to look exceptionally well. ROBERT HAND: we do very specifically talk about that. When we present we say if you get the chance to go to the group beforehand, look at how they run and how they dress, because the idea, as you say, is to fit in and be accepted as part of that. So some of them, everybody dresses quite formally, some of them are more relaxed. But still, you want to look somewhat professional. KIMBERLY TISSOT: and with that comes along hygiene. If you have a consumer who you may have noticed hygiene issues, that's something, that's a soft skill that you want to teach before having them join these boards and interacting with the community. And that's something all of us do anyways at CILs. We teach those independent living skills and oftentimes we do have to have those uncomfortable conversations which might include hygiene. Also, tone of voice. We do not want to train bullies. We do not want our, [applause] and we see this a lot and I've heard horrifying stories where there's name calling and yelling. That's not effective. That's not going to be an effective board member. So definitely this is a skill that we want to talk about. If someone talks loud, make them self-aware and teach those skills to help them control their behavior within the groups that they're working in. And also another thing that, this is my pet peeve and I'll tell, every single one of my staff members know this. If you're going to a meeting, you need to be present. We are not sending you to this meeting to just sit there. We need you to engage in the group and bring your voice. So make sure you are advocating at that table. And I've been at tables where there's several people with disabilities on the SILC sometimes and an issue about accessibility will come up and I'm looking around the table and waiting for someone to say something and they don't. They missed an opportunity. So that's what you want to teach. You don't want someone just to come to a meeting and sit there. Yes, sir. AUDIENCE MEMBER: just going back to your comment about the bullying and not just teaching our people, you know, not to be bullies, but there are bullies on boards. KIMBERLY TISSOT: absolutely. AUDIENCE MEMBER: and they can trigger and set people off. And so to teach safeguards about keeping control of yourself when a bully confronts you I think would be, or pushes your button. KIMBERLY TISSOT: and taking that emotion out. AUDIENCE MEMBER: yes. KIMBERLY TISSOT: yes. You can't get emotional. You can't take things personally. Did I hear a comment? AUDIENCE MEMBER: no, we're getting aggressive over here. KIMBERLY TISSOT: oh, do I need to come over there? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Let's talk about assertiveness. You need to teach bully management. KIMBERLY TISSOT: yes. Yes, we do. So those are very important components of this. And I'm sure all of you have examples of that. Yes, ma'am, in the back. AUDIENCE MEMBER: as a person whose voice is not always fully under my control thanks to my disability, I think one of the other important things we have to teach about that is that sometimes you have to have the advocacy skills to explain your disability and to say I might sound loud, I might sound like I'm really angry, but it's just the way my body reacts in certain situations. I might look really uncomfortable. I might be uncomfortable to look at, but that's not being unprofessional. I think having the self-advocacy skills to express that is something we really need to help people get a good grasp of. KIMBERLY TISSOT: and during that interview process for your recruitment, that's something you might want to assess. Are they a strong advocate first? Because to be an advocate in the community as a person with a disability, you have to be a self-advocate first. And so you have to make it known if you need assistance or any type of accommodations. So, yes, great point. We also teach time management skills. And time management, I mean, that includes coming to meetings on time, but also following through with tasks. If you've committed to doing something for the board that you serve on, you need to follow through in a timely manner. Attitude. Attitude kind of goes along with that past bully statement. You've got to be positive on these boards. If you're going to move boards forward, you have to show that leadership to be positive and get the group through issues a lot of times on boards. So teaching those skills. And you can do a lot, you can do role playing with all of these soft skills during your CLA. Critical thinking and problem solving. If you have an issue with something, you need to teach that you also need to come to the table with a solution. What would your solution be? Effective communication. I think this is something that our CIL does very well with teaching. If you can't communicate effectively and while serving on a board, your voice is not going to be heard. So teaching, and that goes along with a lot of this behavioral stuff on the boards. And we've got different, I should have, I should have brought all of our stuff. But we've got different activities that we do for effective communication. So you all can e-mail me and I'll get that to you as well when you start a CLA. We're here to support you. Body language. Body language is something. You can't go to sleep in meetings. You can't appear like you're mad when you are mad. You're going to have to have that poker face. Active listening. That's part of my pet peeve part about being present in the meeting. You need to be listening because you may miss something. You may miss something that only you could speak about. So be very careful. And teach them things that they need to be listening for on boards. Managing emotions. We spoke briefly. And then handling conflict. I think everyone, I know that we've seen a lot of CLA grads, and I'm sure you have as well, if someone disagrees with them, they think it's an automatic argument. That's not necessarily the case. You just need to teach them how to effectively handle that disagreement. Do you have anything to add? ROBERT HAND: yeah. In the book we do give a little more detail about that. She lists the pages. But also on that appendix, like on page 184, it talks about handling conflict. But I'm assuming most of you have other trainings about this. Like our youth program has a lot of training modules within each of these areas and we just apply those in some kind of modified way into our Leadership Academy. But if you don't have them, get back with us and we can help you with these. KIMBERLY TISSOT: I think this is where CILs can really shine, too, in teaching CLA because they are, this is an IL skill I think we all teach, these up here. So I think that when we're training professionals, we need to make sure that they have those basic IL skills to get through. Making sure your CLA speaks of community inclusion and diversity. This is something that you definitely want to make sure that you're not having a group of all the same people. You want to make sure you have a diverse group. And this is throughout CLA. The speakers that you get, you want to make sure that you're recruiting speakers from different professional areas. We have a whole slide on that in a second. And then also CLA participants, you want to make sure that they all have different interests, because that really creates conversation in the group. You want to make sure that they're from different communities, racial ethnicity is different, make sure we're speaking cross-disability here. So make sure that all the disabilities are not the same. Gender, sexual orientation, age. Now we have split some of the CLAs out for our youth just because I think sometimes, to attract youth, they do better with their peers. But we have had some CLAs that mix the two, which are the youth and then older professionals. It's worked well. It's really whatever you think will work within your own CIL. And a good board wants diversity, so remember that. That's a good board. And then so when you're inviting speakers to the table, this is a really great opportunity to get the community involved in your CLA. Each topic of CLA is set up to have an outside community speaker come in. So, for example, you might want to invite your funder to talk about, be one of the speakers. If your board wants to be engaged, this is also a great opportunity. If you have a CPA on your board who wants to be engaged in the work of the center, invite them to be a speaker of CLA. They learn about a program and really get vested into it. We have had representatives from city council. We've had a house rep. And we've also had a senator come speak at CLA. I think that's the most popular area when the senators come in because they get really excited to talk to them about different issues as well. But approach different non-profits in your state as well. We have SCANPO, which is the South Carolina Association for Non-Profits, come and they talk about board recruitment and they talk about different things of what board of directors should be doing. So invite professionals. You don't necessarily. If you're weak in one area, get a professional to come teach it. And I'll tell you those community members, once they come to that class to be a presenter, they are vested in your program and they want to come back to the next one. They want to come to the graduation. And then before you know it, they're recruiting for you. They're sending people to you to participate in CLA. This has been a strategy that we have used to get funding as well for our center to diversify. We have talked a lot about including an advisory group in some of our grants that we've written. So we talk about CLA and put that in the actual grant budget and have been awarded. So you can really do a lot. Most grants require you to have some type of an advisory council, so you can talk about how your advisory council will be different from any other advisory council and make you more competitive with your grant process. And then outreach, just invite community leaders to graduation and then go out and, I know that I say this word a lot, but we really do have to sell our programs and we have to sell IL. So go teach the community about the impacts that CLA have made and then they will see it once they have a CLA graduate on their boards or commissions or councils. ROBERT HAND: I'm going to go into a little bit more detail on some of that, but before I do, let me talk again a little bit about what Kimberly was but in a little bit of different approach to it. The Leadership Academy to me does many things and it has for our organization. I told you how it started and how the board set that goal. And it was our obligation as a staff to come up with a way to work on that goal to meet it. But we found from the Leadership Academy so much more than what we had originally wanted. What we wanted, of course, was a way to teach people with disabilities to be leaders in the community, and it's done that. We'll talk about later about getting people placed and how you go all about that. And that's critical and it's an important part, but it also, if you decide to do it, can play a big part in your organization in developing it. One of the things that I realized some time ago was we make things important based on how we see them and how we talk about them. So when you're saying we're going to start a Leadership Academy, you can say to your constituents, you can say to the public, hey, we heard about this Community Leadership Academy teaching people to be on boards and things and we're going to start one if you're interested. Or you can say we have the best idea in the world that's going to totally change our community. We are going to make our community one of the rare ones there is that it's totally inclusive. People with disabilities are going to be making the decisions in our community. This is going to change things from this point on. And you're going to get a different response based on that kind of approach. If you believe in it and you're willing to get out there and sell it, it will be successful, but it will also create a new vision, if you will, for your organization, because I mean that very sincerely. I've talked about it. RICV, when I came in, was, and Paula was involved early on, under threat of being shut down. We had a lot we had to change. The finances, the programs, etcetera. But a big part of it was our reputation in the community. People didn't even want to come, other organizations didn't want to refer people to us because of all of the turmoil and chaos going on. So internally we had to change that. But one of the things we found was as we were doing the Leadership Academy, as we were getting people appointed to boards and councils, all of a sudden the community saw us as a totally different entity. We were now one of the main groups that was teaching people to be leaders in the community. It was a radical difference for us. And so we had funders, we had one foundation, we're going to talk about funding later, but I want to do this as the introduction to that, who was giving us grants for something else and said, when they saw our academy and they came in to one of the sessions, they said we want to give you some money for that, because that is so important. KIMBERLY TISSOT: we've had similar experiences. Funders will start coming to you once you have a good reputation. You can just sit back and not have to write any grants, and that's a nice break. ROBERT HAND: so I say all of that as an introduction to this because your speakers and how you go about working with them will become a critical part of that. Hopefully, I know everything in this book and I can teach the whole academy, but if I do that, we've really limited not only what the people get out of it, but we've limited the use it can be for our organization, because when we get these outside speakers who not only have their own very specific knowledge, but we bring them in and we're showing them that people with disabilities are interested in their community, that they're learning skills that are going to make them great leaders, that they're going to be a way to help diversify the leadership within the community, these people really buy into it. And some of them, as you said, have become supporters, and almost all of them are after us, when are you going to have the next academy and am I going to be able to speak at it, literally. So getting the academy started is work and you've got to get it going. Once you get it, there's aspects of it that are basically in place and are really going to help you and they're going to be going and sort of self-perpetuating on it. So in each of the different areas, again, we recommend that you have a speaker. Now, you have to, you'll design your own when you do this. We do it now in six sessions that are three hours each one day a week. You can do it other ways, but, again, if you want to talk about any detail of that now or later, I'd be happy to. But for us, that works well because people can make that commitment and they can do other things in between. Yes, sir. AUDIENCE MEMBER: do you have an optimal class size? ROBERT HAND: I recommend no fewer than 10 and in most cases probably not more than 20. KIMBERLY TISSOT: yeah, we kind of max it out at around 12 just because of conversation and folks being at different levels. We've found that 12 was a good number. ROBERT HAND: if you have too few, you don't get that interaction when you're doing these mock scenarios, people aren't learning to work as a group. If you get too many, it's going to be hard to do it. You know, like I said, when I did, Oakland didn't want a train the trainer, they just wanted a two-day leadership academy, and they probably had 30 people there that I was presenting to. So that was much more difficult to do. So if you want ongoing ones, I wouldn't go over 20, and as she said, probably 12, 15 is ideal. And sometimes it's your own design. If you have a lot of people and you can bring in two or three facilitators to help work it, then you could do it with more, but it becomes much more difficult. Because this is a really hands-on work with the people. As you see, with a lot of these topics, everything from soft skills to parliamentary procedure, it's a very interactive hands-on kind of thing, so you need to get those working. So within each one, we always schedule an outside speaker for part of it. We typically have the topic and then we'll have the speaker come in for the last hour or something like that, last 45 minutes. But we have to vary that a lot. Sometimes we have people who, because of their timing, say, you know, if yours is going to run from 2:00 to 5:00, I can be there at 2:00 and give you an hour, but that's all I'll have. So we'll have the speaker first and then the topic afterwards. When you're doing that, you have to work with your speakers. Some of them we've known for a long time, so we know how they're going to present, but we have to make sure that they know the topic and they know, you know, the process we're trying to get across, the ideas we're trying to get in that so that they'll be addressing the correct things. Now, when it comes to the topic of the community leadership, there are a lot of options, but the very best we've had experience with is somebody in the community in a leadership position who has a disability and has been successful. That really gets that idea across. Now, later we often use a graduate of the Leadership Academy who's also somebody who's been successful at doing things in the community because that adds that extra component to it. But certainly the idea that they have some kind of leadership role either in business or in council in activist kinds of things they do, that's a crucial part of it. And that one's used to sort of set the stage for how people can be successful by going through the academy. Another one is when you're talking about nonprofit boards. And we've had a number of different speakers. Sometimes we've had executive directors come in. I've had the executive director of the UCP come. I've had the executive director of some other non-profits. One of them was the executive director of our community foundation who spoke. Sometimes we get officers from other boards or even from our board. We've had our board president speak. But more often we'll get an officer from another board. So maybe I've done a board training at some other organization and got to know their boards and I'll work with them and the president of their board will come in and talk about what was their experience coming on that board and learning about it and then becoming the chair and how that all worked with it and stuff. So again, it's to give a different perspective on the role of the board member either from the executive director's position and the boards they've worked with or from a board member and their experience with that. Again, that goes to the next one, too, board procedures. When you do that one, that's the one where you're talking about parliamentary procedures and stuff. So if you're going to have a board member, you want one who knows what they're doing and knows how it's supposed to work and can talk about their experiences in that. We have a nonprofit management consultant who we work, well, I'm going to say we, that's RICV, it's them now, but it was we, who works with them a lot and she'll volunteer her time every time. She loves this academy and so she'll volunteer her time and come in and talk about the whole board procedures aspect and how important that is. And she trains all over the state in big boards, hospital boards and all kinds of things. So she's very professional, very well known, and really gets into doing this and thinks it's so critically important, again, what we're accomplishing by getting this underrepresented group to be part of the decision making for their community. Finances. Again, you need to have somebody who knows nonprofit finances. It's not about the agency's finances. I mean, that can be talked about and used as an example, but remember you need to teach people that they're going to be on the board potentially of some nonprofit. They're going to have their own financial statements and so they need those generic skills of how to deal with that. And so we've had CPAs come in. We've had executive directors who are familiar with the finances and they will come in and share their financial statement and say this is how we deal with that. We've had our own financial person come in and talk about it. So you have a lot of options. You can use some of your own staff and some of your own board when you need to. We always try to get somebody else because that strengthens your connections in the community. And when you're using another nonprofit, they often then want their staff or their board members to attend an academy later on because they see how significant it is. Government councils is one of the best ones because you get to bring in those elected officials. So, you know, you've had a senator. I know Morin County in California, they had one of the state senators speak. We had a city council person speak. You often, though, get staff members, which is perfectly fine, but we'll have, we have the staff of one of our senators and she's been the office manager for I think four different senators during the time I've known her, which is probably 25 years, and she is absolutely bought into this program. And if we ask somebody else to speak on that topic, she doesn't like it, but sometimes she's not available so we get somebody else. But she really loves this opportunity. And within this, one of the things we teach, and she's the perfect person to do that, is we teach the importance of reaching out to your elected officials. So I don't know how it goes for you guys, and we are going to have a group discussion part of this. So many of the non-profits in our area have no real interaction with their elected officials and then they have a problem and then they run to them and say, help us with this problem. Well, they don't know who you are. They don't know if you're running a good program or one that they don't want to be associated with. So they may try to help you, but the commitment may not be there. So she invites the people. She said anytime you want individually or as a group, set up a meeting and come and talk to me and I'll show you how it works, how you can do that with every elected official. We'll do a little role playing. Come over to the office and say who you are and what's important to you, and we'll talk that out. And so we teach our people to go out and do that and reach out. Again, that's why we like the idea of spreading it over a period of time because then they can go to a couple of offices of elected officials and get in and talk to people and introduce themselves. And again it's a way to get in that really not only helps them, it totally promotes the leadership program, because these different elected officials are seeing these people who have a real interest, who have something that's important to them coming to these elected officials and talking about it. So that to me is one of your main areas of ways you can gain. Even if you already have strong contacts, which we did, we always have for many years, this gives it a whole different perspective. And they write it up in their reports. You know, we've had some of them get their picture in the newsletter that the elected official puts out because this is a really kind of unique way that they're reaching out to the community. And then this other one again, having past graduates share their experience either as an outside speaker on a specific topic or just coming in to do that we found very successful because we have some of our people, like some of yours, who have gotten really interested and they're getting on three or four different boards or councils. In fact, one of them is on about six, I think. And so they can come in and talk about all of these experiences they've had doing that and how significant it is and how they can feel confident doing it because they feel like they know what they're doing, and it's made a huge difference in that area. Okay. Let's go a little bit to funding and then we'll talk about the foundations and stuff. When we did our first one, by the way, we had no extra funding at all, we just did it. And that's, one of the approaches, when I can use it, that I like, one of the ways you can do things is say I have a great idea. I'm going to go look for funding and get them to sponsor it. And there's nothing wrong with that. We've done that on some things. But another way, if you have the money, is to do it and then you look for funding because then you can say this is there and I can already get you quotes from the people who went through it and how wonderful it is, and I can tell you that I already have three or four people on these boards. So you may look at that either way, because it's not expensive to do it. Now, we're assuming you have staff that you can already set aside some time for, so we don't allocate separate staff because all of this is independent living skills, advocacy skills, etcetera. So the cost per program, in other words, if you run a five- to six- session program, you can probably do it, depending on what you want to do, $25 to $60 per person. Again, the student manual, if you choose to use that at all, will cost you about $18, including shipping and tax and stuff, if you want to get that. You can use that and nothing else. Both of us, we get the abridged Robert's Rules of Order. We give a little portfolio to them and stuff because, again, we really want to promote the professionalism in the approach. You're going to have a little bit for snacks and, you know, you're going to print up some certificates and stuff like that, but the cost is not large. I recommend that if you're going to get into it, you do at least two a year. If you only do one a year, it's very likely to totally fail. Now, sometimes you may do more than two because you have different sites or you have different populations. Like if we do one in Fresno and one in Merced, I'm not counting that as two per year, but in any one area two per year will keep it going. Once you get that first one, particularly, once you get two of them, the system's in place and it's not going to be really difficult to develop it and keep it going from those. We found that funding it has not been particularly difficult. Now, a lot of funding is hard to come by, we all know that, but one of the things we discovered is people who would fund us for other things would not fund us for other things we're doing. So if we went and said we want a grant for independent living, you know, even we want a grant for employment programs, we want a grant for transportation, they weren't interested. But, and this varies, but a lot of those foundations, if you say we have a population which is hugely underrepresented in the decision making of their communities and we've got an ideal program, in fact, now we've got a program that's been proven to work in several locations across the United States, we can fund it for this fairly minimum amount, that's not been a difficult thing to sell. So looking at your foundations and going for that, I think you'll be able to get funding for it if you want to do that. Again, particularly because we can give you help in giving you information about its success. Yes. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I understand that the first time, not a bare bones budget, but that 25 to 60 does not seem to factor in the cost of, say, sign language interpreters should someone need one. Any advice on where to get those more expensive expenditures when you're trying to. ROBERT HAND: yes, that's absolutely true. I'm talking about the minimal, because if you were doing anything, you would provide those. If you were doing a disability advocacy group, if you were doing a peer support group, you would provide all of those reasonable accommodations anyway. But, yes, when you're looking for foundation funding, you want to include all of that in there. Did we have another comment? KIMBERLY TISSOT: and the grant that we have actually involves a number of things along with CLA, but we offer CLA in both offices and then also in the community. But we are also getting paid for tracking, getting paid for alumni association, staff time to develop, and then some time for community outreach. So we kind of wrote the grant very broad. But the specific goal of the grant that we have to fund CLA is to get more individuals on boards for health care, related to health care. So that's the overall. So you can write it to a particular interest area that a funder may have. ROBERT HAND: yes. So this amount of money I'm talking about is just, if you want to start one tomorrow without any other funds. KIMBERLY TISSOT: you can do it. ROBERT HAND: not taking into account the reasonable accommodations. You always make, the staff time you always have, you could do it, as far as new cost, you could do it for that. But we got like a $20,000 grant for it. Certainly within that grant we put in a lot of the expenses that we might ourselves cover otherwise. Yes. AUDIENCE MEMBER: a lot of times I've seen that if people have to make some type of personal commitment or personal contribution to something, they will take it as more valuable. Do you see, like when you have grant-sponsored or other sponsored where it doesn't cost them anything to attend these, do you see people dropping out or not taking it seriously? ROBERT HAND: we've had very little of that. Now, I have to say after the graduation when we talk about tracking, we do have people who don't necessarily go ahead and get on boards and things that we would have liked, but we've had nothing but absolute minor as far as people not following up or participating. KIMBERLY TISSOT: I don't think we've had anybody actually drop out of a CLA, but what we do though, is before they come, we tell them this is your responsibility to come to every meeting and it's your obligation. If you want to come to graduation and if you want to be a leader in the community, you have to participate. So we give them that pep talk and hold them to, we hold them accountable for being there every week for those six weeks. ROBERT HAND: and we allow a makeup session. But, yeah, that hasn't been a problem. But again, that's always issues you can do, you can say, well, we're going to charge people a certain amount of money to do it and, you know, that's another option. Another place where we found some success, personally, I think it has a lot more possibilities, is like corporations and businesses, you know, to get Bank of America to say they're going to sponsor one course, so this is the Bank of America Leadership Academy Course for this one. What for them would be a fairly small amount of money. You know, they could put in $3,000 or something and cover all of your costs on that one course. But get their name on it would be another good way, as well as other local businesses. We've had some funding from government, both government officials and council. So you've got one. KIMBERLY TISSOT: we've got one from a community foundation and we got one from the University of South Carolina. ROBERT HAND: and we've gotten one from the state council on developmental disabilities, but we've also had, I don't know again how it is in your states. In California, typically every city council and county supervisor has a pot of money that they're allowed to use for what they want. It's kind of a little secret thing they have. But they all have that and they can do things within their district to promote things that they think are important and we've had some of them put money into this because it looks so good for city councilman so and so to be sponsoring, and they might sponsor certain, you know, we may say it costs us $200 per person, and so they might sponsor three or four people to be from their district to be in this council and then later get them appointed to some advisory committee and stuff. So, again, I think it has much more unique ways of raising money than some of our traditional things. As you mentioned, universities. And part of this, too, you can use on where you have the meeting. At RICV we have several of the courses at our organization because we have a big enough conference room. But we've had them at Fresno State University. We've had them at Fresno City College. We had them for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Service Center. We've had it at Valley Center for the Blind. We've had it at the economic development center. And by having it at those different places it not only draws those groups in, they're much more likely to send people and sometimes you can get extra sponsorship. So like the university actually sponsored some of what we did on that by having the meetings in their places. Civic clubs. We haven't done that, there they haven't done it, but I think it has a unique possibility because several of those, part of their mission is promoting civic engagement. And so I think there are some very significant opportunities there. And then there's the idea of individual fees. We have had several people talk about that. RICV got approved for that course to have continuing education credit for the, for people who are licensed in rehabilitation counseling. So in that case, we had one individual who actually paid an additional fee to get that. As I said, we also got it approved as a university class under certain situations. So some of those give you some opportunities to provide, to charge other fees if you want to go that way. AUDIENCE MEMBER: so have you, we're talking about a university leadership academy for people with disabilities. Have you considered integrating the group and making this a training academy, an integrated training academy for not only people with disabilities, but people who either don't disclose, don't want to disclose or don't have a disability? And I'm thinking about this in this way because I know that to get state IL funds we have to agree o do certain systems change goals with state ED of New York every year and they're always talking about what it really means to make systems change. I think that the model you're talking about, the way you started, I understand why it's specifically for people with disabilities, but maybe next step is moving to an integrated model that, and I don't know, maybe by being a board that also includes non-disabled as your graduates join those boards, maybe that's the point of integration we're talking about? ROBERT HAND: all of our, all of them at RICV are integrated ones now. We started out only with people with disabilities, but we had such a demand from others that every course they run now what we say is you must express some interest in developing the rights of people with disabilities. We get rehab counseling students. We get social work students, human development students. Fresno state has a certificate in nonprofit management. And even though they have classes on it and on boards, a lot of them like to come to this because of its design. And then we'll have other board members who do not have disabilities of other agencies who want to come. AUDIENCE MEMBER: once they see what your graduates have learned and how they're performing on boards? ROBERT HAND: right. And so they don't have to have a disability, but they have to have expressed that they want to improve the rights and access for people with disabilities. And we feel that it helps show them the capabilities, because they're seeing all these other people with disabilities who are learning all of these great leadership skills. KIMBERLY TISSOT: and we started off just with consumers, but then when you put the invitation out and when you start your outreach, not just consumers will contact you because you'll get a reputation. We have providers that are now participating in CLA. There's been some family members. And then we have had a student as well. So absolutely I would promote that. But they would have to have, just like what Bob said, because the purpose of CLA, we definitely want to make sure that they have an investment in disability rights. ROBERT HAND: yes. AUDIENCE MEMBER: you said that you had that one time where it was college credit. ROBERT HAND: yes. AUDIENCE MEMBER: to take it? Did you go through one of those universities that had the nonprofit programs or how. ROBERT HAND: yeah. AUDIENCE MEMBER: were there a lot of extra hoops to jump through on that? ROBERT HAND: it really, my guess is it depends on your relationship with the university. Several of my staff that I hired had gone through the course to get the certificate of nonprofit management. So when we were teaching it, they approached them and said, hey, can you do this? And they said, yeah, as long as it's this many hours, and the fact that I had a master's and they had a master's. I mean, you have to find out the criteria. Sometimes you can do it through open university or the continuing ed part of a university. So I think it has a lot of options because it has a set curriculum, again, that's been successful in a lot of places. So we found that when we've gone into our foundation and our universities and show them the training manual, that's different than just going in and say, hey, we want to teach some course on leadership because this is a very formalized one. So we do want to have kind of a little more discussion of some of these parts that we've talked about. Are you going to participate in this? Or she's going to leave. One or the other. KIMBERLY TISSOT: she's getting a mic. PAULA MCELWEE: I might have to do that. So we want to talk a little about your specific situations and how they would relate to what we've said, because probably as this has been presented you've thought about what you would do, right, what's going on in your community and how these principles and ideas would apply? And so let's share that a little bit among ourselves because that expands even greater the potential that you have at each of the centers to do the work. So how much right now is your CIL involved in community outreach? Don't forget the microphones and raise your hand if you'd like to tell us. What do you do now for community outreach and do you see the CIL helping you with that? Go ahead. AUDIENCE MEMBER: right now our organization empowers agency is engaged in community conversations where we hold conversations in each one of our counties that we serve to ask individuals what is independent living to you, what are you currently receiving, what services do you need to receive, how involved you are in the community, things of that nature. And it's been very impactful in the way we. PAULA MCELWEE: it sounds like it. So when you think through how you would apply the Community Leadership Academy, do you see some questions that might be asked in those conversations? Do you see it as fitting in a little bit? AUDIENCE MEMBER: yes. I think that from being at this training that there's probably another set of conversations that needs to take place about involvement in boards in their community as a voice. So I think that that's something that we'll be able to take back. PAULA MCELWEE: excellent. Because remember that philosophy, that independent living philosophy, equal access is a key component in that. So how we're achieving that is good. Anybody else want to share? AUDIENCE MEMBER: with the consumers that we have in my area, they all want to be very active in the community and they participate in, we have a Raleigh County Make It Shine where we kind of organize our own group to clean up the neighborhood, you know, anything that they can do to be involved. West Virginia University just moved into our town and they want to help, you know, like welcome packets, anything that they can do to, you know, help the community, but also let the community know that they're out there and, you know, I don't want to sound, you know, like it's not what I want to do, but them being on these boards and getting the training to be on these boards, it would free up a lot of my time so I can teach more people to go out and serve on these boards where they're on these boards and they're spending their time, you know, learning about the processes and everything that goes along and not me. I don't want to sound selfish, but, or like I'm taking everybody's time, but they get to be hands on with it instead of me coming back and relaying the information to them. Now I'm passing the torch to them to be able to do that. PAULA MCELWEE: yeah, you bring up a really interesting point, I think. How many of you have your staff serving on some of these councils? Because I think that's part of what you're saying, right? So right now staff are going to these meetings as part of their job duties, but the reality is you can't do them all. There are more councils, Bob was listing that bunch in Fresno and I didn't even know it was that big and I live there. You know, there are more councils than you can ever impact with staff. And so how can you spread your impact? It's got to be a part of that. So that's going to be real important. Yeah. Other insights into how you would apply this and what you're doing now with community activity? AUDIENCE MEMBER: maybe this is part of the training this afternoon or tomorrow morning, but so also the idea that if we're empowering them to know what to do on councils and commissions and advisory boards, they know about the disability rights agenda. So I imagine teaching about the disability rights agenda and the multiple issues, areas that covers is part of the academy? ROBERT HAND: what we do is there's the initial part where we talk about the history of the IL movement and what we're doing in it and what role that we see within that. But we're very much a part of each person has to decide what's important for them. So we don't use the academy for us to promote a very specific agenda, but rather to teach the skills with the IL philosophy background and then say, like we have disability advocacy teams where we do give input to them and they decide which very specific topics they want to address. And so we tell all of our graduates you can certainly go onto those to do it, to learn more and then go on to other ones. But there's, again, very different options. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I actually love that response for a number of reasons, because I don't know how other states are, but when we look at our National Council of Independent Living and my own New York State Council that oversees independent living and actually comes up with our own party agendas, legislative agendas every year, this whole issue about physician-assisted suicide and about whether or not the disability community feels we're in support of bills that may allow for that in their states are not, don't always agree. So the idea that we're giving individuals the right to make decisions themselves about where they stand on the issues I think is in keeping with IL. So that's. KIMBERLY TISSOT: when we're having a CLA what we also do is talk about the history of the independent living movement, disability rights movement, but also we talk about some identified barriers and how their voices can impact change to remove these barriers. So in every state, we use the Statewide Independent Living Council needs assessment to identify the barriers, and so we review that with them. And to have an opportunity for open discussion about how their voice could change or could influence some of this. So. PAULA MCELWEE: this is definitely a relationship that's built on helping people to have their own power within this. So it is not that you control those folks that are out there on those councils. That's not the model. The model is give them the tools they need so that they can speak for themselves. Other comments or ways you're going to look at this? AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm in a transition stage right now leaving from being the CEO of this CIL of South Florida to being the state director for the Independent Living Council and in that transition I had been working with Florida International University. They have a special pilot project from the legislature to bring in 30 individuals with developmental disabilities to go through university. And it's a very specialized program and we had developed a contract with them at the CIL to teach independent living skills as part of that. And I'm thinking with this, they've invited me when I change roles to serve on their disability advisory council. And so I'm thinking with this, this could be a really good thing to tie in a Leadership Academy, offering that in addition to the independent living training that the center is doing, but having the SILC actually go into this university and maybe even go into other universities and say, look, we've got a great project. Give us a week and this is what it will cost you and here is what your outcomes will be. PAULA MCELWEE: absolutely. Because when you think about it, advocacy is such a key role and there are so many different ways to approach it. This is another element of that independent living philosophy, advocacy is that people speak on those public councils and public places that they get to. One of the other advantages, as I said, each person has their own approach when they get on those councils, but one of the advantages is now you know people on those councils and they know you. And so there is a good opportunity for you to do things like, say, would it be possible for you to raise this as an agenda item and let us know when it's going to be talked about? Because we've noticed that this is an issue and you're on that council, so just so you know, we would like to see that get on the agenda. So you have another way, an extra tool in your tool box to go into those other councils, even if they are councils on, you know, dog rescue. Because the dog rescue people are some of the key people that need to understand service animals and don't. They're some of the same people that you need to communicate with. So sometimes there are these connections that are not obvious right out of the gate, but that's the person's interest area and they get on that council and they can speak to a very, you know, a very significant issue without, seamlessly, you know, when it comes up. Because some of these councils or boards are very informal, so it isn't on an agenda. But when it comes up, they know and they can speak to it. How else are some of you going to utilize this information when you get home? Oh, Bob. ROBERT HAND: one of the questions I thought was interesting, many of you said you have staff on councils. Has anybody been really successful in placing other people with disabilities, consumers or people you work with, getting them on boards and councils? Is somebody already doing that pretty much? PAULA MCELWEE: yeah, good, I see some nods. ROBERT HAND: can you say how you do that? AUDIENCE MEMBER: one of the elements that we always incorporate when we're working with our consumers is that with rights come responsibilities and how to get actively involved in the community, particularly when we work with our young people. We talk with them about changing their self-perception, they're somebody to get help and to show people that they can be of help. So we plug them in as volunteers and interns in local businesses and corporations and that's their foot in the door. So through that many of them have now ended up on, we've got folks on the United Way board. Renee is on the hospital board. So it is a very good mechanism. But that was where my cautionary note came in before because sometimes they get on there and forget what their original motivation was. But it's just through emphasizing the fact that with your rights as a person with a disability come the responsibilities to be involved in the community. We've got a whole crew of people that go to all the local city and town council meetings. Not on the council yet. Although we did get a mayor elected, so that was pretty cool, I guess. AUDIENCE MEMBER: so from a SILC perspective, we're going to use this, we're pretty ambitious, so we're going to implement a statewide project at six different sites across the state where we're going to, this is probably, this academy portion is probably part of a three-leg tripod, if you will, because I don't see how you can move directly to teaching how to, to teaching these pieces without meeting people where they are and first teaching disability history, the importance of community, how to be an advocate, where to get information. I mean, this all came up in our needs assessment that we did in preparation for the most recent SPIL. That folks who have disabilities across the state are completely disconnected, don't feel like they get information, and when they do, you know information about policy and legislation and when they do, they don't know how to respond. So we're essentially going a) here's the independent living movement, and disability history, community and how advocacy and action and these types of things have affected the movement to here's how you do that to then significant pieces of what we're hearing about today. That's how we're going to use it. Again it is six sites across the state, each of the centers got funding through our SPIL to implement this project so that's how we're going to be doing it. AUDIENCE MEMBER: what state is that? PAULA MCELWEE: Arizona. KIMBERLY TISSOT: we'll be watching Arizona. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I got into the our team act because of my DOGFITE, Disability Organizing Group for Initiating Total Equality. We're an activist group and we go to legislatures and do visits on issues that concern us, and then we go to board meetings and stuff that are part of our things that are concerning us, and then we go back to our DOGFITE and report on the meetings. So that's how we got started. So I think this program would work if we implemented it with our DOGFITE group or with some of our. PAULA MCELWEE: absolutely. AUDIENCE MEMBER: areas of focus for the RIL and it's for their groups. PAULA MCELWEE: there's absolutely a place for all the different components and often the same person can follow that trail. So you start by identifying the area, attending the meetings, finding out what their agenda is. And then as you begin to get your mind around that, you figure out what's the process for actually being on that council to make the decision we want to see? And then you can, if you've prepared people well, they can step right into that. So, and there's a long history of that. I still remember, some of you are old enough, you might have been on this mailing list, too, but only few of us, probably, and that was when Justin Dart was first appointed to the National Council, then it was the National Council on the Handicapped, he was the first person with a visible disability to be appointed to that council. I know, it seems unbelievable today, doesn't it? And he was not allowed to take a very active role in the beginning because people just kind of talked over him. So he took his own minutes. Now this was before fax machines and it was before e-mail. I received a photocopied handwritten set of minutes. I wish I had kept them all, I could just kick myself, of those council meetings because he wrote down what was really said in those meetings and sent it out to the community and little by little he increased his value to that committee and to the community at large, right, and eventually he was the chair of that council at the time that they published Toward Independence, which became the ADA. There's your little history lesson for the day. Yeah, go ahead. AUDIENCE MEMBER: thanks. I'm the current chair of our county's disability advisory commission. We have six open seats right now and one of my goals is to fill those seats this year. However, one of the other commissioners said that they are not in favor of just anybody, they want someone that's knowledgeable on the ADA and Access Barrier Act and all that stuff. So do you incorporate that sort of information into your trainings or. KIMBERLY TISSOT: we do. And this is what you can do with CLA, too. You can really create your own design of it as long as you follow the components. And add things that are going to fit the needs of your community. ADA, I think everyone should know about the ADA. So, yeah, having a session on that. And that's something that we do with the disability rights history and all of that as well. Can you all just clarify what DOGFITE means again just so everyone knows that we're not talking about actual dogs again? AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm the staff facilitator for that. It's the Disability Organizing Group for Initiating Total Equality. And so DOGFITE is the acronym for that. It was conceived prior to my working at Resources for Independent Living and it's gone through various permutations. Right now we have a very active group. We've got five committees. A president, actually chair, vice chair, president, vice president. I'm not sure, but it's the same thing, and a secretary. We hold monthly meetings and right now we're involved in a campaign in California, most states only have SSI. In California they kick in additional amounts called State Supplementary Payment or SSP. And we're doing a statewide advocacy effort to get that raised and a cost of living adjustment. The reason I say that is because some of our DOGFITE members are very vocal in that and are receiving some statewide recognition. One of our members was quoted in the New York Times once. It was just a big deal. It was fun, right. It was really fun. So that's what it's all about. And Helen is our chair for our transportation committee. PAULA MCELWEE: anybody else wants to share this kind of information about what you're going to do when you get home with this. ROBERT HAND: in one of the questions I wanted to ask as well, so we have, RICV has Community Leadership Academy, but they also have other groups. They have the disability advocacy team, they have a youth leadership team. And so I wanted, and then we encourage people to go through the academy, so not only to go out to other organizations, but to go back to our own programs that we're running to use those leadership skills. So I wondered if anybody else had other leadership programs or other, you know, organized advocacy groups or programs that would interact with an academy. PAULA MCELWEE: anybody? I see a couple of nods. But anybody want to give an example? No? Okay. Sometimes those councils are not, you know, they're not always disability specific, but often they are. Sometimes within the center you have peer groups that are, you know, a single disability or a single issue or a single age group or a single, you know, whatever it is that caused that group of people of peers to come together and leadership skills are always a positive thing for those groups, too, to really, you know, shine as professional leaders. So that's always good. Any issues around open meeting laws in your state that you'd like to throw out? Because every state is absolutely different and I think some of you probably, as Bob described California, I thought that was very interesting. I know that there's, I ran into a situation with one of the states where they learned that not only were the centers required to be open meetings, but if you had an executive session in that particular state, it's the only state I know of where this is the case, if you had a particular executive session around personnel, the personnel that you were talking about had to be there with their lawyer. So it's different from every state, right? Every state has a different one. Any open meetings issues that you've run into? Yeah, Teresa. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think many states would benefit from improving, coming into the 21st century in terms of technology because I know you have to be physically present in order to vote. Well, you've got folks that maybe the transit is not arriving that day or maybe this or maybe that. So I think it's unfortunate that more states are not recognizing that. I understand you can't just abandon all the current guidelines, but that's unfortunate. PAULA MCELWEE: that's a good point and that's an area where maybe some advocacy could begin to happen in some of your states where that is not taken into consideration. Transportation is a major barrier to some of these other things we've talked about, too. Being on some of these councils, the council starts at 7:00 and it gets over at 10:00 and you might be able to have transit drop you off at 6:00 when they quit. You're an hour early, but who's going to get you home, you have to get a cab. So there are barriers, transportation barriers, and helping people kind of know how to negotiate that and figure out what their options are is sometimes a challenge in some communities more than others again. Because some of your transit systems are better than others. That's an interesting barrier for sure. Go ahead. AUDIENCE MEMBER: back when there used to be an organization that provided this type of training, they required that there would be a sponsoring agency for the individual going through that training and we would then commit to supporting that individual whether it's transit or what have you to make sure that they were able to successfully complete the training and the process. So have you ever thought about doing something like that? ROBERT HAND: explain it again? AUDIENCE MEMBER: right. So Resources for Independent Living, we sponsored three people to go to, it was called Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute and it required an agency to sponsor that individual to participate in that institute training. And we were required to support that person whether it would be transportation or materials, you know, if they needed pens and paper, that sort of thing, to make sure that they were successful in completing that training. Is that something that you think might work with this or, especially in transportation. People of low income and if they're using a paratransit service that they don't operate in the evening and they can get there but they can't get home, like in the example that was used, is that something that maybe we could think about doing? ROBERT HAND: sure, I think, go ahead. KIMBERLY TISSOT: absolutely. And I don't know if you all know, but DD Councils have funding for that specific purpose as well. You can also go to DD Council if someone is going for professional development. I think that's nationwide. PAULA MCELWEE: and SILCs have provision in the law. That is an allowable expense of course. AUDIENCE MEMBER: but a lot of people with developmental disabilities are on Medicaid waivers, so these types of transportation costs are built into their budgets and so that would be another way. But, I mean, for some of these folks they're living in residential facilities and have access to vehicles, lift vehicles that are provided through them living in these residential settings. That's different. So you've got no para transit at night or crappy para transit response, I think that idea is actually brilliant. A private pay from a sponsor to make sure that transportation is covered. PAULA MCELWEE: yeah, prepay the cab or whatever. ROBERT HAND: but in a more generic sense, we've certainly had participants who mainly went to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Service Center or mainly went to the Valley Center for the Blind or some of those others and although it hasn't been necessary, I could see where you would kind of recruit and if you wanted to, say would you sponsor that individual to come in some kind of sense, either pay some or make sure they follow up or do those other things. That would certainly be a feasible approach. PAULA MCELWEE: anybody else? Yeah. AUDIENCE MEMBER: yeah, I checked the site that Kimberly provided to us with regard to the open sunshine laws, open meeting laws per state. Puerto Rico being a territory and not actually a state, it's not there. So I kind of did a quick google search on different articles during the break and it appears that there isn't an open meeting law in Puerto Rico. There's nothing in place yet. But my question was besides the open meeting law, I'm also a council member for the SILC. Originally I started going to the SILC meetings when I wasn't a council member because the law says that they should be open to the public. At one point, I don't know why, it was voted that a part of the meeting would be open to the public and a part of the meeting would be closed. And what I'm seeing is that the open part of the meeting is basically just discussion about different topics related to the disability community or key speakers or invited speakers, but when we're actually talking about the gritty stuff that the committee does, that's discussed in the closed meeting. I'm guessing, yeah, this has worried me and having the information here, it's gotten worse. PAULA MCELWEE: I can see why. Let's talk a little bit more about that, you and I, because that may be a place where it has to do partly with, or you could go back to the Rehab Act and talk about an interpretation of what it means that the meetings are open and we might be able to get some interpretation that clarifies that for your SILC. So let's work on that. Yeah. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I just wanted to mention that something that goes hand in hand with the open meeting laws is the Freedom of Information Law which is in place both on the federal and individual state levels and it's a good thing to educate yourself about. It could provide access to government documents and documents from agencies and other entities. PAULA MCELWEE: good point. Other open meetings comments? Yes. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think Florida has the extreme or one of the extremes that when I used to hear from California what Florida, you know, their sunshine law, I thought, oh, that can't possibly be, how can they function that way, and I get there and it's really that way. And it does limit functioning in that if any two board members, council members, anybody who falls under the sunshine law, if they even speak to each other at dinner or out in the community, anything that may eventually come to a vote, they're in violation of that sunshine law. It's really strict. Everything we do has to be out in the open, in public. The only thing we're allowed to do is if it comes to personnel, we're allowed to have a closed session. It really places a lot of limitations, not only on us. It has been determined by the Department of Education that we as centers that we do fall under the sunshine law because we get state money and we're carrying out on the duties of the state and of course the SILC or FILC would also fall under it because it the governors. PAULA MCELWEE: I'm sorry. Two is really onerous, right? Because you can't even speak. ROBERT HAND: it's generally three in California they say. But when I went through training by the attorney for the Department of Rehabilitation, one of the things he said to us is if you're getting things done, you're probably not following the Bagley-Keene Act. That's how restrictive they thought it was.