Scrappy

ShelterBox

Four words written on a piece of paper: “shelter, warm, comfort, dignity.” This is where ShelterBox began. Tom Henderson, the original founder of ShelterBox, turned with his idea to his local Rotary Club in Helston, England for support, and they took up the mantle. Today, over 20 years later, Rotary International is still a key partner. Here in the U.S., Kerri Murray is at the helm of the largest ShelterBox affiliate in the world. Since 2015, Kerri has personally overseen relief efforts for some of the most dire events in recent memory, including conflicts in Syria and Yemen, and most recently in Ukraine, an earthquake in Haiti, a typhoon in the Philippines and famines in Africa, just to name a few. Links: ShelterBox USA Rotary International Rotary – Helston, England Save the Bay Direct Relief Providence College The Boston Red Sox (why not, she would’ve been great!) Full Transcript Chris Straigis – 00:01 Welcome to Scrappy, the podcast about small companies doing big things. I’m your host, Chris Straigis. I walked by a sign not too long ago in downtown Philadelphia. That read “start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.” It really stopped me in my tracks, three simple sentences, but a profound and moving manifesto. We all have within us to power to affect change, I really do believe that. And I also believe that as a general rule, most humans when confronted with another suffering will skew heavily towards compassion. Now where those two traits intersect, you’ll find positive action; action that solves big problems or helps to alleviate the pain of another. For those special people who find themselves in the middle bit of that venn diagram, they do in fact begin where they are with what they have, and then they take action. Usually in our stories, we focus on a person singular who took up the mission-driven call to use their skill or talent, or simply their will and drive to make the world a better place in some specific way. Chris Straigis – 01:22 It’s easy to point to them and say, look, look at what that person is doing. We’ve always recognized, however that behind many, if not, most of the people we feature, there’s a team who also take up the mantle, motivated by the work or the cause, or even simply inspired by another person taking action. Today, we focus not just on the origins and the current leader of a company, ShelterBox, but we also turn a well deserved light on the selfless brave, and in some cases, heroic difference makers who are on the frontline, the boots on the ground for this global aid organization. Chris Straigis – 01:59 Four words written on a piece of paper: “shelter, warm, comfort, dignity.” This is where ShelterBox began. In a 2008 CNN interview, Tom Henderson, the original founder of ShelterBox, describes the epiphany he had while watching news footage of disaster relief efforts. Chris Straigis – 02:27 In that moment in 1999, his compassion for the scene turned into an idea, then into action. “If people have lost everything” Henderson asked, “why should they lose their dignity as well?” The idea was simple. Provide disaster relief victims with an easily transportable kit that included the most basic needs for survival: shelter, clean water tools. He eventually turned with this idea to his local Rotary Club in Helston, England for support, and they took up the mantle. Today, over 20 years later, Rotary International is still a key partner, with its global reach in hubs in nearly every corner of the world. Kerri Murray is at the helm of the largest ShelterBox affiliate in the world here in the United States. Kerri’s been President of ShelterBox US since 2015 and has personally overseen relief efforts for some of the most dire events in recent memory, including conflicts in Syria and Yemen, and most recently in Ukraine, an earthquake in Haiti, a typhoon in the Philippines and famines in Africa, just to name a few. Kerri, thank you so much for talking to me today. Uh, I usually like to start by following the breadcrumbs into the past to help paint a picture of how one ended up doing the work they do now, but I wanna change it up a bit today and start by asking this, what do those four words mean to you? “Shelter, warm, comfort, dignity.” Kerri Murray – 04:02 For me, those four words represent really one of my reasons for being, and certainly the work that we do every day at ShelterBox. Those words are at the core of why we exist. Coming back from the Ukraine, Poland border where I was working, I think those words are even more important to me than ever before. And they represent to me that people who’ve been affected by disasters and some of the worst humanitarian crises in our generation have the basic things that they need to sustain their life and to enable their recovery. And I think those four words are at the core of what we do every day. And it’s, it’s why I do the work I do at ShelterBox. Chris Straigis – 05:00 That’s a great answer. And it says a lot about why you’re doing the work that you do. Most of our shows hone in on the specific key person who’s behind the wheel of an organization or movement. But I also think ShelterBox is such a great example of the hard work, dedication and shared mission of so many people, especially your SRTs or ShelterBox response teams. We’ll get into that. But I think that your personal story might just be a great analogy to step into that broader scope. So I wanna touch a bit on you and your path. Let’s do a quick, deep dive. You were born and raised in the proud new England area. So it’s the 1980s, in the small town of Naugatuck, Connecticut. A young Kerri Murray is sitting in her room listening to, I don’t know, maybe the Pixies and the Cars, thinking about the future. What did you want to be when you grew up? Kerri Murray – 05:53 Well, in the 1980s, I was playing on the softball team, uh, at my school as well as on the boys’ baseball team. And there’s no question that I really was dreaming about being the first woman on the Boston Red Sox. And I am a huge baseball fan, I’m a huge Red Sox fan. It didn’t pan out quite as I expected, but that’s probably, uh, what I was thinking. Chris Straigis – 06:25 In 1991, you made a big step into your future at Providence College, right up the road in Rhode Island. You took a path toward political science. Why was that your focus? Kerri Murray – 06:38 You know, I always had a, just an affinity to public service. I just always felt this burning desire to be part of the political process I had worked and been part of on some campaigns in, in high school and grammar school. And I just wanted to find a way to serve. And when I got to Providence College, what was so unique was that about a mile and a half down the road was the State House. And I learned early on when I started school that I actually could intern and I started interning for a state representative there. And then I was hooked. I just found myself in the throes of Rhode Island state politics. And I absolutely loved it. And actually, um, my last year of college at Providence, I ended up really going to night school there because I was really just so swept up in working in Rhode Island politics that my last year of school, I became a lobbyist and I became a lobbyist for an environmental group, which is an incredible humanitarian organization called Save the Bay. And I started lobbying for them. I was their first lobbyist and really advocating against the dredging of Narragansett Bay. And that was, uh, an incredible opportunity for me. So that was my last year of college, and then I graduated in the spring of 1995. Chris Straigis – 08:10 Facing the realities of graduation. Kerri told me that she had decisions to make. And with her tuition loans coming due, she turned to corporate work and in a fateful move, landed with a global pharmaceutical giant. Kerri Murray – 08:25 In the late 1990s, I started working for GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals and I spent 13 years there and it was the most transformational experience, learning deep business skills and working both in the United States and in Europe. But in really in 2004, my whole life changed. I was pregnant with my first and only daughter and in an instant, everything went wrong and, um, she stopped breathing and I had an emergency C-section and they had said that she had a cord wrapped around her neck many times, three times. And they said she hadn’t grown for the last 10 weeks of my pregnancy and they didn’t think she’d make it. But eventually they said that if she lives, she’ll never talk because she had paralyzed vocal cords. And so that was really a transformation for me in realizing that so many parts of the world being pregnant can be a death sentence. Kerri Murray – 09:29 And in many parts of the world, I would not have made it. My daughter certainly would not have. The difference was we had access, right? Access that so many people in the world don’t have. During that experience, I started getting involved again, on the side, with a lot of different humanitarian organizations, just volunteering, anything I could, whether it was my time, whether it was resources. And then in 2009, we had a new CEO that came in at GlaxoSmithKline and really his agenda was trying to transform the industry, the pharmaceutical industry. And he wanted to do that by starting with our company. And he tapped me and a handful of other executives from around the world and he asked us if we would be willing to do nonprofit assignments. Kerri Murray – 10:24 And so at the end of 2009, I was embedded into an organization in California called Direct Relief. And they had been founded in 1948, but were having a lot of issues just, uh, overall with sustainability. Expenses exceeded their revenue every year, they were having trouble, uh, really raising funding for the organization, and awareness. And so I came in to help them on a six-month assignment. And I was on the job for a month when the earthquake in Haiti hit. And that was a disaster that was heard around the world. It was devastating. It killed hundreds of thousands of people. It displaced a million and a half people in an instant. And I went to Haiti and I, and I saw that it was these incredible nonprofit organizations on the ground that were really filling gaps around basic needs, food, water, shelter, access to medical care. And that was the first time I actually saw ShelterBox. Um, that was one of the largest responses in their history. They were everywhere providing temporary shelter to Haitians who’d been displaced in an instant. Kerri Murray – 11:45 I fell in love with humanitarian relief work and particularly disaster relief work in that experience. And I came back to, uh, from Haiti and I just realized that I could leverage everything I ever learned in my corporate life and I could apply it to these nonprofits. And ultimately it didn’t mean we were making more money. It meant that we could save more lives. And so I got off the corporate in 2010 after my six-month assignment and I spent the next five-and-a-half years with that organization until one day I got the call from ShelterBox in 2015 to come serve as their president. Chris Straigis – 12:34 Just so that we’re all on the same page. Can you describe ShelterBox for me? And what’s at the core of your mission. Kerri Murray – 12:41 We’re a global humanitarian relief organization that provides emergency shelter and essential household items to people who’ve been displaced in an instant, either by a natural disaster or by a crisis situation, conflict situation, civil war situation. And so the center of gravity of what we do is the provision of the shelter. And then the other things that we provide that you think about that when you need to set up household very quickly, that are essential for life. Things like light. So you’ve lost power in so many of these instances, we include inside the box, waterproof solar lanterns. We also see often in disaster situations, contamination of the water source, so we include a water purification unit, containers to store purified water. You see aid organizations bring in food and water, but what are you gonna boil water in? What are you gonna prepare a hot meal in? So we include a whole stainless steel cook set. Then we have mosquito nets to protect against vector-borne disease in wet conditions. We include everything from blankets to ground mats that you can sleep on, as well as a tool set. And it’s all about really giving these displaced families the tools that they need to enable their self recovery and shelter is the absolute first step in the recovery process. Chris Straigis – 14:11 Tom Henderson originally took his idea to his local Rotary Club in that small town in England. And they provided some key early support to get it off the ground. Now today, Rotary International is a worldwide partner with ShelterBox and a key element in the speed and scale of your disaster relief efforts. Can you tell me a bit more about this partnership and the value that it brings to your organization? Kerri Murray – 14:36 It was a simple, but great idea. Um, we’ve since become at ShelterBox, we’re a separate 501 C3 nonprofit. We’re a separate group. However, we remain the official project partner of Rotary International in emergencies. Now, across the world, there are 35,000 Rotary Clubs in 200 countries. And so Rotarians often answer the call and there are often in sources of information when awful things are happening in the world. Some of the first folks that we talk to, you know, even in the, in this whole situation with the Ukraine crisis, you know, the first folks we were talking to were Rotarians on the ground in the region to really get a good understanding of what was happening. So they often serve as providing information on the disaster or on the conflict situation. They often serve as volunteers locally, when does, especially in natural disaster situations, they mobilize and help us with logistics, supply chain training, putting tents up. So they are one very important partner in this global humanitarian mission. Chris Straigis – 15:47 Now, as I mentioned earlier, uh, I wanna zoom in and shine a light on some of the incredible people that have taken up the cause. And in some cases are even putting their lives on the line to serve. It’s one thing to prepare and ship your boxes into a disaster zone. There’s sourcing materials, assembly, the transport logistics. But then there’s the very real challenge of the so-called last mile. You have to get large shipments of your relief product into some of the worst conditions geographically or even geopolitically. Obviously you can’t use FedEx or UPS for this. Instead you use SRTs. At a high level, can you describe these amazing people who are at ground zero for ShelterBox? Kerri Murray – 16:30 When we were first started, our founders created something called the SRT, the ShelterBox Response Team. And these are volunteers that come from all walks of life, from all over the world. And essentially they apply to become a first responder with our organization. They go through about a year of training and one in 30 people will pass the program and become an SRT member with our organization. And so these are the folks that really help an enable ShelterBox to scale up a response and serve thousands of families when something really horrible happens. And this work can be extraordinarily challenging. It’s very physically demanding, uh, but it’s incredibly rewarding for these folks. And, um, it’s the only way that we’re able to really do the work that we do at ShelterBox, because at any given time, I mean, we’re responding all over the world. In addition to the Ukraine crisis right now we have, uh, a huge deployment going on in the Philippines for super typhoon Rai, which hit last December. We are deploying aid to Yemen, to Syria, to Cameroon, Ethiopia. So we are working in some of the most challenging disaster, but also conflict situations in our world. And we couldn’t do it without this incredible army of, of response team members. Chris Straigis – 18:01 I’m sure every one of your SRTs comes away from a mission with some incredible stories. Can you share one or two stories about specific people or events that are the stuff of ShelterBox legend? Kerri Murray – 18:14 Our organization works extensively in a country called Cameroon and we work in a refugee camp called the Minawao camp. And our claim to fame in this camp is that ShelterBox is the only provider of tents to new arrivals at this camp. And a few years back, uh, our teams met Esther. Esther is from Nigeria, Boko, Nigeria. And as a young teenager, Boko Haram, the militant group, stormed her village and she was with her family. And in the middle of the night, they killed her father. They raped and murdered her mother. They killed her brothers and they told her to run, which meant she was likely gonna be target practice. Kerri Murray – 19:07 But Esther miraculously made it to the border of Cameroon and with a group of girls from her village, she was taken into Cameroon by security forces and she was left at the Minawao camp. And for so many Nigerian refugees who make it out the Minawao camp is the first step in their recovery. And really what changed her life was she took a sewing class at the camp and she became the finest seamstress of her block at the camp. And for these refugees, they could live for on average of 17 years at a refugee camp. And she’s become a seamstress, she’s married, she’s now had two children and she supports her family on her income. But she is indicative of the type of people that we work to find every day at ShelterBox and help enabling their recovery. And sometimes it’s newly displaced and sometimes it’s the long term displaced, but Esther is really the reason we do this work every day to help her with the basic things that she needs to help sustain her family when she’s gone through something, just absolutely horrible. Kerri Murray – 20:18 Another story that comes to mind, I flew into Kraków, where our response team is working and we coordinate within the UN system. I actually went with one of my teammates and we went down to work on the border, the Ukraine border, just a few miles over the border into Poland. And we were working at the main train station over the border where 20,000 new refugees are coming every single day from Ukraine into Poland. And it was it’s the middle of winter. It’s extraordinarily cold. The people stepping off the train station were women, children, elderly, disabled, and then dogs and cats. And I saw very few men because if you’re between the age of 18 and 60, you’re forced to stay behind a fight. And so families are having to make these unbelievable decisions and choices about fleeing their country and oftentimes leaving family behind. Kerri Murray – 21:18 And that was what I experienced. I talked to one woman, Julia, who spent five days fleeing the country on foot on bus and then train with her 10 year old son. And when I met her, she was absolutely exhausted. She wasn’t relieved. She was an absolute fear because she told me she had to leave behind her 22 year old son. And not only was she afraid, would she ever see her son again? Would her home be gone when? And, and if she could go back to her country? She also had had no idea where she was gonna sleep that night. And so, you know, we’re also seeing this moment right now, this situation, which I believe, I mean, we’re hearing it’s the fastest growing refugee crisis since World War II in Europe. And it’s incredible to look at the numbers. We’re approaching 3 million refugees. Millions internally displaced within Ukraine. I’ve never seen our refugee crisis situation moving so quickly like this one. Chris Straigis – 22:25 Kerri, let’s dive in a little bit more on this current crisis in Ukraine. What, if anything makes this situation unique compared to other relief efforts that you’ve managed with ShelterBox? Kerri Murray – 22:39 So what makes this Ukraine crisis so different right now is the scale and the severity and how fast moving this is. And so with many conflict situations that we’re now, you know, at the 11 year anniversary of our response in the Syrian refugee crisis. I mean, that was slower moving, obviously hugely consequential, half the pre-war population has been displaced. But this Ukraine crisis is moving so quickly. So we now you have nearly 3 million refugees, millions internally displaced. The numbers are expected to increase in the days and weeks and months to come. And that you have 12 million people already in need of humanitarian assistance in a country of, of 44 million. So what we’re seeing is that the, you know, the human costs are mounting each day. You know at ShelterBox we’re also having to do things very different to meet the unique needs of this situation. Different needs inside Ukraine versus what we’re seeing with refugees for people internally displaced, you know, they they’re living in damaged homes. Kerri Murray – 23:50 Um, so it’s it’s shelter kits to help repair their homes. They’re in evacuation center, sleeping on the floor. So it’s mattresses, it’s blankets, it’s coats and hygiene kits. And then for refugees, it’s the basic things to help them sustain their family. So it’s small cash allotments to help buy food and medicine, it’s coats because we’re in the middle of the winter, it’s cold, it’s hygiene supplies because they fled without anything, and it’s basic things for, for their personal care. So, and you see this, you know, the refugees that are fleeing, it’s not to just one neighboring country it’s to the neighboring countries to Ukraine, but it’s also across the EU. So this is gonna be a fast moving refugee crisis situation that isn’t getting, going away and it’s only getting worse. And the UN is now estimating that there could be between eight to 10 million refugees all told. Chris Straigis – 24:49 I mentioned in my intro, some of the disaster responses that you’ve overseen. And now we’re talking about this crisis in Ukraine, which is still so very troubling and so raw. But when I hear you talk, you are so enthusiastic and optimistic about your mission. What gets you up every morning? What drives you to continue to do this work in the face of the things that you deal with every day? Kerri Murray – 25:17 I feel lucky every day, uh, back to 2004, I feel fortunate that I’m here. I feel fortunate that my daughter’s here and I know that I have the ability to really help people who are some of the most vulnerable people in our planet today. And that I could do that through my work at ShelterBox. And that, you know, it’s my first deployment I ever had, when I mentioned to you, in Haiti, I remember feeling really down and really sad. I mean the first place I went when I hit Port-au-Prince in 2010 was a ward with babies and it was awful. And I remember I was with a board member at the time and she kind of pinched me and kind of slapped my face gently. And she said, “Kerri, you know, you gotta perk up. We’re here to give these, these families hope.” And something shifted in that moment in me, and I’ve, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve changed forever on how I really envision this work, is that that is my job. I’m there to bring hope, I’m there to help provide the basic tools and just the, the basic things people need to help rebuild their lives. But also that these basic things that we’re providing can transform someone’s life. I just know that I’m in the right spot and this is where I’m meant to, to be. And where I’m meant to serve. Chris Straigis – 26:40 You mentioned earlier a pivotal point in your life with the traumatic birth of your daughter. Now fast forwarding to today. Can you share how that turned out? Kerri Murray – 26:52 Not only did her vocal cords restore, uh, and it was a while she, she didn’t have any voice for the first six months of her life. Uh, but today she’s 18, she’s a senior in high school and, uh, she’s a singer nonetheless. Um, she was one of the youngest contestants ever on the 2020 season of American Idol. And she, uh, she’s actually just went on tour. Chris Straigis – 27:31 ShelterBox is currently hard at work in Ukraine and around the world to learn more about their missions, to donate, or maybe even to go through the process of becoming one of their elite SRTs, visit ShelterBox.org. You can also learn more about Rotary International and even find your local chapter at rotary.org. They’re always grateful for the support in their local communities. And you can find links and transcripts for today’s show at scrappypod.com. As always, thanks for listening to Scrappy. The post ShelterBox appeared first on All Around Creative.

Embrace Autism

Marie Haas has worked with, and touched the hearts of, some of the most vulnerable citizens in our society – kids with autism and their families. She began and grew a company in Singapore called Embrace Autism. It was the fusion of science and art, born of a passion to care, connect and communicate. But that’s not what she set out to do, at least not officially. She actually just wanted to dance. LINKS: Marie Lynn Haas Embrace Autism The Autism Treatment Center of America Emergent Improvisation Marco Iacoboni’s UCLA Lab Full Transcript Chris Straigis – 00:02Welcome to Scrappy the podcast about small companies doing big things. I’m your host, Chris Straigis. So we’re now nearing the end of 2021. And it’s been a little while since we’ve done a new episode, very sorry about that. But time has felt somehow distorted recently. I think I can safely say that in many ways, at least comparatively, our world was buzzing along in kind of a cruise control until early last year. COVID was, and still is, a catalyst for some major and massive transformations. It’s changed us. It’s changed a lot of things, from how we relate to each other, to how we relate to our jobs and even how we relate to our greater global society. Now, I know that many facets of these changes, didn’t just pop up out of nowhere. Our world, our experience is ever evolving. But this pandemic was a game changer for our generation. Chris Straigis – 01:08No one, not the very young, not the 20 and 30 somethings, not even the elderly are coming out of this unchanged. And really, I don’t think we’ve even begun to see the true transformation. Everything we’ve experienced over the last year and a half brought about short term and rapid change. It’s the ripples in the water well beyond the original splash that may turn out to be the most fascinating. In other words, how will a change to us change the world? Chris Straigis – 01:41At its core, this is what Scrappy is all about, transformation. It’s about everyday people, just like you and me, doing extraordinary things. Usually finding themselves, forging their destiny from materials they didn’t even know they had, and then watching those ripples roll out in ways they themselves couldn’t even foretell. And so it is with our guest today. Marie Haas has worked with and touched the hearts of some of the most vulnerable citizens in our society – kids with autism and their families. She began and grew a company in Singapore called Embrace Autism. It was the fusion of science and art, born of a passion to care, connect and communicate. But that’s not what she set out to do, at least not officially. She actually just wanted to dance, or more specifically explore movement, self-expression and communication through dance. Little did she know when she started, how connected her ideas would be in a world far from her own, and in a land far from home. Marie’s journey began in Houston, Texas in the early 1990s, her dad was a computer programmer and her mom, a school teacher. Marie Haas – 03:03I can remember when I was living in Texas, um, that my mom would, you know, work with both my sister and I at home on lots of educational things. Including, um, this hooked on phonics, which I’m not sure if you know what that is, but that was very popular at the time. And I can remember sitting in the floor in the living room, you know, doing this hooked on phonics even before we were, you know, in school. Chris Straigis – 03:37But an early and devastating shakeup in the family would send her far north in a move to Massachusetts and begin to drive her inward. Marie Haas – 03:48The circumstances through which I moved across the country, um, were traumatic in terms of they, that was the falling out of my parents’ marriage, and they had just gotten divorced. So, I didn’t want to move to Massachusetts, I didn’t want to leave my friends behind. I didn’t want to leave my cat behind. I was being uprooted from everything that I had previously known. When we were living in Texas, I was taking, um, gymnastics lessons and swimming lessons, but those things were not readily available or at least not close by, um, where we lived in Massachusetts. Marie Haas – 05:03However, um, my aunt owned a dance studio, a town over, and so I began taking ballet lessons with her at her studio after school. I think dance really offered me a place where I could express a lot of the things that I wasn’t able to express verbally. Um, so it was definitely an anchor in that sense. It was an outlet in that sense, it gave me something to really focus on. I was able to, to use dance, to really work out all of the complex emotions that I was holding in my body. In that way, there were a lot of times where dance was incredibly healing. It was also in a way a space where I could hide. I wasn’t necessarily having conversations, um, or willing to have conversations with people around me about how I felt or what was going on in my life or how it was affecting me. Um, and instead I just sort of buried it inside of this practice. Dance in many ways, became the way I felt seen in the world. Chris Straigis – 06:09What Marie discovered in dance was expression – expression of feelings and emotions that she wasn’t comfortable verbalizing. It was how she talked to the world around her and, more importantly, how she talked to herself. What she couldn’t have understood at the time, however, was that her study of dance as a form of communication for feelings of which she was unable to speak, would share a deep parallel in the work she would do in the future after college. But that journey to college and beyond first took another devastating twist, where Marie came face to face with an abrupt end of her dancing life. Marie Haas – 06:52We are rehearsing for a production at the performing arts high school that I went to. Um, and in the middle of this rehearsal, I get dropped. I landed pretty square on the center of my spine. For what felt like a really long time I couldn’t move, but I was in a lot of pain. I didn’t think that anything was broken. I wasn’t bleeding. And so I drove myself home eventually. Um, and then the next day, uh, went to the hospital to have some x-rays done and it didn’t show that anything was broken or that anything was off, but that I should take it easy. Um, but I didn’t really do that. In that particular time of my life. I really believed that, you know, part of this practice is pain and that you have to get back up and keep going. And that that’s part of it. And so I pushed myself, um, to continue rehearsing and continue dancing and to struggle through the injury. Marie Haas – 09:00But as a result, at that performance that we had been preparing for, at the end of a piece, I ended up collapsing and my entire back just gave out. We found out that a bunch of the tissues and ligaments around my spine had been torn and had were bleeding, essentially. And at that point I actually had to stop dancing altogether. I was also told that I probably wouldn’t be able to dance in the same way moving forward or in the future. I was also, never mind this performance, I was also in the midst of applying to colleges and a lot of colleges that had, um, more conservative dance programs that would ultimately thrust you into the performative world of professional dance. And it sounded like at the time that that really wasn’t going to be an option for me. And so that was incredibly heartbreaking and upsetting to feel like the, the thing that I had been working my entire life for at least, you know, since I was nine or 10, um, was just going to completely disappear before it had ever come to fruition. Chris Straigis – 09:58Years of hard work, the voice she had developed through this art form seemed gone and a flash. Faced with the end of her future in ballet, she, once again did what she had to do, she adapted. As the old saying goes, when one door closes, another opens up and for Marie, this is where the doors would begin to open. Marie Haas – 10:24At the time two of my dance teachers, um, at the performing arts school were primarily, um, modern dancers or contemporary dancers. And they also had a lot of experience in improvisation and in different types of improvisation. They came to me and said, “Hey, why don’t you take a couple of classes in this? And here’s some books…” And I worked with them closely and started experimenting with improvisation, and a little bit with composing and making my own dances. They were also floating ideas about different kinds of colleges and places that I could go and study, and Bennington College happened to be one of them. And so I started looking into Bennington College and was reading about Susan Sgorbati, who is at the time, one of the, uh, dance, um, professors there. And she was teaching emergent improvisation, the idea of spontaneous composition, or composing in the moment. And I think ultimately, you know, the improvisation work became the way in which I could really find catharsis in the process of creation. Chris Straigis – 12:03Marie ended up choosing Bennington College in Vermont, after all it was Susan Sgorbati’s program that gave her a new path, so it seemed like a perfect fit. And during her time there, her new chosen style of expression, improvisational dance, would also lead her down another unexpected path. One that would open her eyes to a different, more science-based aspect of communication. This revelation would prove to be key in what was to come. Marie Haas – 12:34In my senior year, I was collaborating with my long-time dance partner and best friend, Emily Climer on a duet practice, an improvisational duet practice, that we call the Recall Form, and is about cultivating what I was saying before this, this empathy that brings us into partnership with one another. And as part of my research, um, outside of the studio, I began reading about how do we connect with others, um, and sort of what’s going on from a neurological perspective. And that’s how I found Marco Iacoboni in his book, Mirroring People and the Science of Empathy. He talks about how mirroring and imitation is the way in which we’re biologically tuned to connect with one another. Chris Straigis – 13:47And it’s here that her connection with autism begins. Marie Haas – 13:51One of the things that really struck me in reading his book was not just in relationship to this work that I was doing in dance, but he has an entire chapter on autism and dedicates an entire chapter on it in his book. And he talks about how some of this scientific research that is emerging around mirroring and imitation would support therapies that are utilizing those techniques. So I was ‘like light bulb moment,’ I’m going to volunteer at this place where they’re joining children and their exclusive and repetitive behaviors and activities, and that sounds a lot like mirroring an imitation. And it would make a lot of sense then why that’s such an effective form of building a connection and building a rapport and a relationship. I was being, you know, called in a sense to move in that direction, and towards, towards that work. Chris Straigis – 14:58Marie continued to dance and continued her research into Marco Iacoboni’s work, which would in turn deepen her understanding of its connection to people with autism. She would also meet her future husband, Nick, whose own path would prove pivotal for her as well. Marie Haas – 15:17In the year, following my graduation from Bennington college, I started volunteering at the Autism Treatment Center of America, which is the home of the Son-Rise program, which is the autism program that I’ve been heavily involved in. I was drawn to their program because of its similarities to my work in dance. Their program also focuses on connecting and building relationships with these children through what they call joining, which to me looked from the outside, very similar to these same forms of movement, um, shared movement that I was utilizing with my dance partners. And so that’s why I was really drawn, or at least that was one of the reasons why I was really drawn to what they were doing. Um, and I was also just really intrigued by their curriculum because they weren’t, you know, using the traditional curriculums that other autism therapies were using, they were using a developmental model, um, that again, really focuses on connecting and building relationships with children, but also works on building their ability to relate to others in the world and to socialize. Working in the Son-Rise Program playroom for me was ultimately no different from dancing and improvising with a partner in the studio. Chris Straigis – 17:04There are times, as Marie told me, that the universe just works in mysterious ways. As she begins to explore post-college life, she’s volunteering at the Autism Treatment Center of America and staying involved with Susan Sgorbati’s program. She’s still living near the college and growing roots. She’s also still dating Nick and they’re planning their future together. And then, in early 2010, he’s offered a job in Singapore and he wants Marie to go with him. This would be the second time in her young life that a move to a far away place would seem to disrupt everything. But then in the fall of that year, our friend, the universe steps in. Marie Haas – 17:51Nick got this, got this job opportunity in Singapore, and it was, at first it seemed like really crazy, like really crazy. And I was like, I don’t know if I can move all the way there and not know anybody or not having anything to do. In the fall of what would have been 2010, I met a family at the Autism Treatment Center of America who had come all the way from Singapore with their daughter for a Son-Rise Program intensive. And we met in the dining hall there and I said “this might sound crazy, but my boyfriend (at the time) just got a job in Singapore and I’m going to be moving to Singapore to join him, and would you be interested in me coming to work with your daughter?” Marie Haas – 19:02I think they were shocked in somewhat disbelief that that could possibly be happening or that I would eventually show up at their doorstep, but they agreed that they would absolutely love to have me come and volunteer in their home and work with their daughter. So ultimately that’s what I did. I picked up and packed all my stuff and I moved all the way around the world. In the first year I was still dancing, but then that kind of slowly started to become less and less, um, because I was spending more and more time, um, working with Izzy, which was the little girl that I had met at the Autism Treatment Center of America. And I was spending, at that point, eventually five days a week, I was at her home. So that became really my full-time work. Her mom and I would take turns or shifts in her playroom. Marie Haas – 20:10And so I would go in for a couple of hours and then she would go in for a couple of hours every day, Monday through Friday. I kind of in a certain way, I don’t really feel like even though I wasn’t dancing in the studio anymore, I didn’t really lose my, my, my dance or my improvisation practice because being with her in that room was really no different. You know, to her, I was, I was her playmate, but for me, she was really my dance partner. Sam and I Izzy’s mom, Sam, um, and I met Chris. And Chris who was another mom who was, uh, running a Son-Rise Program, playroom for her children, she was very, very connected, um, to the, to the community. And she had also been to the Autism Treatment Center of America for training in the Son-Rise Program. Once we connected with her, we began connecting with the community there. And, but there was a very, in terms of the Son-Rise Program, the community was pretty small. There was a lot of people who were interested and keen to learn about it and wanted help, even. But as far as I could tell, I was one of maybe a handful of volunteers who were helping these families and working with these children. Chris Straigis – 22:06Marie realized that there was a need. There was a large community of families who were in need of a better way to support their children with autism. Marie Haas – 22:16Most of what was offered in Singapore at that time were more traditional forms of ABA, speech or occupational therapy. Um, and there weren’t as many alternative programs. Um, and there certainly weren’t very many home-based child-centered programs like the Son-Rise Program. And at that point I started getting a lot of requests from other people – “Hey, can you work with my kid?” Um, or, “Hey, can you train my volunteers?” And of course, like I said, I was running and working with Izzy five days a week, and so I really didn’t have the bandwidth to do that. But I thought like, it seems like there’s a need for this. There’s a community of parents and children who are looking for other ways. I emailed Raun Kaufman, who is the Director of Global Education at the Autism Treatment Center of America. He’s also the author of Autism Breakthrough, which is the book that sort of offers this step-by-step look at running the Son-Rise Program with your children. And I was like, “Hey, I’m here. This is what’s happening. Do you think that you would ever be interested in running a week-long training program in Singapore?” To my surprise and my excitement one afternoon, I got an email saying that they would love to have a conversation about bringing the Son-Rise Program to Singapore. Marie Haas – 24:02That first conversation was really exciting. It was also incredibly overwhelming because I didn’t really realize what kind of can I was opening up, Suddenly, it was like, okay, in order for this to happen, you have to have an organization. And, you know, all the, the things that go into running a program, and not just a program, but really a not-for-profit. And I, at that point ,for as much as I was excited, I felt really overwhelmed. We, you know, we knew we were going to need help, and so we had reached out to all of these other parents and said, “Hey, we’re going to need volunteers. We’re going to need help.” And so we got a small group together at my apartment in Singapore, and we just had a big brainstorming session. And to be honest, I actually have no idea who said it, but at a certain point, that name was floated and everybody loved it. Chris Straigis – 25:05And so in 2014, Embrace Autism was born. As it’s said, ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.’ And it was all Marie could do to take that one step at a time. Marie Haas – 25:20So at first we didn’t really have a long-term vision. We, we really just thought, okay, we’re going to create this company because we need it in order to partner with the Autism Treatment Center of America, to bring them over here, to teach the program. And then when it’s over, we’ll dissolve it, right. We won’t keep it because this was sort of going to be a one and done kind of situation. Like let’s help educate some people, and that was sort of, as far as the vision was initially. We also didn’t have any funding. So we started by the three of us contributing our own funds with the hopes that we would create and balance a budget that would pay ourselves back at the end of it. You know, this was just sort of a project, you know, a one-time project that we were working on initially. Marie Haas – 26:28Raun came over, and part of what they offer when they run the Son-Rise Program in other parts of the world, is first a lecture tour with Raun, where Raun comes and speaks. So we set up a series of lectures, a couple in Singapore, and also a couple in Malaysia, right next door. And set up a TV interview and a radio interview, an interview with a magazine, a local magazine in Singapore. And we did all of this by sort of word of mouth and connection. Like Chris was like, I know somebody here and Sam knew somebody here. And so we really started building this larger community of people, and surrounding ourselves with people who were also passionate about this, wanted to be involved and wanted to help. And as a result of really building and utilizing that community, we became bigger and bigger. Marie Haas – 27:43By the end of the lecture tour, we had reached over a thousand people, um, between Singapore and Malaysia. And so, and that far exceeded our expectation in terms of how many people were going to show up. And then we ended up having 135 participants registered for the training program that would then happen in May of 2015, and that would be the first program that we ran. We were just in awe and obviously so excited. It just organically grew from that place. Marie Haas – 28:35Other groups started reaching out to us from around Southeast Asia and we ended up partnering with a group in the Philippines and a group in Vietnam. It was really, really became much more than we envisioned. And it just took on a life of its own. You know, and really that’s, you know, in part, obviously a Testament to our, our passion for like helping spread this thing. But also I think more than anything, this community that was hungry for this and the people who just continued to show up and offer help and offer support and want to grow this thing with us. Chris Straigis – 29:33Trauma, relocation, injury – it all helped shape Marie’s young life. The separation of her parents, the move across the country, the near total loss of the one thing that helped her cope, dance. But other natural instincts drive and persistence and optimism, Marie used those tools to adapt and achieve more than she thought possible. They helped her find a way to help others. She’s been guided not only by instinct, but also by the chance people she met along the way – Susan Sgorbati, Marco Iacoboni, her husband, Nick, Raun Kaufman, and of course, Izzy a young girl with autism that would speak for the universe and clear a path for Marie to follow. Marie Haas – 30:25So I’m still in touch with her family. I’m in touch with her mostly via WhatsApp. Um, she she’ll usually WhatsApp me, um, in her evening, which is my morning. And she’ll ask me what I’m doing at home today. Mostly because of the pandemic. She’s outgrown her need for the Son-Rise Program and is really in school and making friends and thriving in the world. A lot of times I think about, you know, her footprint really, in the world and in a way being bigger than mine in terms of allowing this thing to come to fruition. Like if I hadn’t met her and moved to Singapore, then none of this ever really would have happened. And so my work with her, my relationship with her, my friendship with her has, has been incredibly special for me. Chris Straigis – 31:43To learn more about Embrace Autism. You can find them at facebook.com/embraceautism.sg, and you can get more information about the Autism Treatment Center of America and their Son-Rise Program at autismtreatmentcenter.org. For those of you into dance and movement, I’d also encourage you to visit emergentimprovisation.org, to learn more about Marie’s work with Susan Sgorbati. You can find transcripts and links from today’s show at scrappypod.com. And you can listen back to all of our previous stories at the website or wherever you get your podcasts. And we do have some great conversations slated over the next couple of months, so please do keep an eye on us. And of course, as always, thanks for listening to Scrappy. The post Embrace Autism appeared first on All Around Creative.

Ruh Global Impact

In the mid- 1980’s, Debra Ruh was nurturing a successful career in the banking industry and looking forward to starting a family. But in 1987, her path took an unexpected turn after the birth of her daughter Sara. And today, that path has led her around the world to work with multi-national  companies, nations, the UN and more. As an advocate for accessibility and inclusion, Debra has dedicated her life to improve the lives those with disabilities. LINKS: Ruh Global Impact website Debra’s Podcast – Human Potential At Work Debra’s bookstore ADA.gov Full Transcript Chris Straigis – 0:02Welcome to Scrappy, the podcast about small companies doing big things. I’m your host, Chris Straigis. We’ve been working hard to collect stories and interviews for our second season. But in light of all the recent changes we’ve been going through from politics to pandemics to protest, we’ve decided to change things up a bit. Instead of waiting to launch a whole new season that would run over just 10 short weeks, we are instead going to let loose a new episode continuously each month or so. And in that way, get more great stories out more often. And I couldn’t think of a better place to start this season, then a big anniversary that our country has coming up this weekend. One you may not even be aware of. Chris Straigis – 0:5230 years ago, on July 26 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed into law The Americans with Disabilities Act. This groundbreaking legislation was the world’s first comprehensive civil rights law for people with disabilities. It would usher in a new era of rights, freedoms and care for one of our nation’s greatest untapped citizen resources. And it would bring into the fold an entire segment of our society that had for too long been marginalized, stigmatized, and second class. But 1990 was not the end of this work really, it was just the beginning. And today, the work continues with more momentum than ever before. And with a new era of advocates on the front lines, advocates like Debra Ruh. Debra Ruh – 1:44My name is Debra Ruh, and I’m the CEO and founder of Ruh Global Impact. Chris Straigis – 1:49Debra is kind of an unexpected hero in this fight. In the mid 1980s, she was nurturing a successful career in the banking industry and looking forward to starting a family. But in 1987, her path took an unexpected turn after the birth of her daughter Sarah. Before too long, she found herself forging her own way, employing an internal drive to help those in need – a drive that had long been waiting just below the surface. Chris Straigis – 2:19Debra, thank you for joining me today. There is so much that I look forward to learning about the work and advocacy that you’ve been doing for two decades now. But if we could, I want to start just a bit earlier. A young Debra Ruh was just coming of age in the turmoil of the late 60s and early 70s. How would the Debra of today describe that time and that little girl growing up in the deep south? Debra Ruh – 2:48Well, that’s a great, great question, Chris. And thank you so much for having me on your show, I really like your podcast. I am a baby boomer and I’m the later part of the baby boomers. And so I, the Vietnam War was going on and all the protests were going on and the hippie movements and burning the bras. And a lot of that was happening when I was in elementary school, in the beginning of, beginning into the middle school. Even then there was a lot of fighting about truly including African Americans in our society and why were we segregated, segregating everyone. And so there was a lot of turmoil. And there was a lot of turmoil, unfortunately, in my family, because my mother really, really struggled with mental health issues. And she was diagnosed as borderline personality disorder, which is a, it’s a really, really tough one. And she did, she did the very best she could and I understand that as an adult, but as a child, as a child, we just never knew what was going to happen from moment to moment, day to day. It was very turbulent inside the house. And so the outside world was just some other place that I didn’t completely understand. But it seemed like there was a lot of turmoil happening out there as well. Debra Ruh – 2:59In the midst of all that though, By the mid 70s, you were at the precipice of adulthood. And you were ready to sort of shape your future. What did you want to be when you grow up? Debra Ruh – 4:29Well, I wanted to be, I really wanted to be a journalist, even though I wasn’t a great writer, but I wanted to be a journalist. And then I thought, wait a minute, no, I think I’m gonna be a police officer because police officers, you know, help people and save the world. But I remember my father saying to me, no, you you can’t be a police officer Debra, you you won’t be able to handle it. Your heart is too tender. It’ll crush you. And so then I remember moving more to okay, I’m gonna be a psychiatrist. So I knew, I always knew I wanted to help people. I knew I wanted to make a difference. But at the same time, I was never encouraged to go to school and go to college. My family didn’t have a lot of money, so it was never, ever anything we talked about. We weren’t really encouraged to think about what’s your career and where you’re going to go. Debra Ruh – 5:21My both of my parents retired, they work their whole life and retired from AT&T. And when, when I graduated from high school, I graduated in 77, and my mom got me a job at AT&T. I was an overseas operator, so I was in that you see it in the shows the big switchboards, and people are plugging in the wires and stuff. I made really good money that time. I was making $35,000 a year plus expenses, which was great money… and I hated every single second of it. So after I did it for a year I thought, I’m doing this, and I quit. And I became a waitress. And I started working my way through college. But everybody was shocked, especially my mom. And she was so mad at me when I quit this really good job, but I just didn’t want to spend my whole life doing that. And so I guess I was a little bit of a renegade. Chris Straigis – 6:23You were in the mid 1980s. You’re in your mid 20s. You’re making good money before you quit. You met, where did you meet your husband? And when did you get married? Debra Ruh – 6:32I met him in the restaurant business. So when I quit AT&T, I went and started working at a restaurant. It’s not around anymore, but some people might remember it was called Victoria Station. And they had the best prime rib, it was the best prime rib. And it was modeled after the Victoria Station cars and so they actually would have a train, part of a train as part of the restaurant. I remember the first I met my husband when he had just moved there from Atlanta. I loved that he had such a gentleness about him and he felt very, very safe to me. And so that was very, very attractive, somebody that seems so stable and calm and, and gentle. And he is still that same way. We’ve been married 38 years in September. Debra Ruh – 7:27Unfortunately, my husband now has early onset dementia, because when he was a child when he was 11 years old, he was just getting a kite going, and if any of us anybody that’s ever gotten a kite, you finally get it going and get the airs lifted in as lifted though, you know, it’s flying. And he was running with it and he ran in front of a car, and the car hit him. He was 11. It threw him 750 feet. He actually died on the scene. They brought him back. They took him to the hospital, he was in a coma for a couple of weeks. And then he didn’t go back to school for months. And when he did go back to school, things were different for him. He used to be a straight-A student, and he was then you know, a medium student. Debra Ruh – 8:14And so, unfortunately, even though we have these amazing brains that rewire and figure out how to work around an injury, his brain was still very, very seriously injured. And so as he aged, the, the brain has aged into dementia. And that’s, that’s been a very interesting, you know, path. At the same time, but he still grew up, got married, had two children that worked, you know, in telecommunications, and so there was a success story, but it’s just now it’s, it’s so hard for him. It’s very hard for him, and it’s been hard for all of us. But there’s also beauty in it. There’s a very interesting beauty in this, this, this trip to this journey. Because my husband that was always there and gentle and kind and happy, um, not quite as high strung as his wife, he’s still there. But he’s lost a lot of processing abilities, but the soul, the person that he, that I fell in love with is still there. He still knows me. He still thinks I’m great. He’s still you know, he’s so patient with me. But so it’s interesting walking this because the person that makes him so important to me is still there. Chris Straigis – 9:39So, again, we’re gonna, I’m trusting my math here so you’ll correct me if I’m wrong, on a beautiful Easter day, I believe in 1987, you gave us to a daughter Sarah. Debra Ruh – 9:53Yes. Chris Straigis – 9:55As as happens to anyone on their first child, and I can speak from experience, there’s a seismic shift. There’s, there’s a beauty and optimism for life and future, mixed though, with an absolute fear of not knowing what actually being a parent really means. I’m sure that like anyone else, you get that vision in your mind of a healthy, happy child growing up to be a productive, successful adult. It can be a really magical time, but in just a few short months, before you even settle down from that first seismic event, an even bigger one was about to hit. One that literally changed the course of your life. So can you tell me a little bit about the moment when everything changed for you? Debra Ruh – 10:38Yes, and thank you for asking. I wanted to have kids so bad. I was just one of those little girls that always wanted to have kids. And so when my husband and I got married when I was 23, we started trying and we, and nothing happened. But we would try and we would we try and we wouldn’t, and then when I was 28 I became pregnant. And I remember being just so excited that I was pregnant. And then as you said, Chris, and then I thought, wait a minute, I don’t think we’re qualified yet. So, but at that point, welcome. So when my daughter was actually born, I had this weird little thought float through my mind. And it when this thought floated through my mind, and I’ll say the thought the thought was, “wow, she looks like a little baby with down syndrome.” And immediately I thought, what would it, I don’t even know what a baby with down syndrome looks like. So I dismissed it. Debra Ruh – 11:38Four months later, the doctors were finding that she was having what they called ‘failure to thrive’. My beautiful, perfect little four-month-old baby. And when doctors started suspecting it was there was more, and they did the test and realize that she had Down Syndrome, and they called my husband and I… and this is a call that you know is not going to go well. I remember, I was at work, and I was working in telecommunications at a bank, and I get a call from the doctor’s office and they said, the doctor wants to see you and your husband today at 2:00. So my husband and I went in, and they told us that Sarah had Down Syndrome and they use the word Mongolism, which is no longer appropriate. They, they made comments about, you know, you could put her in an institution and, um, yeah, that’s not gonna happen. And I just, and what I, the first thing I blurted out, was, “well, I’m not telling my mother.” And the doctor said, “Deborah, you cannot hide that your daughter has Down Syndrome.” Oh yeah, you want to see? Oh yes I can. But it really did just, you know, change our world. And I didn’t think I knew anybody with a disability, which of course, I learned that’s ridiculous. But she I also had the gift that I already knew this this little girl I think she had been, you know, born four months before and she was so sweet and she was so loving and she was just just she was a great little baby. She still is a great woman. But at the same time, I did have to walk the steps denial. I’m not going to tell anybody. I remember, I drove one day through, through fast food. I remember it was a Hardee’s and the real sweet little teenager that was behind the window, as I drove up to get my my drink and food, she leaned out of the window and she said, “your baby so cute does she had Down Syndrome? Oh, she’s so beautiful. My brother has Down Syndrome.” And I felt like that teenager had stabbed me in the heart. I didn’t want people to know my daughter had Down Syndrome. I didn’t want to, I was still in that part of the journey. So it was, you know, life, life gives you a lot of opportunities to grow. Chris Straigis – 14:09With the lessons you were learning in, through the early years of Sara’s life by let’s say, by the 90s she’s she’s growing up and beginning to come of age just like that young Debra back in 1970s Gainesville. But the times obviously, are very different at this point. And so are young Sarah circumstances, obviously. What kind of unexpected challenges did you face, not just at home, but in society at large? Debra Ruh – 14:39The first thing I really hated right at the beginning, from the moment we found out, was how much people underestimated Sara, and how much people would learn that I that I had a daughter with Down Syndrome and they would say, “Oh, so sorry, it’s such a tragedy.” And I thought, well, why why is this such a tragedy? She’s a really cool kid. And she’s funny and she’s creative. And she’s it was a real smart alec and there was so many interesting things about her. And I didn’t understand why society couldn’t see. There wasn’t any information on how to raise her what to expect. There, you know, we were we were putting in her in early education and trying to give her advantages, but you were on your own unless you wanted to read the dark, dark, dark literature that was out at the time about people with Mongolism and all that it was just that they die really young. And the data that was out was all based on when we took babies and we put them in institutions. I didn’t have any support to go, you know, people just didn’t understand the journey. And I hope, I hope that’s better for parents now. I know that I’ve tried to be one of the leaders out there with information. But it was very, you’re alone, you just felt very alone. Chris Straigis – 16:06Well, you had mentioned Sara’s personality and and I have to expect that she gets her a lot of her personality traits, and specifically her optimism and resilience, from from you as well. I saw a story about how she made some friends on a bus ride to school. Debra Ruh – 16:29That’s a great story. I live in rural Virginia and my kids had a really long bus drive to school. And but I worked full time at the bank and my husband worked at Capital One. And so we we didn’t have the luxury of being able to drive them to school or anything. So a couple of houses down there were a couple of girls that lived there. And so they would get on the bus and Sara said to them one day, “hey, can I be your friend?” And the little girl said, “No, we don’t want to be your friend.” And seriously, why? And her brother was on the bus, he was so mad and some of the other kids were really mad too that these little girls did this. But they said, “no, we don’t want to be your friend.” So my daughter thought about it and everything. And so the next day, the bus, on the bus, the little girls get on and Sara’s like, “Hey, can I be friends?” And they’re like, “no.” So Sara did this to these little girls every single day for weeks. Finally, finally, the girls are like, “fine, fine, we’ll be your friend” because there was also not only Sara continuing to ask, but the peer pressure of all the other kids, because the kids really treated Sara like they understood that you shouldn’t be mean to her. Now they were horrible to each other, my son that you know, he got bullied and I’m sure they all dished it out themselves. But the kids, they didn’t really bully Sara I mean, these little girls were like I’m not gonna be your friend”, but she just wore them down. “Fine, we’ll be your friend.” Chris Straigis – 18:01Let’s fast forward to 2000, the year 2000. The year opens with the world bracing for a technology meltdown with Y2K. The year ends with the world learning the term “hanging chad.” So there’s a lot going on. But in your own life, your own life is is about to irrevocably change course. How did you go from average citizen to advocate? Debra Ruh – 18:30When they first told us that Sarah had Down Syndrome, I thought, how can I contribute? How can I contribute? And I couldn’t really figure it out for a long time. And I was in the banking industry. And I, you know, there was a project in our bank, they’d asked the managers, I was Vice President, they asked the managers if you would hire some people with disabilities, and so I did do that. And so that was some ways I could, could contribute. And when we would do United Way or eat Easter Seals or, I could talk about how those organizations supported our family when we were walking this. But I wanted to do more. So when Sara, she reached that middle school part, so she was in middle school, we had a conversation with her teachers, and the different special ed experts. And it was a meeting to talk about Sara’s future. And so when I was in this meeting with all these experts, and I’m just the mom, and they are talking about, pretty much Sara won’t be able to contribute anything to society in the future. She will not be welcome in the workforce. And it’s, you know, pretty much she’ll be dependent on all of us for the rest of her life. And I thought, what, Have you even talked to my daughter, and can we have a conversation about what she wants to do? And she’s so smart in her own way and why do you think there’s no room for her in society? And one of the people said, “Well, I guess what she could do is just bring shopping carts in from, you know, a Target or a Walmart.” And I thought, really, that’s the that’s the stretch goal you have for my daughter? So at that moment, I woke up to really the plight that many people with disabilities walk, and I thought, I don’t, I don’t think society should work that way. Debra Ruh – 20:26So, so I decided I was going to create my own company. I’ve never been somebody with a burning entrepreneurial desire to start a company. I never thought of myself as an entrepreneur. I really liked working for big corporations. So my identity was really wrapped up in working for big corporate America. But I thought, okay, I’m going to start my own business and I’m going to employ people with disabilities. So I created a company in 2001 called TecAccess. I love technology. My father was a technologist with AT&T, and I just love technology. So I, I thought, okay, I’ll be a technologist and I will employ people with disabilities that are technologists. And there was this law that had just been refreshed on the books the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. And in 2001, we updated it and put a little bit more teeth in the section 508 part of the law, saying that the United States government could not build, procure, buy any technology unless it was fully accessible to all citizens, including citizens with disabilities. So we were working with websites, but also software and hardware too, to make sure it was fully accessible to people with disabilities. And the majority of the team or people with disabilities, so I had a huge advantage over my competitors because I was employing the people that they were trying to make technology accessible for. I had all these super talented employees with disabilities. Debra Ruh – 22:00There was a gentleman that worked for me that lived in the Virginia home, in Richmond, Virginia. So he was a quadriplegic. And he, he needed around-the-clock care. I had a woman who actually still works for me at the new company, Rosemary, that, you know, was born with cerebral palsy. And Rosemary told me once that when she lies down flat, she can only blink her eyes. That’s the control she has of her body, but she’s brilliant. And she’s a creative and imaginative. She’s just a really amazing woman. And so, I learned so much by these individuals. I also learned that, I remember one gentleman that worked for me, he had very, very severe diabetes, and he sustained multiple traumatic brain injuries. And he said to me one time, you know, Debra, I know I’m not going to live this longer, as long as my peers just because of these disabilities, but I want to make a difference while I’m here. And so I started realizing this is not just about you making a difference, Deborah, this is about you making sure that he and others have the limelight so they can, their voices can be heard. But the corporation’s weren’t, and I still often feel are not still seriously taking true disability inclusion, accessibility to heart. It’s still a compliance issue for them to check off. Debra Ruh – 23:24My company TecAccess failed because of a bank we were with in Virginia, it was one of the first small business banks to fail because of the greed of the big banks. That’s when I took the my company and I merged it in with another company that also was in the field, and all of my employees got hired and got pay increases. And so I lost a lot of money, some investors lost a lot of money, but I saved my employees with disabilities, which was very important to me at the time. So, but so I stayed with that company for about 18 months, and it wasn’t really my cup of tea. And so I went and created a Ruh Global Impact, because I just didn’t think anybody was telling the stories about, you know, yes, we need to be accessible, and yes, we need to include people with disabilities. But why? What are the stories and and why is it important in to these these corporations to do this and these organizations? It’s not just for corporations. I mean, why should anyone care about these topics accessibility and inclusion? I just felt that the stories needed to be told. And I didn’t see anyone doing that. Chris Straigis – 24:39What does accessibility mean to you? Debra Ruh – 24:43Good question. Accessibility means that technology works for all of us. And, and I think also accessibility is bigger than technology. It’s certainly ICT – internet communications and technology because it’s got to to be all the devices have to work, I have to have, you know, good internet connection. So the digital inclusion is part of it. Your software, your apps, your, you know, I mean, as you know, technology and communications has just changed and changed and changed and change so much, but, but at the same time, also, the built environment has to be accessible. Because if I can’t go into a restaurant, because I’m with a friend that’s in a wheelchair, you know, I don’t, I’m not going to go to that restaurant. So everything has to be accessible. And the good news about accessibility is when you make things accessible, it makes it accessible for everybody else. Debra Ruh – 25:41So when we started captioning videos and transcribing audio, the good news is that 80 to 85% of people watch videos with the sound turned off. So if you’re captioning it, you’re gonna, whether you do open caption or closed caption, you allow me to turn it on and off. Maybe you don’t want to see the text, you’re going to make that experience more beneficial to everybody else. And another thing that I learned about accessibility is, and I talk about this all the time, as we live our lives, my husband’s a perfect example of that we change, we change. And according to AARP, 46% of us over the age of 65 have disabilities. We don’t see as well, we don’t hear as well, we don’t move as well. We don’t concentrate as well. And also, a lot of times older Americans feel that they just, something must be wrong with them, they just must be so stupid. They can’t figure out how to use this technology. When, I don’t believe that’s true. I believe it is that the designers are not taking the time for a lot of different reasons. Not all of them, but they’re not taking the time to really make sure that technology is truly usable for all of us. And that means accessibility, but that also means somebody that is aged into a disability, also can use your technology. Chris Straigis – 26:59So today, with Ruh Global Impact, you work with Fortune 100 companies to help shape their efforts around the process and concepts of accessibility and inclusion for people with disabilities. When I think of the agility of companies like that, I get this vision of a 1000-foot cargo ship, trying to make a U-turn on a busy street in my neighborhood. And so, tell me something that you’ve learned working with those kind of companies. Tell me something that those companies don’t understand when it comes to the work you do. Debra Ruh – 27:38When they still don’t understand, and I do, I have been blessed to I have some of the biggest customers that are some of the biggest corporations in the world we’ve evolved into over the last few years. We are talking about it from a much broader lens than just people, than just people with disabilities. We’re also talking about the intersectionality of diversity and how this, and once again, this is not just about people with disabilities, this is about people that are aging into disabilities. This is about, you know, the African Americans that might have a disability. So it’s, it’s all about inclusion. I use often the word inclusion, diversity and disability inclusion. One thing I think that helped me get into these big corporations is that I come from corporations, and I know how it works. I know how even though you’re a gigantic brand, trillion dollar brand, or a billion dollar or hundreds of millions, the reality is you still have a budget, you still have only a limited amount of resources and you still have other goals that you have to do. So one thing that I still think is happening is that I think most of these gigantic corporations still are not taking this seriously. Now, I think it’s there’s a shift happening, but I still think that they’re looking at it more as a compliance. It’s something they have to do instead of looking at it from the front perspective of ‘first of all, society has expectations of you. Second of all, when you make things accessible and inclusive, it benefits all of your customers. And it really benefits you.’ Debra Ruh – 29:11And so I think, I’ve written about this, I’ve written three books, but my last book was inclusion branding, and I talked about this, and I’ve talked about it from more and more societies expecting that you are going to include everybody in the workforce. You know, we’re finding that when we hire a diverse workforce, they’re actually more creative and innovative. So and they’re actually more productive. And well just look at that, we send everybody home teleworking, and they’re more productive. Wow, just think how much more productive they would be if the systems were accessible to them. I think technology needs to work for humans and we need to tie technology to humans and we need to make sure corporations and organizations of all sizes, all sizes, understand that why would you build anything that didn’t include all of us. And every time we make things, something accessible, it makes it more usable for us to use it. And the more we use it, the more we’re going to love your products, and the more we’re going to support you. So I think we still are there, which is why it’s so important in that you’re in the conversation, Chris, because you we need everybody in these conversations, because we’re not going to change society. If we don’t really take the time to reimagine what it could look like. Chris Straigis – 30:30Deborah, it’s been an absolute treat to talk with you today. The work you do is so important and the community you support is so engaged and has come so far, but I know there’s still a lot of work to be done. And I would encourage everyone to get involved at either their business or in their community, or even at a political level to help keep the ball moving forward. But before I let you go, you mentioned earlier that someone painted a future for your daughter, Sara, that she would at best be pushing carts at a grocery store. Can you tell me what she’s doing today? Debra Ruh – 31:09They told me that Sara would never be able to work in marketable positions. And you know, and and they were wrong. The experts were wrong. And she actually did work for 15 years for Nordstroms. And she worked before that, three years for Wendys, so she was in markable employment But then then Sara got sick, and she got very sick and she, she wound up having this rare disorder. It’s a blood clot disorder, which I didn’t realize it but it runs in my husband’s family. So she got very, very sick. So right now she’s much much, much better. She doesn’t speak on stage with me anymore like she used to. I’m hoping she’ll start doing that again because she’s a wonderful speaker. She’s talked on stage to audiences as large as 5000 people. She is, she’s a beautiful little soul. But right now she’s not working, but she moved out on her own (air quotes), because she’s in a supported apartment, not living with their parents, which she loves. And she lives with another woman that also has disabilities, intellectual disabilities. And then she has a staff that supports them. So they come in and they help them with meals, they help them with grocery shopping, but my daughter is thrilled to be on her own. So she’s very happy. And what more do you want for your children than for them to be happy? So she’s thriving right now. She’s really thriving and it is, it warms my heart. Chris Straigis – 32:55Debra’s work has taken her around the world to help create programs, develop strategies, and implement processes that fully include persons with disabilities. It’s a critical cause that I’d encourage everyone to learn more about. To learn more about Debra and her corporate and advocacy work, please visit rueglobal.com. And listen to her podcast, Human Potential At Work, wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook @debraruh. You should also check out the Americans with Disabilities website, ada.gov. There you can find news, technical assistance materials, laws and regulations, and much more. You can find transcripts and links from today’s show at scrappypod.com and you can listen back to all the great stories from Season One at the website or wherever you get your podcasts. And of course, thanks for listening to Scrappy. The post Ruh Global Impact appeared first on All Around Creative.

Everyday Masks

Staci Tinkelman and Becky Pyles realized early in the Covid-19 pandemic that masks were going to become a critical need – not just for front-line medical staff, but for the community at large. By combining Becky’s sewing talents and the infrastructure at Staci’s printing company, Quaker Chroma Imaging, they realized that they could help those in need, and get some of their people back to work. LINKS: Quaker Chroma Website Full Transcript Chris Straigis – 0:01Welcome to Scrappy the podcast about small companies doing big things. I’m your host, Chris Straigis.So far 2020 has been a year of, shall we say, changes. We woke up in January, got our coffee, went to work, met with friends for drinks, watched the games. But by March, we could hardly recognize this world as new routines took over in what seemed to be like an instant. And we also had some trouble recognizing each other due to the rapid cultural shift of wearing masks. Early in the pandemic masks were front and center as news of shortages became the lead story. Becky Pyles – 0:47I did reach out to them actually to say “Hey, is this something that you need?” and they were all desperate. The need was starting to increase by the day. Chris Straigis – 0:56At first, it was just for medical professionals. The folks on the front line. But a small team from a fabric printing company in New Jersey saw a bigger picture. And with it, they saw a unique opportunity to get some of their team back to work and provide resources for people in need. Staci Tinkelman and Becky Pyles pooled their resources, their talent and their business infrastructure at Quaker Chroma Imaging to start a new product line called Everyday Masks. Staci Tinkelman – 1:26My name is Staci Tinkelman. My positioned at Quaker Chroma Imaging is Vice President of Digital Imaging. And my position at Everyday Masks is Co-Owner. I want to shout out to Becky Pyles. Becky Pyles – 1:41I am the Head of Sewing Department, and at Everyday Masks I am co owner. Staci Tinkelman – 1:47She is our head seamstress our Head of Sewing Department, and she is amazing at figuring out difficult structures, giant structures, how they’re going to be sewn. That’s not an easy thing to do. With darts and turns and corners and things, a lot of stuff has to happen. And she’s amazing at that. Chris Straigis – 2:04How many employees does Quaker Chroma have? Staci Tinkelman – 2:08Anywhere between 30 and 40 at any given time. Quaker Chroma Imaging has been around for quite a while in that it was originally two separate companies. And they formed, they merged together I think about 2004. And since then, it was a great partnership. We went through trials and tribulations with the economy over the years. We moved out to Jersey from Center City. We were going gangbusters just building building building until you know the COVID-19 happened. Chris Straigis – 2:39Your businesses chugging along at the beginning of 2020. And then all of a sudden COVID-19. Obviously, it was spreading around the world. News of things starting to shut down here in the States came pretty quickly. So walk me through what you were doing at that point. And how you guys were we’re sort of talking about how you were going to handle what seemed to be coming? Staci Tinkelman – 3:06COVID-19 came and everything shut down. And we had to leave. Becky’s at home making mass because people, nurses and people know she sews, and they’re asking her “I’m desperate I need it.” They don’t have any PPE, they need something. Hospitals are saying ‘go out and buy bandannas in the store.’ Craig and her were talking about this and they’re like “we could do this we could make these things, help people and keep people busy and and do something about it.” Becky Pyles – 3:33And need was great for people to get masks in hand that didn’t have any PPE available to them. So they were my very first customers. And then it spread quickly. To the couple of nurses in my circle or medical staff in my circle. I did reach out to them actually say “Hey, is this something that you need?” and they were all desperate. The need was starting to increase by the day. In working with the nurses, I came up with a sized option where the mask actually fits over your face by the size of your face. So small, medium, large based on, and extra large, based on your frame of your face. That way the mask can actually go underneath the PPE that they’re supplied. And then for people in less risky situations, it was the only mask they’re wearing. And it was before the general public was even wearing masks that we started into production. So I went back to work check in let him know I was working on and brought this idea back, saying we could definitely do this. This is something that we can help, we can get masks out there. And the track was on trend to see that the regular public was going to need them as well. This wasn’t going anywhere. Working with our capabilities, which is printing, we were able to offer really unique designs really play the print to the scale of a mask, which you can’t just do with fabric. The downside of doing masks for myself from home is, I could have gone and bought fabric from Joanne’s but they the commercially available materials are getting harder and harder to source. So going wholesale with the materials really made a big difference on the quality and quantity of fabric we can get. So the ability to bring other sewers who were all at home sewing their own masks for their own friends and family and make it available to the public at large. That was really the goal is to get it out into as many hands as possible and make the shift that we’re not used to. It’s a cultural shift to cover our faces that but unnecessary one unfortunately these times. Chris Straigis – 5:58When you decided to work through the company through Quaker Chroma to start utilizing this the scale basically scaling up what you were doing and utilizing the the potential of bulk fabric. What, how did you sort of land on the materials you were going to use? Aside from the the idea of of printing on them, what was… Were there specifications or regulations you had to consider when when you were thinking about you know, PPE for medical professionals? Becky Pyles – 6:33I product just to preface it’s not PPE for medical professionals. It is an added convenience for them or or an option when PPE isn’t available, or trying to extend the life of it. We don’t, we can’t say that it’s PPE in any way. You know, I’m saying it’s not licensed, it’s not CDC, it’s not anything along those lines. We chose the fabrics that we use primarily based off of the guidelines that were set across, there were like CDC type guidelines. There were people who are nurses who were making patterns saying what they needed or wanted out of a mask. Most of them boiled down to a couple of factors – they wanted cotton if being used in the medical facility because it can tolerate very high heat when it’s being sterilized. So they want to be able to wash it and have it wear well and not break down in the sterilization process. So cotton mask is definitely something we wanted to offer in case they weren’t being used in an augmentation of the PPE. But we definitely want to go with multi layer because it adds more protection. It’s best practice you know, in best practice, multi layer is better for you than single layer. Chris Straigis – 7:51How did you decide on what patterns to use in terms of the design? Staci Tinkelman – 7:56Becky, and I picked suggestions of what we thought people would want, you know, American flag, camo, different things. And even to this, to today we’re looking at switching it out and putting new ones in and changing things up. Just because of what we see out there what we think maybe younger people might want. It’s sort of funny how Becky and I are, you know, Becky’s younger than me, I’m the old person here. But um, what I print out a couple different options and there’s a lot of the girls here that are sewing and guys that are sewing are younger than us and we’re like, what do you like? Becky Pyles – 8:35We did get input from the sewing department and many of them have been through fashion design school so their eyes pretty good. So when we pulled ideas, we did like a little bit of a vote when people first got back saying what do you like, but we had pulled quite a few designs to pick from but we got some input from the 20 somethings to help us stay on trend. Chris Straigis – 8:58How many people do have sewing currently, doing masks? Becky Pyles – 9:0313, 13 sewers. Chris Straigis – 9:05You brought 13 people back? Becky Pyles – 9:08Yeah, well, more than that, because there’s the support staff, but there are 13 seamstresses, we brought back to sew. Chris Straigis – 9:16And how many masks have you made to date? Becky Pyles – 9:18Oh goodness. Staci Tinkelman – 9:20So here’s the thing, we do make both the cotton and the printed masks. And we do make more than, like, especially the cotton mask, because those a lot of the ones we’re donating, we make a lot more than we sell, because we do donate a lot of them. So it’s hard to… Becky Pyles – 9:38We’ve given away more than 1800 already. We’ve we’ve managed to connect with the Center for Family Services in New Jersey, and we’re able to donate to the group homes and the foster care system. So it’s been really good, fulfilling to help these groups that wouldn’t otherwise have had the resources to purchase this many masks Chris Straigis – 10:01These are washable, right? Staci Tinkelman – 10:03Absolutely, a hundred percent. Actually the cotton masks when you wash them are even more because they’re a little stiff at first because there’s three layers of cotton, but then when you, after you wash them, they’re like softer. You know it’s, you know, they they’re they seem to wash really well. I’ve washed mine several times and they seem to wash great. Chris Straigis – 10:21They become like a like a comfortable t-shirt. Staci Tinkelman – 10:24Exactly. Like you have your I have my favorite masks that I like to wear. Chris Straigis – 10:28Do you accessorize your masks with what you’re wearing that day? Becky Pyles – 10:32I do. Chris Straigis – 10:33See, there you go. Listen, we can we can be protected and fashionable all at the same time. What’s your most popular pattern? Staci Tinkelman – 10:48What do you think Becky? Becky Pyles – 10:49Really, the tie-dye has done a little bit better than whiskers. But I think the galaxy and the flag are the two that I would say are the most popular. Chris Straigis – 10:58Yeah. And what’s your favorite Becky? Becky Pyles – 11:02I just made a new one that says “Strong is the new pretty” so that’s my favorite. Chris Straigis – 11:06I like that! Strong is the new pretty? Well, that’s gonna be trending soon. You know, you know, like in the old comics when when somebody would curse and it would be just like a series of characters. Right? You know, it’s never like an asterisk and an exclamation. That would be a funny one. Have that just printed on the over the mouth. Staci Tinkelman – 11:28That would be awesome. Hey, can we use that? Chris Straigis – 11:31You can use that, yep, that’s for you Staci Tinkelman – 11:33Okay. Okay, Becky, I’m on it. Chris Straigis – 11:43Within a few days of my interview, I got a delivery from Staci and Becky. It was the mask that I joked about when we talked. They weren’t kidding about using the idea. You can actually now find it on their website along all of their other great designs. Oh, right, the website… Becky Pyles – 12:00The website address is everydaymasks.net. And then we are, you can also find us on Facebook, and you can find us on Instagram. Chris Straigis – 12:13We are hard at work on our next full season of Scrappy which we hope to have out by this fall. In the meantime, you can go back and listen to season one at scrappypod.com. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @scrappypod. We’d love to hear from you with feedback on any of our stories or ideas for people we could talk to for future episodes. Thanks for listening to Scrappy. The post Everyday Masks appeared first on All Around Creative.

Federico’s Pizza

Michael Morin and his brother Bryan were beginning to gear up for a new year at their family-owned pizza shop in New Jersey. Then, out of the blue, Covid-19 changed the scope of what their bustling business would look like going into the Spring of 2020. Faced with state mandated closure of walk-in businesses, their first thoughts were of the 20 employees that were the cornerstone of their success. So, following the advice of their father to “always take care of the people who take care of you”, they took quick action to secure a $50,000 loan to ensure that they wouldn’t lose any staff. When word got out of their selfless act, the public response was immediate. LINKS: Federico’s Pizza Website Full Transcript Chris Straigis – 0:01 Welcome to Scrappy, the podcast about small companies doing big things. I’m your host, Chris Straigis. Michael Morin – 0:09 My father always said take care of the people that take care of you. These guys and girls that work for me are all just top shelf. And without them, I don’t have a business. Chris Straigis – 0:21 It’s been a little while since we wrapped up our first season. In case you missed it, you can go to scrappypod.com to hear the inspiring stories from 10 pretty amazing people. A lot has changed since then. The global pandemic from COVID-19 has affected just about every aspect of our lives. And we’ve had to adapt the best way we can. Throughout this spring in summer, we’re busy building our next season. But in the meantime, we’ve heard so many great stories about ordinary people in small businesses, stepping up their game to take care of others. So we decided to do a couple of many episodes to bring some of those folks to light. Mike Morin is co owner of Federico’s Pizza in New Jersey. When the governor made the decision to close most walk in businesses in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19, Mike and his brother Bryan sprung into action, in an effort to take care of the people that work for them, even while Bryan caught the virus as well. Michael Morin – 1:24 My name is Michael Morin. I am co owner of Federico’s Pizza in Belmar, 700 Main Street, Belmar, New Jersey. Federico has been in business, I think we’re going on 25 years now. So we’re pretty much established. Chris Straigis – 1:30 It’s a family business, right? Michael Morin – 1:42 Yeah. My father was always, you know, in the corporate trucking industry. And he, you know, it’s just like a lot of other people they, you know, corporate burns you out. So he said, you know, let’s do something on the side. You know, he had four kids. So and three of us were going through college at the time. And that’s pretty much when we bought it. It was a small store we did a lot of pickup delivery there was only like maybe say 7 tables in the front. So I think it was 16 or 17 years ago. We bought the building diagonal across the street, which was much bigger. Inside we have 80 seats. Outside we have a patio areas that’s has an awning. So in the summer, we open up the patio. So it’s been it’s been good to us. Chris Straigis – 2:34 How many how many pizzas do you make on an average day? Not counting COVID average? Michael Morin – 2:40 Yeah, yeah. On the average? I mean, like a Friday night you’ll do you know 300. In the summer, you know, you know, a couple hundred pies maybe maybe a night? Yeah. And we do a lot of dinners on Saturday. It’s funny Friday nights pizza night, Saturday nights dinner night. Chris Straigis – 3:05 So let’s dive in a little bit to what we’re talking about today. When you noticed COVID was going to start to present a challenge and and the restrictions were going to start to present a challenge at the very beginning, how were you expecting it to play out? What did you think was gonna happen in terms of from the business front? Michael Morin – 3:28 So we figured we’d be okay, because like our dining room is more, it’s a lot busier like Friday, Saturday, obviously all year, but in the summer, it’s a lot busier because you get more more of a crowd during the week. It was you know, sporadic, but we thought we’d be okay but we didn’t realize the extent of you know, it’s the first time we ever you know, the government steps in says you got to close your restaurant. Once that hit it was like, ‘holy crow,’ because I think that hit I think we had to close, I think it was on March, I think it was St. Patty’s Day. I think it’s when they they locked us down, and said, you know, you’re pretty much, there’s no inside seating. And then with that we do a lot of catering. So it took took a huge hit, like, you really you weren’t prepared? Nobody? No, you know, you look around, everybody’s like, you know, you can close for two weeks, a month, whatever. And then how are these people going to survive? Chris Straigis – 4:28 How many employees do you have? Or did you have at the time? Michael Morin – 4:31 We have 20. We get a couple more waitresses in the summer, just because like I said, the inside’s a lot busier. That’s pretty much what we keep on. Chris Straigis – 4:41 You decided at some point to take out a loan as a way to shore up the business to make sure that your employees were taken care of what was walk me through a little bit of the the thought process behind that. Michael Morin – 4:55 It’s funny, that, it was basically, it was a, it was a two minute discussion, like, ‘hey, Bry, you know, you want to, let’s make sure we have money aside to take care of the people that take care of us all year, and that they’ve helped us through some really harsh times. So let’s, let’s just take money out, and then we’ll put it aside. If we don’t need it, we’ll give it back if, you know, let’s just have it, just in case we need it. And I was like, okay, and that was it. We went got it done. Chris Straigis – 5:32 Because that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? You don’t I mean, because it’s, it’s supposed to take care of, you know, the people that are there for you, you know, so for him, and I was kind of like that, you know, it wasn’t even a second thought it was just like, because that’s what you should do. You know? So, how did the community respond overall? Michael Morin – 5:53 I was amazed, like, you know, I guess, it was funny, my my delivery guy you know, [unclear] you know, as soon as the story hit, we’re getting calls from all over the United States. People just call and saying ‘thank you,’ people wanting to donate. And we’re like, well, we’re not… the first night I had to go down there. I was off, it was a Sunday. And I kept trying to call to get through and I couldn’t get through. So I went down there. And I ended up staying and working because they was phones were off the hook. And my brother looked at me, he’s like, ‘Mike, I don’t know what’s going on.’ He said, ‘I’m getting calls from like Arkansas. I’m getting calls from Florida like they want to donate. What are we going to do?’ I said, ‘I don’t know Bryan like we’re not taking donations, we didn’t do this for like for donations.’ And then at that point, we said, you know what, like, I was, like I said, it was like a two second conversation. I’m like, ‘you know what, Bry? Let’s take the donations. It’ll keep our people working and we’ll donate the food. We’ll donate the food to the hospitals, the the to police the fire EMTs in the town. So we got the word out there. You know, we were doing that and people started donating more and we ended up… We go to the hospital, we were in the beginning, for the first month, it’s twice a day. Now we scale back we go at least once a day with donated food. My guys are working. So we got we’ve been taking care of the hospitals. Chris Straigis – 7:26 You ended up having to close your business for about 10 days, I think right? Because your brother and co owner tested positive. Michael Morin – 7:34 Yeah, yeah. That was, um, that was a little crazy because he, he was fine. Then he went home. And then in the morning, I got a call. And he said, ‘I don’t really feel good.’ I was like, all right, well, let’s figure this out. And he goes, he’s like ‘my, I have a little fever and a cough.’ I go Alright, so we’re closing because that’s what you’re supposed to do. If anyone has symptoms or whatever, I’m not gonna put it, we don’t want to put anybody else in jeopardy. So we made the decision within a couple minutes. We said, ‘you know what, we’ll just close it, figure it out.’ He’s gonna go get tested and, and go from there. And thank God we did because he ended up having it. I think it was the right call people were like, but you know, some people were saying, ‘well, you don’t have to close it’ and like even the doctors are saying, ‘well, technically, you don’t have it because you didn’t get the test.’ We’re like, it doesn’t matter. Like we have to close it because I’m not putting anyone else in jeopardy. Like I don’t care. You know, do you have a symptom, you close it. You figure it out later because I noticed you know, a lot of places you know, you see it now the Meatpacking industry, all that stuff like where they’re, they’re making people go to work and it’s just keeps going and just yet spreading and getting worse. Chris Straigis – 8:58 So how’s your brother doing? Did he did he get very sick Michael Morin – 9:02 He had a cough for two days and he had a mild fever like 101. That was it for like two days and then he was good. You know, he stayed out for like two weeks. And then we just decided 10 days because the doctor, we spoke with four or five doctors and they said, Well, you know, as long as he’s not there, you’re fine. But we said no, let’s give everybody a break. And then we’ll reopen 10 days later. Chris Straigis – 9:32 I’m glad to hear that he’s healthy and he came through it. Michael Morin – 9:35 Okay, thank you. Chris Straigis – 9:37 So, you sound to me like the kind of guy who who doesn’t generally take a lot of time off. You sound like you love your job. You love to work. Michael Morin – 9:46 I love what you do. Chris Straigis – 9:47 What did you do for 10 days. Michael Morin – 9:51 I love my family too. Like it’s we split it up pretty good, but it I have I love what I do. Before this, it’s so funny, before this is like, everyone always thought ‘I just need a couple days to myself a couple days.’ And then you get it, you’re like, ‘what the heck am I gonna do?’ Chris Straigis – 10:11 Yeah, I know, everybody, I’ve never seen more people ready to go to work in my whole life. Michael Morin – 10:19 Yeah, even my children like, I have three kids. They’re like, ‘I can’t wait to go back to school.’ I’m like, ‘what?’ Chris Straigis – 10:29 I think that what you’re, you know, what you’re doing with the donations you mentioned a few minutes ago is is very inspiring. Where you you’re donating food to the, to the people on the front line of this thing. It’s It’s such a great such a great kind of thing. Michael Morin – 10:43 Thank you. It’s, it’s, it’s, it makes you feel good because it makes you feel like you’re doing something. You know, everybody sits there and like, you know, what can I do? What can I do? Well, you know, and that was the one of the biggest things when we had to close for 10 days. I’m like, Damn I’m like… I’m sorry, I shouldn’t say that. Chris Straigis – 11:02 That’s okay! Michael Morin – 11:05 I was like, that was one of the biggest things. I’m like, oh, we were doing, you know, we’ve gone to helping out the health care workers and, you know, we’re doing our thing as best as we could. And then that stopped and that that kind of upset me. Chris Straigis – 11:19 I was reading an article that was written about you guys and and you had mentioned some some, some advice that your father had given you, when it came time to sort of wrap your head around that two minute conversation of wrapping your head around taking out a loan to make sure your employees recovered. Your dad gave you some good advice, what was that? Michael Morin – 11:39 My father always said take care of the people that take care of you. I mean, because you can’t really leave them in the street, you know, in a time of need. That’s the thing, these these these guys and girls that work for me are all just top shelf. And without them I don’t have a business. I mean, you got to do something, you know? I think… I just I have so many things going in my head, like, ‘Why can we do this?’ There’s other people that could have done it, my brother and I could have just, you know, just made sure our families were safe and, and to hell with everybody else. But that’s not the type of people we are. Chris Straigis – 12:19 So now that you’ve lived through, or are living through this, this strange and unique experience of this pandemic, and not knowing exactly how it’s gonna play out for the next couple of months or the next year, what would what would your advice to somebody be? Michael Morin – 12:41 It’s easy just to give up, but it’s, it’s hard to figure it out. That’s what I’m learning. Like, there’s so much so many different things. So you if you gotta, you know, just figure it out because it’s not going to get figured out for you. Chris Straigis – 13:02 All right, well here you can settle, you can settle a couple of debates for me, a couple of raging debates. New York style or Chicago style? Michael Morin – 13:11 Wow. Honestly, I’ve never had, I want to try Chicago style, but I got, you gotta give it to New York style. Chris Straigis – 13:17 Okay, good, you’ve got too. What’s the most popular pizza? Michael Morin – 13:22 Most Popular pizza I would say is it’s, I gotta say, it’s gotta be pepperoni. I mean, that’s the number, that’s the number one topping. So I’m gonna say pepperoni. I like pepperoni. Chris Straigis – 13:38 All right, and the other debate: pineapple or no pineapple? Michael Morin – 13:43 Oh, man. Wow. I’m gonna say no pineapple. I don’t understand it. I think we sell one a week, maybe? I don’t know why. Chris Straigis – 14:08 Thanks for listening to Scrappy, you can go to scrappypod.com to listen back to all of Season One. And find us at scrappy pod on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to learn when all new episodes drop, including Season Two coming up later this year. The post Federico’s Pizza appeared first on All Around Creative.