Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 250. Preventing a Lost Generation + Building a Small Business Incubator for Refugees: The Mission of Hello Future - Charlie Grosso

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250. Preventing a Lost Generation + Building a Small Business Incubator for Refugees: The Mission of Hello Future - Charlie Grosso · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:00
  Becky Endicott: Hey, I'm John.
• 0:00
  Becky Endicott: And I'm Becky.
• 0:03
  Jonathan McCoy: And this is the we are for good podcast.
• 0:05
  Becky Endicott: Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more work, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:14
  Jonathan McCoy: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 0:23
  Becky Endicott: So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropist, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:34
  Jonathan McCoy: So let's get started.
• 0:36
  Becky Endicott: Hey, Becky. Hey, John. Imposter syndrome is real.
• 0:40
  Jonathan McCoy: Seriously. I mean, goodness, our guest today has done so much live so much life has so much care for other humans like we feel like imposters over here.
• 0:49
  Becky Endicott: Well, anytime that Susan McPherson, our self appointed adopted godmother of our company gives you a shortlist and says, Here are some of the most extraordinary humans in the world that your audience needs to get to know.
• 1:03
  Becky Endicott: We jump on that and we have one of those here today. And we are just absolutely delighted to welcome Charlie Grosso, the founder of Hello future to the podcast today. Hello, future.
• 1:15
  Becky Endicott: Whoa, my gosh, you guys, this organization, their tagline is preventing a lost generation.
• 1:18
  Becky Endicott: They transform the refugee youth experience from alone stuck and forgotten to connected and empowered. But I want to talk a little bit about Charlie before we dive in because she's had 20 years of experience. As an entrepreneur. She founded her first business when she was 20.
• 1:38
  Becky Endicott: As an advertising photographer working with Lexus, Nike, JC Penney, Comedy Central, she's done so much traveling and going 80 plus countries, and it just really grew her heart for humanity, she was kind of pouring in as a writer, a documentarian, a filmmaker. And she took all of that, and took this lifelong passion for innovation and social justice and founded Hello future in 2016. And they're bridging that education gap for adolescent refugees. And I just think that what you all are doing Charlie to teach the essential skills needed. So these youth can become empowered entrepreneurs and community leaders. That is just a poignant ripple. And we're so geeked out to dive into your frameworks and understand your heart. So welcome to the podcast. We're so glad you're here.
• 2:27
  Charlie Grosso: Thank you, Becky. Thank you, Jonathan. I, it's a pleasure to be here and in your enthusiasm for me as it's making me blush.
• 2:38
  Jonathan McCoy: It's so real, like, we're just so excited. I mean, tell us a bit of your story, we want to get to know you tell us about Charlie growing up and kind of catch us up to where you're at today.
• 2:47
  Charlie Grosso: For the listeners, I am a Chinese American woman with a male Italian name. And, and I founded a you know, a nonprofit working with Syrian refugee teenagers in the Middle East. You know, as you mentioned, in my kind of career trajectory. I've been a creative my entire professional life. Right? So how did I suddenly take a left turn and end up in the nonprofit space? I did not. I was not a Peace Corps volunteer, I did not cut my teeth in kind of the major agencies of naserian. You know, so So again, how did I end up in this very kind of particular space working to advocate for this particular group of people, I know what it feels like to be alone stuck and forgotten by the world, I had a very kind of challenging and difficult teenage years, I was sent away to live in America, with strangers, I didn't speak the language, I couldn't go home, it was just really, really hard.
• 3:48
  Charlie Grosso: And it was really hard in a way that when Syria erupted, right, in 2014 2015 2016, I knew what it felt like, I felt an emotional echo of, of being stuck somewhere that you didn't wasn't by choice, right? And, and your options are very limited and what you can do to help yourself to help your family. And I think that was really the impulse that drove the everything that kind of came afterwards, right. And I like to lean in on that emotional resonance deeply. Because I think that's something like a lot of us can relate to, right, like, a lot of us have had hardships in our lives in one form or another that we get, and if we can relate on that engine of what it feels like, rather than the fact that oh, they're Muslim, or they're Syrians, or whatever those kinds of other identifiers are. Then maybe, maybe we can just broaden our scope and our sense of empathy maybe.
• 4:52
  Jonathan McCoy: Yeah, I love starting from that place. I mean, we talk a lot about the power of storytelling and just the importance of empathy and what we Do and we actually talk all the time about how do we build empathy for others. And I think you're coming from such a beautiful place that you're using your lived experience, even though you were never a refugee to serve refugee families. And I feel like that's how we get this work done around the world. I mean, we're never gonna have the lived experience to tackle some of the worst humanitarian issues, especially coming from a privileged country like Becky and myself and our story. But channeling the pain and channeling similar emotions is possible for sure for all of us. And so I love that viewpoint. Well, I mean, tell us about I mean, how did you step into I want to hear about your creative endeavors, and then walk us back into this. But I mean, you went on to work with some of the biggest brands photographing, you know, and using a creative skill. What was that part of your journey, like, and what did you learn?
• 5:53
  Charlie Grosso: So I was a theater major to start as a theater major. And I wasn't, I wasn't an actor, I was a producer and a director. And I said that I have a degree in in making something out of nothing, because that's exactly what our job was, right? You have a black box to go make magic. At the end of my Bachelor's years, I applied for grad school, because that's what you do. And but I was pretty burnout, I was pretty burnt out. And I was really doubting the, the usefulness of a grad degree. For me at the time, I made a deal with myself that if I got into NYU, I would go and if I didn't know, I was going to start my own business.
• 6:30
  Charlie Grosso: I got into everywhere else except NYU. I started a career as a photographer, you know, I honor my own kind of budget with the universe. And I was like, alright, well, then we're gonna go be a photographer, because because every admission officer wanted to talk to me about my photography portfolio, and not my design portfolio. And I caught a few breaks really early on in my 20s. And next thing, you know, I was shooting full page ads for 17 on Wired Magazine, and I was like, 23 years old. So I had a 10 year career, you know, as an advertising photographer, and a creative director and the ad space in Los Angeles, it was a lot of fun. And I don't know that I would had enough willpower to leave it, even though I was tired of it. Had it had I not been forced to put that to rest. The 2008 market crash just flattened everybody out.
• 7:23
  Becky Endicott: So talk about that transition, because that's a pretty big jump from for profit advertising into this for purpose space, like, was there a moment? Was there a light switch that came on? Was it a feeling what what was that like for you?
• 7:41
  Charlie Grosso: So between Oh, nine and 2015, you know, I had a smattering of other kind of businesses. I was consulting for some tech companies on their branding and messaging stuff. I did some nonprofit brand designs and strategic planning and program design. There was there was just a lot of other kind of smattering things. And I was also, I was also working as a documentary photographer, so I was all over the world. So 2015, I was again at this kind of inflection point of like, what I wanted to do, and just career wise, and again, Sierra blew up and, and I was at leisure to leave. So I left New York City, I moved to Istanbul and I lived in a civil 2016. And the initial impetus was that I was interested in either a book or short film, something I knew how to wrap my arms around, something I knew how to make as a creative, but I had a couple of dialogical conversations happening in my head at the same time, right? Again, I'm still really interested in how does, how does the media story we tell effect, the how we think about something, how we participate in something where there's a conversation we have about a thing, right. And I was having conversations with refugee teams or refugee families at its time.
• 8:56
  Charlie Grosso: And from a consultant background, I was really interested in their relationship to technology. So in the Middle East, mobile phone penetration is really high. It's like 1.1 1.2 per person. So everybody has a phone, right? Whether their smartphone or just a regular mobile, that's social economics, but everybody had one. And I was seeing UN reports, putting the cost of connectivity as high as 33% per person for available income. So you're talking about people who don't have a lot of disposable income to start with paying up to a third of what they have, in order to be connected to the
• 9:33
  Becky Endicott: internet. That's crazy. Unbelievable. Well,
• 9:37
  Charlie Grosso: it tells you that it's really important to them, right? So in the conversations I have with refugee families in the beginning was Do you have a mobile in the heads of a household with like, you know, bring it out? Say yes, of course I do. They're really excited to show it to me, right? Of course I do. Rally is cool. Like, what do you do with it? And I like Oh, I'm on Facebook. What's happened Instagram. I'm like, Yeah, that's cool. So am I what Elsie do with it. And now they're confused. And then now they want to change the conversation and they want to talk to him about how worried they are about their kids education. Sarah had a lot of emphasis on education as a as a country within the greater region as a whole, their literacy rate before the conflicts was 86%, which is actually on par with the US.
• 10:17
  Charlie Grosso: It's a very well educated, literate populace. So the parents are concerned, right, like, I'm worried about my kids education, I would say, Well, have you ever looked for something that could help them learn? There's apps or schemes, there's videos, there's platforms, there's tutorials, like there's no shortage of things to look at? Like, what?
• 10:34
  Charlie Grosso: They have no idea what I'm talking about? I would say, Well, have you ever searched for something before? And they're like, What, right? And before I ask to use the word search, I will ask like, Have you ever Googled for something? Because that's how we would ask the question, right? Like, what, how do you Google? I will literally get that question all the time.
• 10:53
  Charlie Grosso: How do you Google? Turns out, that's just not a thing that people do. Their experience with the internet is radically different than ours. The Internet is a point of connection, right? They talk to family members and each other via WhatsApp, or Facebook, their entire news source comes from Facebook, you and I, we think of the internet as a resource.
• 11:14
  Charlie Grosso: First and foremost, right?
• 11:17
  Charlie Grosso: Before we think of it as entertainment for them is just entertainment is this passive feed of information that comes at them. And once I had enough of these conversations, I was like, wait a minute, the internet for you is a radically different thing than the internet for me. But I can totally teach you how to use the internet. And if I taught you how to use the internet, you would have all kinds of benefit that comes from it. Right? You can teach yourself things, you can find information, you can find resources, you can find help you can protect yourself better. So we quickly shift out of a book, or a film into into a teaching moment.
• 11:55
  Becky Endicott: Oh, my gosh, and your whole world just changes. I would love to hear how Hello future came out of this. And you've you've taken this journey, which was really about storytelling and lifting the voices of people of real people.
• 12:13
  Becky Endicott: And all of a sudden, you've become a lifeline to them. And I would love for you to talk about this Inception story.
• 12:21
  Charlie Grosso: One identify this need for digital literacy, right? The ability to find search and share content online and those word sounds. So they're small words, right?
• 12:30
  Charlie Grosso: They're like five letter words that we all understand what it means. But behind it, pack some really big ideas, find, right, the act of search itself, how do I know this is a good search results that are looking for an ad versus a verify result? What does it mean to have first page of Google ranking? Those are actually kind of complex ideas that us as adults had to learn you as a marketer how to figure out verification is a different is a different idea. Right? What does it mean to share? You know, especially after the last few years, we had, I think the negative side of sharing is a little bit more readily available to us. Right. But, you know, back in 2016, like that wasn't so readily apparent. So to me, digital literacy, involves media literacy, the internet is a media saturated place, they go hand in hand, but we don't talk about those things. Because I think to start, we assume that people are just digitally literate.
• 13:27
  Jonathan McCoy: But I think even here in the States, I think there's, you know, generationally, definitely doesn't understand at all levels, what you can learn just from watching YouTube, I mean, you know, that you can grow so much with the knowledge available, I think there's a gap of, of that, you know, so I can of course, understand this and different cultures that haven't had that maybe time to germinate and all these kind of things.
• 13:51
  Charlie Grosso: Absolutely.
• 13:51
  Charlie Grosso: Right. Even in the, you know, the massive remote learning experiment that we went on this last two years, right, think about how parents are forced to be tech support for their kids, while they're trying to remote learn, right? And this is a generation this was be like the digital native generation, right? This was the digital first in everything. They're just, they're just a set of skills that I think we take for granted. And we haven't, we haven't spent enough time in exploring what it means to to be digitally literate. And to both understand the advantages and the pitfalls of this 21st century.
• 14:30
  Jonathan McCoy: Well, you know, can you give us you know, share some of your hallmarks of what the programs that you really stood up because you talk about transforming the refugee youth experience. What does that look like in a tangible form? How are you doing that through your programs,
• 14:44
  Charlie Grosso: a one on one program, I kind of think of it as a kitchen sink of ideas, it, it combines it has this digital literacy, digital basic moments, and when we talk about digital basics, I mean, basic productivity tools that you and I use every day, right? We're Excel, PowerPoint, Google Drive emails, right? Like, there are certain proficiencies and exposures that one need to any of those things in order to use it well. And then there are certain etiquettes, for example, in the email space that is just required. Imagine you're a 17 year old refugee, like, who was going to teach you how to write a polite few sentences, we looked at the fundamental skills a person need in order to be successful in this 21st century.
• 15:29
  Charlie Grosso: And it's a combination of both hard skills and soft skills, a lot of our soft hard skills I already kind of mentioned, but then there are soft skills that again, we take for granted, like teamwork, collaboration, project management, critical thinking, again, we come back to media literacy, right? How do I analyze this thing that's being told to me? How do I decide if that's the story that fits for me, or if I want to retell that story differently, right? In the refugee space, there's also a lot of need to just be hard.
• 15:57
  Charlie Grosso: It's incredible for us to see our students stand up in our class and to tell their stories, and for their stories to be embraced by their peers, who are their neighbors and their friends and their schoolmates.
• 16:14
  Charlie Grosso: And for them to say I too, had a similar experience when the kids see themselves in each other, and you would imagine that they already do because they're their neighbors and schoolmates. And they live in the same place. But yet, they never had to speak of these things and ever had a form to to be okay to talk about things. Right, and, and then for that moment recognition to happen amongst themselves, that's always really powerful for us. So we touched upon a number of SEL factors, psychosocial factors, as we build their soft skills.
• 16:52
  Jonathan McCoy: Well, I wonder this may be backtracking a tad.
• 16:54
  Jonathan McCoy: But I wonder if you could give us just paint the picture for what the refugee situation is, like, I know you work with a lot of Syrian refugees. They kind of paint a picture how many people are we talking about? What are their gaps? What are their challenges and kind of bring us into that story? I want to know like what is a daily life look like? You know, and introduce us to somebody in that.
• 17:50
  Charlie Grosso: Um, so the the camp we work at is in Iraqi Kurdistan. So we've been working out of a refugee camp, since since our inception in 2017. It gets converted from a tent camp into a cinderblock camp. So low cinderblock homes, permanent structures, the roads are paved now. And so there's electricity, there's water, there's sanitation. And all those services are provided by various other NGO entities. The camp is about an hour outside of the closest big city. So you know, it's kind of standard camp setting, right camps are set outside of major cities.
• 18:27
  Charlie Grosso: Kurdistan, is unique in the refugee space in that they allow for work so they can work legally if they can get it. And they have freedom of movement, so they can come in and out of the camp. That's not always true. It's actually mostly not true. Depending on the the camp in the country, you're in both the the ability to work and the freedom of movement, despite of the ability to work. It's set against the backdrop of 17% national unemployment rate, and a 20% youth unemployment rate.
• 18:58
  Charlie Grosso: So reasonable unemployment is high. It then is a slippery slope down the exploitative labor practices, the kids gets to go to school. So we decided to work with refugee teams really early on, because we looked at what everybody was offering. And in the greater ecosystem as a whole, the bigger NGOs like to focus on primary school kids, so little kids Gray, like one through six, and then heads of households. So either like age 35, and up or like that kind of 18 to 35 range, leaving teenagers without a lot of options and largely and attended to which make them extremely vulnerable. They're also at a very, very vulnerable in formative age. The girls are at risk for early marriage, the boys are at risk for radicalization. Both are at risk for exploitative labor practices. And and I think those years are the years in which the kids decide who they want to be, you know, rather consciously or unconsciously. So we decided to work with teens just to kind of fill that service gap. So our students get four hours of school a day if they go to school, secondary school attainment for refugees as a whole is 34%, which means that most of their education stops at sixth grade University attainment globally is 3%. Wow.
• 20:19
  Charlie Grosso: So most of them do not go to universities they kind of live in exists within this cinderblock camp. That's their universe. Town is a little bit far they can get there, but it's just a little bit far.
• 20:32
  Jonathan McCoy: Hey friends, we've got pause the podcast for a minute, we have some really exciting news to share.
• 20:37
  Becky Endicott: Yeah, we're partnering up with our friends at virtuous to co host this year's free responsive nonprofit summit on April 20, and 21st.
• 20:42
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• 20:46
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• 20:58
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• 21:07
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• 21:43
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• 21:54
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• 22:09
  Becky Endicott: I just thank you for taking this observation that you made, and finding ways that you could fill in a gap. And I just am picturing these camps.
• 22:17
  Becky Endicott: And just the the word cinderblock is just hitting me over and over. And I just keep seeing like not a lot of color, and not a lot of change. And I go back to the vibrancy. Again, we want people to live vibrant lives. And I think when you give someone power in and I'm holding up my phone and this device, it opens up a world of possibilities that could have never been seen when you're staring at cinder blocks. And so talk us through what you're doing with these kids. What are they doing once they get some of this tech literacy? Where does it take them? Where are they going once they get this and I would love for you to share a story if you have one.
• 23:01
  Charlie Grosso: You're absolutely right. But he it's it's great. It's cinderblock.
• 23:03
  Charlie Grosso: It's it seems really depressing.
• 23:07
  Charlie Grosso: But there's there's bakeries, and there's mosques. And there's, there's greenhouses. So it's this attempt to make a life of where they are despite of how rough the circumstances are.
• 23:19
  Charlie Grosso: Right. And when I when I look at these things, the scenes in these stores that exists within the camp it it tells me that they're still striving for, for these big moments in life, right again, and graduations and engagements and weddings and babies, and that they so much want to hold on to that however they can. So one of the activities that we do with our students in our one on one program is called a $5 business is an introduction to entrepreneurial principles. But more than that is a project management collaborative work tool, right? That's really the hidden agenda underneath it for our kids, they get the equivalent of $5 to star, that's our c capital, they have one week to plan, they have two hours to execute this business.
• 24:06
  Charlie Grosso: And then they have to report out you know, with a full kind of spreadsheet p&l And in a slide presentation and they have to stand up in class and tell us how they did they have to figure out how to how to get it out done right. They have to assign each other task hold each other accountable, right? What happens when somebody doesn't pull their way too, right? Like those are all things have to figure out on their own. So one of my favorite$5 business, and I want you to think about how quick the adoption rate is and just how smart these kids are without knowing complex business principles. So the lesson before the $5 business is a virtual reality one, they experienced virtual reality for the first time they make their own now they are onto this $5 business moment. And this team of girls decided that they wanted to have a virtual reality business, because they only have two hours to execute. They decided to split their own team up in half.
• 25:02
  Charlie Grosso: And they're all each half was gonna walk around the camp and run into whomever they run into and say hey, would you like a virtual reality experience? So the first half of the team walk around camp and say hey, would you like a virtual reality experience anywhere you like think has some takers? Not a ton. They didn't realize that their prospective clients were stumped by what the paralysis choice right when they had a pig they didn't know what to pick because they could go anywhere.
• 25:29
  Charlie Grosso: And the other team the other half was around the camp and went up to grandmother's So would you like a virtual reality tour of Mecca. And for the listeners who aren't familiar with Muslim customs, every Muslim, if they're able is supposed to go on a hodge a tour of Mecca, it's a big pilgrimage is very expensive because it's located in Saudi Arabia. So a lot of people do not have an opportunity to go visit Mecca in their lifetime. But it's definitely this deep, profound religious desire that they have.
• 25:58
  Charlie Grosso: So the girls went around and asked their mothers, would you like a visual tour, a virtual reality tour of Mecca. In two hours, this team brought in $34, for their investment of five knocks it out of the park. But think about the Advanced Business Principles in which they demonstrated themselves they a be tested without knowing that's what it was, of course, they don't understand what choice paralysis is. But that's exactly what happened. Instead of a hyper niche play of, you know, a tour of Mecca to a very targeted demo, grandmothers who have this deep longing to do something that they know they probably don't ever get to do.
• 26:39
  Charlie Grosso: But they really want to, of course, ourselves. So think about how could these kids adapted to a technology diametre experience before? And then to executing in a business idea that is 100 times viable?
• 26:53
  Jonathan McCoy: Yeah, I just keep thinking of like, it's almost like these possibilities that you're unlocking because everyone's walking around with these phones, like I'm so like, stuck on that first instance, when you're like, No one even realizes the potential. It's like in their pocket. It's like Steve Jobs on stage like you don't believe what's in this pocket? Like you just keep going open up these new apps. So I mean, what does it look like?
• 27:13
  Jonathan McCoy: What is your dream as he as refugees, embrace these entrepreneur principles? What's kind of the next step?
• 27:22
  Charlie Grosso: Absolutely. I think all of it is about Unlocking Potential, right? The potential the internet for, for not just the youth, but their parents and their siblings.
• 27:31
  Charlie Grosso: Teenagers are great vectors of viral spread, right, they can teach up, they can teach down, they can teach laterally, their adoption rate is super speedy.
• 27:39
  Charlie Grosso: So I think that's really powerful. We want to unlocked the power of the internet for them by shifting the framework by exposure, right. And we want to lock their own human potential by teaching them tangible skills by teaching them transferable 21st century skills that does not lock in into a particular vocation. As you know, there are many NGOs who are still focused on non transferable vocational training, I like to say that I am future proofing them. So we want to future proof these kids with hard skills, soft skills, entrepreneurial skills, leadership skills, as these kids have demonstrated, they have the insights, they have better insights than I do. And any NGO worker who's on this ground, right, because they live in the community, that part of the community, they understand the community in a way that I never well, right. So why don't we teach them what we know. So they can be community leaders, and they can be changemakers. And then we really get to local capacity building instead of always external players coming in and trying to fix whatever it is we're trying to fix.
• 28:49
  Becky Endicott: Yeah, it feels to me that you are doing the hard work, you're going, you're not taking the problem at surface level, you're going to a systemic, deep level. And in those skills are something that they could teach their peers, and if they're hungry enough, you know, it has the ability and the rapidity to be translated, and the ripple can go on and on.
• 29:16
  Becky Endicott: And I just am wanting to picture a kid right now in this community, would you tell us a story of a particular youth who has been affected by your programs and how it touched your heart?
• 29:30
  Charlie Grosso: Well, I n is one of my favorite kids. Super smart. He wants to be a video game designer. He's not no longer continuing in our programs. But he is not for the best reason of all. So after our one to one, so we have five courses. What I want is the beginning of course. After a one on one course, he wanted to know what else was available to him.
• 29:53
  Charlie Grosso: So he looked online for university opportunities. He found the United World College, our instructors acted as a caring adult and help him decipher what does it take to apply to a university because there's all the parents out there with college teenagers know like that's that's a beast that's a beast when you speak English. It's another one you know, you've never applied to college before. So our instructor helped him walk through the university application process including a scholarship and and wrote him a recommendation letter. And now I n is an India studying at a united College sight, and I n will have, he'll have this opportunity to have a beautiful, beautiful life because he got out of camp, he got over camp and he will also be able to support and help his family when that time comes, his family is still in camp, and that has shorten a projected protracted stay have 20 plus years, from 20 to five. Right. And, and that's massive. So we wish for we wish for more ions, of course, right.
• 31:04
  Charlie Grosso: But also like, people take different trajectories. What we're hoping with the small business incubator that we're launching later this year, is that, you know, we're going to go deeper into business principles, so that we can help them start small businesses that are tech enabled, right? They're not, it doesn't need to be a technology business, right? Just tech enabled, as we are tech to enable in this moment, and design things that the community really needs, right. And again, it's going to be their insights, their initiative, their relationship with the community.
• 31:34
  Charlie Grosso: And we set them up to be community leaders, right, rather than us being community leaders.
• 31:41
  Charlie Grosso: And that they can have different outcomes for themselves and for their families. Again, shortchanging the the projected 20 years of protract, to say,
• 31:51
  Becky Endicott: I want to ask you a question. That's, that's personal. And you don't have to ask answer if you don't want to.
• 31:57
  Becky Endicott: But I'm going back to little Charlie, and I'm thinking about how little Charlie must have felt coming into a strange new world, and the isolation and the fear. And I look at you now. And like, what a force for good you are, and you've had such an winding path, like just from education into the creative and where you've gone around the world. And I see you in this moment, and I just wonder how it feels to you to look at this beautiful thing that you've created, to look at the ions of the world. And I wonder how that feels when you look back, and you think about coming in, and giving them this parachute that you so desperately wanted, and probably received, eventually, through your wonderful education and just having, you know, this tenacious grip that you have, how does it feel to you, when you look at this,
• 33:03
  Charlie Grosso: the work feels how I ended up at this work, and the work itself feels deeply karmic. And right, in, in so many ways, in the ways that I see myself in these kids. And, you know, at 43, I still remember what it feels like to to be a teenager to be full of angst and, and frustration and, and feeling powerless. And in the world in which is set up for us. And I love every moment in which I learned from the field, the stories of I NS and in the girls in their VR projects, and right. I love it. That's the those are the moments that makes it all possible, right. And in all the countless moments in which the kids say like, Thank you for thank you for listening, we we create these, these kind of remote feedback moments where external people like yourselves can provide feedback into their projects that they create for as part of their class assignment.
• 34:05
  Charlie Grosso: And it matters so much to these kids to be like, Oh, you, Jonathan, Becky, like you guys are, you guys are important people in this world with important jobs, and you looked at my school project and, and gave me feedback on it. And that made me that made me feel real, that made me feel important and seen. That's everything. You know, life is long, complicated weather, weather, they are going to have a positive outcome or not as is anybody's guess.
• 34:31
  Charlie Grosso: Right. But but to know that we made that moment possible that they felt seen and heard, and that we impart of them with some useful skills that will carry them through this life. That's pretty awesome.
• 34:46
  Jonathan McCoy: Compliment, you know, I can't think of a more poignant thing to tell you after your journey, but that you listen to me, you know, that you saw me like, how beautiful and that you're
• 34:57
  Becky Endicott: a real person.
• 34:57
  Becky Endicott: And PS signed me up to go look at anybody's work. So this is like we talked about the five minute Favre all the time on this podcast, it's like anybody could give five minutes to review. One of this so I just thank you for sharing the story.
• 35:14
  Becky Endicott: It is such a powerful mission that you're advocating for. And, you know, we end all of our podcast with asking our guests to give us one good thing could be a piece of advice, a life hack, what would be your one good thing you'd offer up to our audience today?
• 35:30
  Charlie Grosso: Hello future came out of listening to to the refuge The families that I was interviewing, not on a narrative that I wanted them to conform to, but, but what they what their true experiences are. And we see how powerful that is every day with our students, when we listen to them when they listen to each other, when we make them go outside and, and talk to adults, and really listen to what the adults have to say to them. And, and that's also what I practice every day with our staff, right, like I, I give them a lot of time to to just really tell me what is it that they want to tell me, right, and sometimes it takes it takes a while to like get to the core of the thing, but but to give them a time and to listen and also let them feel heard.
• 36:19
  Becky Endicott: I can I add a one good thing here, John, I can't help it. I just I am feeling so heartened by the refugee conversation here. And for anyone who's wondering how to socialize this conversation with your children, I just wanted to give two really quick resources. One, my daughter has read refugee, which is a book by Alan Gratz. And it's a breakdown of youth refugees from Nazi Germany, one from 1990s, Cuba, and one from modern day Syria.
• 36:48
  Becky Endicott: And it is a great book, I've read portions of it to awaken the empathy inside your children to understand how to relate to a refugee or how to understand what these children are going through. And the other one that I use, with my seven year old is a graphic novel called when stars are scattered. And it's about an African refugee crisis.
• 37:14
  Becky Endicott: And the author is actually the boy who lived the entire story with his nonverbal smaller brother and their two great stories. If you're looking for ways to have this conversation, build empathy, we're watching, you know, that Ukrainian Russian crisis right now it's a great time to just talk about love and empathy and peace, and showing up where you can to help when you can
• 37:37
  Jonathan McCoy: have those Becky. Oh, Charlie, okay. We just have love this conversation. How can our listeners connect with you? How can we get plugged in with everything you're doing that Hello, future?
• 37:49
  Charlie Grosso: Um, well, we're available, where all things on the internet is available on the internet, all the usual places.
• 37:56
  Charlie Grosso: And you can always find us at Harlow future.io. Sign up for our newsletter. And if you are interested in becoming a judge for review some of the kids his projects and give them feedback on it. Send me an email at Charlie at Hello future.io. And I'll personally add you to to the distribution list on that.
• 38:17
  Becky Endicott: Definitely signing up. And I just think if this conversation is spoken to you in any way, please find a way to pour into it get educated through helo futures, social channels, if that's a way to kind of get yourself warm, they have incredible video on their homepage that has, you know, the kids talking about this experience. And I just think lean into this concept of preventing a lost generation.
• 38:42
  Becky Endicott: There's so much potential that could be yielded from these kids and we want to give everybody the potential to live to their fullest. So thank you, Charlie, for coming in and just inspiring us and keep going with this important work.
• 38:55
  Charlie Grosso: Thank you too.
• 38:55
  Charlie Grosso: It's been a pleasure. And I'm and I'm grateful for the opportunity to speak without having to pitch because I realize our conversation wasn't very pitchy.
• 39:07
  Jonathan McCoy: Thank you. It's been awesome. Thanks for joining us. Today's episode was brought to you by our good friends at auth zero without zero your nonprofit can do more with a login box. Greet prospects and rabid fans of your mission with authenticity simply make it easier for your team to manage data. There's so much at AUC zero login experience can do is it auth zero.org For more info.
• 39:29
  Becky Endicott: If you enjoyed this episode, we know you'll love being part of the we're for good community. It's like our own social network where you can find like minded friends, ask questions, share resources and find inspiration anytime. Sign up today at we are for good.com backslash hello
• 39:45
  Jonathan McCoy: thanks friends