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In this episode, Messellech “Selley” Abebe talks with Kai Kung about what it means to help every child find purpose, possibility, and pride in their future. Kung is the CEO of San Joaquin A+, a community organization reimagining what education and opportunity can look like for young people in the Central Valley of California. Together, Abebe and Kung discuss why traditional pathways don’t work for every student, how paid internships and local partnerships are opening new doors, and why listening to kids — and believing in their dreams — is the foundation for lasting change.

To learn more about Kai Kung and his work, you can visit the San Joaquin A+ website, and follow him on Instagram.

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Transcript

Speaker 1  0:00  

What’s something you hope your future self gets really good at basketball,

Speaker 2  0:05  

probably interpersonal relationships, dancing,

Selley Abebe  0:10  

rethinking success. What if thriving doesn’t require a four year degree?

Speaker 1  0:15  

What’s something you love to do someday? But no one’s really talked about it.

Speaker 3  0:20  

Okay, so when I grow up, I want to be an operating room nurse, and I’ve never really met any operating room nurses, but I guess I’m just gonna have to do my research, because it’s so interesting. You get to do all types of surgeries, and you get to travel around America. I’ve

Speaker 4  0:38  

thought about it like they always ask you, like, what would you do if you’re not doing what you were and, man, I’d love to be like a sports broadcaster. I’d love to be an ESPN analyst. I don’t even know what the path would be to that, but

Speaker 2  0:53  

I think an internship is very important in any career path, and it’s very hard to get an internship first of all, but it definitely helped me decide, like, Hey, this is something I could see myself doing, for sure, getting that full time experience and fully understanding what my life like, my future life would look like.

Speaker 4  1:17  

Super in me, I can imagine it’s different on a field by field basis, I would say that most like companies in the civil engineering field are actually looking for you to have an internship, which is really hard when you don’t have an internship, it’s like, how Do I get one?

Selley Abebe  1:41  

Hey, ambassadors, welcome back to Speaking of Kids. I’m Selley. This episode is all about how we define success for kids, and who gets to define it, because in a world where the college for all path leaves too many behind, we’re asking, What if there are many ways to thrive? Our guest today is Kai Kung a former educator turned systems change strategist. He was a senior program officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and now CEO of San Joaquin a plus a nonprofit that works to prepare students to be successful. But the heart of Kai’s work is simple. He wants every young person to do what they love, earn what they need, and be set up by the time they’re 26 I’m excited to have this conversation because it’s important. And you know, we have a lot of listeners that are parents, grandparents, all sides of the aisle, that kind of come to us for bipartisan solutions ideas, and so I’m thankful that you’re able to, you know, shed light on on your organization and the broader work that you do around education.

Kai Kung  2:52  

Well, thank you so much Messellech. I mean, a lot of stuff is going on in the world today, and I think, you know, keeping a focus on kids and and sort of the future of our country, I think is important. So thank you.

Selley Abebe  3:01  

Yeah, so you’ve said that society often defines success for high schoolers as going to a four year university. It’s something that I know I heard growing up, and I had the expectation that it was obvious that I was going to go to undergrad. But what does success really look like to you, and what does it mean to you? Yeah, I

Kai Kung   3:18  

Yeah, I appreciate the question Messellech. I think, for us, very simply, as an organization, success for young people looks like, you know, are young people doing what they love and earning what they need by the time they’re 26 right? And I think starting with that end goal, which, by the way, when you talk to parents, that’s what they tell us about, that’s the language they use. They don’t talk about specific degrees or majors or colleges even, that’s where they go to, right? And you know, when you when you talk to people, that message resonates. Ultimately, public education is a means to an end. It’s not an end unto itself. And ultimately, what we’re talking about is, are young people thriving? I think, you know, circumstances maybe have changed. You know, over the last 20 years, where masella chunai, you know, there was sort of one very, sort of unanimous, consensus driven definition of what success looks like for young people, and that usually culminated in a four year university or college. I think today, in today’s economy, it’s becoming less clear, right? And I think there are a diversity of pathways that young people can take and still be able to reach that end goal of thriving. And so I think it’s a bit more of a nuanced definition of what success looks like for young people, but I think one that’s more in keeping with you know, what parents and young people want these days.

Selley Abebe  4:27  

I mean, I think that’s the whole goal. I have three kids, and it’s funny because I was just having a conversation earlier today with my aunt, my mom, who was also in the room, was talking to my brother and encouraging his son, my nephew, to become a doctor. And my aunt and I just looked at each other and started laughing. And it’s like, do you want to go to school? Like, why is that the only you know? And then we landed on, ultimately, we just want them to be happy, be successful, be able to kind of, you know, live within their means, but also just be able to live period. And I think that’s what’s gotten away. For so many people over the years?

Kai Kung  5:02  

Yeah, I mean, I think when you talk to parents and ask them what they want for their for their kids, I mean, it’s something far more universal, I think, right, which is we just want our young people to be happy, to be thriving. And I think traditionally, the path to get there has always been for your university, and the data has borne that out. And I think the data still suggests, depending on the degree program at certain four year colleges and universities, that’s still the best ticket for a lot of our young people. But there are other pathways as well, and I think part of the work that my organization does is to begin to normalize and celebrate those other pathways to success for young people, and we see it as our job to prepare young people for success, regardless of what pathway they take.

Selley Abebe  5:45  

Exactly, exactly. And so with that, you know, you are in the business of investing in your community’s kids and someone that does live in a community that I really enjoy. You know, why do you do that? What drives that commitment to really invest at the level that your organization does?

Kai Kung  6:04  

You know, Messellech for me, personally, it’s, it’s at least a few things, right? I mean, I think we all sort of go off our own live experience, right? And for me, my parents were immigrants to this country. Came to this country with Not, not a lot, right? And I was born and raised in Michigan, so I’m not from Stockton, but because of the choices my parents made for me, because they chose to locate us in Ann Arbor, place with a great public education system, and, frankly, a lot of opportunities that other young people don’t have because of those choices my parents made, I was fortunate enough to go to a good school, you know, get what I needed Out of my education, and I want that for more of our young people across the country, right? And I think, you know, as we get older and wiser, perhaps we understand that, you know, we are the byproduct of the opportunities that we were given, right, sometimes beyond our control. And so there’s a there’s a deep yearning inside of me, personally, to make sure that more of our young people have the same opportunities that I did, and I think too, you know, as I said, I’m not from Stockton or San Joaquin County, but I’ve really grown to love this community. And you meet, you know, people within the community, you meet parents, you meet these young people, you meet local leaders. They’re just so invested in this community, and I want to see this community succeed, right? I think young people deserve it. I now have personal relationships, so I feel a level of personal accountability, and I think that’s shared across our organization, across all of my team members, that sort of level of accountability and responsibility we feel to this community, that, you know, we are putting young people in more of a position to succeed than maybe historically.

Selley Abebe  7:41  

That’s pretty powerful. And you know, to that note, because you’re so connected to the children and the community at large, you know, we know, and we’ve seen throughout this podcast and in our work, working with partners, kids carry so much quiet wisdom. In your experience, has a young person ever shaped your thinking, maybe even without realizing it?

Kai Kung  8:03  

Well, I’ll say a couple of things Messellech in response to that. So one, we conduct focus groups with a lot of the youth that we serve. If you’re not getting closer to the truth of what young people want and need, we are not doing our job as an organization, and we are always just so impressed, sometimes surprised and then just awestruck by, you know, what young people have to say, and we’ve tailored our program accordingly. We’ve made a number of changes to our program in response, direct response to student feedback, but nostalgia, the way I’ll answer that question, and I’m sure a lot of parents can identify with this, is there’s nothing like becoming a parent. And I now have a four year old and a one year old, and it’s not always what they do or say. It is how much they make you reflect on yourself, your own lived experience, your own upbringing, your own parents. And that’s I think, you know, as a parent of young kids, the number one thing I’ve learned about parenthood is I’m so grateful for my kids, for that opportunity to reflect and think about my own experience, and whether I want you know that to continue for my kids, or whether I want to be more intentional and deliberate about some changes, right? And so I think you know what we all go through as parents of kids. I think we also take into our lives professionally, right? And the work that we do is specifically to serve children, and kids much like my own, and so always being receptive to their feedback, always having them at the heart of your programming is not only going to make me a better father, but also a better leader of an organization serving young people.

Selley Abebe 9:37  

I love that I also both my parents immigrated from Ethiopia, and my two brothers and I were born here in Connecticut, and, oh, by the way, I have a Michigan colleague who’s like, Go Blue. Okay, that’s you Right, yeah, that’s me. I love, you know, born and raised, yeah, yeah, she will fly anywhere for a game. But that’s very true, you know, like getting the upbringing that. You had, and even just when you become a parent understanding the struggles that your parents had, or at least the different perspectives from, you know, I know, in my case, immigrant parents, that the center was safety and protection, and you know, now being a parent like, I wasn’t even allowed to go to school dances because my parents were like, I don’t know what’s going on after school, and you’re like, what? But very much, you know, this logic of higher education, advanced degrees education is the way, and that very much, you know, is a path that worked for me. However, you know, I have three kids, and I know that that may not be their path, especially now with technology taking off and AI, I mean, even those opportunities will look drastically different in the next you know, 510, 20 years. Yes, absolutely. So you work at a place called San Joaquin. A plus, if someone had never heard of that organization, how would you explain it to them?

Kai Kung 10:54  

Yeah, I think we would start with our mission, our beliefs, to make sure that more of our young people are doing what they love and earning what they need by the time they’re 26 that’s our work. And I think what we fundamentally believe as an organization masellich is the best way to enable more young people to do that is through a combination of in classroom and out of classroom learning. Right? I think we are core believers, strong advocates for strong public education systems, we see them as among the most important systems for our young people. Now, learning has to be more responsive to the needs, the evolving needs of our young people, but there’s no substitute for in classroom learning, and I would say there’s no substitute for what young people experience outside of the classroom, and when you’re talking about, you know, doing what they love or any what they need, you’re talking about preparing them for careers. When young people are exploring careers, there’s no substitute for getting real at bats in those careers, right through things like paid internships, job shadows, mentoring opportunities. And so we fundamentally believe that it has to take concerted effort, both inside of the school and outside of the school, for young people to be prepared for careers. And because we believe those things, we work both with schools to help them reimagine the academic experience for young people, so that what students are learning is more tied to professional fields of interest, right? So that’s more relevant and engaging. And then we work with employers to provide more work based learning opportunities for students in those schools. You know, young people need to be really thinking about this question of what they are interested in and what they’re passionate about, both inside and outside the classroom.

Selley Abebe  12:35  

Absolutely and oftentimes, it’s the activities outside the classroom. You know, be it, even if the curiosity starts in the classroom. I know, for me, I wanted to be a neurosurgeon. I don’t even know why. And I was really about, like, this is just what I, you know, what I want to do, until I was, I think, in seventh grade, and I did this program called medical explorers, and and I was introduced to a cadaver, yeah? And I was like, Absolutely not. Hell no. I can’t even not for me immediately, you know. And it’s funny, because maybe I would have found that out eventually, but it was, it was helpful to know, for me that was a no and and sometimes finding your interest and also what you’re not interested in when you’re young is still helpful, you know, maybe you go back to it. If you know, you get curious again. But these experiences are helpful.

Kai Kung  13:26  

Absolutely. And I think when you sort of peel back the onion of you know what it is we do, right? Your question about, what does a plus do day to day again? We work with schools, we work with employers to try to prepare more young people for careers and their futures. But on a more universal and fundamental level, I think what we are doing is building agency, you know, self awareness in our young people, right? A lot of that starts with, again, knowing yourself, really asking questions of yourself. What it is you’re interested, what are you strong at? What are your Where do you need to develop? Where could you see yourself over time? And in your case, Messellech, you had a level of self awareness. You thought maybe the medical field is where you wanted to go, but then you actually need the opportunity to see if it’s for you. And sometimes that is not within the immediate reach of a lot of our families. You know, the medical Explorers program aside, if they don’t have that in their school, they don’t have friends who are doctors, you know, where are they going to get that real world experience to sort of test out whether, indeed, that’s, that’s what they want to do, right? And so that’s a lot of our work. But on a more fundamental level, it’s really just, you know, building more self awareness in our young people, that’s always the first step, and then preparing them with what they need, so that they’ll have agency regardless of what. You know, macro factors are at play. You know, the rise of AI, everyone’s talking about what that’s going to do to entry level work going forward. And I think that’s very real. But the way to make our young people more future proof, as in, you know, not sort of being blown by the wind with all these economic changes, is, you know, just to build agency, give them what they need, so that, regardless. What path they take and they, you know, many people’s paths, they’re not sort of linear, right? They sort of are circuitous or winding. But regardless of what is before a young person, I think a lot of what we do is just to build the agency in them, such that they can do whatever they want and they can be responsive to whatever happens.

Selley Abebe  15:19  

That’s remarkable. If we could shadow you for a day, what would we see in the San Joaquin A plus world? You know, who’s involved, what’s actually happening day to day?

Kai Kung   15:30  

Our primary stakeholder groups are students, schools and employers, and so there are members of my team that sort of lead our engagement and relationships with each one of those. So we have a person that’s really focused on recruiting employers and engaging employers, seeing if they’re interested in, you know, hosting students for a job shadow tour experience, or, you know, potentially interested in hosting an intern this coming summer. We have folks also on the school side that are most student focused. They are the ones providing a lot of the training that we provide to young people. So we, you know, provide professional skills training, soft skills training. We teach young people how to put together resume and LinkedIn profiles, you know, all the very tactical but very important skills that young people need to find and look for jobs. And then we have people on our team that are really focused on doing this academic reimagining. Work with schools, right? So working with teachers, working with counselors, principals, to really develop a new vision for you know what the academic experience looks like for young people in those schools? So that’s what it looks like. Because this work is so cross sector and multidisciplinary. We’re doing very different things as a team, but it’s all with the shared goal of having more young people doing what they love and earning what they need.

Selley Abebe  16:48  

What’s fascinating from where I sit, from, you know, an advocacy organization based in DC is oftentimes it’s initiatives and organizations like yours that are able to be scaled, right? So I love how methodical you’re being. And side note, I think I saw in your bio, you worked at gates for a while, so I was like, he knows it. Of course, it’s a great organization, you know, because I, you know, I can understand how it’s so many different moving pieces, but then you can’t ignore scale, yes, and constant changes that that are happening that are beyond your control to a degree, but you have to adapt for I mean.

Kai Kung  17:29  

That’s so well said Messellech, and you know this right in the nonprofit space, there’s always that tension as an organization, you know, around, you know, sort of scale, wanting To scale, but also wanting to do it with quality, right? And at times those are those are in tension with one another, right? So we are in this work because we want to serve as many young people as possible, and so that is a natural tendency towards wanting to scale, and yet we also have to sort of think about the individual young person that’s currently receiving our programming. You know, are we giving our best effort? Are we providing for the best possible experience that we can with that individual? And so those are two thoughts that we always have to keep in our minds at the same time, and at times we feel tension around and as a leader of an organization, that’s one of the fundamental tensions that we wrestle with.

Selley Abebe  18:22  

Mm, with. Yeah, I can definitely see that. So you’re sitting at the intersection of schools, families, local businesses, you know, what has that looked like? And how have you kept, like, local businesses engaged? How have you kept teachers engaged? How have you had families, you know, engage?

Kai Kung  18:41  

Yeah, I think increasingly, regardless of whether you’re talking about public education workforce development or any policy issue, frankly, I think increasingly we are going to see more intersectionality in all of this work, right? Because increasingly it’s hard to talk about just the public education system and isolation. You know, when you’re talking about preparing on people for careers, workforce has to be involved. And so I think if you take us through sort of that assumption that our world is going to become more intersectional, you know, you have to continue to work across each stakeholder group. And what I’d say is, you know, a lot of the trick is just find, you know, finding shared incentives, right? I mean incentives, regardless of what system you are in, you are driven by a set of incentives, right? The trick when you’re dealing with a multidisciplinary issue that involves multiple sectors is to ideally identify a shared value or a shared incentive or a shared objective that allows you to knit together all these disparate stakeholder groups, right? So in our case, when we talk about preparing young people for careers, certainly that resonates with the young person and their parents, right? Who are invested in the success of the young person. The school obviously invested in that as well, right? Because that’s that’s why you go into education. That’s why you become a teacher. Our teachers. Want what’s best for our kids, otherwise they wouldn’t be in the profession that they’re in now, with employers and workforce partners. What we tell them is, you should be incentivized to want to collaborate here as well, because these young people represent the future of your workforce, right? And so the better you’re able to invest time and prepare them, you know, early on in their journeys, you’ll reap a lot of benefits of that downstream, right? So you’ll have more young people who are prepared, knowledgeable about your industry and company, maybe have a certain affinity towards your organization because of the community work they do, and your bottom line will benefit, right? Because you’ll have a more prepared, local, hopefully diverse workforce that represents the future of your of your organization, right? And so I think a lot of what we try to do is to think about the incentives at play. You know, what is going to motivate people to want to come to the table? Because people are busier than they’ve ever been. I mean, it seems like people, as much as they might, you know, be aligned with you, philosophically, ideologically. It still comes down to what’s going to make them prioritize your thing versus something else they have on their plates. It almost is an exercise in, you know, human psychology, right? It’s, it’s really understanding what motivates certain systems and players within those systems, and how can you identify shared objectives to knit them all together?

Selley Abebe  21:25  

I love that, you know, because so often, a big anchor of our work is the federal share of spending on children, sure, and so oftentimes we don’t even get to really get into the nitty gritty of like so the overall share for kids, across the board all issues, is roughly about 8% you know. They make up 25% of the population. Yeah. So when you think of professional development dollars that are funded by the federal government, if you can imagine, like is nothing, you know, and we’re talking about early childhood educators, like mental health providers, you know, let alone industry needed professional development dollars, let alone professional development dollars that are allocated for kids, for such kind of programs that you work on, sure, and so that means down the line, it’s going to be harder for our kids to land jobs, and also, with the rise of AI, and unless robots take over everything, soft skills are going to become increasingly important, you know, being able to communicate, being able to, you know, write a thank you letter, even having the wherewithal to know, you know, okay, after I talk to this person, let me, you know, have An interview. And from, you know, the standpoint of business. Oftentimes, there’s so many things in a business that you know, even if you take Nike, for example, right? It’s like people just think maybe of one thing, you know, but it’s like they have accounting needs, they have graphic design needs, like all these different things. They have janitorial needs, like they have, you know, facility, storage, logistics needs, so, you know, all these different things that depending on what a child is interested in, even exposing them to that, and for the company to take advantage of that and say, oh, you know, maybe this department is not a good fit, but let’s move them over here, you know, or let’s move her over here. So that’s great that they’re bought in. All right, let’s pause right here and when we come back, how companies are stepping up what it takes to host a high school intern, and why real investments from employers might just be the turning point this system needs. Welcome back ambassadors. Before the break, we heard how crucial it is for young people to get real exposure to different kinds of work. And as Kai Kung explains next, that only works if employers are actually willing to open their doors and rethink what internships can look like.

Kai Kung  23:59  

You know, honestly, I think we have been, you know, I wouldn’t say pleasantly surprised, but just inspired by how deeply and thoughtfully our employer partners have engaged in this work. Just to give you an example, one of the things we ask our employer partners for that’s hardest for them is to serve as hosts for summer interns, right for high school students. And you know, this is incredibly difficult, because a lot of these organizations, economically, you know, have been hurt over the last few years, right? I mean, from a profitability standpoint, they don’t have a ton of money to throw around on hiring interns, let alone high school interns. A lot of our organizations have not worked with high school aged youth, right? And so that represents a hurdle for them as well, and yet, they’ve pushed through and done it, and they’ve not only done it because they understand, sort of our messaging around this is important for your future workforce development, and they are invested, obviously, in the success of the community, but they’ve taken it to the next level. You know, when they start to develop job descriptions for these summer interns, they’re. Being incredibly thoughtful. They’re not just sticking our high school students in one corner and not having them work on anything, just sort of mill about idle. They’re not having them just stick to one department necessarily over the course of the entire internship. They are constructing a very thoughtful six week experience for the young person, where that young person gets to experience multiple aspects of the organization, different job types, and they’ve really gone above and beyond in that sense. And what it’s done is it’s created a really great experience for young people, and I think our employer partners, it benefits them, because, you know, a young person might be interested in a company. They thought they might have been interested in counting at that company, but then they got exposure to marketing, for example, over the course of that internship. Now they’re the company is still going to hire them on full time after they graduate high school, but just in a different capacity than they all thought. And it’s because of how deeply involved their employer partners have

Selley Abebe  25:57  

been That’s remarkable. And you know, when you were building this, did it all click at the same time? Is it just organically that each kind of invested sector or invested partner came together?

Kai Kung  26:12  

It’s a great question. And, you know, I always, I always love reading, like after the fact, kinds of accounts of successes, right? And I want to go so as far as far to say we’ve been a success, but it always presents sort of like a linear path, and it’s never, I’ve just never experienced that sort of linearity. What I’d say is, we’ve been very deliberate about making sure that whatever we do, it is based on feedback from our stakeholders, right? And, you know, we’ve continued to augment our program over the years in response to that. You know, I talked about the first step when you’re dealing with a multi sector cross disciplinary policy area is identifying sort of a shared objective or a common incentive that you can knit everyone around. I think the next step is really understanding their pain points and their challenges like so if everyone has the same goal and is incentivized to do it, well, how do you make it super easy for people to say yes, just as an example for our employer partners, as a way to make this summer internship for high school students seem less insurmountable. We actually more or less serve as a staffing agency. Like all of our interns, are our employees at San Joaquin a plus. We take care of payroll, you know, time sheets, scheduling. We add them to our workers comp policy. We onboard all of our interns. And all of that was done because when we conducted focus group with our with our employer partners, that’s what they told us. They said we would, we would love to do this, Kai, but I’ve got legal concerns. I don’t have that sort of level of back office support that I can just throw out this and so if you can solve that pain point for us, we’re on board. And I would say, you know, much credit to my teammates. We’ve just systematically built that into our organizational culture that we try to really understand what the pain points of are of the stakeholders we’re trying to serve, and then design solutions to those to lower the barriers to adoption and engagement. There’s a school of thought that’s highly prevalent in the tech world, called user centered design. And increasingly, I’m seeing user centered design sort of become more mainstream in other sectors and fields, but we really believe in that, right? I mean, if you’re trying to serve young people by way of schools and employers, you really need to understand how you can make life less challenging and make it easier.

Selley Abebe  28:41  

And you know what side note I would add? So I’m huge on customer service. Yes, you know, like, just big on it. I worked at AAA all through undergrad, and I remember at the time, they had a policy where you couldn’t put a customer on hold for more than 60 seconds, and people didn’t do that, you know now it’s like, if you get an actual human, you’re winning. So you can put me on hold for 17 minutes and I’ll wait. But I think in any industry, no matter what you’re doing, like the best businesses across any models and the best organizations across the board, yes, care about who are they trying to serve, right? Yes. And for you, you’re trying to serve so many different communities for a common goal, yes. And so I can completely see that. And another thing I believe that you have a really unique point of view on is, like you said, the pain points which immediately lend itself to some level of advocacy and policy engagement. Sure, you know, just because you’re so attuned to the needs of families, to the communities, to kids, and it’s such a comprehensive view, you know, what is your engagement with? You know policymakers at different levels, like, do you work with city officials, state, you know, federal, local officials? How does that play into your. Work.

Kai Kung  30:00  

Great question, if at all, if at all, yes, it’s a great question. Messellech, and I think we deal with all three levels, right, sort of local, regionally, as well, with the state, nationally, through our funders that we have. And so policy and advocacy is critical, absolutely critical. And yet I think what we need to really focus on is doing good work, right? That’s what I tell my team all the time. All paths stem from doing good work. If you do good work, you’ll have a strong argument in front of policymakers, funders, potential partners, and so that’s what we focus on. You know, we’re on the path to establishing a proof point that I can use to go have conversations with funders and policymakers at every one of those levels, and they all have a role to play. Right? Our experience, since we’ve gotten funding and support both through the city of Stockton, our county, the state and, you know, via national philanthropy, they all have a role to play. The way it’s worked out for us is, you know, the first capital that’s usually in is typically the city or the county, right? Because they have the most at stake, right? This is where they live, where their family members live, and so they feel most at stake, and they’re willing to take on what seems like a very risky proposition, right? But that that funding and support locally is so critical because it often comes with relationships, right, which are so, so valuable in our work. And what we’ve seen happen is, you know, local funding, and that local support, local partnership, has allowed us to really develop and refine our model to the point when then we can take it to regional funders or partners, or state level partners, and say, look at the great work that we’re doing in our own backyard. We think we can expand to other, you know, cities, other counties. Would you support us, either through funding and relationships? And then I think, you know, the national funders have been helpful across each one of those stages. But as we’ve talked about, they’re really focused on scale, right? And I think they will be far more useful to us as an organization, you know, as we sort of develop a proof point here across multiple counties with our work, as we think about how to service youth, you know, across the state, and ultimately across the across the country. But, you know, policy can always be an effective tailwind, right? I mean, can be such an enabler of our work, and it can such, it could be such an accelerant and catalyst of our work. And so I always feel like the best way to advocate for policy change is to do good work, to have work that, you know, elected officials feel like they’re comfortable sticking out their necks around because they’ve seen it or experienced it or heard about it, and so that’s always a common denominator for us, is doing good work.

Selley Abebe  32:50  

And, you know, can I just say, as a representative of my entire policy team, is, you know, one of the biggest things, and really the whole organization, one of the things that we really try to make the point on oftentimes with policymakers, is your ROI is, like, astronomical, yeah, you know, like, even if, even if this goes to scale and this becomes the ultimate goal, right? Even if we had a child mission statement for the United States that said Our goal is to make sure that every child is, you know, ready to thrive by 26 regardless period of anything else, a child is ready to thrive by 26 and they’re economically, you know, stable, that would drastically impact maternal health outcomes. Oh, yes, absolutely, you know, zero to three outcomes in early childhood and early development. You know, it would change the way that we probably think about nutrition in schools and education, just more broadly. You know, it would change everything. You know, it may even solve some of these issues that we’ve been trying to get at for so long. You know, even family economics, from, you know, child tax credit to all these different things that if you’re really centering kids and our future, yeah, and then, to your point, I’m like this, this should make people happy. So yeah, if you get behind it, and then you go and tell that to the people, wouldn’t they be happy? So it just seems like it’s a no brainer across the board, but sometimes, you know, even us, we wonder, like, Why aren’t kids issues more of a focal point for our country? Because it impacts every invested partner that you’re working with, business, right, families and community, local schools and local community partners. Like, that’s pretty much everybody.

Kai Kung  34:41  

I couldn’t agree more, and that’s why I think, you know, your focus on kids and children, that’s sort of the solution, right? Because I think part of what you describe, and the reason why in a lot of communities, we’re not doing right by our youth is because in these systems, you know. Yeah, adults are involved, or other special interests are involved. And perhaps I’m optimistic, but I think everyone’s in it, you know, for the most part, for the right reasons. But it’s just if you’re not doing a version of user centered design where you’re constantly talking to the people you’re trying to serve, your constituents, you’re just not going to be in tune with what they actually need what they’re challenged with, what their pain points are. And so I always encourage policymakers to not only talk with, you know, nonprofits like ourselves who are providing direct service to these young people, but talk to the young people themselves, right? And so make sure that what you’re advocating for, from a policy perspective, is actually going to help them. You know, that’s the challenge that a lot of our policymakers face, it’s not that they have the wrong intentions. It is, how do you continue to stay in touch with the people you’re trying to serve so that what you’re advocating for, what you’re doing, actually solves their challenges?

Selley Abebe  35:53  

Yeah, I mean, and that’s a big part of why we’re doing this podcast right is really just to encourage people from across the country to just lean in a little bit, because their voices matter, right? And the thing about kids is, once you’re no longer a kid, it’s easy to kind of forget their needs, maybe until you become a parent or grandparent for the first time, like it’s hard to envision it. So that’s why I think the work that you’re doing is so important. Because ultimately what we know, connecting your work all the way to our work is federal investment in scale, right? Or more, more investments in scale, right? You know, if you get those two things and you’re handing a solution like as it grows, you’re not only bringing attention to an issue, but you’re also hand delivering a solution that’s very thoughtful, based on different industry, because at the end of the day, everybody does need to, kind of see, they need to have an incentive. It needs to be mutually it needs to be beneficial for for everyone. Typically, you know, to get large scale collaboration. And likely this is going to look different from community to community. And some communities might not even need it, right, like absolutely, some communities if they don’t have a large population of of young kids, like, maybe, maybe they don’t need it. But a large part of America, I would say, you know, we need programs like this.

Kai Kung  37:11  

Yeah, and you I think Messellech pointed to like a phenomenon we observe in this sort of pathways, you know, workforce development, work, which is to say, you know, sometimes we only notice our young people when they’re in specific spheres or systems, right? So as an example, k 12 educators, once somebody graduates from high school, it kind of becomes, you know, the colleges or the universities or the employer’s responsibility for that young person. Once they’ve graduated high school, somebody else is in charge of them, so to speak, similarly so for higher education, when you’re in you know, when you graduate college, you’re on your own right, or, you know, you’re the responsibility of an employer. And I think it takes thinking about the the actual young person themselves, by the time they’re 26 when they’ve gone through multiple systems, who, other than a parent, is thinking about that young person as an individual, not as a member of a certain system at a given point in time. And I would say the same thing about geography, right? I mean policymakers, sometimes, I think, prioritize certain policies because they are their constituents, right? So what happens when that family moves to another district or another part of the state? Is that somebody else’s problem. So I think it’s easier said than done, but I think increasingly we need to think about things not, not, not be constrained by the systems in which our young people operate, but just think about the young person and what their goals are and what you want for them, and get beyond sort of this siloed thinking, I guess, right, both geographically and depending on the specific sort of public system in which the young person is, I think that would really benefit us and benefit the young person too.

Selley Abebe  38:58  

Absolutely. I mean, I don’t think there’s anything left to say, you know, because we, at first focus, are all about breaking the silos, because we see how everything is so interconnected. And I just appreciate the work that you’re doing and the work that you are going to continue to do. I can already see great things if you have not listened to other episodes. We ask our guests at the end of each episode we have, like a budding playlist. And so we ask all of our guests, what is the one song that resets you, you know, that makes you happy? What is it for you? And it could be an album. We’ve had some albums. Someone from the team strategically picks the best song that they like on the album.

Kai Kung  39:43  

Well, you’ll have to give me access to this playlist now then I’m curious, and it actually reminds me of my mentor, Don who always used to ask a version of this question as well. What comes to mind is the times they are are changed by Bob Dylan, you know, for the people that know me, Well, Bob. Dylan, gosh, he’s just a really important person in my life. I love his music. It’s really spoken to me, but specifically the times, they are changing. I think, you know, first of all, was written, you know, during the 60s, during time of, you know, incredible change, I think, for our country, you know, not unlike where we currently are. You know, thinking about a young person having to endure covid, Ai. I mean, these are monumental tectonic shifts in the lives of young people, you know, I think of our current, contemporary time. I think about the 60s a little bit, when the song was written. And, you know, that song is really about youth, right? That youth are incredibly important. They are the future of our communities, of our country, and if we are not lending a hand, you know, as Bob Dylan says, either lending a hand or getting out of the way. I mean, you know, our young people are not going to be successful, and so that’s what I think about at times. Massage is, you know, we’re doing our best to lend a hand for the next generation. They are the future of our country, and we’re trying to get more people involved so that they’re lending a hand, as opposed to standing in the way

Selley Abebe  41:02  

I love it. Thank you so much.

Kai Kung   41:04  

Thank you so much, Messellech. It’s great to be honest, you and best wishes.

Selley Abebe  41:11  

You know what stuck with me after this conversation, the idea that when young people say I don’t know what I want to do, maybe that’s not confusion, it’s a lack of access, and Kai’s work is a reminder that exposure, connection and follow throughs aren’t luxuries, they’re necessities. So here’s your takeaway, if you’re part of a workplace, a school, a city agency, ask yourself, Could a young person see themselves here? If not, what would it take to make space? And if this episode sparked anything for you, maybe it reminded you of yourself when you were little, and how you wish you’d known about an opportunity or an industry sooner, share it with your school board, with your HR department, even with your little cousin, who is trying to figure it out. Speaking of kids is a podcast by first focus on children. It’s produced by wind Haven productions and blue jay Atlantic. Elizabeth Windom is the supervising producer. Julia Windom is the editor and Jay Woodward is the Senior Producer. For more about this episode, visit first focus.org.