Speaker 1 00:00:01 Hello, fellow stewards. My name is eWAY. So from Rethink Health, a Ripple Foundation initiative, we're hosting a new podcast called Unsung Stewards in Turbulent Times. And it's about leaders like you who are taking responsibility to tackle the big question of our time. How can we design systems with the conditions that all people need to thrive? You're not alone and wondering, can we break from business as usual in practical ways?
Speaker 2 00:00:33 How
Speaker 1 00:00:33 Do we effectively lead communities and institutions to think and act in ways that will actually make a difference? And where do we find the courage to step forward when so many want to preserve the status quo? In this series, you'll hear human stories about real people, real places who are taking on these questions and making real impact. Today we are talking to Wanda Webster Stanbury, the Executive Director for the Center for Child and Family Achievement. When the schools in Trenton, New Jersey moved to remote learning, t, CFA and community partners collaborated to equip parent and students with a toolkit, resources and learning environment that they needed to continue to reach their education potential. Wanda exercises, stewardship on different levels, the street level, the scholarly level, the systems level, and the spiritual level. Her stewardship posture was forged during her work in the interfaith student protest movement of the sixties. That formative experience seeded in her the practice of dialoguing and working together across difference in order to transform our systems and our relationships with one another.
Speaker 0 00:01:53 And here we were, you know, black and white and, and, and Christian and Jewish teenagers going to help other people, but also learning how to communicate and how to, um, embrace one another's fears and, um, dreams.
Speaker 1 00:02:12 Good morning, Wanda. Thank you for joining me today.
Speaker 0 00:02:15 Good morning. How are you doing?
Speaker 1 00:02:18 I'm doing well. How about yourself?
Speaker 0 00:02:20 Great. I'm doing great. Thank you.
Speaker 1 00:02:22 Well, thanks Wanda. Um, we're happy to have you. Um, I wanted to start off our conversation with, um, just some quick storytelling. You know, one of the remarkable ways that you and your organization have taken action during these, these multiple crises around the pandemic and also, um, reckoning with racial injustice is through your, your work supporting schools.
Speaker 0 00:02:44 Well, when the pandemic hit, uh, we knew we had to go into a first responder emergency mode thinking about what's most important, which is the wellbeing of the child, and providing a safety net for that child and that parent doing this real uncertain, uh, moment. And so what we thought about initially was we wanted each child as many children as possible at the Gregory School in Trenton, New Jersey. And so our conversation centered around what I call the safety net in the toolkit concept, which is if you put a toolkit in a child's hand, they immediately feel two things. They feel that they are seen, they feel that they're safe. How do I make as many children and create an environment where as many children are feeling safe in this uncertain moment? And the idea occurred. We have lots of books in the building that belong to us because, as you know, the Center for Child and Family Achievement, our primary mission is centered around literacy and eradicating illiteracy in our lifetime.
Speaker 0 00:03:55 And so we have books and we had school supplies, and then we partner with another partner in the building who provides snacks for children, the Merc Street Friend Center. So I said to our partners, our parent partners, because that's another one of our best practices, is that we work with the parent as the, the center for helping the child move forward, moving them together. So we contacted parents in a very short window and said, look, we have some books, we have some bags. We need to bring snacks and books together and put them in the hands of children and let them know they're gonna be okay. That's really what happened. It was sort of like giving them this toolkit and giving them as many supplies as we could. And then from there, uh, starting to think about what was going to be happening next, which would be the idea of remote learning and virtual learning as the way in which children would continue to have a classroom experience.
Speaker 0 00:04:58 It's interesting that prior to the pandemic in 2018, uh, CCFA put together what we call the digital initiative. And, um, it was executed in January of 2019 for 74th graders at the Gregory School. So when the pandemic hit, we already had 70 students that had in their possession Chromebooks in their homes. And, uh, so we started working with following up on those students to make sure that they understood you have in your possession the most sought after tool right now, which is a Chromebook because most school districts were not ready and did not know how to respond. And New Jersey was one of those states. We maintained, uh, real relationships. I put together a concept dealing with, uh, wellness calls, which is, um, identifying the most at risk families in that building and working with the, the, uh, parent liaison and working with the parents to identify who those children might be, and just reaching out to them and saying, Hey, how's it going?
Speaker 0 00:06:14 You know, to the, to the mom or dad, we want to learn as much as we can about what's happening on the ground floor and influence policy, but we also understand the importance of touching people on a, on a day to day basis. Our virtual program after school program that's going on is the only program in the building, uh, of an elementary school. And we're probably one in the district of about maybe four other virtual programs that are going on across the district. And, uh, so we'll have 60 children. So the way that we approach this is really based upon our core practices, which is partnering with the parent. We partnered with the parent, um, in the very, as I said, in March, we partnered with parents, which means that, um, we had a parent orientation meeting prior to the cohort. We, we got parents vested in this with us as well as the child, and we set up incentives and competitions. So we'll be awarding students, um, incentives for perfect attendance, and, um, we're doing all sort of things to keep them engaged with us. So really that's how we did it. We sent out daily text. If your child was not on the, uh, Chromebook mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, the first 10 minutes of the afterschool program, my support team would call them and text them and say, where are you? We're waiting. We need you. You're gonna miss out.
Speaker 1 00:07:43 No, it sounds like a lot of, a lot of the, the, in the relationship with the parents allowed this to be pulled off because a lot of, I'm sure a lot of other schools have not been able to, to pull this type of engagement off. One of the things you mentioned was the, the importance of touching the reality of everyday people. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and, and, and of every child in every family. And it really demonstrates to me the importance of, of being anchored in and, and keeping track of and touching the lived reality of, of every child or family, even while we're doing kind of broader policy and systems work. Is there, I I'm just curious, is there a specific story or example you can share about, um, a child, um, or a student or a family who's live you touched, um, around the partnerships and the toolkits that you just mentioned?
Speaker 0 00:08:28 We have many stories, but I think I want to talk about a more recent story that deals with, um, the Washington family, uh, which is a, a grandmother raising, um, currently in her home, three grandchildren. Uh, but of her, of her eight grandchildren, five of them were raised by her. Um, and, um, you know, this particular grandparent went on a journey with me with Ccfa from the very beginning. So her now six year old grandson was with me from birth at the Center for Child and Family Achievement. The first, um, sibling. I met him as a six year old Joseph. And, um, Ms. Washington as a parent partner participating in all of our activities. But the one thing that was constant with us was books in the home and encouraging reading together, making sure they had food and, um, various basic resources, school supplies and uniforms.
Speaker 0 00:09:37 And so what happened during the pandemic, of course, because, uh, Joseph is my fifth grader getting ready to graduate, right. And our graduating students from that particular school, it's a part of our model. Each graduating fifth grader gets a huge bag of books for the re for summer reading games, educational toys, hygiene items, a huge bag of things to say, we see you, we love, you. Keep learning. So Joseph, of course, was getting ready to leave, um, our school and go on to middle school. So what I wanna say about the Washington family said, did, here's a grandmother who, um, is extremely resourceful, um, needs someone to, um, affirm her to know that she can call and get help. And so my team is available to do that. Her child, her grandchildren, when they started, when the pandemic started, I would go in and I would check on them.
Speaker 0 00:10:38 They would be doing their classroom work on the sofa, on the bed, on the floor with the Chromebook, but they didn't have a designated workspace. And, um, so at the end of the summer, she was so excited to share with me how the support that we gave her through our partners who were dealing with emergency food relief and other school supplies. Joseph also was one of 21 students who we, in who we invested a Ard Packard portable printer. He was able to set up an office in his home. So here he, he has a Chromebook from fourth grade. Now he has the printer going into the pandemic. Right. So, but he had, he didn't have a desk. So his grandmother was very proud to share with me how she purchased a desk for all of her three grandchildren.
Speaker 1 00:11:38 Just the way that we are, we're talking about, you know, specific grandchildren and specific children. It's, um, it's reminding me about just the, yeah. The importance of recognizing the potential of every, of every child. And, um, mm-hmm. <affirmative>, even reflecting on Joseph, there's a, there's a Brazilian philosopher, um, Roberto Unger who, who kind of says, our, our education system needs to treat every child as a tongue tied prophet, you know, but all they need is to be equipped with the right tools, um, and resources, whether that's, um, Chromebooks or printers or, or a designated desk. Um, and, and I think that way of thinking about, you know, these are, these are, um, potential profits, these children, you know, we need to invest in them, um, and they need the right tools. Um, which sounds like that's what Ccfa is, is really focused on, on doing.
Speaker 0 00:12:28 Absolutely. We're, we are passionate about the toolkit and, um, the, you know, the, the, the closing the disparity gap between what a poor child has access to, to learn, to be inspired, to learn, and to be a lifetime learner. And the basic toolkit for us is a book, the Power of a book. And, uh, for many kids, for thousands of children, we have given them their first book.
Speaker 1 00:13:00 Um, one of the, one of the things I just find really fascinating about Uwana is, is the kind of multiple worlds you, you kind of inhabit and integrate mm-hmm. <affirmative>. What is unique about your approach to stewardship, um, and how you approach, kind of change
Speaker 0 00:13:15 What that meant, you know, to be a part of how things change and, and knowing that I have power to make things different, uh, has always been fascinating to me. And also understanding that in the context of all of that, it doesn't happen without people connecting, and it doesn't happen without, um, love being your core, um, source of strength to keep going. So, um, I was exposed as a teenager and maybe even as early as 12 years old, um, in my hometown Red Bank, New Jersey, to the interfaith, uh, youth council. And, uh, the Reverend Joan Higgins, who later became my mentor, but she brought together black and white children, Jewish children, Christian children, young people to learn and to engage with one another, but to encounter one another, what we were thinking and what we were feeling in the 1960s, 1960, you know, 19 64, 19 65, you know, um, was very powerful.
Speaker 0 00:14:29 And, um, at that time, I, I became, became very curious about, you know, what I could learn and what I could teach other people. Reverend Higgins would always say to me, she said, you know, if you can tell people how you really feel and keep them talking, and then we, we do things together. And that's what we did. We encountered one another through, um, dealing with issues, dealing with race and racism and the pain and the, uh, the, the, the, uh, upheavals in the sixties. And then we would go out and do social projects in communities and neighborhoods. We went into very impoverished rural communities and, um, the nearby rural black urban communities that were migrant communities as well as urban communities. And so that was something that was very interesting to me. And I never left that, um, dialogue. And, and then I heard Fanny Lou Hamer speak, you know, and I was, like I said, a young teenager and she, I heard her speak this woman from Mississippi, and she was talking about poverty of Mississippi James Baldwin, when he was gonna be on television.
Speaker 0 00:15:44 I was the first one to try to get home to see his interviews. When I got involved in the Community Action Movement in the, uh, early, um, the late sixties, um, I was involved in the student protest movement and, um, working with, uh, diverse students who understood, you know, uh, student protests and social justice. So I grew up with this desire to be a change agent and to do it as a part of a community. And, um, I learned from that encounter that, you know, in being a part of that community, we will not always agree. We will not always be accepted. We will not always be welcomed. It will not be, uh, it will be painful, but it will be worth it in the end because we'll make a difference. It's sort of like a story that a woman told us when, um, we went to her community and I remember her very much and we were doing a, um, my job was to do a clothesline for a woman.
Speaker 0 00:16:52 And, um, she made us call her ma'am. And so I would call her Miss Ma'am. And so she had a clothes line. So she said to me, she said, we said, we're here to, to, to give you a clothes line. So she said, no, you're not. She said, you're not here to give me a clothes line. Said, you see that over there? That's my clothes line. The thing that was funny that I remembered was that the lesson in that story was, and we worked with her and, you know, she, she made us corned red and she showed us how she, she would wash her clothes in a tub and put wood under it, and cuz she had no running water. And they would wash their clothes and they would share a clothes line. So our job was to take one of those, you know, it's like a, you pull it, you know, and we were installing that for her.
Speaker 0 00:17:43 So we were like, and we had an adult with us. We're like, what are we doing? We're like almost in tears. Cause we were so intimidated. Cause she was, but what happened was she wanted me to know I have something already. Yeah, you're just coming to make it better. But I already have something. When I am blessed to work in a community, I'm not bringing a solution. I'm coming to connect to what's already there and learn from that person how to make it better. There's always something we can learn from someone if we listen. Um, that communities don't need us to help them. They are there to help us understand what it is that they need to have help with. We're not the solution, we're partners in the solution. Yeah. So I always think about her, um, when I go into communities, I think about what we, what we, that connection I made with this particular woman that day, which is I will always go back.
Speaker 1 00:18:48 Oh, that's a great story about, about Miss Mam. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, thanks for sharing that. And, and also just the whole story about, you know, that we all have a piece of the, the puzzle to kind of contribute together and, and kind of even your experiences with interfaith, if I'm hearing you correctly. When we, when we roll our sleeves up and, and kind of do work together, it, it leads to kind of a deeper understanding about mm-hmm. <affirmative> what we each have already. And it also kind of starts to melt away these preconceptions we have about, about each other, about how, you know, you're Jewish, you're Christian, or you're black and you're, you're white. But kind of like the dialogue happens within the kind of work that you're doing together and the projects you're doing. Wanda exercised stewardship through multiple levels that she refers to as the four S's on the street level, touching the lives of real people, the scholarly level in academia, the systems level through public policy and the spiritual level through her Christian faith.
Speaker 0 00:19:54 So the four Ss for me have always been staying connected to a street level of information, and not only a street level of communicating with people and understanding the culture in the language. I wrote the legislation called the Urban Women's Center Job Training Act that was signed into law by Governor Kane in 1965, I think it was. So the street level is always a place where I inform, um, what I want to do and how I want to do it, and also where I feel that, that there's so much untapped talent. And then, um, the, when I look at the other, in the four Essences, we look at the street level, we look at, um, the scholarly level, you know, what, what, what does the academic community have to offer? Because again, I'm very much involved in the importance of, of the academy and partnering with universities and, um, listening to the research and being infor, data informing how we respond to the streets, and also the streets re informing how we respond to data as well.
Speaker 0 00:21:01 So the other, um, the other s would be, um, you know, the systems, um, app approach would be, you know, looking at the streets in the system and, you know, how do we then inform public policy In 19, in, in the early 1980s, I established my own consulting practice, which was, um, management interventions, a urban public policy firm in 1981. And that's where I began to, um, take my curiosity of the streets and my spirituality, my faith in God, and my faith in, um, um, not just the word of God, but the power of the word of God and the power of faith and the faith community. So I've always connected the faith community to my work, you know, through interfaith, um, initiatives and ecumenical initiatives. So we have the streets, we have at the very core of that, you know, the center, the top and the bottom, my spirituality.
Speaker 0 00:22:07 And then, um, you know, uh, the scholarly aspect of it, connecting to the academy, because again, as a public policy leader and thinker, I'm always looking at research and data, but I think that, you know, that we all inform each other. It's such a connectivity there and such a dependency and, um, public policy that works, does not work without information from what's happening on the grassroots level. And we, we are guided in our spirituality to work with integrity and stewardship. This is where stewardship comes in, how we amplify our stewardship issue, my faith in God, my faith in people, and what we can do.
Speaker 1 00:22:52 And then I think what's fascinating and interesting is just, you know, um, I think the world and, and just the society likes to put us into kind of different boxes, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it's just, it's just interesting that you've been able to integrate those different parts of yourselves, but it's also something that is needed. I wanted to just pivot a little bit, um, because we've, we've been in this period of time where we've been in a global pandemic <laugh> mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but also as, as a nation. I think we, um, what's live for us is, is the reckoning around racial injustice.
Speaker 0 00:23:25 Well, I think that what needs to be done in terms of, when we talk about anti-black racism and white supremacy, we have to be honest about that. We have to be honest at looking at what is anti-black racism and what is white supremacy, and why do they exist? Why do they exist and how did they become the American reality? We need to really look at that historically from a perspective of enslaved people coming into people who were African, who were, who were then enslaved coming to America, being brought to America as a free labor force. And one of the things that I think we're going to find as an answer is that we have some real economic issues to address that at the core of reconciling racism has to be economic justice. And what does that look like? And how comfortable are we in talking about reparations for enslaved black Americans, number one, and how do we get there?
Speaker 0 00:24:34 And the core root problem and the core reason why we have these two realities in the first place, one being owned by the other, one being enslaved by the other. And I think we have to really talk about that. Um, and I think the way to get there is going to be through honest dialogue. You know, again, you know, communications on all levels, the street level, the grassroots level, the academic scholar level, the spiritual level, the policy level. It's a solvable problem, but it's going to deal with, uh, upsetting the current, um, economic structure of American capitalism. You know, the Black American, um, who going into reconstruction in the, in the late 18 hundreds and 1920s owned land in Oklahoma alone, 1.5 million acres of land was stolen from black Americans. Over 50 towns in Oklahoma were burned and destroyed and disenfranchise. That's a case for reparations. That's a case for economic payback return on our trauma, our pain, our suffering, and we have to address it. There's no reconciliation without it. Everything else is superficial. I think that people want to own it, but we keep avoiding it. We keep saying, oh no, let's just talk about diversity. The families that I deal with, their primary problem is poverty, compounded by illiteracy. And illiteracy was a slavery issue. The slaves were not allowed to read and write.
Speaker 1 00:26:26 I did wanna, this is a little bit of a pivot to a different topic, but I was wondering if you would be willing to share the story around, um, the Urban Woman Center. I know that you worked with a white woman across difference and kind of what that demonstrates to you about coming together to work around reconciliation, but also real material economic gains for women. And
Speaker 0 00:26:47 So, yeah. Um, in the early part of the eighties, as I was a consultant to the, the New Jersey division on women in the area of displaced homemakers, and I was working with policies around women, uh, I began to ask questions, where were the services for Hispanic and black women in urban communities and across the country? And we didn't find very many resources. One, one week I was going to pick up some material for a conference that I was speaking at. And, um, the dire, the new director of the department said to me, division on women said to me, oh, I heard about you and you were always coming here to pick up information. And I was curious about, you know, why you're here. I said, well, because this is what I do. I connect people with information and I, I love doing this. And, and I, we began to talk and we built a rapport.
Speaker 0 00:27:39 And she was, uh, at that time concerned about the feminization of poverty. I shared with her some of my views on that in terms of, you know, the black woman being, uh, disenfranchised and, and not connected to resources. And the Hispanic woman as well, she said, I want you to be a consultant to me. And that began, became our journey together, um, with this very powerful, um, woman, um, who was the director of Division on women, Joan M. Wright, who, uh, came out of the Cane administration and we became friends. And later on she said to me, she says, you know, when I first met you, I had never had relationships with anyone who was black. I, I had a certain view about black people. And, um, and I said, I said, really? She said, yes. She said, but I, I, you know, I never really invited anyone to come to my home cuz we began to, you know, go to one another's home and connect on that level and became friends over, you know, this, this five year period that I really worked with her on this model, we, you know, worked together on a number of issues.
Speaker 0 00:28:43 I became her surrogate speaker when she was having speaking engagements. And so what happened in that moment for us was that here were two women from two different, um, frames of reference, but what brought us together was our purposefulness on the feminization of poverty that we were both concerned about why more women living in poverty, why were more, she was concerned about why were more white women disconnected to wealth building and access to wealth. And I was concerned about why were so many black women and Hispanic women not at all connected to the pipeline of wealth creation and building. And, um, and we embraced one another's, I think, interest and found commonality in that. But yet we, but, and when I heard her story, she was like, you know, this was not the person I was before we met. She says, you know, I just, you know, and I said, what does that mean?
Speaker 0 00:29:40 Well, my views were far more conservative and far more, um, you know, in contrast to your thinking. But we united our voices on one singular mission, which was the feminization of poverty. We did that together and it transformed communities in the state of New Jersey and other parts of the nation and world. But it all started with a, a, a non-threatening conversation, non-judgmental conversation about something that we both believed passionately in. But we knew that as women, we were in different places on the continuum. I knew that white women were here and black women were here, you know, but my goal was to do what, to create a relationship so that I could figure out how to bring about that equality and that that framework to make a difference. And I think we did that. Out of that came the Urban Women Center legislation, which, uh, strategically through Jones Genius, we were able to put it in four cities in New Jersey. And from that came the Hispanic Women's Center model with Dr. Gloria Belia, who said, I want one for Hispanic women. Although at the Urban Women's Center, we had Hispanic women represented from day one.
Speaker 1 00:30:59 Not only did you all pass legislation together, but it's, it's bringing me back to an earlier part of this conversation around when you roll your sleeves up and do work together, you start to kind of dismantle the preconceptions, you know, of each other. Right. That was yours with Miss Maam. And, um, or with, um, you know, the interfaith and Jewish Christian. And so it's almost as if, um, yes, the legislation is, is kind of one really important outcome, but then the relationship that you all have built and, and your experience now with, um, each other beyond just kind of, well, that's a white face, or this is a black face mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it's kind of become to, to kind of change as well and shift as well. So worry.
Speaker 0 00:31:37 Yeah. That's, it's, it's, it, it it's what it's really all about, you know, you know, rolling our sleeves up and, um, you know, that's how we're going to, how we're going to understand one another and, um, you know, become advocates for change and, and activists and really live out what we learn from one another that, um, that this, this dream called America belongs to us all. And, uh, as Fran Hamer said, you know, the American flag has the blood of the Black American all over it, but now what do we do? How do we move forward? You know, going into different relationships in my career, did I ever have fears? Yes. Did I ever feel discriminated against? Yes, many times I was the only one in the room. But I also knew that the vision, the mission, the purpose for my life is far greater than, um, the rejection. People talk about love, but there's a deeper love, which is humility.
Speaker 1 00:32:35 Hmm. Well, um, this has just been a really uplifting conversation, Wanda. Um, your, your journey is just really beautiful and it has so many different layers to it. And so I really appreciate you, um, just sharing your journey today here on this podcast.
Speaker 0 00:32:53 Well, I appreciate you. I appreciate your, um, you know, your love, your, uh, curiosity, your power, you know, and the thing that excites me is when I have the opportunity to talk generationally with young people, because I know that your questions are grounded in a desire to make our world better.
Speaker 1 00:33:16 Wado Webster Stansberry is the Executive Director for the Center for Child and Family Achievement in Trenton, New Jersey. You can find out more about our
[email protected]. This podcast would not be possible without the talent of Jane Erickson, Bobby Millstein, Brad Gerard, Jessica Estelle Huggins. I'm so from Rethink Health, and this is unsung stewards in turbulent times.
