Life skills

That was it.

Well, I was going to touch on it later, but it's a perfect segue to bring it in because you run Paul Wade's Life Skills and a lot of work with the community and speaking.

So one thing I don't believe people from the outside looking in have, how would I say, like respect or actually think about is the impact on work and what you were just talking about and the actual impact on the job.

So is that what you're saying that how you've had to modify the speaking gigs that you're doing and actually the work that you're doing through the, what about the actual football in school and that you're doing with the schools and the community aspect? Has that had to change as well?

As a special ed teacher...

in autistic support and life skills settings predominantly yeah leadership means coordinating things making things happen mentoring

yeah

and supporting their families helping create systems that allow the students as much access to the things that they need as can be as can yes

And they need a higher level of care than a shelter.

Well, when we go out to speak in our community, we do like to educate people on several common causes of homelessness, including lack of affordable housing, lack of education, some of the stuff you were mentioning, lack of life skills, mental illness, domestic violence, and addiction.

Why is it important for people to understand that homelessness rarely has just one reason or

one cause? You know, Ruby Payne wrote this awesome book called Understanding the Framework of Homeless and Poverty.

And you hit rock bottom.

And it's like, is this really the bottom? Because sometimes it's not, right? They got to go even deeper.

Well, we often talk about life skills.

What are some examples of life skills that many of us take for granted that can have a huge difference in someone's ability to remain

She does post-trauma sensitive yoga, all of this sort of stuff.

And you know, Jodie and I, I've worked a fair bit together over the last 12 months on, on various projects, but the big one was we put together a four-part series called the Life Skills Masterclass.

And, and it was so good.

So good.

I'm so proud of that series.

So basically, how it turned out was I w-- I had Jodie on as a guest to talk about, you know, her career in-- She's a former member of the Austra- Royal Australian Air Force and, you know, talk to her about work in clinical nutrition and, and post-traumatic growth with trauma-sensitive yoga and all of this kind of stuff.

And, and she's just-- she was just such a wonderful guest, and I knew that I wanted to do a four-part Life Skills Masterclass series.

And it wasn't until after I had Jodie on as a guest, as a just a, a solo guest to talk about her story that I thought, "You know what? I would really like to see if she would be interested in being a co-host for the Life Skills Masterclass series," which she, which she very g- graciously said yes to.

So the Westwood Bound, of course, is, um, an educational program.

It's a life skills program.

And let me just tell you, um, that the, the, the Westwood Bound component of it is it complements like the STEM programs that people teach.

So we don't just teach history, um, or SCAM, or STEM skills or soft skills.

And, um, we'll, we can work it from there.

We're already working with a couple of, um, universities, um, we're under NDA, so we can't really speak about that, who are interested in being able to bring these programs to their outreach programs as well.

With that being said, how does the program intentionally support underserved communities and address equity in STEM and life skills when you bring in the removal of DEI and Opportunity Access Program?

With this book, and I feel that by studying the Westwood Bound principles, going through each one of the modules, as Jackie mentioned earlier, it is helping you step-by-step position yourself

And when they're older and the younger ones, you know, if it's a Monday, they might be going to the grocery store to purchase what they're going to be eating for lunch all week.

And then they'll be learning how to make their lunch all week because those functional life skills are so, so important to our students' success.

I can imagine.

So as far as across the country, do you know if there are a lot of schools like yours or is yours a unicorn? I mean, it sounds like...

People may not ever tell you, but it affects your life and it affects your economics.

So then I have a chapter called Life Skills Needed to Survive and Thrive.

I tend to ask questions a lot.

So I ask questions like, why not me? And why can't I? And how can I? You know, a lot of times we see a problem and then we don't think about, okay, well, what can I do about it? don't have enough money okay well what are we gonna do about it i'm in debt okay well what you gonna do about it those questions like how can i increase my wealth how can i buy another property how can i whatever and then another chapter that i have in there is is dealing with relationships from friendships to parents to dating relationships to marriage and i have four pillars in there that i talk about marriage it's really really good stuff this book is a great book i don't know if i told you