8‑20‑21
930/NDI/SignNexus
CART Disclaimer:  This rough edit transcript, which may contain missing, misspelled or paraphrased words, is only provided for your immediate review and is not certified as verbatim and is not to be cited in any way.
[ captioner standing by ]
>> Hello everyone.  How are you all?  Great to see everyone.  Thank you for joining us for our first convening of our each of the class trainers to the discussion.  At the beginning you were seeing some quotes that folks had sent in then you also were seeing ‑‑ listening to the music that was created by one of our fellow trainers, Tyson Bedford so you were able to enjoy his music this morning.  So thank you so much Tyson for allowing us to share your music and we hope to share a little bit more of your music later in our time together.
So thank you for that and thanks to everyone who could sent in quotes for us to be able to share and use.  We're really excited about this time for everybody to come.  And, you know, this is different than our training.  Because we're not just focusing on one specific topic we're bringing everyone together to network and have conversations.  But, you know, similar to our trainings we hope that today is really as interactive, we hope you enjoy the activities that we have.  I said in the trainings if you were at a dinner party you had to play a game before you laugh so we have some fun games we're going to be doing today as well.
Then we will also do some breakouts.  But I share that I just want to make sure we set ground rules as we get started.  Similar to the training please feel free to ask questions, we really like the dialogue and you can either put something in the chat or you can just raise your hand and we can connect that way.
Before we get started I would like to say a special thank you to the NDI team for all of their work in helping put this together today.  Laurie, Katie, Hope, Nikki and Kish who really put a lot of these pieces together and we really want to thank our team.
And before we get started and before I introduce some other folks, please if you're open to it turn on your camera.  Just so that we can see folks who are participating and it helps us as well just to see everybody's reactions.  Plus you know when I get to see your faces it really helps because you know what I got here?  I have all of my lists.  Remember the seating chart I had people do?  All of my notes from each class of everyone.  So I got them so then when I see your name I know, oop, that's what class Melissa was in or oop, Debbie, I remember where Debbie was sitting now.  So now when I see it, yeah if you can turn on your videos that's great.
Then if you can share with others which class you attended that would be great.  Okay.  So here's the other thing that you got in your email.  Did everybody get a bingo card?  Did everybody ‑‑ I know some people did not get their box yet but you do have a goody box coming if you did not receive it so be on the look out for it.  For those that did receive it there's some DOTS candy in it.  So that's what you can use as you connect the dots on your bingo card.  Okay.
Now this is how this bingo game works.  Okay.  So if you look at your bingo card there's different things on it like trainer ‑‑ this doesn't count, don't start marking your cards just yet.  Okay.  After this then you can start.  So each time you hear somebody say for example like trainer support network.  Right.  Then you can mark off trainer support network.  Or if you hear somebody in the Zoom meeting, you know how in Zoom meetings everybody says and we transition to another presenter and somebody says can you hear me.  You can mark can you hear me.  Right?  So these are different words, different things that throughout we'll be talking about and just mentioning so each time you can just mark it off.  All right.
Then when you have bingo you just say bingo wherever we're at in the game.  I hope we don't use all of these words in like the first 5 minutes because if not Kish will have to send out new bingo cards to everyone.
But this will be one of the activities we're doing.  Are there any questions about this before we get started?  How many of you are excited that you're going to play bingo today?  There's some hands.  Yes, yes, yes.  See!  Oh there's Teresa.  Yes, Teresa is putting her thumbs up.  Perfect.  Perfect.  Okay.  Great!
Great.  So we mentioned the bingo cards.  All right.  Great AJ thanks so much for mentioning the box.  I'm glad you got it.  With that before we get into the program, we do have a couple special guests with us.  We would like to introduce the council, deny any Deany and Mariel joined us and we would like to say thank you to the group for supporting this initiative and allowing us to work with each of you on this important topic of financial wellness.
So sorry, I wasn't looking at the slides but it says chatbox and technical assistance.  Please use the chatbox.  We are recording this meeting.  If you have any difficulties reach out to Hope.  Sorry, Hope for not mentioning that at the beginning.  All right.  Next slide.  Now we would like to really say special thank you to Illinois council on Developmental Disabilities and we're fortunate that Dennis Deany is with us and he's our contract manager and he's here to share a few words with us.  So Dennis, turn it over to you.
>> Thank you, Michael.  First I want to welcome everybody this morning and thank you all for joining this training and for sitting through the financial wellness trainings that the council has brought to Illinois.
My name is Dennis Deany as Michael said and I'm a program specialist with the Illinois council on Developmental Disabilities and this is one of the trainings that was funded by the Illinois council on developmental disabilities.  We also refer to‑do it as ICDD.  Our mission is to help lead change in Illinois so all people with Developmental Disabilities can exercise their rights to equal opportunity and freedom.  We are a state agency here in Illinois and the uniqueness about us is we are 100 percent federally funded.  Everything we do is guided by a 5‑year state plan we have to develop and submit every 5 years to the feds.  It's actually the administration on community living.  So everything, all the projects and everything that we do falls underneath our 5‑year state plan.  As part of that 5‑year state plan we also evaluate that yearly and we look at yearly plans and how we're going to reach our goals outlined in our 5‑year state plan.
So the council is dedicated to investing in innovative demonstrations or grants and pursuing systems change to promote inclusion and community integration for all people with Developmental Disabilities.  I would also like to encourage you to visit our website, which is icdd.Illinois.gov.  I will make sure I get that in the chatbox.  So please be sure to visit our website, check out the exciting things that are going on in the council.  Also, I encourage you to subscribe to our listserv by emailing icddinfo@illinois.gov and in your email just ask to be included ‑‑ ask your name be included on our ‑‑ added to our listserv.  The listserv is a great way to keep abreast of future upcoming trainings.  Also you can feel free to reach out to me.  I will leave my email in the chatbox as well and again it's a pleasure working with the NDI team.  So with that I will turn it back over to NDI.
>> Great.  Thank you, Dennis.  And again we really appreciate the council's support on this particular initiative.  So thank you again for joining us.  Okay.  So to get started and for some reason this decided to go off.  So we will ‑‑ hopefully that noise will stop in just a minute.  All right.  Next slide.  Next slide and Hope I saw your message and I did send Michael's information.  So one of the things about this theme for today is connect the dots and why connect the dots.  And one of the things we've learned as we've been going through the different classes and the evaluations and the trainer support network is when folks have said, hey, I'm not connecting all the dots through the different initiatives that maybe the council is supporting.  And how customized employment also is leading to the piece with ABLE accounts.  Right.  It's all connecting so thanks Kish who came up with this theme for us today that's what today is really about and helping to connect the dots.
So you can't connect the dots looking forward.  You can only connect them looking backwards.  So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.  And that was Steve Jobs who shared that.  Great.  Excellent.  Next slide, please.
So look being at our agenda for today.  So first of all we're going to start off with a chat, with Michael Moore the founder of the National Disability Institute and one of the things about Michael is that Michael is the original author of the shell, of the curriculum that we use.  And so we are fortunate to have him come.  We're going it ask him a few questions and have just a chat with him then also open it up to you if you have any questions that you would like to ask Michael you'll be able to do that as well.  Then we have activities that we'll be doing throughout our time together.  Then we'll be breaking into a group discussion that will have some different questions that we will pose to you and allow you to network with other trainers and we have a variety of training opportunities coming up so that discussion will happen.  We will have a brief break that you will be able to ‑‑ a brief break that ‑‑ 5‑minute break or so in between then we'll come back and talk about new products and updates to the projects.  We'll also give updates regarding the trainer support network then we're also going to share with you some exciting new items that are coming up, text messaging campaign, supplemental guides, as well as some focus groups to look at the impact of the program.  Then we'll share some items of next steps.
So that's what we have planned for today.  Any questions or comments before we get going?  Okay.  Great.  Yes, people in the chatbox are putting in what classes they attended.  Teresa was in the February class.  So if folks could put in the chatbox to share with others which class you were in, that will be great.  Okay.  Well now we're fortunate to have Michael Morris who is the founder of the National Disability Institute and he's here to chat with us and share with us some information on the National Disability Institute and so we're very grateful that Michael has joined us.  I just want to remind everyone that as we look at the bingo page Michael Morris is one of the bingo words.  Okay.  That's how it works.  All right.  Everybody got it?  Okay.  Great.  Hi, Michael.  How are you?
>> I don't think we can hear you Michael.
>> Please check your head set.
>> How about now?
>> Perfect.
>> Yes we can hear you.
>> Okay.  Great.
>> Great.  Great.  Michael thanks so much for joining us today with our partners in Illinois and our trainer support network members who have gone through the training.  So we really appreciate your time in coming in and speaking with us today Michael what we're going to do is is folks can put some questions in the chatbox but we also came up with questions for Michael so we're just going to have a conversation here and one of the questions that our team was really looking at and talking about was NDI was started 15, 16 years ago.  And Michael could you share with the trainers why you thought there was the need to start a national organization focused on financial wellness for people with disabilities.  And also share what was that initial vision of why you created the organization.
>> Well great question, Michael and thank you for inviting me to this group, which is doing such important work reaching so many people with disabilities and families across the state of Illinois.  It's a great question and my answer is it's kind of ironic.  My original goal was not to start a national organization.  I had become very interested in the fact that underlying the issues that other organizations were engaged in were helping to advance inclusion, helping to advance employment, affordable and accessible housing, access to appropriate healthcare and other things.  But what I didn't see were organizations dealing with what was a fundamental challenge that affected millions of families across the country and that is dealing with the extra costs of living with a disability, of understanding the importance of making informed financial decisions and that ‑‑ so I took that message to other national organizations that I had worked with.  I had been in Washington DC for quite a number of years.  I was a former legal counsel to the senate subcommittee on disability policy.  The and I said why don't we focus more on poverty alleviation strategies.  They all looked at me and said gosh we're already busy with our agendas on healthcare, employment, community living, et cetera.  And I said yes but underlying all those issues are really about helping people set financial goals, making informed financial decisions.  And they said ‑‑ they looked at me and said Michael just go start your own organization, we'll work with you but we don't ‑‑ we're not sure we truly see the connection.
I think the history of National Disability Institute as we've worked at a national level in states like Illinois and across the country and in cities across the country, I think we have shown and so many people have joined in our efforts to recognize that understanding the importance of financial wellness and financial inclusion are absolutely essential to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities and their families.
So I started out of necessity after really being turned down by other groups to work with them and I think we've been very fortunate at the nebulizers of organizations, developmental disability councils and national disability groups who I think have become more sensitized to these are fundamental issues that affects everyone in the disability community.  So that was how we got going.
>> Great.  Thank you, Michael.  The to folks who may not know I've been with the organization I guess for about 13 years, I started in 2008 and one of the first activities that I was assigned when I joined NDI was to help with the focus groups, help with the evaluation of the original curriculum that you all use that Michael and others had written.  And in that original curriculum ‑‑ we didn't even call it financial wellness back then, did we Michael?  The title of the original curriculum was building community participation and asset building for people with disabilities.  And through the evolution that it has changed.  But Michael in looking at the curriculum and the idea of creating a financial wellness curriculum over 14 years ago, why was it created and what was the initial intent, the initial intent to create it?
>> I mean very similar to the reasons for starting the organization was what we quickly saw was there was a real gap.  There was real lack of availability of anything called financial education for individuals with disabilities whether that was at a high school level or that was with adults and parents and family members.  It just didn't exist.  And so what we really envisioned was we could equipped them with power.  If they have informed financial decision making and understand the importance of creating financial goals, budgeting, understanding credit, understanding how to manage debt, how to understand the relationship between benefits counseling, the complex set of rules that create means tested public benefits and its relationship to setting financial goals and finding ways to really save, build assets improve choices in one's life, have greater self determined lives.  That was the motivation behind creation of NDI and the creation of this curriculum.  I don't think I ever envisioned now some 14 plus years later that that original curriculum which still have a life today would still be relevant, would still be part of the core of what you've been doing in Illinois.
So I'm incredibly grateful to all of you for being really become the messengers, the teachers, the trainers to help others understand that quality of life is always very much a variable of understanding economics, understanding the importance of financial goal setting and financial behavior, which ultimately is all about really financial health and wellness.  And so you have become a part of it.  Its amazing how much this has taken hold and continues to grow as a critical set of skills and knowledge for people with disabilities and families across the country.
>> Great.  Thank you, Michael.  Yeah I was pulling up the evaluation from 2008 when we were looking at it and one of the pieces that came out of the curriculum then and we're seeing some great stories like this in Illinois as well is individuals hearing about the curriculum and back then we had insights in the curriculum was a module on individual development accounts which were savings accounts and with the home ownership piece and one of the things that was really an outcome from there in the evaluation that we learned is an individual and his sister were able to use the individual development account, use the account and bought their own condo and it was the first generation individual with a disability in his family, actually first generation in his entire family to own a home so that was one of the pieces we had learned back then.
And now each of you are a part of this curriculum and making some great work and we're going to share some more of your all's best practices and highlights later on during our time together.
So Michael one of the things that we talked about in other trainer support network pieces and then we have some other questions that came in that we'll ask you but what advice or what do you think the future looks like when it comes to the future outlook on financial wellness for people with disabilities?  You know at NDI we often times talk about how we have to have the system change.  It may not change as quickly as we like but we've seen changes.  So what do you see?  What are your predictions in the future outlook on financial wellness for individuals with disabilities?
>> Well, it's a great question.  As much as progress has been made and some people tie progress not just back 14, 16 years ago when we started our work but tie the beginning of a change in attitude with the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act some 31 years ago.  But regardless of looking backward and when I think about looking ahead we still have so far to go.  The we at National Disability Institute continue to do research about the poverty levels that persist for people with disabilities, barriers in policy that keep people with disabilities from saving because of means testing based on income or assets for whether it's food assistance, housing assistance or as fundamental as the rules of eligibility for SSI.  So we know that our future is all about making sure that more and more people like you're doing in Illinois understand what is financial wellness, understand what is the set of skills, what are the key knowledge areas to be able to think ahead not just day‑to‑day but setting financial goals and really understanding that the tools continue to be added to the tool box.  It was some 5 plus years ago we were able to create the ABLE act achieving better life experience which offers really 8 million eligible individuals in this country with disabilities the chance to have tax advantage savings accounts to meet financial goals short or long term.  For family members, potentially employers and others, as well as the individual with the disability to contribute to an ABLE account and have an asset that does not count against means tested public benefits.  And yet despite being 5 years into ABLE implementation, less than 2 % of eligible individuals with disabilities in this country have opened ABLE accounts.  So why is that?  I think we have a massive, massive challenge ahead still in making people even aware, what is an ABLE account.  What are the benefits of an ABLE account?  How are the hundred thousand plus people who now have ABLE accounts, how are they using it to change the quality of their lives?  Whether it's to purchase a home as some people are doing or purchase their own means of accessible transportation or covering healthcare costs that are not covered by either public or private sources and so many other things.  We're also seeing financial wellness being a part of other systems.  In the workforce innovation opportunity act and what goes on in the workforce development system across the country, the law actually requires and offers the opportunity for people to get financial education.  And yet in most states, it's not a part of what's going on in the one‑stop career centers.  We're seeing more developmental disability councils like here in Illinois realize this needs to be a priority for training and educating families and adults with disabilities.  The so there's more work to be done.  President I think finally COVID has really put into the spotlight what started out certainly as a massive health challenge that has not yet gone away as we have this new variant.  I hope people have looked at the financial resilience center which is another project of National Disability Institute because there's a whole new wave of public benefits, ways people can gain access to economic stimulus payments or now new expansion of the earned income tax credit, the child care tax credit, so there are constantly new things to learn, new tools to be put in that tool box to make sure that the disability community is aware using those tools and benefiting from them for the ultimate goal, more choices in their lives, more freedom, more opportunities for communities participation and greater productivity.
>> Great, Michael.  So I know we have a few minutes left of your time but we do have several questions that have come in and so I want to ask them before I ask my final question.  But as you were talking about this and the barriers and talking about the things we still have to work on.  What advice do you have or what are the top 3 things that advocates and trainers can do to help overcome these barriers and these challenges?  So what key advice do you have for advocates to help eliminate these barriers?
>> Well, number ‑‑ well several.  One, I already mentioned is for folks in Illinois you, they should take a look at the Illinois ABLE program.  If you're someone already using an ABLE account talk to 5 other individuals with disabilities who may be eligible and families.  You can be a messenger of how transformative an ABLE account can be in someone's life.  So that's number one.  Number two is to really think about with the systems we have whether a child in Special Education or an adult receiving vocational rehabilitation services or workforce development services, why aren't we making sure that as fundamentalists setting up individual goals for rehabilitation or education, they should be interwoven with financial goals.  What is my future going to look like not just getting a job but what are my financial goals in terms of my own needs and setting goals around savings and asset building.  We're not doing that yet in this country.  There are only a few pilot projects here and there that are doing it similarly for people on Medicaid waivers opportunities to think about financial goals alongside community living and community inclusion goals.
So I do think that there are really large policy changes.  It's not that we have to change laws.  We have to change practice for people to understand financial health impacts every aspect of someone's life and it truly is a path that will change choices related to where one list, probably productivity and work and overall community participation.  So that's just some ways that each of you as beneficiaries of this financial wellness curriculum can raise these questions with others and really can be messengers and really on the frontline of individual and systems change.
>> Great.  Thank you, Michael.  So Michael a question came in from AJ who ‑‑ and AJ was in our Springfield class, hi AJ.  She's with a wonderful organization that supports individuals with mental health diagnoses and we're so grateful she's been in our trainer and been our partner.  So one of the questions she put in the box is that she said Michael, why was financially empowering persons with disabilities important to you personally.
>> Yeah.  So it's interesting.  I think that it was probably first said in the Americans with Disabilities Act, disability is sort of a natural part of life experience.  When I first started working in the disability communities more than 35 years ago, my passion wasn't because I had a disability or a member of my family had a disability.  My passion was about really systemic change.  I grew up in a generation that really people banned together on social cause that is were important to them in the same way people do today although today our country seems a lot more ‑‑ people being pulled in many different directions.  But over time, disability became not only a passion and a commitment to social change but it became a commitment life‑long due to the thousands of people I've sat down with and talked with over the years and their own individual circumstance and their own family circumstances.  But ultimately ‑‑ and this is back to, you know, it's ultimately a part of everyone's personal experience, probably in a lifetime I in recent years had to battle with cancer, which at certain levels probably made me within the definitions of disability and the ADA and even more recently and perhaps related to that cancer I am now a person who uses two hearing aids and has some significant hearing impairment.  So it's gone from a professional to personal and back to professional sort of passion and commitment and that's what continues to drive me.  What really is driving I think all of us, the personal stories of motivation and commitment to really better life experience that only comes about when we've recognized that unless we create pathways to savings, asset building, better financial health, we really are not going to produce the kind of change that takes place in this country.  Civil rights is critically important but civil rights is only as important as we move people forward in terms of economic advancement and economic self sufficiency, perhaps the goal of the ADA we have least achieved and I think these type of efforts and your efforts in the future having been participants in this extraordinary program to understand tools and impart knowledge to others about financial health, you really are the ones who are going to be the messengers and advocates for change that's so dearly still needs to happen.
>> Excellent.  Thank you so much, Michael.  Thank you for sharing that.  I think one of the pieces that's really impactful here is as we look at the curriculum and how many people have used it you know what we know from the trainers in Illinois which we haven't shared this number with them but as we've been adding up all the numbers from the past 2 and a half years the trainers have delivered financial wellness information from the curriculum to over 4,000 Illinois residents with disabilities, family members and providers.  And so we really see the amazing work and how they're really creating that change.
Before we close out any final thoughts that you want to share with the group?
>> Well I first want to thank the NDI team Katie and Laurie and you Michael and others, because we are not large in number.  There are only about 35 of us but we have a wide and deep foot print of bringing forward the importance of financial health and wellness.  To me it's the ultimate goal for all of us to think about whether you have a disability or not, whether you're a member of a family with a disability or not.
[ muted ]
‑‑ sorry, Michael I put you on mute on accident.
>> Hope did it Michael.  Can you unmute him, Hope?
>> Okay is that all right?
>> There you go.
>> Yeah I think just fundamentally this is work that is in its early years.  And the opportunity that each of you present to bring the messaging forward, to bring the knowledge forward, to bring the skill sets forward, that's what's so critical.  I'll be excited to learn over the next few years the impact of your work.  The impact of your messaging, your education, your training because we'll see it.  We'll see it in increased number of people signing up and having the benefit of ABLE accounts in Illinois.  We'll see it in expansion of what goes on in the vocational rehabilitation, the education system, the Medicaid community, home and community‑based waiver system.  Because what I know is and the benchmarks for us right now is almost one in two adults with disabilities are unbanked or under banked.  We've got to see how that will change and it will change with your work.  We also know that people with disabilities are two times as likely to have an unmet need for credit.  That can change with informed decision making that you will help bring forward.  So there are measures, there are metrics.  I think we will be able to really mark the changes that you will lead in the future.
>> Excellent.  Thank you so much, Michael and thank you for joining us today and for sharing these inspiring words and, you know, allowing the trainers to know like their part of this movement and really guiding and leading this movement.  So we really appreciate that.  Not to put Michael on the spot but I will put it out there any way but Michael is a poet.  I writes some great poetry.  I mention this because Michael at the very beginning one of our trainers Tyson created music so I'm thinking ‑‑ and Michael has a couple songs another group did so Michael I think we're going to have to connect you and maybe you do a poem and put it to music for the Illinois project.
>> Oh, please, please do.  Nothing would make me happier.  I look forward to connecting with him and of course we'll come back and want to play, sing, whatever it is, recite together.
>> Excellent.  Excellent.  Great.  All right Michael thanks so much for joining us today.  Please feel free to join us or I know you have a busy schedule but hang out with us if you want for a little while longer and thank you again.  All right.  Oh yes, so Kish put in we will send Michael and Tyson.  We will make sure to connect you after this I'll do a connection.  So that's great.  All right.  So what we want to do now is we are going to do a couple polling questions and then we are going to ‑‑ then we're going to go into an activity.  Okay.  So Hope could you put up our first polling question?
>> I might have to ask somebody else to because it's not letting me.  Kish can you try?
>> I can.  Are you ready?
>> Yes, please.
>> So these are some questions about topics that you might be interested in having additional training on.  This is really important because this will help guide the next several months of our ‑‑ of this grant and future programs that we put together.  So I'm going to launch this poll.  If you cannot for some reason see this poll because if you are on a phone and don't have video, the questions are this:  Please choose your first choice for one of the following topics you would like to have additional training on.  SSA benefits, housing supports or employment programs and support.  So if you can remember that, if you do not have access, if you might email that to me or put it in the chat.  So again your first choice would be either SSA, housing or employment.  And then also put your second choice, SSA, housing or employment.
Okay?  So your first and second choice.  And again if you don't have access to this poll we can still use your data.  And it looks like we have 90 % of you.
>> Great.  We'll end the poll.
>> All righty.
>> Kimberle in the box said SSA and housing.  Okay.  This is great.  So your first choice it looks like social security benefits was the top one and employment programs and support, perfect then same with the other so top two SSA benefits and program employment and support.  We have something planned for looking more at the social security benefits and employment support.  So that's great.
All right.  Before we go into our group, I would like for us to do something.  We would like to create a Word file of what you feel about the training.  All right.  Before we go into our breakout sessions.  So what we would like you to do if you can have a piece of paper and if you have a marker or a pen or whatever, could you write down one word ‑‑ oops.  Okay.  Next slide.  I'm sorry.  I'm not seeing the slides.  Perfect.  Thank you.  Thank you.  So on the screen it says activity is one word.  What's one word you would use to describe the impact training has had on you personally or professionally.  Write it on a piece of paper and hold it up in your camera that would be great so we can take a screen shot.  If not just put it in the chatbox or if you're on the phone can't do either you can unmute yourself and you can share it and we can write it down.  So if everybody could take a moment and write your one word down and then we will take a screen shot.  So one word.  Hold it up on the paper.  Oh this is great.  Oh, keep them up.  Keep them up if you're holding them up.  Please keep them up.  Boy look at the chatbox going.  Oh my goodness.  This is great.  Look at that chatbox.  All right.  Hold up the words, please.  Knowledge, to share, self-awareness that Tracy shared.  Informative Melissa, Debbie mentioned informed.  Kimberle said informed.  Inspiring, Amy.  Thank you.  Heather says power.  Great.  Thank you.  Esther I didn't see your word.  Did you hold a word up?  Oh, Barbara, confidence.  That's a great one.  That's a great one.  Informed, informative.  Okay.  Perfect.  Esther said empowerment.  Sweet.  Confident from Barbara.  Perfect.  Capacity, informed, awareness, Tyson said awareness, Christine said empowered, empowerment, confidence, goals.  Great.  Great.  Empowering, empowering.  We have a lot of empowering.  Educated.  AJ says igniting.  Igniting.  AJ does a podcast after the training.  AJ we should send that link out to everyone.  That was a really good podcast that you did.  Anna mentioned capacity, motivated, tools.  Perfect.  Sure.  Okay.  Great.  Excellent.  Thank you all for doing that.  We appreciate it.
All right you can put your words down.  Great.  Thank you.  Okay.  So now what we're going to do is go into our activity ‑‑
>> Michael are we still having ‑‑
>> I'm sorry, I'm sorry.  Yes.  It shows how well I follow the agenda since I have it right here.  So I'm going to actually turn it over to Katie Metz.
>> See how Michael always wants to steal the show?  I'm just kidding.  I'm kidding.  So hi everyone.  It's Katie.  Good to see all your faces again.  So one thing I learned today ‑‑ I don't own anything with poke dots.  This is the closest shirt I could find that had dots.  I was trying a little bit.  I'm surprised Michael doesn't have a polka dot tie.  We should have coordinated Michael.  Anyway.  So I'm really excited.
>> I don't wear ties any more so... 
>> This is what COVID has done to us.  Anyway.  So it's good to see you guys.  And so I really am excited, I have done all the trainings, you know, Michael and I and my colleagues have been in some but maybe not all S  knowing all of you, it's good to see your faces again and see everyone come together as much as possible.  And so I'm really excited to introduce Barbara Martinez who was actually I believe our first virtual class, um, is that right?  Yeah I think so.  So kind of, you know, bear with us and kind of dove into how we would figure out how to do this virtual thing.  So very excited to introduce Barbara so she can share a little bit about a trainer's perspective and the work that you've been doing.  So I will turn it over to you Barbara and welcome.
>> Thank you Katie.  Hello everybody.  Thank you for having me.  The I have been ‑‑ I have done about 9 workshops this year with a group ‑‑ two different groups.  Seven of them was a wild group, a group of people when I do it they have an interpreter.  So when I'm doing the workshops it's like immediate translation so every sentence is translated into Chinese.  So that has been a wonderful experience for me.  I had never had that opportunity before.  I have done workshops in Spanish myself and I have done workshops in English but never financial litigation workshop translated in Chinese.  I feel very United Nations and it's really exciting to see that we can, you know, share our knowledge with different demographics, different languages and the parents participate as well.  Some of the questions and things come from the parents for their own lives and sometimes come from the participants.  One thing that I have learned from working with the institutions is it is a very good idea to communicate with the institution before the workshop and share the PowerPoint slides with them because they understand the knowledge‑base of the participants that you will be teaching and they can look at the PowerPoint and say, you know what this concept is too deep and we don't have time in an hour to get into it or the translation is too difficult to explain all that in an hour.  So maybe cut this slide and only focus on this.  Then you can just trim the slides and customize the knowledge they have.  So that has been like what I have been doing and it has helped a lot.  And also being able to understand that during the class they can be interested in a particular part of the course and have a lot of questions on that and then you don't have time to cover like everything that you want to cover but as long as you're engaged and they're learning information you can later share the PowerPoint and all the resources but the most important part is getting them engaged in the topic, getting them to participate and ask questions.  Then finally a lot of the workshops that we have have a lot of information that maybe the participants that we're training don't need at the moment.  Maybe they are not employed.  Maybe they are not doing their own finances.  Maybe they don't want to be doing that in the next year or 5 years.  So you need to find what is it that they can do now.  What is it about money that they can start learning now in the situation that they are in so then they can start getting engaged with the topic of money.  Even if they cannot get employment right now, even if they cannot become self sufficient.  I think that's what has been very liken lightening to me because like when I have been doing workshops before with other types of demographics you know pretty much everybody had employment or they were looking for employment and they had a rental or a house.  But these participants are different.  They have different situations.  So the curriculum might not be applicable for them.  They might not be looking for work or they might not be working or might not want to be doing that right at the moment but I still need to engage them and I still need to get them excited about the topic.  So that was like a challenge that was something that I had to learn really quick how to go about that.  So that's what I wanted to share with you guys wait.  One more thing.  Then I used two platforms, Zoom and another one, Webex or something like that.  And my tip is like I had to take an editorial for the second one because I never used it before.  Completely different from Zoom so that threw me off a lot.  So find out what platform you are using before and make sure you feel comfortable with it.
>> That's awesome, thank you Barbara.  Some really great tips.  I love all of them.  I really like the one about talking to the organization in advance because they know, you know, the individuals that you're working with.  So really great work and we applaud you for all you're doing so thank you Barbara so much.
>> Thank you.
>> Does anybody have any questions for Barbara real quick?  Do you want to put them in the chat then I'll turn it back to Michael.  Okay.  If anything comes up let us know and we'll certainly get those and talk about it more.  Michael I'll turn it back over to you.
>> Okay great and folks can unmute their lines.  So if you want to unmute and you want to ask a question or share something as well from your perspective, then please feel free to share.  Why is everybody so quiet?  Did we like send like the goodies that we sent, are they making everybody now like just relaxed and, you know, had some sugar?  All right.
>> This is Susan.  I would like to volunteer a comment.  I think the most challenging training I did was called a camp for individuals with disabilities and the knowledge and communication abilities just ranged from nonverbal to highly verbal to just, you know it was quite a range.  And so that was a situation where I really wished I had known in advance because I could tell some individuals wanted more information and some individuals just couldn't follow the basic information.  I was glad I did it.  They were glad I did it but it required a lot of follow‑up for those who wanted more information.
>> Great thank you Susan.  Thank you for sharing that.  Thoughts from Susan.  Additional comments?  Okay.  Great.  Thanks for sharing.  Perfect.  Okay.  So now next slide, please.  Now we're going to go into our group.  And so we're going to go into breakout rooms and you're just going to be random so we're going to be able to get you set up.  Then just to the team doing the breakouts please do not put the NDI staff in a room just yet then we'll go in after that.  We'll go to the breakout room and I think there's maybe 4 questions, maybe 3 and we'll have about 30 minutes to discuss the questions and we'll reconvene at 10:00 a.m. central ‑‑ 10:15 ‑‑ no we won't because it's 10:00 now but we'll have just that but you'll have about 30 minutes and what we want you to do is we want you to choose someone to be the recorder keeping notes and we ask you send those out to us.  Then also somebody will report.  Somebody will report out when we all come back together.  Okay?  So Hope there's a question in the chatbox.  I think to Tammy can we chat within the breakout.  I think what will happen is everyone would see the chat or you can send it to just those people in your group.  Is that correct, Hope?
>> I think so.  And also I need to know who requested the captioner so I can put them in the right room.
>> I don't think that individual showed up.
>> Okay.
>> And Kish can send a message to let you know.  We will make sure to put these questions in the chatbox so you have them.  So there are 4 questions.  Right?  So the questions, if you had a magic wand and could improve the education on financial wellness for customers/students with disabilities, what would it be?  Second question is what is the one fact or activity covered in the financial wellness training that helped you to understand how important financial wellness is for people with disabilities?  As a result of the training has your agency or organization changed policies or procedures to help facilitate financial wellness for customers?  And what new activities have you implemented in your work with people with disabilities to help them move toward more financial wellness and share examples.  We will put each of these in the chatbox so when you go into your breakout room you will be able to have them so don't think you have to get them all written down right now.  And so we'll be able to ‑‑ you'll have them that way.  So Katie or Kish someone if you can please make sure they're put in the chatbox.  Then make sure that when you get in your group that everybody gets to share then we'll also be putting in a staff person that will stop in as well.  All right.  Perfect.  So Hope let's move us into the breakout rooms.  Is.
>> Back at 1030‑ish.
>> Recording in progress.
>> Hi everyone.  Did you all have some conversations?  Conversation?  I get it you all chit chat whenever I'm not in the room.  Right?  So what are you trying to say I talk to much or something?  I get it.  I also liked how people turned on their cameras.  It was really great.  Really great.
>> Michael?  Your wisdom just intimidates us.
[Laughing].
>> Nice Shannon, nice Shannon.  Okay.  All right.  Great.  So before we hear from the group, Terry I see you now.  I didn't see you earlier.  Oh my gosh, now I see ‑‑ I didn't see my roll call today.  Right?  Got you.  Now I'm seeing folks.  Okay.  So just a reminder about the bingo card.  So as you hear a word throughout the training you mark it.
>> We had a bingo.
>> Yes, I was in Barbara's group.  Yeah Barbara had mentioned bingo but that group had shared so we'll check her card just to make sure.  Just kidding Barbara.  But what we're going to do now is since we have somebody who has bingo, we're going to take another ‑‑ somebody else has a chance to get bingo.  All right.  And one thing we didn't mention at the beginning is that we will have 3 prizes of $25 gift card.  Now everybody is saying bingo.  Shannon, Melissa.
>> I had a bingo too during our session.
>> What was that?
>> I had a bingo.
>> She did, legit.
>> What we're going to do down ‑‑ Kish will double check with those 3 people, Melissa, Shannon and Barbara and so what we will do, you still have a chance to win.  If you already won a gift card you don't get to win again but what we'll be doing now is block out.  Isn't that what it's called when you have to block out the whole card?  Right?  Okay.  So then one person who has black out will win another $25 gift card.  Does that work?  Cover all.  Yeah.  Okay.  Great.  Great.  If we have each group can share some of the highlights, the key points that you talked about from the group then we can go around and have each group do that.
>> Kristina raised her hand.  Do you want to go first Kristina?
>> So for the first question if you had a magic wand how could you improve education on financial wellness.  We talked a lot about curriculum accessibility, curriculum kind of missing out on talking about benefits and what benefits were exactly.  And then even just informing more people about ABLE accounts just because it's an opportunity to kind of get yourself out of that systemic poverty that unfortunately social security benefits have kept individuals with disabilities in for years and years.  Number two what is a ‑‑ one factor or activity covered in the financial wellness training that helped us understand.
>> Kristina you think what I think what we will do ‑‑ I think we were going to go by question.  It might be easier ‑‑
>> Yeah let's do that.
>> I didn't mean to interrupt you but then I thought okay.  So that way we can take all the notes at one time per question then we can kind of piggy‑back off each other.  Cool.  So we'll come back to you Kristina.  Okay what other group wanted to talk about question one our magic wand?
>> I can go for the team.  One of the things that was mentioned is first of all convey hope, being able to magically convey hope to all the individuals that we're teaching, especially that type of community because many times they feel there's no hope.  So being able be to convey hope is very important in order to then be able to train someone or teach them the knowledge and then we mentioned also having the financial wellness classes be mandated in every state school curriculum.  We believe that's important.  And then it was also mentioned educate the district to provide financial wellness classes for children and just be able to help people understand the value of the dollar immediately.  Those were our points.
>> Awesome.  Great.  Thank you, Karina.  Next up I have Whitney.
>> I was with Amy, Heather, Meredith, Tammy and Sarah.  I don't know what number that was.  But ours were similar to Karina's actually but we were saying that this training is widely available.  That this is standard or required training for people who are receiving benefits.  Helping families like be excited and see the vision that the trainer has for goals and what financial wellness means and again similar having a family culture or just early exposure from youth and kids about talking about money with their families.
>> Great.  Thank you, Whitney.  Perfect.  Melissa.
>> Hi I was group 5 with Tyson, Tiwana, John, Barbara and Teresa.  And our magic wand question, John and I talked about more education for the ABLE account and what a huge opportunity that is because the rate of participation is so low.  Barbara wants to have more testimonials, success stories and personal examples to be used whether it would be video or however that would be woven into training because that's so important to have personal examples so that people can see the opportunity for they can do these things.  Tyson wants more focus on differentiating training so that you can really be customized for the group so it really provides the best information that each group needs.  Barbara wants to harness technology and she used the example of apps if we can create or find people to create more apps that are specialized to the disability community so that they can have that easy access to the way many of us, you know, answer questions in our lives with an app on our phone.  Then Teresa talked about more access to financial services to connect the dots.  So that's what we have.
>> Perfect.  Thank you so much Melissa.  And Shannon, last group.
>> We were group 2 and similar to some other people we really focused on like why isn't financial planning, financial education part of that transition plan.  You know we talk about where are you going to live, what are you going to do in the community, what resources do you have but we don't talk about money.  We say hook up with PUNS.  But not a lot beyond that.  So making that not just for students with disabilities but all students.  We agree needs to be something we start much younger.  Then on the other end working with nursing home transitions, some older people and people with disabilities getting out of nursing homes and make it ‑‑ commenting that it's difficult because they don't have a lot of control of their money in the nursing home so that's not something they focus on or think about a lot.
>> Perfect.  Thank you, Shannon.  So you know having heard each other's discussions and what we were reflecting on, on question one did that spur anything else for anyone maybe that we want to add on before we move on to question two?  Any other magic wand wishes?  I mean this is the time, the Genie is in the bottle.
>> This is Esther I want to add on and echo, I don't remember the name but she has a wide vision that's in the NDI as far as financial training is concerned, to have it as [Indiscernible] to lobby the government or city or state so that, you know, it's the training that has to be in schools especially high school people are looking forward to getting into college and careers.  I think that's the best time that training has.  I think NDI has to spread its wings to high school students so that they prepare themselves at that time and I believe it will be a mix of people with disabilities and people without disabilities and that's a bigger vision and I can see that, you know, Indiana growing to that.
>> Great.  Thank you so much Esther.  Anyone else then I will turn it back over to Michael.  Anyone else have anything else that they thought of with a magic wand?  Michael's back.  Everybody quiet again.  Go ahead, Michael.
>> Okay.  Okay.  The next question.  What is the one activity covered in the training that helped you understand and I'm told Kristina's group is up first.  So Kristina.
>> Okay.  We said just having access to information on all topics but again we kept coming back to how ABLE accounts can really help individuals kind of understand that they can build assets and savings while still receiving the SSDI benefits.  I also come back to the facts ‑‑ the fact of just like individuals with disabilities are two times more likely to live in poverty and again like our government system while it was put in place to help individuals it's kind of created the cycle of poverty unfortunately.  So again the ABLE accounts are helping individuals get out of poverty and I know we had a pretty interesting discussion because we were coming from rural, suburban and urban environments and just talking about the different issues between transportation and federal benefit rate of 794 not going far in the city.  It might in a rural location but again like ‑‑ and Amy was saying a lot of parents think oh that's end all be all that's the only income the student is going to be able to tap into so that was kind of our discussion for that question.
>> Perfect.  The perfect.  Thank you, Kristina.  Which group was next?  I missed the order.  Group 4?  Are we going backwards?  Who was next?  Shannon.
>> I'll go.  So like the activity that helped us understand, one is wants versus needs.  So understanding like those are different for everybody.  Like is a phone a need or a want.  Which way, you know that kind of thing.  The American dream or kind of what would you really want to do, you know if you could do anything with your money what would you do.  And kind of hearing those answers and Susan was saying she kind of elaborated how the ABLE account again could help them achieve some of those so being able to bring that activity to the front and one of the things that I've asked is what would you say for in being able to say well if that game costs $60 if you save $20 a month you would have it in 3 months and that dawning of like, oh I don't have to think about it as $60.  I can think of it as $10.06 times and breaking it down differently for people and that concept of being able to do that and making those things attainable.  Esther said about knowing your research and the linkages in the community can make it so much easier for people to access to say, you know, this is here and this is here and you can turn here and they have this service.  So ahead of time knowing all that.  So you can kind of meet people where they are hand‑off their concerns are and have an answer for them ahead of I'm.  So you're not kind of oh that's a good question, I'm not sure.  Because that can kind of put people like oh it's going to be so hard.
>> Perfect.  Thank you Shannon.  All right.  Group 1, 2 or 5.  Group 1.  Okay Melissa, group 5 then we'll go to the other.
>> Group 5.  Let's see.  We talked about just the importance of learning about all the different workforce programs and all the different programs and how you can have opportunities to work and still keep benefits and how important that is to communicate to people when it's not either/or.  Tyson felt that the credit, the unit on credit and credit score was really useful and that the whole idea of building a credit history and how, you know strategies that you can use to improve your credit score, everything that goes into it, how that's just not something that people even think is important for people with disabilities to know about.  The assumption that oh you won't need to know that.  And that got me back to the whole mindset of, you know, how the disability community has been treated as like you're just the recipients of the government.  You get what we give you and as long as you can sort of make it on that there's no ‑‑ there hasn't really been a mindset of you can actually have financial goals just beyond paying your bills for the month.  You can actually think about building credit.  You can think about building wealth.  You can think about investing.  You can think about owning things.  You can have the same financial goals as anyone else as opposed to just, you know, hoping that the government programs will keep you with a roof over your head.  So I think it's just the mindset.  You know, education to change their mindset.
>> Great.  Thank you, Melissa.  The next group, Karina.  Karina, your group.  Or was somebody else in her group?  Group 1.  Group 1.
>> Sorry I couldn't unmute myself.
>> Hi, Karina, nice to see you.
>> Likewise.  We're still on 2.  Right?
>> Right.
>> Okay.  So for us is there has really not been that many like ‑‑ hold on let me get back to my ‑‑ let's see, sorry I'm getting confused with number 3.  One of the things that we brought up was again the ABLE accounts and the opportunities within this type of account and the clear misunderstanding such as the amount one can save in those type of accounts and who can open this type of account.  Also something learned is the amount of opportunities available for individuals to develop their financial wellness which included all the activities and everything that we learned throughout our trainings.  That's what was shared during our time.
>> Great.  Excellent.  All right.  Let me ‑‑
>> I'll just add on to what hasn't already been said but I think our running theme was that a lot of little things add up to a big thing, which is like your goal or financial wellness.  Then another fact that was really important to note was just that services are free, taxes should be free, benefits planning and counseling is free.  That's like an emphasis that we need to recognize that these are services in the community that we don't need to pay for that are helpful and we don't need to spend more money on.  So, yeah, but we also talked about ‑‑ we had similar themes to what everyone else was saying.
>> Great.  Lit any it was a light bulb moment for me again because sometimes when we hear from individuals and think of free they say nothing's really free but what you just said is really that piece that there are these brief services available and like really free.  Right?  So I think that word about being free is sometimes, yeah, right.  So yeah to explore that a little bit more, how we can let people know.  So perfect.  Thank you.  Okay so here's what we're going to do it for the next two questions.  We're going to kind of blend them together.  So for number 3 as a result of the training has your organization changed any policies and procedures and what new activity have you implemented for that.  As you go around this time share key highlights, key themes for each of those questions briefly so then we can go to the break.  Also just to make sure whoever was the note taker send them to Kish.  Okay.  Great.  So group one, going back to you Karina.
>> Okay.
>> For the 3 and 4.  Perfect.  You can blend them together.  Thank you.
>> Okay.  I think most of us said again there haven't been major policies changes however some incorporated more financial wellness classes or trainings in their programming.  AJ said in September they're working with the state of Michigan to train financial wellness for their mental health department.  So that's something big.  Also Anna said she is spreading more awareness within the parent groups she's involved in, in just helping them understand there's so many resources available.  Me, I did mention that we haven't really made any changes or implemented much within my organization, however I work with I would say 50 % of my clients are Spanish speaking clients.  So talking about financial anything related to finances is very, very personal and it's not something that they're willing to open up about.  So for me it's more like opening that little door and starting those small conversations with my clients so they can lead to big wins and also one of my goals is to implement this trainings and the information I have learned in their language, in Spanish for them to understand in their language because even if they are bilingual most of the time understanding information in your native language can have a tremendous power and it's most likely they'll take the steps they need to‑do do what they need to do.  Then AJ also shared that they started ‑‑ they did start a disclosure scholarship for individuals who disclose that they have a mental health challenge and if they receive the scholarship for their education it's $500 and they're choosing two individuals.  And I believe that's all.  I'm not sure if I missed something.  Ladies did I miss anything, AJ I think ‑‑ I don't know if I missed anything.
>> Can you share with us the safe passage concept?
>> Sure this is AJ.  So Montgomery county Illinois has a program called safe passage and it's a national program that different municipalities can decide whether or not they want to participate.  It does require key stakeholder buy‑in but basically the idea is when somebody presents either to a church or to a nonprofit or to the police station and just says they need help they're in crisis, they're in some kind of distress there is one ‑‑ there's one entity that is designated to have a recovery care coordinator come to ‑‑ that coordinator is dispatched to the participating location, to that point of access and that recovery care coordinator, you know they interact with that person and then they provide a warm hand‑off to whether the person needs substance abuse treatment, whether the person needs housing, like kind of whatever their need is, um, that person works with them one‑on‑one and I just thought wouldn't it be great if when ‑‑ I mean first of all we want people to experience financial wellness and not be in crisis but wouldn't it be great when they were p in financial crisis, their power was about to be shut off, they were about to lose their apartment because they lost their job 4 months ago or even one month ago or even their credit card debt is to, you know, after the nomically just such a burden wouldn't it be great if there was a similar structure that existed that would give people kind of safe financial ‑‑ wouldn't it great if people were in financial crisis maybe we're more likely or more apt just because of financial desperation to plug into a program.  Wouldn't that be great if it existed?  That's all.  Thank you.
>> Thank you AJ.  Thank you Karina.  Perfect.  All right.  Great.  Next group, Shannon.
>> All right.  Amanda is restructuring the youth department there at her Center for independent living and they're integrating a lot of the financial well being to the youth and family members they're working with.  That's been a big change and she also mentioned the vision board activity.  She had been doing that with a lot of her consumers but they started adding in that financial piece like oh well what could I achieve.  So that was a nice addition she was seeing.  And I personally have started to add ‑‑ starting that future planning conversation.  But what happens when mom and dad can't handle your money any more.  Who will step up?  Who else in your family or in your support structure can help with that?  Or how do you take more control over that yourself as the person with the disability?  It is your money.  Right?
And then I will shout out for Susan because she's awesome she's been working, a parent of a son with a disability and working in a group with other parents and helped 4 families open ABLE accounts so I thought that was awesome.  Something else shah she's been adding to her own group community.
>> Nice.  Nice job, Susan.  It's really cool.  Right?  Great.  Great.  Susan you're really working on moving that 2 %.  Right?  We get the 3 % percent we know it's all of you all.  So great.  All right.  Excellent.  All right.  So for the next 3 groups we're going to do a speed round because we will have to close up but we will do is share all of these notes with everyone and put some recommendations together.  Okay.  So everybody will get the information.
So Kristina from your group for 3 and 4,s key highlights.  We agreed the information into our every day ins and outs with clients and students and what not.  But I think one thing that would seem exciting was Kish mentioned they are ‑‑ or it's going to start a small business training for her clients so that's exciting and I know Kish was excited because you guys have a lot of good resources and information on that.
>> Great.  Great.  Great.  Thank you for sharing that.  The and we are going to follow up with you, I'm just double checking here.  The we'll be following up with you, my colleague Nikki is on the phone and she's doing some self employment work and we have some other resources as well so we want to make sure we talk with you about that.  Thank you.  Perfect.  The next group.  Litany.
>> It was hard for our organizations to change policy or procedure but instead how we viewed it was like adding this program or like developing it into something that's already existing that we have.  So for some it's like for me an example is adapting this into our course material or making sure that more staff are trained with NDI.  Then I guess the last thing like a new activity for us it wasn't always having a new activity but building on existing options that we learned through NDI and finding what works for us, whether that was like making sure that our presentations were more engaging, like through the jeopardy activity or like through using the camera as a tool to help make sure people are engaged in our presentations.  So yeah that's basically what we have to be quick I guess.
>> That's great.  That's great.  I thank you for sharing about the trainings and how y' all have incorporated the different activities and things like that.  The simple things.  Right of using a camera in a virtual environment.  So perfect.  And speaking of that really quickly, some people, the folks in Springfield get to attend in person and everybody else has been doing the virtual and it was mentioned about being in the in‑person training how it's different and it was.  But we did activities through each of them.  So, yeah.  All right.  Perfect.  Melissa you're last up just a brief overview of what you all did with 3 and 4.
>> I would say the highlight was two talked about taking this information and not only using it with clients but training their staff, their colleagues so that they were spreading the wealth throughout the organization by training their colleagues and so that was a great way to get the information out then Barbara also mentioned that from taking this class on Zoom more awareness of accommodations for people whether it's captions or just whatever kind of accommodations people need to participate in learning, the Zoom experience gave her more awareness of that.
>> Excellent.  Excellent.  Thank you.  All right.  So thank you.  Thank you all for sharing and you got to hear what other people are doing and things like that.  So we hope it was very helpful for you to hear what others are doing.  So what we'll do as I mentioned we'll take these notes and put them together and formulate some ideas and pieces and recommendations.  Also just like the polling questions that we have a couple more we're doing is for the remaining of our contract we're going to be doing specific trainings on these different topics that you all identified.  So things you want to go deeper in.  So we'll be sharing those and these and this group activity as well.  So this is what we're going to do.  We're going to take a 5‑minute break just let everybody get up for a minute then we're going to do an activity and if you don't want to take a break you don't have to.  You can hang on here with us.  What Kish is going to do is put back up on the screen the slides that show the different testimonials and you're going to hear some more Tyson's music who is your fellow trainer and you'll be hearing more of his original songs during the break as well so we'll come back in 5 minutes.  All right.  Thank you!
>> So this is Laurie.  Thank you everyone for coming on back.  I wanted to share with you the new resources that are available to support your efforts in providing training ongoing within your communities.  So Hope if you can show the portal, the NDI portal where these new materials are posted.  So if we scroll down we'll see the financial wellness modules, down a little bit further.  There we go.  So the curriculum.  We know that everyone who has participated in training took ‑‑ participated at different times.  So over time many of the materials that you have received have been updated so we want to encourage you to take a look and we'll send messaging each I'm curriculum or power points are updated, but in particular I wanted to draw attention to module 3, the EITC and text preparation thanks to Shannon for letting us know that the IRS issued their final regulations as a result of the American cares act so that information was updated in both the curriculum and the PowerPoint slides here.
And we have new handouts if you can scroll down.  Thanks so much.  And again this is on the NDI site.  So we have added ‑‑ boy I cannot see that.  P let me make that bigger.  Illinois ABLE frequently asked questions flier so you can hand that out to every customer you meet with and I believe that these were mailed to you as well.  And Illinois ABLE what type of investor are you.  The and those are now available.  And I wanted to draw attention to this wage reporting fact sheet.  So we meet many people over time who do not realize they need to report their earned income, their income from a hobby to social security administration and walking a person through that fact sheet can really help them to be on board and to hopefully qualify for more benefits in the future.  And then I wanted to if you can scroll down, Hope, to the syllable promotional flier.  So you can download this.  You can fill out the information about the module that you're going to be covering or the activity that you're going to be introducing, your name, contact information and that can help you to promote your events whether they be Zoom or in‑person events maybe in the future.  And so that's our update on the newest materials.  And remember you have a password when you go to the NDI site that you need to use and that is Illinois in all capital letters and then you can access all these materials.  If you have any questions about these materials or you need some supports relevant to training that you're providing or you want to know about a particular resource, please reach out to your TA liaison and we'll be sending out a reminder about who your TA liaison is for the financial wellness project.  Thanks so much!
>> We're good to go?
>> Good to go.
>> All right we're going to turn it over to you.
>> Okay, Tyson... Tyson we're going ‑‑
>> We're going, yeah, we'll come back to that.
>> This is good ‑‑ this is exciting.  We have a unique training connection here.  We have a mom and a son group trained.  We have Tammy Bedford who was a trainer with me and 30 something others of us in Springfield on a snowy February right before COVID hit in Springfield.  And in June Tyson her son just finished the training virtually and they're from Illinois and they started a funded investment called quality lives Geneseo.  But we asked them to come talk about the personal impact it had on them in the community and as members of this cooperative and as a family.  So Tammy is going to join us by phone because she's had intermittent power outages at work so she's going to unmute and join by phone anti son is all geared up as you can see.  And I don't know if you guys worked it out between the two of you but... You want to start, Tammy?
>> Sure.  Hi everybody my name is Tammy Bedford from Geneseo, Illinois.  About 6,000 people in Henry county which I believe is roughly around 20,000 total population.  We're a pretty rural community.  Several years ago we had the opportunity to participate in a grant to bring some knowledge about the disability community and how we can integrate better and support families so we took that opportunity.  We have since became incorporated under quality lives, Inc.  We now incorporate families from the entire county, anybody who would like to participate with us is welcome to within the county.  Like Kish said I took the first class of financial wellness training.  We were in‑person in Springfield, Illinois.  I thought I was doing okay.  I thought I knew quite a bit.  I found out there was a lot more I didn't know then what I knew so I was really looking forward to bringing that back and sharing that with families and young adults with disabilities and talking with Tyson he decided he wanted to take the course as well and took it this summer virtually.  Tyson if you want to say anything about your experience with the class.
>> Sure.  The I mean what can I say about it?  It's been absolutely fun just the sort of experience that I've gone through with this class so far.  I'm looking forward to ‑‑ I'm looking forward to more sessions in the future as well going forward.  Yeah.  I was in the same boat although I rarely do much with my money anyway.  I rarely like to spend much if at all really.  But, yeah, I've come to learn from this class that even spending power has a big significance on what strengths you have financially and what that means going forward for you.  Yeah.  I'm looking ‑‑ I'm really looking forward to learning more and I'm especially looking forward to teaching different individuals rather they be a person with a disability or somebody that's just looking to learn more about how they can find out about their financial status or if they're looking to just learn more about financial well being as a whole.  So, yeah.
>> Tyson what would you say to somebody, a self advocate or a person with a disability who thinks they don't need to know the information that you learned?
>> So what I would say as an advocate is this would probably be the most important thing to learn about, especially if you're going to be a self advocate, because not knowing what you're going to be doing financially or how you're going to be doing financially rather, um, yeah, that's going to have major consequences going into your future.  So I would recommend that anybody especially somebody with a disability to invest their time in doing research about finances and like especially credit score or tax credit or things relating to those two topics, because, yeah, like I said going into finance and learning about that stuff is definitely going to be important, especially if you want to be a self advocate.
>> And Kish I just wanted to share that being in the size of area where we are that it has been somewhat difficult for me to get groups together to do the trainings but everybody seems to want to catch me independently off to the side, you know, out of official, if you will out of official kind of training thing.  So I've done a lot of one‑on‑one talking to parents, um, about a lot of these topics.  So I believe Tyson is planning on doing some training with a self advocacy group we have for young adults so I'm going to move in as a support role in that and help him with his trainings and I'm hoping in that way then we're going to get some parents to attend with some young adults so we're going to kind of get everybody on the same page and open that dialogue between families so that they can have those conversations at home then and, you know, be more excited and more interested in learning all the different possibilities.
>> And there you have it.  Okay.  Thank you.
>> Can we just see if there are any questions for the group for Tyson or Tammy.  Shannon raised her hand.
>> This sounds like a awesome collaborative there.  I was wondering what was your outreach like to get your kind of group of self advocates together on this?  Did you just have a Facebook group or just kind of other connections you already had in the community?
>> Tyson if I could I'll go ahead with that one.
>> Sure.
>> Through quality lives, through our parent group, we have the majority of the parents all have young adults who are roughly the same age.  I would say they're probably 20 to 26, 27.  The and so it's just a group that naturally came together because the parents came together.  So we all knew each other and learned the families and everybody and a lot of the young adults did go to school together because remember we just have one high school.  So a lot of them went through school from early education all the way through graduation so there was already kind of a little bit of a prerelationship there with the young adults.  But they are great at welcoming and encouraging new members to come in.  We know a lot of teachers with life skills classes and such so that's going on there too.
>> Any other questions?
>> We will for sure as part of the trainer support network and I know ‑‑ I know this family in the area pretty well.  And so I just think the work that they do and the insight that Tyson was able to offer our training group was awesome and so you'll be hearing more about this.  I think it's a unique perspective because sometimes as trainers we forget to ask the very people that we're advocating and training for.  So it's sometimes important to ask and I've often asked questions of the group out there.  So we'll keep you in the loop and it's not the last time you'll hear from the Bedford family.  So it's exciting.  It's very exciting and inspiring so thank you both and we could have a whole hour with the things that they've done.  So thank you!
>> Thank you.
>> We are definitely running over.  Right, Michael?  And we want ‑‑
>> That's a great discussion.
>> This is such a good discussion.  Yeah.
>> Kish before we go on I just want to remind everyone don't forget we're still waiting for the person to have black out on their bingo card.  So you got 25 minutes left to try to get black out.  All right.  Turning it back over to you and Katie.
>> Going over is a good thing because that means we were talking that the discussions have been so good and that's what this is all about.  And so we're getting such good information to help guide things for the next several months.  It's all good feedback so it's all good stuff.  So... I believe we decided we're going to table some of the really exciting stuff about child tax credit and save that for later.  And put that on base camp.  Right?  Is that what we decided, Katie?
>> Yes.  Yes.  Yes.
>> Okay.  So I think right now I'm going to talk actually this is a nice lead in to talk a little bit about the trainer support network.  Which is a perfect segway.  So for those of you who don't ‑‑ I haven't met personally, you've seen my emails a lot of you know I'm Kish and I am new to NDI as an employee since around the end of April as a project support for this very project.  And I am actually here in Illinois and I was trained in the Spring cans field class and also a parent of a 23 year old adult with autism and intellectual disabilities.  So I'm living this ‑‑ going through what everybody is a parent and advocate is going through right here.
So my job is as a project coordinator in helping Michael and Katie and Laurie and Hope get work through some of the details is to give a little bit of the Illinois perspective which has been really great.  So one of the things that I will be doing is working with the trainers, um, in supporting, you and just giving you the information and if you ever have questions and I know some of you in your groups had questions on how to present or where to present.  You have my contact information and you can go through me and I can put you in touch with the right person but one of the things I wanted to talk about was that we do have our monthly meetings.  Now this counts as our August meeting so we're not going to have an August meeting and we will have meetings in September, October and November.  The and those are the fourth Thursday of the month from 10:00 to 11:00 and we're going to do things a little differently where we will have a topic and a lot of the topics will going to be drawn from some of the things you have mentioned in this training.
So we want to make sure that we're filling in and connecting the dots to what you've said that some of your needs are.  And the other thing I wanted to talk about is ‑‑ and Laurie alluded to it and Katie will touch on it again is base camp.  If you have not logged into that, that is a platform that we are using because it is accessible for everybody.  You don't have to have special software or anything like that.  If you haven't logged into it or tried to sign into it, um, please try to and if you can't if you have any issues also give me a call I'll work you through it.  In the next couple of days realistically let me say Monday we're going to have it all cleaned up and all the materials you've learned about today will be up there also.  On there also is a discussion board.  So this is a trainer support network.  So it's a network and we're connecting these dots.  And so there's a discussion board on there.  So it is a way that if you have something to share, please feel free to go there and share it.  So we get files there and all sorts of stuff.  It's a nice place to go for information.
So again if you have any connection issues please let me know about that.  One of the things ‑‑ I have a marketing background so I'm always thinking about the marketing side of things, how to make your life easier.  I think it's any sort of messaging, any sort of tools, any sort of cut and paste.  I'm all about how to cut and paste to make things easy so one of the things you can look for, Laurie showed you the flier that can be used if you're promoting any sort of presentation that you're giving or, um, at work or with another organization.  The wording is all there.  The you know, what it is.  One of the things that I will have for you is sort of a menu.  The so a list of all the modules and a description and so that if you were emailing somebody about wanting to do a presentation here's a list of all of them.  Here's a brief description and so really just all compact and in one document.  I myself have used it when I did ‑‑ when I did, um, these sort of presentations because I should say that everything that you're doing I'm also doing too because I've been a trainer and a presenter and trained people as well online and in‑person.  So you'll look for that.  The.
And we are also if you're familiar with the things that some of the group training event, we are formalizing some other group‑type organizational training opportunities.  We will be doing something in the fall with the community and another one we're finalizing.  So what's going to happen here on the lower left of the screen you see a screen shot of an excel sheet that will be in base camp.  I will send you all an email that says hey so soon is looking for trainers.  You can go in there and sign up.  So you're not having to search for training opportunities.  You'll be able to ‑‑ you'll be able to sign in and make the arrangements and do that training.
So we're working on several of those.  If your organization ‑‑ if you're part of an organization and you need help within your organization, please call.  That's what my job's for and I can, you know, help you out with those resources.  So don't ‑‑ don't let there be an obstacle for getting training done.  We want to really get this information out and we have plenty of tools and resources to make that happen.  So those are sort of the big things that we're working on.
And if you have any suggestions and Laurie just put the dates of the trainings.  We adjusted the date for Thanksgiving because we love you but we're not going to spend Thanksgiving morning with you.  And, you know, if there's a specific topic you would like to address, we're open to that.  We've had a lot of things that have come out of our meetings and trainings.  So that's it in a nutshell.  I do ‑‑ going to try to send not as many, this will be an exception for a lot of emails but try to compact them into more of a lot of information or compact the emails into information into one email said instead of a lot of different emails.  So that's it for the trainer support network.  And on that topic we're going to go one more poll.  Again this is going to help us with ‑‑ let's see ‑‑ I think I am.  I have one poll here.  I have one poll here, Hope.  Do you have the other poll?
>> In the Dropbox there's a beginning and an end.  So you hit the end.
>> It should be in the poll.
>> There we go.  Here's the other poll.
>> Again these are just more training type of questions.  The because we certainly don't want to be training on topics that you're not at all interested in.  And again, it's helpful that I'm here doing the same parallel things that you are doing.  But again certainly those of you who are working within provider agencies, if you need some assistance within your agencies, um, getting a series or something going that's ‑‑ it's a really wonderful opportunity.  I did do something with CTF Illinois during COVID that was pretty successful and there's plenty to go around.
>> We can end the poll.
>> That's it for me.
>> All right.  Look likes how to collaborate is the top then strategies on embedding.  So thanks everyone for sharing this information.  It was great.  Katie, up to you.
>> Great.  Thanks.  So really just going to do a couple of things that are coming up and real quick kind of summary.  So we've talked about and I believe and a few of you have been on the trainer support network calls we will be lunching our text messaging campaign that's geared towards individuals with Developmental Disabilities and their family members and providers.  So that will be coming out soon so we just want to remind you to continue to look for that information when it comes from either Kish and Nikki is working really hard on that.  Then we also will be doing some focus group work with our researcher at NDI, our Director of research and focus groups that will con's straight again on persons with disabilities and family members and kind of getting feedback on the training we've been able to provide and all of you have provided.  And then we know hearing a lot around social security.  We were working on redoing the module 6 that curriculum and so they'll be some supplemental guides that will be coming out soon as well.  Nikki is working on those with us.  And so you'll see some supplemental guides posted in base camp and we'll send out an email announcement when those are ready to be shared.  Then finally as Kish mentioned there will be more training opportunities that come about.  So please, um, you know, look at base camp and your emails and keep an eye out especially if you're looking for opportunities to be able to train if maybe you had difficulty connecting with partners, especially in this virtual setting, these are really great opportunities for you to be able to just kind of sign up and connect with the partners and then proceed with doing those trainings.  So please be on the look out for those as well.  If anyone has any questions you know you can always contact any one of us at NDI.  Kish is your main point person now as your liaison but all of us are here and willing to answer any questions you might have.  Michael.  The you want to close us out?
>> All right.  Great.  Great.  Great.  So I put a message about the bingo, looks like some people have 3 spots left.  A couple things that I think we may not have said during this meeting since many of us have gotten used to the virtual is can you hear me.  Or can you see my screen.  In case those are two you're waiting on I'm hoping that may have helped for someone to have gotten black out.  Okay.  But we have a few more minutes so hopefully we say all the words that you need.  Next steps.  What we're going to do is we want to make sure you check out the resources available on base camp.  Join the trainer support network, sign up to train at one of the upcoming events and report any trainings that you have provided and as we reached out it has shown over 4,000 individuals have received financial wellness information from you all.  This is really amazing and impactful so we really want to be able to highlight this great work that you all are doing.  So please report to ‑‑ please report any trainings that you have done.  One of the pieces that we want to share also is that we really appreciate all the work that y' all are doing to educate individuals on financial wellness but also on financial capability.  And that's to the remarks of Michael Morris I think that's the piece that really keeps ‑‑ we need to keep in mind, right, is the importance of that topic and each of you are doing that work.  Before I close out what we would like to do is, um, actually share the next screen ‑‑ so as we continue to look at our next steps and have the upcoming trainings and different resources and stuff that we're putting together is that we're really connecting the dots and our collective actions big and small are connecting the dots of financial wellness for people with disabilities and in Illinois.  And I think that's what's really exciting about connecting the dots.  One thing just to share as a benefit if you're interested is that we are going to be putting forward the possibility of doing a 5‑part training series on public benefits.  One of the things that we've learned is that many of you had asked for more information and education on public benefits.  We hope that will get approved.  We'll keep you posted on it.  It will only be available to trainers.  Those who successfully completed the program.  So just keep that in mind that it will only be that and keeping our fingers crossed that happens.  Kish or Hope, could you put up the Word cloud.  So at the beginning we asked everybody for one word to talk about the impact of this work.  So we want to share a word cloud that we put together from this by connecting the dots and could you make it bigger?  And scroll up.  It's not working.  Make it smaller.
>> Is that better?
>> A little bit better.  Make it smaller.  Sorry.  I gave you the wrong direction.  Good thing I'm not a Director or producer.  Remember the 5 key strategies?  Hey, that's a word on the bingo card.  But we looked at the circle.  But look at the collective impact that you've shared about the impact that the training has had for you it made I feel these words.  And so each of you are doing that had for all of the individuals that an you are working with and that you're serving.  P we've saved this word cloud so we will be sure to share it with all of you.  So thank you, Hope for sharing that.
>> It was a dot and it looks interconnected.
>> Yes.  Nice job.  Nice job.  Great.  So we'll just go to the next slide and before we go out are there any questions or comments before final slide?  Any questions or comments?  Phobic books burning questions?  Nothing?  Well you will be getting an evaluation.  Thanks, Penny for talking about the package in the mail.  Thank Kish for putting them altogether.  So remember if you have any questions you can ‑‑ you can share, um, share them with us and we will be able to get them.  The so, um, again thanks for connecting the dots.  I hope you're connecting the dots on your spending diary.  I hope that you are connecting the dots on ‑‑ making sure that you are ‑‑ we have black out ‑‑ great.  Great.  Amy Corbin congratulations you're the fourth winner of the $25 gift card so we will circle back with you.  You will get a $25 visa gift card.  I will say a special thank you to Illinois council on Developmental Disabilities for supporting us, initiative for allowing us to bring you altogether in this virtual convening.  It was scheduled to be in‑person.  We had hoped to be in‑person but unfortunately with the current situation we are still in a virtual environment.  But we thank the Illinois council on Developmental Disabilities for supporting us and allowing us to do this.  Don't forget you will receive the evaluation link.  Please, please, please complete that.  As you know we take this information so seriously.  We changed so many things in the virtual environment because of those evaluations.  So please, please, please be sure to share that.  Closing out here I've got to say thank you so much to the NDI team.  Thank you so much to Laurie, Katie, to Hope Price, especially to Kish for all the pieces she put together, also Nikki, thank you then also those who are not on the call, Katie, I really want to thank all of them for putting it altogether and doing it the various training.  As Michael Morris said the impact of this work and future outlook financial wellness for people with disabilities anti son mentioned this too is that it's when we can share this information, knowledge of power and the more individuals that we can share this information with the more empowered.  Right?  To be able to do.  And I think whenever we listened to the piece that as an advocate the most important thing is self advocate because if you don't know about your financial wellness what can you do and how can you advocate.  I think that's really powerful.  Right.  So I want to say thank you to everyone and thank you all for continuing the conversation with so many.  The with that I think we'll close out.  If the NDI team can stay on but just making sure there's chat going on about something in the chatbox.  What are we supposed to ‑‑
>> Evaluation link.
>> I'm suggesting if you can just try to do the evaluation now like grab that link and do it right away so otherwise you're going to get a bunch of emails from me.
>> It should launch automatically.
>> For those that won at bingo, the 4 people please those should go out next week.  They have to come out through the DC office so you will get them and we will let you know.  All right?  Any other thoughts?  All righty.  Thanks so much for spending the day with us, this morning with us.  We really appreciate it.  All right.  I hope you had fun.  All right.  Thanks everyone.