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The Hangout
#72 Antonio Torres, Community Plate Initiative
Antonio Torres, one of the founders of the Community Plate Initiative, joins us to share his profound journey from early community service to launching an innovative nonprofit in San Diego during the pandemic. Antonio opens up about CPI, which distributes high-quality, nutritious meals to unhoused communities in San Diego, and addresses the challenges and creative solutions involved in sustaining such a vital project. To learn more about the Community Plate Initiative, visit their website.
For these people to have that kind of experience, something that they've never had, is heart-touching for them. I mean, I've seen people break down and cry that our food is so good. They've told us it's the best meal they've ever had in their life and it's something I'll never forget.
Speaker 2:And something I'll never forget. In this episode, I was privileged to sit down with Antonio Torres, one of the founders of an innovative nonprofit called Community Plate Initiative. From their website, communityplateinitiativecom, their mission is, to quote alleviate hunger within our San Diego community while inspiring others in the respective communities to do the same. Fostering hope for a homeless and hunger-free future is at the forefront of what we're working towards together. Learn more about the positive impact we have and join us in creating a difference. Antonio and I cover a wide range of topics, from how he got started in this work during the pandemic to the power and dignity that comes from serving high quality food to another human being, and much, much more. I hope you enjoy this conversation with this inspiring young leader as much as I did.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Superintendent's Hangout, where we discuss topics in education, charter schools, life in general, and not necessarily in that order. I'm your host, dr Sharetta. Come on in and hang out. Welcome, antonio. Thank you so much for coming in this afternoon and hanging out for a little bit. Thank you for having me. Could you start off by telling us about your background, your personal origin story, where you're from, where you grew up, and then kind of bring us to the present moment in terms of your work in the community, as well as your studies.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm from San Diego. I've lived here almost my entire life, short of a year. I've always done some kind of community work, not fully intentionally all the time, but I've always had a knack for wanting to help other people. I've ended up having enough for myself at certain points, here and there, but what really kept me on my track on that was you know, one time for Christmas, I was with my mom and she said we're going to give out 100 bags of food. We're going to make it Give it out. You guys aren't getting any toys this year. I was like 11 years old.
Speaker 1:That's a crisis when you're 11 right yeah, and so I mean, but really it stuck with me since I had uh been forced to do stuff when I was a kid help out, um, stuff like that. But at that age it was when I really was able to understand. So, uh, moving forward, um, coming to the pandemic, one of our members, one of our founding members, his name's Mark Actually. He came down from Santa Cruz from school. It was his birthday and he decided to do the same thing. Well, it's my birthday, I have everything I need. Why don't we just pull our money together, don't give me anything and we'll cook some food and give it out? And well, we've been doing it every Wednesday since that first day.
Speaker 1:But when we realized that just a community-based organization wasn't enough to garner support and funds for sustaining a long-term mission like this, we decided to go the nonprofit route and with that decided to bring a more presentable name than some of our other ones that we've had in the past as ideas. So we settled on Community Plate Initiative and that's just based off the notion that we're trying to build a community that is willing to help others. So, like I said, it's a plate initiative. We're building that idea that you're able to do this as well. Hopefully we can inspire others in our community to go and do the same thing in their respective communities. That's in our mission statement in our website. It's one of our core values.
Speaker 2:So how does that work as a practical matter? You got a group of buddies somewhere between high school and college, right In the middle of the pandemic, and a guy on his birthday wants to do something selfless. But then you got to figure out where the ingredients come from, where you prep this stuff, how you transport it, all that stuff. So talk us through how you began to set up your systems and how they've evolved.
Speaker 1:Well, we started off. The first time we cooked was at the Big Kitchen over here in Golden Hill.
Speaker 2:Shout out to the Big Kitchen in Golden Hill. It's been around longer than I've been alive, probably.
Speaker 1:Yeah, many, many years. And shout out Judy, she's an amazing woman.
Speaker 2:Yeah, judy's a. She's the mayor of South Park. Yeah, exactly years. And shout out judy, she's an amazing woman. Yeah, judy's a. She's the mayor of south park, yeah exactly.
Speaker 1:Everybody respects her, everybody knows her.
Speaker 2:There's not a person in the area that wouldn't bend over backwards and I think even um she's had celebrities who used to work, I think, whoopi goldberg used to work there like probably 40 years ago yeah, I mean she has a piece on the wall that says don't paint over this, and it has her signature on it. So okay, so she let you use her spot to prep, I'm assuming, in certain hours when the restaurant's not functioning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it works out that we do it on Wednesdays because she always you know well, currently they're closed Tuesday through Thursday. So that works out for both of us. She always loved doing community work so she immediately was willing to jump on the wagon and at first we had started cooking out of her uh, big kitchen. But this was before we were actually community plate initiative and we were trying to figure out what we were getting into. And there's a space called God's Extended Hand which also shout out to them they are now closed. They've been in service for over 100 years.
Speaker 1:Wow, and they were I think it was off of 16th and Island, just about. They serve the homeless community giving food, and they were also a faith-based organization providing prayer services and everything of the like, giving food, and they were also a faith-based organization providing prayer services and everything of the like. But, yeah, so we cooked out of there for quite some time and it was a larger kitchen and we were able to do a little bit more meals for the time being. But for a while that cost was coming out of our own pockets and when the time came that we heard God's Extended Hand was going to start closing, it was kind of a shift in all of our mindsets that we really needed to figure something out in order to keep this going.
Speaker 2:So is it a formal nonprofit? Yeah, Recognized 501c3, IRS compliant the whole nine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we're continually updating paperwork, as it always goes, that's right.
Speaker 2:So you have a board or yeah, we do.
Speaker 1:It's comprised of, actually, some of my friends that I've known for multiple years and some people that we've met through the organization, and really it's been an effective system because we all have our talents that we're highlighting. We're not necessarily trying to do stuff that we're not used to doing. We have a photographer and a person who runs social media for another company here in San Diego is doing our social media. Myself, I've had experience with nonprofits working at the Veterans Museum for quite some time. So taking the spearhead on this, at least being the president for the moment and hopefully uh, you know somebody else to take the position soon.
Speaker 2:So I can, because it's so highly paid, you can't give it up. Exactly so, and in the, in the midst of all this, you're graduating high school and going to college, right? Actually, you graduated high school prior to the pandemic, right? Correct? And so did you also graduate college before you started this.
Speaker 1:No, I was going to UCSD. I was a couple years in already and I was well. I had one more class to complete and during the pandemic we know everything closed in person. My only class was an in-person lab that I was not able to complete, so I had to pick up a minor and through that spent more time at UCSD.
Speaker 2:But while doing studies, while working full time as long as I could, through the pandemic we were doing community plate initiative without a name at that point, Talk to me a little bit about what we were discussing prior to starting this, recording your comments on generational views, on helping other people, about how the you know one of your stated pieces of your mission is quality, quality food, and there's a dignity that comes in in in sharing quality food, right and and meals and and um.
Speaker 1:so just talk to me about about that whole piece when, looking at society, at least from our perspective, what we see is that for the different groups that come out, there are you know. So I'll give one stark example. I don't know the company's name, nor would I share it if I did, but they hopped out of a Sprinter van and had three bags of McDonald's and had five cameras and eight people all in t-shirts, hopped out of the car five seconds, gave a few people hamburgers, took some photos, hopped right back in the car and drove off. I don't know how much they were giving out. I don't want to knock them for that, because that was their idea of doing something and that really was more than other people are doing.
Speaker 2:So you saw that downtown in some capacity.
Speaker 1:Right. Yeah, this was when we were giving out our own food and it really struck a chord with us because I wouldn't serve that to my mother if she was on the street. I wouldn't want to just give her McDonald's, I would cook her a whole meal. I wouldn't give that to my brother if he was on the street. Have chosen to stay there a lot longer than they need to, but there are also people who just are down on their luck and I've seen a lot of stories where people have gotten a lot of the assistance that they needed, come back and said, hey, thank you for the food. I was able to get a house, I was able to get an apartment or a job able to get my life going again. And the one step that we do is just a minor one. But if we're able to provide that impact, I feel like that in itself does more than enough.
Speaker 2:So I'm always curious, when volunteers distribute food, about your level of engagement and conversation with the folks who you're sharing this food with, right. So I've seen scenarios like the one you described, where it's a fast, almost like a photo op, right, whether it's going to be on TikTok or something about how cool you are, and then you're out in your nice van and you're safe. I'm assuming you guys walk the streets. Have you started to see the same people and have kind of like iterative conversations with them, week after week?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, of course, I know some of their names. I know some of their stories. There's this one example, without giving out a name yeah, he's an amazing man, about 65 years old, very humble. He always, whether he has clothes or not, whether he has food or not, he's always considering the next person and he says that he has visions from God. Every week that we pass by, he opens up his little sketch pad and he has another drawing and it's a Bible verse, but he colors them in color coded, specificallyoded specifically, and it's a lot of Well, like I said, he considers them visions from God and it's a lot of art also, and he loves sharing with us his experience. But also, too, we love talking to him as a person. He's, just like I said, a very humble human being and we've met people like that.
Speaker 1:And then we also have our returning customers who are belligerent, and that's also okay, because we understand that. You know what. You might've just got your fix, but you're still going to need food at some point, even if you're asleep. We're going to put a fork, a mule and a water right next to your tent, right next to your, even if you're just laying on a piece of cardboard with a blanket covering you. We're putting it right next to you that way, when you wake up, you have something there for you, I'd imagine you also run into families as well, right young kids and yeah, and it's actually surprising how many kids we see out on the streets.
Speaker 1:We have a lot of kids' clothes that get donated and for the most part they go. We give out. If we don't only give out food, we give out waters, clothes. We gave out hand sanitizers in the past. When we got donated, a whole pallet Actually shout out BAMCO for that. We're giving those out for an extended period of time and, like I said, every time that we have kids close, we never fail to get rid of them.
Speaker 2:So how can folks get involved? You know they can go to your website, right, and there's some options for donation. Talk us through those. I think I recall seeing like you could sponsor one meal for one person or something all the way up to kind of an ongoing commitment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we wanted to make it simple for people who wanted to help out just understand how much impact that they're going to end up having. Those are based off of our metrics. We've had data over the last few years that we've been doing this officially about how much it's costed for all of the items, all the food, all the containers we don't consider like the gas costs that's out of our pockets. Short drive, exactly, just a few blocks up the way. So showing that impact and really giving people that idea is a great way, a great tool for them to understand and get involved, is a great way, a great tool for them to understand and get involved.
Speaker 1:And also, too, if they wanted to do some continuing donations, then yeah, of course, that would even help us expand our organization, because currently we're only serving on Wednesdays. Now we just had an event in coordination with Mr Ace, a huge golf tournament at the Coronado Golf Course, and we're expecting a good chunk of change from that. However, we need a little bit more longevity with our donations. So we're already looking at expanding our days, doing Tuesday and Wednesday now, okay, but we're definitely looking for people to, you know, gather in and help out a little bit.
Speaker 2:So when folks do go to the website they can and we'll put this in the show notes too that they can donate. They can make a one-time donation whatever dollar amount they want. They can say whatever $100 a month, lock it in and I think there's that functionality on the website.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that functionality on the website. Yeah, and it'll tell you particularly about $100. We'll serve about 200 people. We can do different meals If we get higher donations, and I believe there is a notes tab, as we should have put in there. You can even tell us what you would like us to cook. Really, yeah, I believe that we got that function going, so I saw on your website.
Speaker 2:That was like this you have some photos of different foods. You clarified to me those are foods that you had served at one time, correct? You don't always serve those specific things. I was looking on there, I saw a raspberry cobbler with a delicious looking photo, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:That was amazing.
Speaker 2:I bet you, if one you do make that, half of it ends up in you guys picking at it. In our stomachs yeah, so did you guys. Were you skilled as chefs prior, or you're kind of self-taught?
Speaker 1:A little bit of both. We've had people who were in the industry, and actually we as an organization have a majority of people who are in the service industry. When it comes down to our chefs, though, our head chef is a line cook at Mr A's. He does the protein there consistently, if not other stations which you know. Oh, you got to be good, you got to be quality to be able to even get off of your own station Right and do some fill-in work. You have to be amazing. So the fact that we have these high-quality cooks, high-quality chefs they're able to see what we have, what we're given from the food bank Now that we're a nonprofit, we're actually working with the food bank and getting food from them as well, whatever they have available, and we will cook any dish based on the items that we have at the moment, and so, them being those high-level chefs, they're able to make something quality, something that tastes and looks appealing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's amazing. Healing yeah, that, that's, that's amazing. It's very often you hear people talk about it's not so much a food scarcity system-wide as much as a food distribution crisis yeah, and that's where you hear the idea of food deserts.
Speaker 1:That's right, and there's locations where you can't necessarily, and even in my neighborhood I don't live in the nicest area, we have a modest house, but you can't go up the street and get fresh produce. I have to get in my car and take a 10-minute, 15-minute drive up the freeway, which is not so bad considering that it's San Diego. But if you were living anywhere else, that's not a 10 or 15 minute drive. Or if you didn't have a car, if you didn't have a car, it's even worse. That's a three hour bus ride there getting your food and coming back.
Speaker 2:When people find out about the work you do, do they oftentimes weigh in or make comments about homelessness, unhoused, what should be done? People should just pull themselves up by the bootstraps and get a job, or stop doing drugs, or blah, blah, blah. Do you get that sometimes?
Speaker 1:We do. We get it. I would say a majority, but a slight majority More so we get people that are just willing to listen. At this point, because we're a group of young individuals, I'm the oldest one that is part of the actual board, of the board members, right, and I'm 26 years old, so we have members now that are just shy of 30. That are just shy of 30. But overall our cohort is at average age 25, 24. So when we talk to people, when we meet new people, they see something that is not normal and they're willing to listen to our story because of the fact that they don't see this every day.
Speaker 2:There's nobody else, I believe, that has actually put in as much time to creating a full organization at our age and that was the inspiring thing, that when I found out about your work that I said I got to talk to these guys because the idea that young people, college age, recent high school graduates, college age, you know that kind of that that whole under 30 set would take a ticket upon themselves to start a nonprofit and do this work. That's fundamentally selfless, to its core right. Obviously it pays you back in real deep heart ways and spirit ways. Right that you can't put a dollar amount on, exactly, but you also can't eat from that.
Speaker 1:Exactly. I need something to fill my pockets at the end of the day, and you know we all have our own nine to fives. But we're looking to expand this and make it something to where we can all end up getting paid from it and continuing to help other people at the same time. We're not looking to stay just on Wednesdays and Tuesdays, we're looking to do it daily and one of our long-term goals or even hopefully midterm goals, probably in the next few years is to get a food truck so that we can serve people on the go, because that's what we do already. We walk around downtown with carts, but it'd be so much easier if we could go up to a high concentration, high density of individuals and serve them food right there.
Speaker 2:What has been well. You talked about a lot of the successes. You know. Even just starting was a real success, right, and the fact that now, four years later, you're still doing the work. What's been the greatest challenge?
Speaker 1:I would say either motivation or money. The two Ms yeah.
Speaker 2:So motivation meaning this is just some days when you guys are like we're so busy, we got our own lives and no one's showing up for the distribution or what.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so both of those were more prevalent, I would say, a couple of years ago. I was in the end of my UCSD days. Everybody else is getting established in their current careers and we didn't have as much time to be able to put aside for this, let alone our money, which we didn't already have. We were putting to be able to get food out, and that was one of our driving factors to actually become a nonprofit and put more work on ourselves in a time when we didn't have any motivation. We were kind of just pushing each other around saying all right, I know you don't want to go this week, but I went last week and I didn't want to go, so it's your turn to pony up and let's do it Like there's going to.
Speaker 1:There's no shortage of people that need the help and when we think about the people that we served and that we continuously serve, it's like oh yeah, like the chili guy is not going to be able to ask us if we have our chili today, because that's one of our recipes that we've made quite consistently. Uh, our chef robert. He has this vegan chili that he does so good. There's this one guy who will come every week for that for that. And if we don't have it, he's like well, I'm okay enough, I would you know, but if I would be able to get you chili sometime, that would be amazing.
Speaker 2:And that is all he wants from us, and that is okay have you faced any challenges, any logistical challenges in the actual distribution on the streets? Uh ever. Is there ever any resistance to, to the police? Sometimes wonder what you're doing. Or you're pretty, it's been pretty pretty easy.
Speaker 1:Um, I would say when we first started, the police were a lot more wary of us. Um, we've never even had a conversation with a single cop, but they will at least look over. Sometimes we've offered them water if they're sitting there in their patrol vehicle. But that's about the extent of coordination that we've had with them, and that's okay, because we don't need it to get to that point where we need police intervention. If they want to come up to us and help out, that'd be great. But the whole idea is that we're doing this to help other people. There's no need for that.
Speaker 2:Well, we could go all different directions from that, I know. Right in the middle of your work, the camping ban law went into effect right Ban camping on the streets. I don't even know where that is right now, because there's a lot of People camping on streets.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we hear a lot of rumors that circulate through the houses community and we heard something of the effect of a camping van coming into place, but what, in effect, I think has happened in some cases in certain areas is that the people are just shuffled around Right and I will call out the city in this particularly around right um, and I will call out the city in this particularly um.
Speaker 1:During the world series, when the padres were actually doing halfway decent last year and they were in the playoffs, they moved all the houses individuals from the direct path of the stadium and two weeks later, when the padres weren't playing, when they already eliminated, all the people were right back, and it's really more of an issue about services rather than the camping ban, because they're still going to end up living somewhere. The difference is where they're at, and so one of the things that I've noticed and that people have said is the locations that they have outside of downtown, those camping areas for the houseless individuals. They aren't large enough for that amount of people, and the amount of people in San Diego is only growing, I think. A metric that I heard recently was that it's doubled in the last two years.
Speaker 2:I think a metric that I heard recently was that it's doubled in the last two years. Yeah, I know they do the annual count, which is not a totally precise metric, right. And then it's tricky too, because you're talking about the city and then people can move outside of the city but they're still within the county. And how does that fit together within the county and how does that, you know, fit together? Um, but there's certainly yeah, anybody who's familiar with downtown san diego knows that what 16th street?
Speaker 1:uh, anyway, all the way from peko park east is lined with encampments and, yeah, that is where we start handing out food at. Actually, we're kind of near that Pecco Park or I forget the full name, but it's the Day Center. They have an adult center, public showers, and that's the little strip of assistance that they have. They also have what is it? The Father Joe's?
Speaker 2:Father Joe's yeah.
Speaker 1:And they're all doing great work. They have the Alpha Project and that entire. What half a mile distance is where people are tending to congregate, because that's where they can get all the stuff that they need. But you see that they become encampments and that there's long lines and that people aren't actually able to get the services that they need.
Speaker 2:So you're 26. You're on the older end for your organization. Yeah, uh, what do you know now that you wish you'd known when you started this work? That would have made your life easier back then I would say, uh, consistency is key.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's something that's come to play and I feel like all of our lives the fact that we've started like we started this organization with just giving food. We added clothes At some point. We weren't keeping up with gathering donations for that and when it came down to it, we started letting go of some of the excess things and even for a short period of time, we weren't giving out waters, we would only be cooking meals, and the reason why we ended up getting to those points was because we didn't do the work on our end, and that's usually how it ends up going. The work will match, or sorry, the effort matches the result, and in this type of work it definitely does, because we have to be out there actively gathering support, meeting new people, and when we didn't have time or when we didn't think we had time and now we come to realize that we definitely do that consistency portion really has paid off when we became a nonprofit and since then we've been putting a lot more time into it and we've gotten tremendous results.
Speaker 1:As I mentioned earlier, we just had the Mr A's golf tournament. It was their inaugural golf tournament and that was all set up because one of our cooks who works at Mr A's had just mentioned a few times to the owner hey, we have this organization, you know, not expecting anything, just saying, hey, we have this organization, you know, this is what we do. Maybe spread the word if you can. But he comes back a year later letting us know well, I like the work that you're doing, and can you show us that you've been doing it for a while, that you actually have stability, you have your paperwork in order, et cetera? I'd be willing to help you guys out. And so, when it came down to it, we just gave our you know tax id that it's searchable on the irs website.
Speaker 1:Right, we are fully legal and finally yeah, uh, and when it came down to it, he was fully for it. And there's a lot of. Actually now we're realizing philanthropists in the community that we hadn't been tapped into, and people who have to donate yeah, exactly, to be able to meet their obligations at the end of the year or, you know, get rid of excess budgets, and that's going to be, I think, our new target audience, just because we've kind of got a foot in. I think that that would help us expand our reach the most for the moment. But still, we're going to try to keep our head to the ground and mind that it's for the community.
Speaker 2:It's pretty remarkable that you've been able to keep it going for four years. Right, that's right.
Speaker 1:Every Wednesday. Yeah, and I'm not going to lie, we have missed a few distributions here and there, and it's only been because of stuff like we didn't have the money to be able to fund it ourselves, or even one time the food bank didn't have enough food. All we had that week was onions and didn't have the money out of our pocket. So you know it's how it goes out of our pocket. So you know it's how it goes. Um, but yeah, so starting this, I mentioned this before and you said it's been. You know it's been four years. This had been going on since I was 22, so uh, you're looking at approximately 50 200 or so.
Speaker 2:uh, distribution events, that's a lot. Oh yeah, distribution events, that's a lot. Oh yeah, that's. That's a lot of work for volunteers to do and really commendable.
Speaker 1:And, as you say, you're kind of, there aren't a lot of people handing out quality food right, so you guys have kind of found your niche area, yeah, so, as I mentioned before, I wouldn't want to serve anything that I've seen served in the past To my family members. I've seen a lot of disparity in the levels and quality of involvement that people are willing to put up and I wouldn't say anything negative about anybody doing any bit of help. Only thing I could say is I wish that there would be more awareness to the fact that you're also going home and eating a whole meal that you cooked yourself. You have two sides, probably, and a main item. You have your soft drink or if you drink water or your juice or whatever it may be, but what these people are getting on a consistent daily basis is the same meal, same sandwich. I mean I don't want to say it fully like, because it's not the same, but almost short of like jail food.
Speaker 1:People who've been in that situation. They'll even refuse some of the food that comes around because it's a lot more disheartening in some ways. And I've seen that when we come around with our quality food, something that they open the container and it smells good or they can see a piece of chicken in pasta. They can see a piece of meat instead of, you know, tomatoes and lettuce on a sandwich bread, a little bit of mayonnaise. When they can see something that actually looks like the food that it's representing what it is, you can see their eyes light up. Dignity, yeah dignity.
Speaker 2:What's what's your, what's your favorite meal that you guys have prepared over these four years?
Speaker 1:the one that that you're like man.
Speaker 2:That was legit.
Speaker 1:You know what? Okay, so I love red meat. So the one item that we cooked and this was relatively recently we had a huge donation of prime rib, so we had prime rib, we had rosemary mashed potatoes I believe it was and we had roasted cauliflower and broccoli, and that itself, like I said, coming from these quality chefs, is going to be amazing.
Speaker 2:It's really one of those stories that no one talks about, right, you got a line chef from I don't know how to rank restaurants, but Mr A's, if you ask people who've been in San Diego a long time, hey, hey, top 10 restaurants, they're always going to mention it in some capacity.
Speaker 1:right, it's known around the world yeah, I mean, even in the last edition of san diego magazine, I think they were mentioned four or five times. As far as restaurant rankings go, on either items or drinks service I they're exceptional in all realms and kudos to their management and ownership that they would be interested in in this, right.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm looking out the window of my office and I can see Coronado across the Harbor. You and I are obviously in a very different neighborhood from Coronado as we sit here and record, but to think that there was a golf tournament there, right, and the connection to Mr that there was a golf tournament there, right, and the connection to Mr A is a top, top, top and global level excellence from a restaurant and all that energy and goodwill. It's also benefiting folks who need the help. That's a special thing.
Speaker 1:And one thing that people tend to forget is that a lot of people in all these positions are humans as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not all of them, but a lot of them, thank God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I know there's plenty of philanthropists in those circles and, like I said, the owner of A's, ryan Thorson, amazing person. But yeah, so.
Speaker 2:So I have a couple more questions for you, um, uh, but first, is there anything that we haven't touched on, uh, that you'd like to to convey about the organization? I'm also intrigued by your own college track right, which is kind of a little divergent from this right.
Speaker 1:Maybe there's connections.
Speaker 2:But maybe talk to us about that a little bit. Like you and I were talking prior that, you kind of got partway through a college career and then you decided there was a you need to make a left turn.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, as I said before, I went to UCSD for cognitive and behavioral neuroscience that was my undergraduate degree's name. I had a minor in psychology and I was working in one of the top labs at UCSD world-renowned professor, dr Ramachandran Shout out to him. He did a lot of phantom limb and synesthesia research and he's really the one who was the cornerstone of solving these problems and figuring out really what was going on. I was working in his lab for some time and I realized that my original idea of research and what I wanted to do for my career was not what I wanted to do. That level of detail is not something that I like to commit, I guess, to long term. I realized that and it was surprising that I was able to be that honest with myself, because most people get locked into that notion that they need to stick with what they're doing. But for me, I still love the realm of science, I still love the realm of the brain, and so I want to shift my focus to be a professor. I want to be able to talk and talk people's ears off about something that I love. But when it comes down to community-planned initiative and my conjunction with that and my degree has been to the degree that I see and my degree has been to the degree that I see. For example, in Chicago there was this study done a few years ago I was mentioning this earlier about an overnight basketball team. I believe it was 1 to 3 am that they had this team fully publicly supported, paid for. All the students had to do, all the children had to do, was show up, and the crime rate in that particular Chicago neighborhood went down some odd 40%, don't quote me, but it was a significant number. And so I'm at least on my end, trying to use the stuff that I've learned from my degree to be able to support our community.
Speaker 1:I have on a training document something that they use in psychology. It's called unconditional positive regard and it says exactly what it is unconditional positive regard to the person you're talking about, to the person you're talking to, to the person you're talking about, to the person you're talking to. I employ those methods purely because we need to show that dignity to those people. Everybody has a story, everybody has a family, and where they're at now doesn't reflect their entire history. So that's something that I try to drill into the heads of any of our new volunteers if they don't already have that, and usually they're amazing about it because if they're already coming in to do this kind of work, they're like-minded individuals. That's right.
Speaker 2:There's not many volunteers with unconditional negative regard. Yeah, I mean that would be a strange thing.
Speaker 1:Only people, I feel like, are the people that are required to do it. But even still, after a little bit, you start realizing what's going on and you start feeling good about yourself and helping other people, and it turns into something different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the human seeps through no matter what right. Exactly, unconditional positive regard. I'm going to have to look that up. You said that's a concept in psychology. Yeah, therapists use it Interesting. Yeah, in psychology. Yeah, therapists use it Interesting. Yeah, I like that. I wanted to wrap with a hypothetical question. Okay, shoot, so you have a chance to design a billboard, okay, okay, and we're going to make it CPI's billboard, since you're the president. All right, I'm hiring a graphic designer there we go.
Speaker 2:You can't do that, oh yeah, well, yeah even when you hire graphic designers, they're gonna pitch you a whole bunch of different slogans and you're gonna have to decide and you're the president, so they you get.
Speaker 2:You got to narrow it down before you bring it to your board. How's that? So you can hire whoever you want, but you're not getting to know this question. So what does your CPI billboard say? As people are flying by on the 5 freeway and they're distracted and they're on their phones and all this other stuff, what's the message you want to say to the world?
Speaker 1:In short, short quality food for everyone equally, so I can touch on that slightly yeah, on the equally part, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, because seeing the disparity I mean our quality chefs from mr a's and the type of food that we've seen given out in the past, it it's a whole different world, a whole different flavor composition. You get depth of flavor in something that is cooked by somebody who has that kind of experience. For these people to have that kind of experience, something that they've never had, is heart-touching for them. I mean, I've seen people break down and cry that our food is so good, as they've told us it's the best meal they've ever had in their life.
Speaker 1:And something I'll never forget.
Speaker 2:Yeah, quality food for everyone equally yeah, I think that's a really appropriate and touching place to wrap for today. We're going to put the show notes. Put information in the show notes about donating. Please, everybody, check out this nonprofit. It's a really special impetus that comes from young people who see a world that they want to change, and us older generations have a lot of areas that we could have done a better job in, so the young folks are really helping us out. So thank you so much for coming in today and being willing to share about your work, and thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Really, I appreciate the ability to spread our message around to anyone who listens.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to the Superintendent's Hangout. You can follow me on Twitter at DVS1970. Please be sure to share this show with friends and family on social media and in the real world. Thank you to Brad Backeal for editing and production assistance and to Tina Royster for scheduling and logistics. Thanks for hanging out and have a great day.