Lindsay Aguilar On What Would Change If Every Kindergartener Arrived Ready

We talk with Lindsay Aguilar about how Building Strong Brains brings more than 80 partners together to help more children enter kindergarten ready to learn. We get specific about the no-wrong-door approach, what readiness really means, and how the summer Countdown to Kindergarten program removes barriers for working families.

• Lindsay’s path from youth development to leading a countywide early childhood coalition
 • Why systems change helps community foundations and nonprofits move the needle
 • No-wrong-door support that reduces “door knocking” for parents
 • Coalition structure with action teams focused on health, community supports, and quality early learning environments
 • Funding through the Community Foundation of Elkhart County and investments from community partners
 • What kindergarten readiness measures and why it predicts long-term outcomes
 • Countdown to Kindergarten’s growth from a small pilot to serving more than 300 children
 • Removing barriers through transportation, meals, before- and after-care, and bilingual instruction
 • Adjacent challenges such as hunger, housing, and transportation that can derail progress
 • How family voice stays at the center so decisions remain grounded in real needs

Learn more about the Community Foundation of Elkhart County at inspiringgood.org. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

This show is a production of the Community Foundation of Elkhart County. It is powered by equipment from Sweetwater and recorded in The Riverbend building in Elkhart's River District. Editing is done by the award-winning communication students at Goshen College, home of one of the best college radio stations in the nation. Listen to Globe Radio at 91.1 FM. Learn more about the Community Foundation of Elkhart County at inspiringgood.org You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Music is provided by Sensational Sounds. Thanks for listening. We hope you are inspired and inspire good and your community.

Transcript

Welcome And Why It Matters

Marshall King 0:03

Welcome to the Inspiring Good Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by the Community Foundation of Oak Ark County, which serves a vibrant community in northern Indiana, known for its generosity and strong network of nonprofit organizations. I'm Marshall King, your co-host with Kevin Deary, a veteran nonprofit CEO who now coaches others. Today our guest is Lindsay Aguilar, Coalition Director for Building Strong Brains. Welcome, Lindsay.

Lindsay Aguilar 0:28

Thank you, Marshall.

Kevin Deary 0:29

Lindsay, we're so glad to have you a colleague, and now you're the director of Building Strong Brains Initiative. It's such a big initiative. So what drew you to Building Strong Brains?

Lindsay Aguilar 0:38

So I've always worked in youth development. So right out of the gates from college, I was a first generation college student. So I was I was on this quest to enter the sector and and help youth get to the finish line because I was familiar with with those, the many obstacles that often stood in the way. But in particular, what I've been most interested in watching this coalition, I'm an Elkhart County resident, so I've been I've been watching as a fan for years now. I myself, the last eight years, I've been an executive director for a community foundation in Michigan, the Certice Area Community Foundation, and we were grappling with those questions that all community foundations grapple with. How do you make the most out of your grant-making programs? How do you move the needle? And how do we utilize all the tools at our disposal, whether it's our investments or grant making, how do we, how do we make the most impact? And about three years ago, we started supporting coalition work in childcare through some state level initiatives in Michigan. And I've become to realize that this is a really unique space for community foundations to operate in. And I've begin to see through that work that when we are able to achieve real systems-level change, that that becomes the answer to that question about how we really strengthen our grant-making programs. And so as I was doing that work and I was seeing Building Strong Brains develop in El Cart County, when the door opened for this

Lindsay’s Path To Systems Change

Lindsay Aguilar 2:05

position, I just knew that this was this was something that I wanted to follow.

Marshall King 2:10

Lindsay, before you were at the community foundation in Sturgis, like you were working some with kids or at least with kid-oriented organizations. What was your background before the community foundation up there?

Lindsay Aguilar 2:21

Yeah. So prior to that, so right out of college, I did what a lot of young college grads do. And I moved to Chicago and I spent several years there working with Chicago Public Schools, managing a federal grant, implementing programs at the grassroots level, and then ultimately found myself implementing programs for youth at the national level through the Elks National Foundation. And when my daughter was two years old, I decided I wanted to relocate back home to be closer to family. And it was actually a job offer from Boys and Girls Clubs of Elkhart County that brought me to Elkhart County. And so again, an opportunity to serve youth and followed my heart there to continue with that mission.

Marshall King 2:59

This is where, if you didn't pick up on that, Lindsay used to work for Kevin at the Boys and Girls Clubs.

Lindsay Aguilar 3:04

That's right. That was my long-winded way of saying Kevin Deary actually brought me to Elkhart County, this place that I love and have now called home.

Kevin Deary 3:10

And one of the best hires we've ever had. You came in at the last second and I looked at your resume, and I said, Wow, if if she is interviews as well as her resume looks, and you blew me away on the phone interview, and the rest of it is history because you you were you did a great job for us. Thank you. And and now neither one of us with the organization. I retired and you've moved on and to become a CEO yourself, and I'm super proud of you. And you've done you're you're definitely a game changer for any organization. And I think building strong brains is right up your alley because you you have to understand systems and how they work and how to build them. Most people impact change like youth development from the adult to the child, and and maybe it's homework help or some kind of leadership program. But yours is yours is huge and particularly focusing on the zero to five year olds, which is fascinating. It is it has really become a challenge for us. Childcare in general, young parents that are having children and their working fam, both parents are working, it's hard. And you yourself, you you have a toddler, so you know, as well as having uh some kids that are a little older in school, yeah, and how challenged it is to be in that space where you have to be careful where you place your child. And a lot of working parents don't have choices, and sometimes they make poor choices and because they're desperate. And so maybe you could talk a little bit about how Building Strong Brains initiative is working with those zero to five-year-olds.

Lindsay Aguilar 4:45

Yeah, so it's important to remember that building strong brains is a coalition of partners, right? So our coalition, they are they are the network of organizations, right? But what makes Building Strong Brains special and powerful is that these partners have said, we're going to come together and collectively address issues that we could not address alone, right? It's that we're stronger together model. And what I think is really special is that all of the work started by listening to families, because to your point, every family is different and every family has such unique needs that there is no one size fits all solution to this. And that's what makes it really challenging work, but it's also what makes it very rewarding work. And so our approach to this has been rooted in a belief that if mothers have healthy birth outcomes, if families have access to the community supports that they need to navigate all those obstacles and challenges. And if we can make sure that parents and children have access to quality childcare and learning environments, that children will thrive. But in order to get improvements in each of those areas, it takes a lot of cross-collaboration and a lot of a lot of conversation.

Marshall King 6:03

And Lindsay, I'm a word guy, so I don't I don't always count very well, but I've I've heard you use the phrase zero, zero

What Building Strong Brains Does

Marshall King 6:10

barriers. Yeah. Like explain that.

Lindsay Aguilar 6:12

So we talk a lot about if we're doing this work right, because every family is navigating their own unique set of circumstances, that's what we're really ultimately trying to do with our partners is create a no-wrong door approach in Elkhart County. So that no matter where a family goes or where they start with an organization, that that partner is going to be equipped through our coalition work to point them in the right direction, right? And to be a resource. Because as a parent, you can imagine you go one place for a set of resources and it's not right, and then you go knock on the next door and you go knock on the next door to find what you need. But by fostering really great collaboration and communication, our hope is that we'll be able to connect parents to the resources that they need just by being in better partnership together.

Kevin Deary 6:56

So we would be remiss if we didn't talk about Candy Yoder and her vision of laying this out years as president of CAPS. She worked in this space and always wanted to do something like this. And then her her and then and then Dr. Kim Boynton came in after her to help build some of this infrastructure, and now you're here. And we're so glad to have you. Candy retired, of course. And so I am delighted to have you. But as you how many people, like how many leaders, community leaders, and organizations do you have in this system?

Lindsay Aguilar 7:29

Oh goodness. The network is is quite strong. Just at we had a convening this morning, actually, and we had 80 individuals in attendance. There are probably 80 organizations that have been at the table guiding this work. And just to give you an idea of our structure, it's it's quite complex. So we have teams, we have a steering team and a leadership table that's similar to the way a board would help align priorities for an organization. They help us do that, right? We're accountable to them for outcomes and they help us think through priorities and alignment. And then we have action teams. So those around maternal and child health, community supports, and quality learning environments. And though each of those teams represents a group of organizations and leaders that come together on a regular basis to tackle key issues in each of those core areas of our work. They make recommendations and strategize together on what we might do to strengthen the system in each of those areas. And then from there, we have additional work groups and alignment teams that come together. So we really have leadership from top-level executive leadership to frontline workers, all engaged at different levels of our coalition work. And it's it's really inspiring, it's really cumbersome, but it's it's really also generating some really important conversations and results.

Kevin Deary 8:48

And you've you're you're growing a big team to a support team staff. How are you all funded?

Lindsay Aguilar 8:53

So we're funded from the community foundation of Elkhart County, right? So from it, we actually were born out of the Kids and Families Committee. So that's really, really important. They they saw this need and this vision and actually helped launch the very first the Building Strong Brains initiative as a grant-making committee, right? That I talked about, that's grappling with how do we help move the needles, how do we help our partner move the needles. They they had that vision and invested in this in this systems change work. So it started there and it's grown. We also have a significant amount of funding from Willie Endowment that is now providing a lot of funding to our partners and our coalition-led initiatives throughout the county.

Kevin Deary 9:29

So as you and I both know through our youth development work, there's a lot of families, more and more than a single parent, whether it's mom or dad, and then also grandparents that are raising their children's children. That's especially challenging for them because they haven't been a parent for, you know, decades, and now suddenly they're thrust back into being a parent again and and finding the resources to help them with their grandchild. So how is this going to help single parent families as well as grandparents raising their children's children?

Lindsay Aguilar 10:00

Aaron Powell You know, if we strengthen the system and we're how coming behind our partners, there are so many partners that exist to support those single parents and to support those grandparents, right? So what we recognize is we have our partners in the room and they're doing this work and they know what the system needs. And so our hope is that by listening to them and helping them build their capacity and strengthen their strengthen the system overall, that those individuals are going to have more access to resources, they're going to be more aware, and that our county is going to be ready to embrace anyone with the resources that they need.

Marshall King 10:35

What is it that specifically that you want to see a kindergartner be able to do when they walk in the door on the first day of their formal school career?

Lindsay Aguilar 10:46

Yeah. So we are when we look at kindergarten readiness at the county level. Years ago, there was an assessment developed with the help of HEA that that was developed with insights from kindergarten teachers. And kindergarten teachers identified six skills. Three were social emotional skills, and three were gross motor skills, or not gross, gross, they were more motor skills in general. So gross, motor, fine motor. And so we're certainly looking at those skills based on that assessment. And then we're also looking at there's a there's a new state assessment. So we're also looking at what other types of readiness, maybe more traditional things like early literacy and more academic type standards. But, you know, what we're hoping for is that children have been exposed to building those skills and have had lots of consistent opportunities to build those skills so that when they're entering the kindergarten classroom on day one, that they're feeling confident and ready to learn and not completely overwhelmed.

Kevin Deary 11:45

And there's measurable data out there that says those who enter kindergarten ready are f are far less likely to drop out of high school, far less likely to have

Zero Barriers And No-Wrong Door

Kevin Deary 11:55

absentee problems and to excel academically. It makes a huge difference how they c how they come in their first day, doesn't it?

Lindsay Aguilar 12:02

Aaron Powell Yeah, kindergarten readiness, I mean truly building strong brains and our coalition uses kindergarten readiness as our North Star. But one of the reasons we use it as the North Star is because of that, because it's linked to so it, you know, your level of readiness at kindergarten has long-lasting impacts on your overall educational experience and outcomes, right? It's really a proxy for overall childhood well-being. And that's the if we had to pick one measure, that was the measure that we knew was connected to so many other important factors of of life.

Kevin Deary 12:34

I remember just a simple analogy, a board member asking me why it's important for kindergarten readiness. And I asked him, have you ever have you ever gone to a meeting where everybody's got a pen or a pencil but you and you don't have one and you have to borrow one? Do you remember what that felt like? Yeah, I've I always feel stupid. Imagine a kindergarten that doesn't he's never held a book or doesn't know how to write, or doesn't doesn't know its colors. And that's how they feel. Now you can get a pen and pencil and you can you know move on. It's not so quick for them. It's important that we want them to be successful in kindergarten. It is huge that they love school, love their teacher, and they they're understanding the values and the lessons that they're learning so they can go home and tell mom and dad what they learned.

Lindsay Aguilar 13:20

Yeah, it's it's a really big transition. And a lot of exactly what we're talking about was the the reason that our countdown to kindergarten initiative was launched. So if you're not familiar with that last summer, countdown to kindergarten was piloted, it was a kindergarten boot camp. And the concept was exactly that. How do we help make sure that children who have not had exposure to preschool or maybe a childcare center with structured curriculum are still having an opportunity to build those skills that they need to enter the classroom confident on day one? You know, to your point about showing up at a board meeting with no pencil, I always say that program is sort of like think about it like joining a soccer team, right? Like, how would you feel if you had to show up day one and jump in the game? It'd be very overwhelming. It'd be the equivalent of showing up to that meeting unprepared, right? And so countdown to kindergarten, kindergarten boot camp started with that notion in mind. How do we help give them that practice to build those fundamental skills? And Head Start is our lead partner in instruction. And last year it was piloted with just under 50 children, and the the gains that those children made were incredible. And so this year it's actually expanded. We've got more than 300 children in the program right now. It started two weeks ago, it kicked off. We've got classrooms around the county, Elkhart, Goshen, Napanee, and these children are right now, as we speak, in classrooms around the county learning to be ready for this fall. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Kevin Deary 14:43

And these are targeted kids. These are these are children who are coming with maybe not from the greatest homes or the two-parent working parents, and maybe the kids are behind.

Lindsay Aguilar 14:53

Well, we specifically targeted children

Coalition Structure And How It’s Funded

Lindsay Aguilar 14:55

who had not participated in preschool, right? So it maybe they've got to stay at home, but they just were never, you know, and maybe she wasn't, you know. So but we are we we do have priority zip codes that we know our highest need in Elkhart County that we have prioritized, and we know that our enrollment is up in both of those neighborhoods. But we also made a we were intentional about saying that this program is really intended for children who have not been enrolled in preschool before.

Kevin Deary 15:21

Which is a great litmus test. I mean, it's it's these are the right kids getting exactly what they need. And if you could impact 50 with the results that you had, imagine it's gonna be exciting to see what the boot camp is gonna have. And I know that's kind of a strange word, a boot camp, but you know, for these kids coming in, this is the first time they're here they're holding a book, understanding numbers and reading and and just feeling successful and liking school. So it to get them in the mindset, I can't wait to be in kindergarten. So, and and also getting positive praise for what they're learning.

Lindsay Aguilar 15:54

Yeah. And I I have to tell you that the building of the Countdown to Kindergarten program is such an example of what this coalition model has made possible because there are nine partners that have actively worked to make this program possible. So Head Start is leading instruction. But then the question became what if what if children in this program need care before and after the program, right? Some are the program, the core program is from 7:30 to one. So what do we do for those families that need to be in the factory earlier or they're working later than 1 p.m., right? There are a lot of families that are working after 1 p.m. And so Boys and Girls Clubs is providing free before and after care. Our school system stepped up with transportation. So so many of the children participating have no transportation barrier right now. They're getting picked up and they're getting taken home. We needed to solve the food. We uh we we needed a food program for the summer. Pen Harris Madison School District is actually stepping over the county line and providing meals, breakfast and lunch, and then cultivate is providing snacks and sending food home on weekends. So it's been just this amazing partnership that has just continued to grow so that we could make sure that it's very low barrier and that these children really have everything that they need to prepare.

Marshall King 17:08

I'm not sure why I'm the one who keeps bringing up math, but so Elcard County has uh just probably just shy of 2,000 kids who will enter kindergarten this fall. 1800, 1900, something like that. Those the numbers have shown that 40% of the kids, 42% of the kids are showing up ready, and 58% give or take, 40, 60 are not, right? So, like, if you're like talk about the impact of working directly with 300 kids who are probably most at risk of not being ready.

Lindsay Aguilar 17:39

Absolutely. Absolutely. And we want to see that number continue to grow. I think that there's going to be lots of opportunity to work with additional partners in the future, like our childcare providers, and we know our, you know, our faith-based community probably has a role to play in this too. But yeah, right out of the gates with this number this year, we're very happy. I mean, the program grew by by six times its size in one year.

Kevin Deary 18:00

Tell me about what you're what you're looking at as obstacles, say a year from now. What are you looking at that's gonna cause a stress? Like how do you scale from three, you went from 50 to 300. How do you go from 300 to 1800?

Lindsay Aguilar 18:14

Well, I think one, we need to look at what additional partners we can work with, right? At some point, and I think Head Start, they've been learning this summer too. We'll have a better idea after this summer what our true capacity for our school system partners and our and our Head Start partners are, and then we can think creatively about where else are our families that we can partner with those service providers to bring this curriculum

Defining Kindergarten Readiness Countywide

Lindsay Aguilar 18:35

in and implement curriculum.

Kevin Deary 18:37

Because honestly, out of 1800, you probably have a certain percentage that don't need it. The kids are going to be prepared coming in from their families. But tell me about how does this touch Millisburg and Foreacre?

Lindsay Aguilar 18:52

Well, the program was offered countywide and it was it was advertised countywide. So our hope is that we've got children from those communities that are accessing it. But certainly when we look at our rural communities, and that'll be something that'll be interesting to look at this year as we when we debrief on this program, we'll be looking at enrollment data, and we really haven't gotten in all of that yet. I mean, really truly to get the program uh grown and implemented. Our partners were working around the clock. Um, you know how families are. You know, it's we're human, by human nature, we are procrastinators, right? So we're we're registering at the at the last moment, we're getting kids assigned to sites. Um, but it'll be really interesting, I think, to the team to look and see exactly what our snapshot looked like and to see if we didn't have as many children participating from rural communities. Did we have additional barriers there that we needed to explore?

Kevin Deary 19:41

And can you talk a little bit about EL, where English is a new language? So how do you plan for that?

Lindsay Aguilar 19:48

Yeah, so uh by partnering with Head Start, Headstart offers instruction in dual language. Most all of our Head Start instructors are bilingual.

Marshall King 19:57

One of you mentioned with Countdown to Kindergarten that food was a key piece. Yeah. Cultivate and Pen Harris and Madison stepped up, and that's that's great. Andy Murray and Jim Conklin have been on previous episodes. They've talked a bit about hunger, but I I mean the community foundation has now leaned in on hunger ends here, but that grew out of building strong brains.

Lindsay Aguilar 20:18

Yes, it it did. And I'm glad you brought that up. So I talked earlier about the three core areas of our work, right? So we're we're continuously monitoring and monitoring maternal and child health, community supports, and quality early learning environments. But we also recognize that there are adjacent issues that impact our success in each of those areas. Issues like food insecurity, housing, transportation, right? These are barriers that will disrupt our success and outcomes in these other areas if we cannot address them simultaneously. So I've been very excited by the partnerships building around hunger ends here and the work that's being done to help address some of those adjacent issues.

Kevin Deary 21:04

I'm I'm super impressed that Goshen College is at the table. Any other colleges, universities?

Lindsay Aguilar 21:10

Well, we're regularly partnering with with Goshen College in and research and for um some of our evaluation. They're also a key sponsor that we've got a number of organizations that have made a commitment to this work for 10 years, and Goshen College is one of them. That's really, really critical. I Ivy Tech is certainly a partner, Notre Dame is a partner.

Marshall King 21:32

The Lucy Institute at Notre Dame is gonna is helping a lot crunch the data, right?

Lindsay Aguilar 21:37

Yes. Yes, we're working and we have um steering team representation also from Notre Dame.

Kevin Deary 21:43

Yeah, super impressive when you can pull together transportation, food, removing those obstacles. And then tell me how you continuously communicate to the families. Like how do you communicate to them as the summer goes on?

Lindsay Aguilar 21:58

So uh from a co op Perspective, how are we communicating with families? So family voice is a critical component to our work. So and when I say family voice, it means that all of our decisions, our partners have agreed that when we make decisions and we plan, that we're doing so in a way that's informed by

Countdown To Kindergarten Takes Off

Lindsay Aguilar 22:20

real families and parent perspectives. And so each of our partners have ways that they're communicating with families and helping us keep the pulse on that. And then as a coalition, what we continue to talk about is how do we share that information with one another? Actually, at our convening this morning, our our one of our core pieces of discussion for the group was how do we center family voice? And what we'll be looking at moving forward is how we help our partners who we know are already engaging families in this way. How do we build their capacity to do that? And then how do we bring back that parent input and share it across our coalition with our action teams and with our support teams to make sure that they have those perspectives and that they stay grounded in those perspectives as we make decisions that impact families, right?

Kevin Deary 23:08

Any outreach to the Amish?

Lindsay Aguilar 23:11

So a lot of our partners, so again, as a you know, as a network of 80 plus partners, we have partners that are working with the Amish community. And I know that some of our family voice work that has been done where we had partners going out to actively engage one-on-one with families, they were very intentional with making sure we had families from many different backgrounds at the table, and and the Amish community is certainly a part of that, especially being Elkhart County, right?

Kevin Deary 23:38

How do you organize your week? I mean, you have such a vast system. You have a growing team. You must your inbox must be full, your voicemail must be full. How do you organize your week and your month on this huge systems level opportunity?

Lindsay Aguilar 23:57

You know, I tell the team that if we're doing our jobs well, we're kind of always doing four things, right? So we are always planning. We are we are planners by nature and we are working alongside our organization's leadership because they are all busy, right? So part of our job is helping keep that vision alive while everybody else is busy. So we're we're staying in touch with leadership and we're actively planning so that when it comes time for us to bring these people together and they graciously show up with their time, that we're facilitating, and that's the second thing I say, we're for facilitating good meetings together. We're showing up with a purpose and we're leaving with action steps, and then we're documenting and we're stewarding process and progress. And those, if we're constantly, you know, a leader a long time ago told me to have five pillars. I can't remember what his name was. What was his name? Oh, was that you, Kevin?

Marshall King 24:50

Maybe.

Lindsay Aguilar 24:51

I think about this work, there are similar pillars. And when it comes to backbone support and being a backbone support team for a coalition, those are certainly four of them that we that we need to constantly be monitoring.

Marshall King 25:03

So, Lindsay, this ties to I've I've heard you use a quote from Martin Scorsese. Like, what I it's it's a beautiful quote. Tell tell us about, tell us about, I mean, the four pillars and what you're doing with your staff and also working with 80 organizations, like it's it's a lot to try to keep people pointed the same direction.

Lindsay Aguilar 25:23

It is. So yeah, there's a quote that I love by Martin Scorsese that actually, so as part of this work, we've worked very the community foundation in building strong brains, works very closely with a consultant out of Tamarack Institute, Dr. Weaver. And uh this this is actually something that I read in Liz in one of Liz Weaver's papers years ago before I knew I would be working with her someday. Isn't that fun? I was like, I kind of had like a nerd moment when I learned I was gonna be working with her because I was just so excited. But as she explained, you know, there's an art and a science, I think, to really building and maintaining coalitions. A lot of them fall apart. How many times have you heard about a coalition, right? And they they struggle to make progress. But there's a Martin Scorsese quote that I think really represents the core of what our role is. And so after he made The Godfather, Scorsese was asked, what's the difference between a good movie and a great movie? And he said, Well, in a great movie, everybody's making the same movie. And I think that that highlighted for me the idea that you can have a shared agenda, but if that means something different to everyone else at the table, you might just get a good movie. So as a team and as a director of a coalition, I'm constantly asking myself, how are we ensuring that we're not just sharing an agenda, but we're sharing a vision and we're keeping that vision alive? Because at the end of the day, this work really, really matters. I shared it this morning at our convening. This work, if we do it well and the solutions that we're actively working toward, these are the answers to some people, to other per people's prayers. And that's not something for us to take lightly, right? There are families right

Removing Barriers And Keeping Family Voice

Lindsay Aguilar 27:05

now, there are moms in this county praying to have a healthy baby. There are families praying that their five-year-old enters the classroom ready to go this fall, and that they're not scared, and that they're ready to learn, and that hopefully they're not a handful for the teacher. And there are families that are praying for those childcare solutions, solutions that they can afford and that they can trust with their most precious asset so that they can go to work and provide for their family. And those are real prayers, those are real issues. And when we think about it like that, I mean, I don't know what else could be more motivating. That's what keeps me inspired. I'm like, this is real. This is where the rubber hits the road for life, right? We're helping people in very real ways.

Kevin Deary 27:51

This is where family meets community in so many different ways. Not only schools, but also through healthy lifestyles, healthy living. So less children in the emergency room. Also, employers, you know, every time that there's a sick child or they have to come pick them up at school because they're not successful at school, it's usually the mom that's got to go pick them up. And then she loses work time to to take the child home. And so there's so many wins here for the for the for the work world, also for the families, for the schools, it's uh it's and most importantly for the children. Because from zero to five, you know, they depend on all the adults to to be the adults in the room and to to make the system available for them to be successful. So do you enjoy your work?

Lindsay Aguilar 28:38

I love mo I love the work. You know, I I think also from my background. So I've from I I've I've seen, I've been a grant writer, right? I've submitted grants, I've reviewed grants as part of a committee, I've been an executive director of a foundation where we had to say, are we moving the needle? How can we make this, how can we build the capacity of our partners? How do we make our grants go farther? And part of that was always, you know, you recognize as a funder that grants are part of the solution, right? But and we're only as strong as the partners that we can invest in, right? And their capacity, which is so much of what you do, right? Working with partners to strengthen their capacity. But also, we also know that even our strongest partners can only go as far as the system allows. So by building a stronger system and investing in our partners who are doing this work every day, you know, we are we are building truly a more vibrant community, right? We're we're helping families live their best life. As far as I know, we only get one of these, right? So we're in it together. And I I just I just don't think there's any, I mean, I know I'm biased, but I don't know where there's more important work.

Marshall King 29:56

Lindsay, what what's something you've learned or that has surprised you since you took this role a few months ago?

Lindsay Aguilar 30:02

Oh gosh, I am surprised every day. I, you know, I will say that this has reaffirmed for me what a special county we have. And I know everybody says that. And we talk about how special Elkhart County is, but so I guess

Shared Vision Leadership And Hope

Lindsay Aguilar 30:20

this this shouldn't surprise me, but this is how I'm what I'm going to say is that I, as I've watched other coalitions in other communities, they typically struggle for one reason or the other, right? Either there aren't the right people at the table, or they've got the right people, but they don't have any right resources, or they've got both of those, but they don't have that person, right? These people are all working and they're busy and they don't have the people to help just continue to make guide the work. And I'm looking at Elkhart County right now, and I'm looking at this coalition, and we have all three of those pieces at the table. And so I am I'm just really, really uh excited because I I I just feel like if we can't do it here, you can't do it anywhere, right?

Marshall King 31:08

That's very cool. Lindsay, I like Kevin, I'm delighted to to now be on the same team with you. It's fun to work together and thanks for making time today and for all that you're doing to move this exciting initiative forward. We always end with the question: what gives you hope?

Lindsay Aguilar 31:24

Oh gosh, our partners, all the people that continue to say yes when they could just as easily say no. Uh we know how busy our partners are. They're out here, they are the heroes of this work, they are the champions of this work. And I know because I've worked for some like I've worked with these organizations, I've been one of those frontline workers at other times of my careers, and I know what goes into those days, and they still continue to go above and beyond and show up to this table. And um working together and collaborating is not always the most convenient thing to do. It's not. But they're continuing to say our job isn't to do what's most convenient, our job is to do what's right for people and children. And I'm just inspired by that, and it gives me

Credits And Ways To Connect

Lindsay Aguilar 32:05

great hope.

Marshall King 32:06

This show is a production of the Community Foundation of Elkhart County. It is powered by equipment from Sweetwater and recorded at the Community Foundation's offices in Elkhart's River District. Editing is done by the award-winning communications students at Goshen College, home of one of the best college radio stations in the nation. Listen to Globe Radio at 91.1 FM. Music is provided by sensational sounds. Learn more about the Community Foundation of Elkhart County at inspiringgood.org. You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We hope you're inspired and inspire good in your community.