Good Neighbor Podcast: Pittsburgh
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Pittsburgh. Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Leila Carter helps residents discover and connect with your local business owners in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Is your business serving the residents of Pittsburgh? Then, we need to talk! Visit gnpPittsburgh.com to schedule your free interview.
Good Neighbor Podcast: Pittsburgh
E10: Language Without Limits: The ASL Friends Journey
What makes Kimberly Nussbaum with ASL Friends a good neighbor?
Have you ever wondered about the profound impact of early language development on a child's future? When Kimberly Nussbaum took American Sign Language as a college requirement, she couldn't have imagined how it would transform not only her life but countless others in the Deaf community.
The remarkable journey of ASL Friends begins with a stroke of serendipity—Kimberly, newly moved to Pittsburgh and working as an interpreter, was randomly assigned to interpret for a keynote speaker who turned out to be Fred Rogers himself. This fateful meeting allowed her to share her vision of creating sign language versions of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood for deaf children. What started as a "cute idea" quickly evolved into a profound mission when Kimberly learned that deaf high school students graduate with an average fourth-grade reading level, severely limiting their educational and career opportunities.
This passionate nonprofit team—Kimberly, Susan Miller, and Laura Clark—now creates immersive ASL programming that enables deaf children and their families to learn up to 70 signs from a single episode. Working with award-winning Deaf producer James DeBee, they've developed a pilot special edition of Mister Rogers' ASL Friends specifically designed for deaf children ages 1-3, a critical period for language acquisition. Their work tackles widespread misconceptions about sign language while addressing the serious consequences of language deprivation in the Deaf community.
ASL Friends embodies the belief that American Sign Language is "for all brains"—beneficial not just for deaf individuals but for anyone with a visual learning style. Whether you're curious about learning ASL yourself, know a family who might benefit from their programming, or simply want to support their mission, visit www.aslfriends.org to discover how this Pittsburgh nonprofit is bridging communication gaps and changing lives one sign at a time.
To learn more about ASL Friends go to:
ASL Friends
(724)713-1402
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Lila Carter.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Are you in need of a nonprofit to foster early language acquisition for young children? One might be closer than you think. Today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbors Kim Nussbaum, susan Miller and Laura Clark. How's it going? Great, happy to be here, thank you. Thank you all for being here. We're excited to learn all about you and your organization. So tell us about the business.
Speaker 4:Sure. So hi Lila, hi everyone. Thanks so much for inviting ASL Friends to be part of the Good Neighbor podcast. We are super excited to be here. Asl Friends is an all-volunteer, grassroots nonprofit organization that began in Pittsburgh. Our mission is to foster early language acquisition for deaf children while supporting their family communication, primarily through immersive educational programming in American Sign Language. Our current cornerstone project, it's a one week special edition of Mr Rogers ASL Friends, designed especially for deaf children and their families. It's a heartfelt initiative inspired by the legacy of Mr Rogers and the vision of our founder and president Kimber. We are honored to work with James DeBee. We are honored to work with James DeBee. He's an award-winning fan. He'll be leading this production.
Speaker 2:We are a passionate organization that is sustained by the generosity of our donors. Excellent, how did you?
Speaker 3:get into this business? I'll take that question. My name's Kimberly, I'm the founder and that's such a great question, and it started a long time ago. But I did enter in it through American Sign Language. At the time I was living in Arizona and took American Sign Language as my foreign language requirement. We moved back to Pittsburgh and as a young mom a new mom I was reintroduced to Mr Rogers' Neighborhood and had a very emotional reaction. It was a little bit overwhelming and I didn't quite understand why this childhood program of my history was causing me such emotion. But that connection, I began to realize how powerful it was and I began to look at it through the eyes of an interpreter.
Speaker 3:I was a new sign language interpreter and I thought this would be a powerful program for deaf children. But I needed permission from Fred Rogers. I didn't know how to go about doing that. This was in the early 90s and there was no internet. But as fate would have it, I received a request to be a substitute interpreter and when I got to the assignment at the Children's Institute, it was a different name than the Rehab Institute of Pittsburgh. I was going to be interpreting for their keynote speaker and that was going to be Fred Rogers. So I was able to share my idea and he shared producer Sam Newberry's information and I wrote a letter and got the ball rolling. At the same time I was studying deaf education and I started to learn. One fact really stuck out was deaf high school students graduate with a fourth grade reading level and that doesn't reflect their abilities at all. And the more I learned about language deprivation, the more I realized how powerful mr rogers with sign language would be as a as a language model. So it became a from a cute little idea to a profound resource that was essential for deaf children.
Speaker 3:Fast forward a little bit more. I was working at the School for the Deaf in Pittsburgh and met a gentleman named James DeBee, as Sue mentioned. He's a deaf award-winning producer director and we both worked at the School for the Deaf and he did a production of the prom. It looked like a Hollywood production. At that point I handed the baton to James and I said we have a little project I would like you to take over. He was very happy to do so, honored to do so, but at the same time Fred Rogers company was called Family Communications and they were a nonprofit organization. They could only allow us to use the program if we were a nonprofit. So that's when, in 2005, we incorporate into a nonprofit organization.
Speaker 2:Wow, what an impactful story and so special that he ended up being that keynote speaker. That's amazing. So what are some myths or misconceptions in your industry?
Speaker 5:So I'll take that. That's a great question, lila. Actually, there's a few that stand out. We often are asked if sign language is globally universal and the answer is no. Actually, each country has its own sign language. But I think a more relevant misconception to today's conversation is around that lack of understanding around the impact of early language acquisition within the deaf community. As Kim mentioned, deaf adults have, on average, a fourth grade reading level, possibly an eighth grade vocabulary, and you can imagine how this directly impacts very important markers such as high school graduation rates, college education, healthcare, employment, et cetera. So that's one of the reasons why our work is so important because we're helping to provide a means to improve that early language and literacy among very young deaf children, certainly those around one to three years old, which is considered a very critical linguistic age.
Speaker 2:So who are your target customers and how do you reach them?
Speaker 5:Sure. So we're primarily focusing on deaf children and their hearing family members, you know the parents, siblings, grandparents, caretakers, et cetera. And in attracting our audience we are intentional. In beginning with that Mr Rogers neighborhood, fred Rogers was very deliberate in his vocabulary, that he used, the clarity of his communication style, the subject matters etc. And just in general his programs were very nutrient-dense in content for preschoolers. So when we pair Mr Rogers' Neighborhood with our Deaf ASL signers, we're finding that Deaf children and their families are learning up to 70 signs from a 130-minute episode. To reach this audience we're relying on social media, our fundraising campaigns and networking to bring attention to our mission and our product. So thank you, lila, for this podcast, Very helpful in that effort. And then obviously we also connect with organizations within that Deaf community, such as Schools for the Deaf Across the Nation.
Speaker 2:Excellent. Have you thought about ever doing your own podcast to reach those clients?
Speaker 5:We have not, but this is going to put us on a new path of exploration, I think. Something to consider.
Speaker 2:Certainly Outside of work. What do you all do for?
Speaker 3:fun. I'm fortunate enough to be a grandmother, so every chance I get I'm surrounded by my grandchildren. Laura, do you?
Speaker 5:have anything to share. We're in the process of moving, so right now, my fun activities are all around cleaning and packing.
Speaker 2:So let's switch gears here. Can you describe a hardship or a life challenge you overcame and how it made you stronger? What comes to mind All?
Speaker 5:three of us have definitely faced some very serious life challenges from siblings who have suffered catastrophic accidents. So we share that commonality and I think what we have all learned through our assorted and the challenges that we faced is just a perseverance, a faith and a tenacity for working towards things that are important and placing our families and our community in terms of how we prioritize our time and effort.
Speaker 2:So, kim, please tell our listeners one thing they should remember about ASL Friends.
Speaker 3:Well, we've been around a while and one thing that's evolved through the years is that American Sign Language is for all brains. In fact, we have a little golf tournament and we call it ASL, for All spelled F-O-R-E. It's a powerful language for everybody and you're seeing it more and more in the mainstream. And if you have that sense inside of you oh, I'm a visual person I've always wanted to learn sign language Take that step, reach out to us. We do classes online, we do one-on-ones, we do families, we do companies. We really are a resource. When you're a little bit timid, not sure where to go, we'll help point the direction if we can't do it ourselves.
Speaker 2:Excellent. And how can our listeners learn more about ASL Friends? Excellent.
Speaker 3:And how can our listeners learn more about ASL Friends? Visit our website is wwwaslfriendsorg. We are on Facebook and we are also on YouTube. We have a YouTube channel. You can find all that through our website. But also we have a upcoming fundraiser. It's going to be for July. We'll have a fundraising campaign and we also have the golf tournament and that's in Naples, florida, october the 4th, I believe.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, kim, susan and Laura, I really appreciate your time today and thank you for being a guest on our show. We wish you and the organization the best moving forward welcome to the neighborhood, thank you thank you for listening to the good neighbor podcast.
Speaker 1:to nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnppittsburghcom. That's gnppittsburghcom, or call 412-561-9956.