SHELTER FROM THE STORM

Published Nov 19, 2019, 4:00 PM

In the studio with me today is Wayne Chimenti, a retired tall boat captain, and an active program director and mentor to youth involved in The Community Boat Project of Port Hadlock, a maritime community in Washington State. Wayne is accompanied by a few of his interns working on the Shelter From The Storm, program, a subset of the larger organization that is busy building tiny homes.

I found Wayne and his group of merry builders when trolling through on-line classified ads late one evening. I ran across a tiny home for sale that caught my fancy. When I made further inquiries, not only did I learn about the item that had been posted, I found about an incredible group of people working to better the lives of students through some amazing experiential learning. I had to have these folks share their work and their mission with you on LOVE SOMEONE with Delilah.

Get ready to be inspired! ~ Delilah

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So welcome back to Love Someone with Delilah, our podcasts that we've been doing for the last couple of years talking to people who are changing the world one heart at a time. We've talked to educators, We've talked to people in all different walks of life who are using their gifts, their talents, their skills to impact the world for good. And with me in the studio right now is Wayne how do you say your last name? Chiminteminty ros Delaney, and Polly nol And then we've got a couple of other students that came with Wayne today to my studio to do this podcast. And you are representing the Community Boat Project, changing lives one vote at a time, not one hard to the time, one vote at a time. I love that. So before we get into what you actually do at the Community Boat Project, I need to tell our listeners about our wonderful sponsor of this podcast, series of business I'm sure you are intimately familiar with because your builders, the Home Depot. The Home Depot is the sponsor of our podcast and the number one retailer of power tools and accessories. You live in a farmhouse like I do, and you realize what a time saver. Having the right power tool and knowing how to operate it can be whatever type of home you live in. Power tools let you fix, repair, or as symbol faster and more proficiently. The Home Depot is set up to help you find just the right tools, and they have every one of the biggest brands to It's quite a display, says the woman, who is no stranger to his think the Home Depot more saving, more doing. First off, I wanted to tell listeners how I found you wing late at night after I finished the show. One of the ways that I distress after talking on the radio for five hours is I go online and I look for weird, strange, cool art objects or animals to rescue or whatever that will add character to my farm. And I stumbled across this tiny house that was like a gypsy caravan that was beautiful, and I said, I need that. I think I need that. A lot of people look at that have the same response, I gotta have it, And then you know, the next day the reason comes into it. Yeah, okay, Well I was one of those people that thought I had to have it, but I was I was fascinated with the craftsmanship of the little tiny house and it looks like a gypsy caravan. It was very colorful and and very pretty. And you wrote to me and you explained who had built the tiny house. So tell us how the tiny houses came to be, because that's not really a boat, but how that came to be part of the Community Boat Project. Yeah, I think that our name Community Boat Project has now become sort of a misnomer because we we build everything. In fact, I was thinking that maybe we should just switch it from Community Boat Project to just community builders. And we have high school students that come in and then we have mentors from the community. Those mentors can be everything from violin makers to ex physicists to X architects to wood Carver's just Joe Schmo to you know, somebody who's a cook who likes to, you know, make barbecue or or or make cakes and um. So you have a bunch of students who are in the room and some of them know what they want to learn. Other ones don't know what they want to learn. They just looking for something to stimulate their passion and learning. And we try to say what do you want? You want to try building a boat? You wanta try building a musical instrument. Do you want to try building a tiny house? We I think I build our first tiny house about five years ago. It was a real winner in that a lot of students loved the notion of tiny house, particularly our county, Jefferson County. Although it's a rural county, everybody thinks of it is gentrified, poor Townsend. It actually has a higher homeless population than than King County. And it's just that those people are living in the woods and not under bridges, so you don't see any whoa I did not know that. You would not know that. So it's actually the Community Boat Project of Port Hadlock. Is the is the title, and you're in the Pacific Northwest? And how long? How many years has has your project been going? This project started in three so we've been running programs for twenty six years. Originally, UM, I was stopped on the side of the road. I was. I was a tall ship captain at that time, and um but I was stopped on the side of the room. Wait wait, wait, wait wait, you just can't throw that out there, Wayne, I was a tall ship captain at the time. You are very tall, You're like six two six three six four. But you're not talking about you were a ship captain who is tall. You were talking about the tall ships that go into ports that tour the world, right. Yeah, if you're thinking about traditional square riggers or schooners, very large sailing vessels. Um, that was my life for thirty five years. So when I went to Boston Harbor and they had the tall ships that came in for the Fourth of July, and these beautiful ships came through the fog at five six o'clock in the morning as the sun was just beginning to pierce through, you would have been on one of those beautiful, majestic tall ships. Yes. In fact, I did the one of the very first Boston tall Ship festivals in eighty which then left and we went to Europe afterwards. So I was there in ninety one on a boat in the harbor and I get sea sick, but I didn't care because I wanted to see the tall ships come in. There's something about ships or boats in general that just touch every humans romantic soul. So even though you are not near the water, though you may live in the Midwest and maybe a you know, a corn farmer, you see a boat. Suddenly there's something that touches you deeply, and that's just something about their their beauty and yet practical. And there's something deeply, deeply in our human psyche that responds to boats. So you you were a tall ship captain, where were you at when you transition to to blessing the community and enabling and inspiring dozens of kids? So in nineteen three, I was running the schooner Adventurous, which is a pugit sounds local tall ship. It's the environmental over a hundred year old vessel, just absolutely gorgeous. And uh, I did that for thirteen years. So I was running the Adventurous when I first got involved with Marcy van Cliff, who wanted to just give public school kids free, high quality experiential experiences. So her thing was, I'm tired of just the rich kids getting the really cool privileges. How can we make it that every kid, if they want to, can get out on a boat, can go water testing in the woods, you know all the things that you know just the private schools do. Uh, And let's do it for free, and let's let's make it accredited. So she approached me about doing an on the water program, which we call the Voyagers, which would take students out every Friday and they would it would be an accredited class and then go on a two week outward bound style journey in the spring something that would be you know, usually five six dollar experience. What was this woman's name, Marcy van cleeve St Marcy. I was just gonna say, you stole my line. I was gonna get hold of the Pope if we could get a Saint Hood for this person for her insight and her vision. Yeah, because we are only one branch of this incredible program called the Pie program where kids learned to repair bikes. There's another one that just as a whole orchestra. Um this water time you name it is going on through this Pie program. It's just about kids following their passion rather than the set high school curriculum. And is it only in your area or has it has it bread to other communities because I know in the town I live in, we don't have any of that right um. When they started the Pie program, it was one of the very first alternative programs in the public school system in the state of Washington. For US, it is also spread up to the poor towns in school district in another program which is very parallel called Oceans. So of course Jefferson County, Poor Towns and School District, Chimocom School District in Quilcene School District, So twenties six years ago this was birthed right, and so I helped Marcy when I was off the ship. I had a you know, I had like a two week on two weeks off schedule with the Adventurous and I could help Marcy when I was off the ship. Um. Finally I decided to give up the Adventurous job at one stage, and that coincided with me. I was helping Marcy on one of the spring journey these There was myself, her another captain, captain Arn't Marybeth Armstrong. We had a very bad day on the water. We were using some open boats that were a replica of Vancouver's long boats, so they were eighteen hundreds technology, and we had a day when a front came in a storm. We only to go about two miles and we could barely get there because the boats were so bad at going to win where they didn't row to win, where they didn't sail to Winward. We got in that night sodden, cold and Marcy said, an MB said, and I said, we need better boats. And Marcy just said, oh, well, let me write a curriculum and we'll just start another class next year. That coincided with me leaving the Adventurous and we started what was then a boat building program with the idea of having local designers, designers boats that were specific for the task. We're safe, they were fast to row, fast to sale, and also had a lot of watertight integrity. And we did it. We just started building boats with kids, learning to use hand tools, learning to do woodworking. How many kids were in your first program, Well, we have to I think probably about ten kids that came in. What did you see happen in their lives, in their personalities, in their character when they started working with you, working with each other, working with the community building boats. Well, I think one thing is that everybody has to go to school at the high school level, and the curriculum is very narrow about what they offer you there. They say the humans have at least seven different types of intelligence and we are catering to one. So if you are a great artist, if you're great with your hands, if you're a great kind of engineering problem solver, you probably are not going to be a great sit down at the desk all day math and English person. So that's where we start doing something like this. People blossom suddenly. People who are good with their hands, people are good problem solvers, people who are artists. They all get in there and they they start to feel good about themselves and guess what, they get credits for it. So I want to talk to Polly and Roz. Roz, how long have you been with the program? Um? So I started hanging out at the Community Boat Project when I was fourteen, when I was a freshman in high school, and I'm twenty two now, so that's eight years. So when you started what attracted you? What drew you to the Community Boat Project? I was told that I could get math credits without going to math class. That's a beautiful thing. You got math credits, but you have to use math, and building a boat you have to use a lot of math. Yeah, I mean, I think so much of it is like so many of the things that kind of fit into the math skill set are like so different than like curriculum, I mean that are so different than like arithmetic or other things that you see repeated in like math curriculums, you know, like spatial thinking and uh reading a tape measure. And what is your favorite thing about the Boat Building Project? What does your area of passion? I mean, so I think for me, I do love to build things, you know, I've built a lot of stuff in my life. I've built some other boats outside of the Community Boat Project too. What I'm really interested is, I'm interested in problem solving and I'm interested in youth work. Um. In my time at the Community Boat Project and just as a student of the Chimmi Gum Pipe program, I really just you know, got to know a lot about how different people are and how when you have just a room full of really different people, how to come together and do great things. And so that was really what struck my fancy. And how many kids have you worked with over the last eight years that you've seen them, like Wayne said, just blossom when they discover that they're so incredibly talent TD and gifted. Oh a whole bunch, like a lot of them. I don't have a number for you. More than that. More than that, I've done some other youth work. I've definitely worked with kind of a lot of kids at this point, and is this the trajectory you're thinking? Are you? Are you thinking your life is going to be your life work involved with boats or your life work involved with kids. I'm gonna do it all, do it all. Yeah, And Polly, how long have you been with the program? Um? I started in June, like this June. Oh so you're a newbie. Yeah, definitely. What attracted you to the program? How did you find your way? Well, college kind of wasn't something that like really excited me, and um I did some running star in high school and it was just for me. It was just really stressful, and it just wasn't something that I could just picture myself doing to get where I wanted to be in life, and that was like just be able to live, like have money and be able to live and just do things like travel and stuff. So one day I was sitting in clas in my art teacher's room, which I stayed like all my senior year pretty much, and he met Wayne somehow and he was like, hey, you should do this program. And I was like, Okay, I've never built anything before, let's do it. And so then I talked to Wayne and I had like a little interview thing and the first time that I ever met him, he had me go down to one of the boats and bail it out with water like one of the docks. And to me, I was like, this is really cool, Like this isn't something that you can ever learn inside of a classroom. So he was Mr Miyagi and instead of wax on, wax off, he was water out, water out. Exactly did I give you like a big bucket to bail or a spoon? I think an old milk carton and where he cut it open but used the handle. Wow, you you're tough. And if she passed the boat bailing where you think in a letter in the program? Was this a test to see just how committed she was? Yeah? I mean life is not all um dreamy projects. You don't get to a great place without doing a lot of grunt work and so um for us that you know, sometimes you're doing an absolutely gorgeous you know, joint or or wood carving, but sometimes you just gotta sand and paint the boat and that's that's life. Hold on for just a second, folks. We're going to talk about your projects a whole lot more here, but I need to pause just for a moment for this very important message back with Wayne and a couple of interns from the Community Boat Project, Ros and Polly talking about the incredible work that they are involved with. Can I just tell Quick Ross story? Yes? Please? You know she did bring in this. Can I tell the Quick Ross story? Okay, go ahead, Okay. So when I was fourteen, wait a second, wait a second, its story to tell. Um, Yeah, I do know the story you're gonna sell. So when I was fourteen, I was one of the most socially awkward people you would ever lay your eyes on. It made people physically uncomfortable to look at. Yeah. I was so uncomfortable. A lot of anxiety, a lot of like trauma in the home. I didn't know how to relate to people. Yeah, And so my motto was, if you can't make friends, make cheesecake. That's a good motto. My daughter blessing hers as if you can't make friends, make brownies. She bakes brownies at least two or three times a week. Yeah. I mean, it's a great way to go. So I was baking a cheesecake every Thursday to bring to the shop. Um, so that everyone would like me and want to be my friend. And um, so I was, you know, kind of slowly amassing some social capital at the Community Boat project, all through baked goods. It's a great plan, Rose, Yeah, like did you do flavored cheesecake? All kinds of weird stuff? You are my girlfriend, I love this. Yeah. Um, so I had kind of like amassed this sort of social capital. I was quickly like you know, insinuating myself into this program. And Wayne decided that he wanted me to be on like the team that was going to be lofting and building a new boat for that year. Um, the Epic. It's still the boat we used for the on the Water programs. And I was a special ed kid all my life, and I told Wayne that I couldn't be on that team. Um, I didn't have the confidence to believe that I could do these things. And I asked him to take me off that team, and uh, to my eternal gratitude, he said no. He very obstinately said no, No, you're gonna do it. You're gonna do great. Even if you puss it up, we'll fix it. And um, for all those years we were working on that boat, I was one of the three main students in that project. So you know, there's roses. I will not do math. Heard this, sir, line sand I'm not gonna do math. And we're talking about now lofting, which is taking from a set of plans, a small set of plans, and blowing that set of plans up to full size. And we're lofting now a thirty three ft schooner. And just raw is another young woman called Tati and a master boat builder, Race Spec, who built a hundred fifty boats in his life. And the three of them have to transfer all this information from plans to reality and then start to build a boat. So does that person have math skills or not? Clearly mad math skills, amazing math skills. You just can't tell her that. It's never say the M word, Never say the M word. Call it cheesecake baking, no words to start with them. Wow, I'm setting here, I can't even talk. I'm so blessed by that story. Well, you certainly overcame all that social awkwardness because you are delightful and definitely comfortable in your own power and strength. And I love that. I also love the fact Wayne that all the students who brought to my farm to day are all women. So yeah, this year, we had a paid internship, of which Polly was the first one to step up to. Every one of those people were female. But I'm just gonna have to say that our thing is not about men or women. Genderless love that and so we're actually, you know, it's just kind of an interesting phase where everything with about a women's empowerment, worm's empowerment, and now we're like, yeah, it's just about people who have traditionally not been able to be attracted to those trades. And that includes that includes people of color, That concludes a lot of Native Americans, that includes just a lot of folks. I mean traditionally you think of boats as like old white guys, you know, but they're so fun to build and get on. Everybody should be on there. I told you earlier. I was raised on the Oregon coast and one summer I worked at a fish canning plant and we'd go in really early in the morning, and my brother worked there and his job was cutting the fish. So if you were a sports fisherman and you would go catch to salmon, you would tag them, bring them in. My brother would cut them with this machine that had these razor sharp knives that came down and chopped them in perfect little steaks, and then my job was to put them in a can and then a machine put the lid on and pressure cook them. And you got to take your salmon home with you four hours later. So I was a Canary girl. And at lunchtime we would go out on the docks and talk to all the fishermen that were lifelong fishermen, all of them old white men. I don't think there was a single guy there under the age of fifty. And there was nobody of any any ethnicity outside of Caucasian. And so you know, that is the image in my mind of somebody who's building a boat or working on a boat, and I love that. You're just blown it out of the water. So how many boats have you built? I think, like from the ground up, we've built four new constructions and we've had some other rebuilds and like restoration projects. You know, it's kind of hard to say, and we say how many boats that we build because we we in this specific thing that we want. Um, I mean, you only you don't need a lot of boats. Maybe we won't really need want one or two boats for our program. So we're constantly refining that design. We're on our fourth iteration of that. It's it's sailing right now, and I think we're there as far as like the perfect boat. But people bring us dinghies and things all the time to fix up, and so we always try to pick a project that we want the students to be able to handle. We don't want anything that's too crazy, and we want to be able to get it done in a school year. So, uh, some of those projects are really easy, just paint jobs. Other ones are you know, a little bit of restoration work, replanking work. Right now, we're restoring beautiful Macinaw boat that we got from a maritime museum that closed up and Anti Cortis and it's a great boat, need at a bit of reclocking. It's gonna need some paint and needs to figure out the rigging. That's the kind of project that we're taking on and it's then it's going to be another beautiful boat out there in the world. One of our volunteers is going to buy this one. That tell me about the tiny houses. We started to talk about that because that's how I found my way to you, And you're working on one now that's going to be Polly's tell me about that, Polly. Um. So with tiny houses, I've always kind of looked at them, and I've always my family we've gone camping so many times that it's like living inside of a tent trailers what we would do is like that just seemed like it never really felt too small for me leaving with five people in there, it was like, never too small. But just tiny house isn't just like living in a different way than everyone else was such a big interest to me, and it was I didn't want to live in a house where you had like plumbing and you had to deal with just like I don't know, just like all the other things the houses bring. But living in a tiny house it's like you can be off the grid completely and it's small enough to where I wouldn't have to buy a house. So with this tiny house project, I kind of just I didn't really want to openly ask when and be like, hey, we gave me a house, So it was kind of like me more hinting at it, and he got my hands and then one day he was like, what do you think about building a tiny house for one of the interns. You're the only Yeah, Um, but well, I think when I first asked was if this next tiny house the belt, could I buy it? And he was like, yeah, you could buy it. And then it was like, why not just make one for you that like it's accustomed to you and like what you would like. And for me that was just life changing or I was so happy. So you get to design it the way that you would envision things in it that will make you happy. So were you involved with the tiny house that I saw online the living that looked like a gypsy caravan? Were you? That depends on which one it was and how many of those did you sell? Because it was a fundraiser to fund the program, right right? Well, um, see tiny houses, we also will have to include a school, buses and in house boats and some other things like that that we throw in that tiny house category. But you know, the key is that we work with recycled materials, so what we call up cycling. We try to keep what we actually buy at the hardware store to an absolute minimum. So we have people who build boats give us tons of wood. We have the lumber yards that something slightly damaged. We are always scrounging the wasiste not want not second use places, and what we find is what we build with. Then you add a bunch of really great people with artistic vision to that and a lot of manpower, before you know, you just have this organically grown house that just has that living art. It is living art. The one that I saw that I wrote to you about was living art and it was is I know, it's made somebody very, very very happy because it was just it was joy on wheels. So she has a home, a safe, comfortable, beautiful, colorful home to live in and to start a business out of. And all those students got all those skills and it built a community. I love this. That's why it's so it's so easy to like the Shelter from the Storm Program. So tell me, Polly, tell me about the Shelter from the Storm Program. Is that what your internship is with? Yes, that's what me Raz and then another person, Felix, and then Sarah. We are all part of the Shelters from the Storm Program. And that's interns building tiny houses people in the community, along with kids that come on Thursdays for their class. And that's like I don't know, like how many kids do we have this year? Eighteen um? And they come and they do tons of different things, Like there's like welding happening, there's people working on the house boat, there's carving lets, we're working on outboard motors. The place is just bustling with people doing different kinds of things. But I guess our main thing is just on Wednesday, Thursday, Fridays in the morning, it's us just like the five of us and we just usually work at my tiny house and we work on just random projects that need to get done. So you were talking Wayne about the homeless situation in your community. I just saw a pretty in depth story online about the homeless situation in San Diego, California, that like one out of four students at one high school are currently homeless. Well, there's different things that go on in different communities. So there's some things that are just national international trends, and that's wealth distribution. So you know, wages have not raised for the working man as as fast as the economy has grown. And add to that, the Northwest is a very popular place to come to right now, so gentrification is throughout the Northwest. Suddenly, a lot of the housing is just brought up by people who are retiring from wherever else they don't want to be. And then one of the biggest things that happened to us is Airbnb. I mean, for decades, poor Townsend has what's called shed boy culture. There's a lot of people who move into town. They're either fishermen or their boat builders, or they're just painters whatever, and they live in some small dwelling which we generally call a shed. They probably call it a tiny house now. And so people were happy with that, you know, they're young or people just simple livers. Now you add Airbnb, which has happened over the last ten years, and all those places come off the market because for one or two nights you can get the income that you used to get for a month. So suddenly you've pulled the bottom in housing right out and suddenly you have a huge homeless problem. Well, we can't fix everything, but we can build tiny houses. Right, We are not going to fix these big trends, but we can do the little thing that we can do. You know, where does your skill set intersect with the greatest need of the world, And at this place is like, oh, if you know how to build something there and you can in some little way help in some small thing about homelessness. That's that's all you can do. If everybody would do that, that's enough, I know you would be cured. And that that was why I wrote my book One Heart at a Time, because I think we're all waiting for something outside of us to shift to fix it, and we're getting frustrated because not only is it not happening, it's getting worse, and so we're looking with anticipation to something outside to fix it. But what you're doing? What the Community Boat Project, what the Tiny house project? How many projects are there under the umbrella now? So we have four programs and we are dealing with about fifty kids a year and deep programs. So you're helping them. You're helping them get through school, You're helping them find their passion, give them life skills. More importantly, you're helping them build community and feel comfortable in their own skin and connect with people and get over like Ross said, that social awkwardness. And you're helping the environment. You're recycling everything and salvaging everything. Do dumpster dive like I do because I love to dumpster dive for goods? Yeah, absolutely, there is so much to live at the Benthic level is so wonderful because you have uh, you know, people come in, they gut houses, they throw all this great stuff right out. Well that's that's where it can float right on down to us and then you turn it into beautiful works of art. Polly, he goes out about once a week just to hit the different places looking for her windows and you know, little bits and pieces. Polly, we need to talk because I've got some ends with some places. Yeah, yeah, we'll talk our dimensions. Yeah. We Actually one of the cool details about Pauli's tiny house was we were able to pick up like the glass top of a coffee table and we framed it up as a window. So now we have this giant oval window sitting in the sleeping loft that came off a coffee table. Yeah, it was super cooler. Like Wayne, I think he emailed me because we're just like just email back and forth, but like things we can pick up and stuff, and he was like, hey, I found this giant like oval coffee tabletop and let's use it at his window. And I was like, okay, let's do it, like not really knowing because I've never built anything in my life other than my back porch. Which is like four by four back porch, and so we get there and this thing is so heavy. So it's tempered glass, safety glass, and um we framed it and stuff, and then I painted the inside like a nice hot pink color because I love pink, and so you can see it from the inside. And I think last Thursday we put it up and it was one of the most terrifying experiences I think I've had with my tiny house because it's so heavy. And here's Wayne and this other guy, Steve, who comes help, and they were putting it up into the house and I was inside of it on this ladder and I hate ladders, and they were like pushing it in and then I had to be on the other side make sure fall through. But we also Steve and I made it so that we put to like braces around the corner so like it really couldn't fall through, and then I screwed it all in. It was fun. It was terrifying for me, but it was fun. But you overcame Fings and you got to see, uh, an amazing thing come to let How did you how did you frame around the oval? We can't tell you trade seats. We are working on Polly's sense of color. So maybe by the end of the nine months that will it's going to be the running gag here is. Wayne's sense of color has always been safety orange. I painted my roof beams like you can see from the inside like this nice like Robin's egg blue. And Wayne just couldn't even believe that that was going to be inside my house. Oh it sounds beautiful, beautiful. Yeah, well, thank you for coming and talking to me today. If somebody wants to get involved, how can they find you? So all our programs are free and accredited, and we don't really sell anything, so of course we just I'll live on grants in individual donations, and you can find us on the web. So go for community boat project in Port Hadlock. And one thing that Pouli is doing right now is part of our internship is she is making sure there's Facebook posts up every week that will show you the progress of this great new tiny house community boat project that you can follow the building projects. Wayne. If somebody is listening, who's a teacher and educator, uh school principle and they go, oh my gosh, we need to have something like this. Maybe not boats, maybe not even tiny houses. But something like this where kids can do hands on learning and get out of the classroom and into real life. Could they contact you to pick your brain on how to get that going? They could definitely contact me. There's not much of a brain to pick, but we could, uh, we can definitely hear them in the right direction. It's like a salmon tried to go through a damn when you work up against the school system as it's now stands. But that doesn't mean that it can't be done. Clearly, it can be done because you did it and it's being done, so it can be done. If one person has done it, it can be done. If one person has started this community boat project and you've been in in existence for almost thirty years, it can be done. We got just got to find people who are willing to be the salmon swimming up the stream. Yeah. And I think every community city is different. You know, we are a maritime community. We started with boats. As we started building our program, we kept looking where where the community needs and we we have followed those. So it's boats, it's tiny houses. Every community is going to be different. One of the great stories from last year was that there's something called the seventy, which is a row that goes from Tacoma to poor Townsend and it just started a couple of years ago, and there was a group in the Mountains of Colorado that saw that and said, what a cool thing. Let's do it with our kids. And then they got an enormous thirty something foot dragon boat. They cut it into three pieces, they somehow hacked it together. I mean, it was just atrocious boat building. But they got fifteen high school kids into this thing, and they came here and they did the se and there was a year long project for them. It was just an incredible project to watch. One thing about the kids some called a right of one thing I heard. I don't know if this is like fully true, but I did hear this is that their school had like a school shooting at it. And so they wanted when you researched their school not to come up as the school that got shut up, as a school that these kids wouldn't participated in this rowing thing. And so they wanted that to be what comes up, not stuff about their school. Yeah, and we actually had a little bit of that. Chimmcam was a pretty good school district, but they've been losing enrollment, and so they've been having budget struggles. And last year the Chimmcam teachers came to us and said, we're tired of Chimmacam always getting bad press. Can we borrow one of your boats and do thee so that when people look at Chimocom schools, they're seeing this great story of these teachers who trained every week so that they could do the se and they did it. So lifts the spirits of everybody in that school district. Wow, I am so proud of you. I'm so proud of you kids. And you're young adults, but to me, your kids and the heart that you have and the way you're transforming communities and transforming lives and transformed your own lives, it's awesome. I wanna put in also for people that are, you know, trying to enact change in their community. Marcy Van Clieve is certainly a force of nature, but she founded the pipe program with four other teachers. You know, you can't do it alone, so you've got to find the people who will help you up. Thank you, thank you for being here today. Well, thank you for reaching out to us and let us tell our story, and for the work you're doing and it's just amazing to get the good news out there for a change. Amen. We need good news right now and we need to change the world one heart at a time. And we can't wait. We can't wait for uh someone out there or something out there to happen. We have to be the change we want to see. So thank you, Thank you, be the change you want to see in the world. That pretty much sums up the message I want to convey to you with this podcast series. Wayne puts it this way. Find where your skill set intersects with the greatest needs. That's how we change the world. One heart, one boat, one tiny house, one cheesecake, one cup of tea, one hug, one listening ear at a time.

LOVE SOMEONE with Delilah

In a world that can feel divisive and bleak, it's easy to get caught up in feelings of hopelessness, 
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