help children learn how to read so we created we poets and here we are tonight twenty nine years later i want to thank all the people who have made we poets possible all of the children the parents the teachers the internes the sponsors everyone it takes a whole village to make a show successful for twenty nine years and now i would like to tell you about some of the sponsors who are providing our show for tonight they are a taste of denmark provided our cake domino's pizza and little caesars pizza in berkeley provided our pizza trader joe's provided snacks for us grocery outlet in berkeley and oakland provided beverages for us the bread workshop in berkeley provided brid whole foods in oakland provided cole cuts and she east berkeley stamp and raving company in berkeley provided a wonderful plaque that i'm going to present to adnan mr norman tonight so it takes many many people to produce a wonderful show so now i'm going to be introducing a two children's groups who are going to perform for us the first group is called  the prescott circus theater clowns they are from oakland they're going to perform first and then the second group is a singing group and dance a group and they're called the martin itchy ball varian art school and they're located in elsa riedel so i know we're going to have a wonderful show so stay tuned here we go  i would not like to introduce you to adnan too much he is the director of we poets and i couldn't have done the show without him the two of us decided we wanted to do a show and here we are twenty nine years later we never dreamed that we'd be able to last this long did w and add it has been an outstanding director he has overcome many of disabilities but yet he said he persevered he never came he never gave up when he came to this country he had a hard time getting into high school but he persevered and he got in and graduated and then he went on to college and he got his bachelor and his master's degree and then he worked at the presidio over in san francisco for how many years went by you know twenty five years and he's been retired for about a year and a half now and he was an architect and he's been here with we poets training the teenagers the interns how to produce our show and he's done a wonderful job he's trained hundreds of interns right and i've interviewed thousands of kids and adnan has received many awards he's a kind of quiet man behind the scenes you don't see much but his first award not his first award i'm sorry but one of his awards that he's a most proudest of and he received on april first two thousand and five and it's called the hero in education award it was given to him by the california lottery the big spin and we got to go down to hollywood and film it and the man who presented it to him is a we'll known t v star his name is jamie far he starred in the t v series called mash and this is a picture of adnan and mr far giving adnan this wonderful award called he wrote an education award and i was so proud of you and we had a wonderful time down there didn't we have an addams family got to come and be with us for the celebration and it was just a very very nice celebration and twenty thirty and i want to present that to you and thank you so very much for all your wonderful work and you know boys and girls and ladies and gentlemen i think everybody should have a hero when i was growing up my hero was my blind uncle and my great grandmother who lived to be one hundred five years old and then when i came here to berkeley and i met and many years ago and became my hero so he's my hero today now that my uncle and my great grandmother have passed away and i can't and now i would like to introduce you to a very special friend sharon woolard she's a schoolteacher and her daughter erin started out on we poets many years ago and now she's grown up to be a beautiful young lady but now we're going to hear from sharon hi sharon hi how you doing tonight fine think you good now tell us how you got involved and we poets well i saw you doing your good work one time when you do a poet remember when you did poetry in the classroom yeah into the classroom you had a special gran they do it what grade do you teach well i taught second i mean tired now and i substitute good for you and tell us all about your charming daughter yeah i have a daughter and when my children did we pollitz got interested and she came down and she works for she was on camera and then she worked behind the scenes in the control in and then she ventured we ended up director she did and she really loved it here and i think it's really really good for their self esteem and it makes sense feel that yes it does and i think it's good for all of them to have one place where they can really shine and i office think it's really good for the children to have a place to display their poetry because there's not very many places anymore where children can really do poetry how many times do you see children do points not too many not too many and i literacy is too much standardized and student individualized and i think we need to see more of the child and when he writes more of the personality because we're all different and special and when we all figure that out the world to be a better place will now tell us what aaron's been doing since she left we poets ok well she went to college she's an artist and right now she works in a bookstore and she continues her art another board member she has joined our board recently been on the board about six months now and this is dr katrina peters she's a psychiatrist and she's going to tell us about her work and working with young children i katrina hello how are you and i'm so glad you could come tonight all thanks for inviting me and tell us all about how you got involved we poets well how i got involved as we poll it is you invited a member of our medical association  medical association to talk about post traumatic stress disorder and how it might affect the families of those military who are suffering from it and i came in did an interview on the show it was such a lovely show what i did wasn't fully aware about everything that we poisoned done and then you asked me to participate in your board i think this is such a wonderful opportunity  community is really doesn't have very many shows or other type of opportunities for children to experience this type of community said they don't get a chance to there's hardly anything promoting literacy in fact they're not promoting writing and probably not reading they're ready so i'm really happy that there's still a small window where children can look in and have a wonderful experience that they don't get very much opportunity to anymore now are many of your patients children are mostly just adults most of my patients are adults however i work in emergency setting and we often do have children who come in in crisis that we do work with on a limited basis and i also when they've been in  family there has been some work with that but i think even though i don't primarily work with children i think it's important for us to promote as many cultural opportunities in our communities so that our children can really prosper and grow into full community citizens i think right now so many children are move around a lot they're not living in communities where they get to participate a lot of extra curricular activities have been stopped in schools and they really don't get to develop the full parts of their personality and abilities i think a show like this is absolutely fabulous to give those children that opportunity good well i want to thank you so much for joining our board and quickly could you tell us some of the other organizations that you're involved in i'm involved in the medical organization that is primarily with african american physicians or miller medical association which is part of golden state medical association and i'm currently the president of both of those organizations and they're all part of the national medical association and  many of the physicians who are involved are african american not everyone and primarily focus on advocacy and community  care disparities so those are some of the other things so this one is a lot more fun and yes well i want to thank you so much for coming and helping us celebrate our twenty ninth year anniversary thank i am delighted to be here you you thank and now i would like to introduce you to a very special guest he and his twin brother have been will be poets i think for the longest they started out when we first started out so he's going to tell you all about him here is scott started well we actually were talking about this last night i was talking to he's living in singapore now and i was talking to him on face time which is something you can connect on his the internet and we were talking about do you remember when we were working at the station and we remember you guys starting the show and we had been working on another show and you invited us to come and be interns on this show and you're like great it's another opportunity get to play on the cameras and i think that's one of the things that's really neat about being an intern on the show is being able to come and play on the cameras and it's a really neat opportunity i think it's something that a lot of people don't know is available in the community and would you recommend that young people get involved in media this way oh yeah i think it's a it's a great opportunity even if you don't want to go if you don't think it's something you want to do like as a profession it's still a great thing to do a real creative outlet and there's very few places like this where you  could actually touch real camera equipment well i want to thank you so much thank you you've been a real inspiration you and your brother and quickly tell us what you're doing now i'm working at a public health clinic in oakland great great well thanks so much to that a wonderful job thank you thanks and now i would like to introduce you to another special friend of mine this is pat and she's going to tell us all about herself hi pat hi how you doing good i'm so glad you could come and help us tonight thanks for having me are special guests on the bridge project and you have children right yes i do do they like to write yes my kids both like to write skylights write and jordan likes to write good and what is your background educational wise and what are you doing well restaurant and do the children get a certificate or the teenagers get a certificate when they finish the course yes they sure do they get a certificate and they also get a job as well where some of the places they might work they'll work either pete starbucks or  other restaurants like me or post as bakery or and act the bakery good good anything else you'd like to put out to our watching audience well the everybody should be interested in reading different types of books and this is a good place to start reading and leave you like portraits of this is a good place to get your kids on the show for porch are a great great well i certainly appreciate you coming in helping us tonight and you were an excellent guests when we had  on last year i think it was you yes and thank you so much for coming in helping us celebrate all thank you once more good and now i have another special friend i'm going to introduce i'm going to interview her name is rita and she's going to tell us all about herself volunteer there once a month with a goal and friends and since i started being here i've met a lot of children like poetry i write poetry some happy to be here good and would you recommend that young people get involved in volunteer work like this learning how to be interns you cited to because the first time actually that i spoke with you and you told me about this i was really excited because if i had this chance when i was a teenager i would have gone so much further so this is a wonderful program for adults young adults and children to be here and learn about themselves and their first experience what country do you come from ethiopia and how long have you been in america about twenty years really all tell us something about your culture back home do you have programs like this now they do when i was growing up you know we didn't have the resources but music was a very big part of me because of my mother so i had that outlet but currently there's a lot of like you tube and we have the you too back there as well it's called do it too that's where you young people now express themselves through the arts and literature good anything else i'd like to put out anything else i would like to put out as all the young people should pursue their dreams and started we poets good well thank you so much you've been a wonderful volunteer and intern for us and thank you for coming tonight and helping us celebrate you for having me and congratulations thank you and now i have another several months ago had a great time tell us all about your t v show we love it it's all about seniors it's encore the talk show for seniors and what we do is we spotlight housing health care and financial programs and services for the community good good how long have you been doing it we've been doing that just a little over a year and we are a smash we have full audiences just about every show good and where do you get your audience from well we get our audience from a variety of places a lot of it is word of mouth we put out the word at senior centers and a lot of our guests invite their sphere of influence as well and people off the street wonderful wonderful well we're so glad that you could come tonight and help us out and we certainly appreciate the good work you're doing here helping us with we poets thank you sal it's a pleasure to be here thank you hello again i have sally baker the host we poets added to mother director and i would like to think many people tonight for helping us celebrate we poets twenty ninth year anniversary you know we can't have a successful show without thousands of people helping us so i do want to give a thanks to the following people first of all i want to thank god for providing us with this opportunity i want to thank all of the children who have come and read their points on we poets i want to thank all of our interns who have helped us produce this show we couldn't do a show without interns i to thank all of the teachers and the parents who prepared their children to appear on we poets i want to thank all of our sponsors we could not have done a show without financial support and in kind donations from our sponsors and we want to thank channel twenty eight berkeley community vidia and comcast twenty six for allowing us to produce our show for these past twenty nine years on both of their cable television stations so a host of people that we want to think and i hope you've enjoyed these programs that we have brought to you for the past twenty nine years and now we're working on our thirtieth year so we hope that this time next year we can bring you our thirtieth program so thanks so much for helping us