CVILA Application Cycle 2024-25: Information Session

Hi everyone. Thank you for coming to the Community Violence Intervention Leadership Academy Info session. We're just going to wait a few minutes just to make sure that everyone who wants to come tonight is in attendance. Feel free to turn on your cameras or off, but we'll just wait until about 5 35 or so and then we'll start off. In the meantime, feel free to put any questions in the chat and I'll also be putting a Google Slides version of the presentation in the chat in case you'd like to follo

w along tonight. Okay. It's looking like we actually got the majority of folks, so we can start off and just do some introductions before jumping into content around 5 35 or so. But hello, I'm Arin. I'm a program fellow at the University of Chicago Crime Labs, where I work closely with Dr. Chico Tillmon and the rest of the team at the crime labs to run the program for the Community Violence Intervention Leadership Academy. We're in our first cohort, which is actually having its graduation next w

eek in dc and I just wanted to say hello before we start. And really thank you all for taking time out of your busy schedules today to hear more about the academy and we're all extremely excited that you're considering applying. So with that, I'm just going to pass it off to our other two team members who are here on the call to just introduce themselves briefly. And then again, if any questions come up, feel free to type it in the chat. My email will also be at the end of the slide deck in case

you think of any questions after this call. So with that, I'll pass it off to Mark. Good evening to everyone and for the East Coast. Good evening to the West Coast. Good afternoon. Good to see everybody. My name is Mark Saint. I'm the director of strategic engagement for the University of Chicago Crime and Education Labs and the director of curriculum and learning for the C-V-I-L-A. And it is wonderful to see you this evening. As Arin has already said, we're really excited about the graduation

next week and we're looking forward to meeting many of you in person. So it is a pleasure. I'll have my camera off for the duration of this, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask. I'll hand it over to Tiara. Hi, good evening everyone. My name is Tiara Robinson and I'm the assistant to the director of the CVILA program. Excited to have you all here tonight and I hope that you walk away with a lot of knowledge about CVILA and what we do. So I'll pass it to Arin. Thanks Tiara. So I'm goin

g to share my screen with the presentation. I also posted a Google slide version in the chat, the link in case you want to follow along there. And it's a little bit easier to read, but let's just start off and then let me know just by thumbs up or a reaction if you're able to see the screen. Okay, perfect. Alright, so thank you for coming to our town hall on the 20 24 25 application cycle. Again, this is recorded, so all this information will be present, but we'll just start off with an agenda f

or this call. So first we'll go over program details such as the curriculum, where it will be held, the various modes of instruction, as well as the completion requirements. Then we'll go into the eligibility criterion. So I know a lot of you on the call have completed your application or are in the process of completing your application. So we'll go over in a little bit more depth the type of person that we're recruiting for this program and why. So the personal as well as the organizational tr

aits that we look for in an application. Then we'll get into the research requirement. So what exactly you are consenting to when you agree to participate in the academy in terms of research so that you have all the information you need to make an informed decision. And then we'll finally go over the application process in a little bit more depth. So like I mentioned, a lot of folks have already submitted their written application or in the process of completing their written application. So we'

ll just explain a few other of the components that are required and why we ask the questions that we do, and then when the decisions will come out. And then we'll round off with a q and A for any questions that may come up and we'll follow up in an email with the next steps as well as all this information. So before getting into that, this is an overview of our team. So the executive director of the CVI Leadership Academy is Dr. Chico Tillmon. Kim is our director of programs, so is critical in p

rogram design and implementation. Mark who's on the call is our director of curriculum and learning, so if you have any questions about the curriculum or how that's implemented, he would be a great person to ask. And then Alicia and I are both on the programming side, so if you have any questions about the nitty gritty of timelines of what you need to do for your application of the requirements for the program and its benefits you can ask us. So before we get into the program details, I want to

just start off with the why. Why was there even a need for A CVI Leadership Academy in the first place? So you can understand really the root behind how we created it and how we're screening for people. So as you all know, since you're leaders in this field, there is a massive public safety issue worldwide, but especially in the United States in terms of gun violence, over 200,000 lives are claimed annually to gun violence and three in every four homicides use guns. But we not only see this oddi

ty in the United States in terms of gun violence, but the University of Chicago noticed that a lot of these issues with public safety are disproportionately affecting the most marginalized people in the United States, specifically Black and brown communities. It's the number one leading cause of death for black men, the number two leading cause of death for black women and Latino men. And if you live in the United States, you're more than two times as likely to die at the hand of a gun if you ha

ppen to be black than if you're white. So clearly the public safety system as is doing an insufficient job of addressing safety, especially for black and brown folks. So with this in mind, we wanted to kind of see what in our public safety ecosystem was addressing this gap. What could do the job that policing right now was insufficient to fully cover, which is bringing safety to black and brown folks. And the answer which Dr. Tillmon knows and I'm sure all of on this call, a very big part of tha

t answer is community violence intervention work. It plays a critical role in reducing shootings and homicides and communities of color by deescalating stressful situations before they lead to violence and interrupting the retaliatory cycle of gun violence. And they do so by a combination of street outreach, by credible messengers and behavioral science informed interventions. And that's where we really saw an opportunity for change and creating lasting change in this public safety gap. And how

this is to the academy is really something that our executive director, Dr. Chico Tillmon, as well as the rest of our steering committee noticed, which is that although CVI work is really, really important for reducing violence in communities of color, and although it has proven efficacy time and time again, we had a study by Monica Bott here on the Ready Model. Johns Hopkins with Dr. Daniel Webster has studied the very strong efficacy of CVI. It's still not fully recognized as an equal part of

the public safety ecosystem. And this is where our theory of change is, which in order for CVI to be recognized as an equally vital part of community safety, we have to professionalize the field. We have to create fidelity across the nation through best practices and standards. And that's really what the goal of the academy is, which is to bring the CVI space fully into the public safety ecosystem and create a national network of CVI leaders who are able to work together, collaborate, find the b

est programs and practices, and create something that is not just working in silos in cities, but really is extracting the best from every city and every organization and creating a lasting national ecosystem on par with policing and other traditional measures of public safety. So. This was our, can I add something to what you just said? How you doing. There? Yes, definitely. This is Marcus on the phone. So one of the reasons why everything she mentioned is on par, but lemme give you another rea

son why we decided to create this academy. So one of the things, as many of you may know, we've had an influx of funding across the country with community safeties acts and all these other endeavors where funding was being allocated and what we saw, me and Dr. Tim, when we went around the country doing fund piece and various other campaigns that we were doing to push for more CVI dollars, one of the things about this academy is that we also wanted to make sure that everyone was all the way clear

on the ins and out of everything regarding CVI, the work. We know CVI is a new term and it come through this administration, but at the end of the day, it was a lot of money going out and the federal government we're giving out money, but we need the people to understand what the work is how, because to be honest with you, I mean it's a lot of new people in this work and the more the merrier because at the end of the day, we want to save lives, but we wanted people to know everything about all

CVIs, whether you know about Street intervention hospital, CVI, whatever it is, give you some of the history. Some of us has been at this a long time to get to the point we're now. So when we started see the influx of money that was going on, that's why we just focused on leaders and not so much on street intervention, workers outreach and all because there are some other academies that do that. This was designed to be national with leaders in mind, so that way you could fight for more funding,

you can understand the different pieces of ecosystem that's going to allow you to probably receive more funds because of the information. Because like I said, there's a lot of money that was going out there and a lot of people were knowing a little bit about this work. So we wanted to make sure we was clear on teaching people everything they needed to know so they can be fully equipped to sustain their work, get more funding and do stuff right, because we fought for a long time to get to this po

int, many you see on this steering committee picture as well as many more that may not be a part of the committee, but they were part of our overall fund piece movement that we did some years back before when ARP dollars just came into play. So I just wanted to add that, Arin,, because I think that's real important as a goal that we had when we thought about making this academy, we knew that a lot of funding was going out there and if we don't succeed with all the funding, then it'd be like, wel

l hell, why did we give that money up? No one's succeeding X, Y, Z. So that's a big part of why this was created. I just wanted to add that to the mix. Arin, thank you. Yeah, no, that was an excellent flag and it'll definitely become a lot more clear how that intention played out in our programming and curriculum design in later slides too. But like Marcus was saying, this is different than a street outreach or violence intervention training similar to the Advanced Peace Cure violence, Metro Pea

ce Academies, this is really targeting leaders so that we can put tools in the hands of people who are able to create decisions in CVI organizations and really lean on executive management and leadership best practices so that when they're getting all this money and it's being scaled up at such a fast rate compared to the past, that everyone is fully equipped to be able to meet the moment where it's at. So I think that was a really, really important thing to mention as to the why of the academy.

And it was beautifully said, which makes sense because Marcus is our dean of students and was also part of the initial design of the academy. So here is our steering committee who have all been doing the work and really saw a need through, for example, doing the fun piece rounds or just within their own organizations and their own community organizing efforts for this kind of academy. So with this in mind, this was the way our inaugural cohort looks. So one question that we were getting about t

he application pretty often was this is sponsored by the University of Chicago. Is this something that's just Chicago specific or is this only for people who are in large cities? And the short answer is no, we aren't just hoping to create a strong CVI ecosystem in Chicago, but this academy is really a nationwide academy to pair with a nationwide movement. And that's why in our inaugural cohort, we selected 31 leaders from 21 cities across the United States who were leading organizations that pri

marily served black and brown communities and they weren't just doing the traditional cure violence model or any particular model, but we tried to find people who were in the entire range of CVI work. So we had people from offices of Violence prevention, we had people doing traditional street outreach, but we also had programs that included safe passage or school-based safety trauma-informed cognitive behavioral interventions, workforce development, similar to the ready model that we studied in

the past. So you don't need to be any specific kind of CVI organization, but you can really be doing work under the umbrella of all the different approaches that CVI has created throughout the years as long as the primary goal is to reduce violence in your community through credible messengers using behavioral health informed interventions. So this is an overview of the way our inaugural cohort went. And now with all that context and the why in mind that we created the academy to equip leaders w

ith the skills necessary to more effectively run organizations to use the dollars they were getting to sustainably scale up and therefore save more lives, we can. So for the program here is an overview of the academy. It is a six month CVI executive leadership development and management certificate program. You aren't doing class for the entirety of six months rather it's an intensive program where one week per month is in person. So synchronous learning that's about eight to 10 hour long days w

ith breaks in between where you're really getting some intensive coursework as well as immersive activities. And for these in-person learnings, travel will be required. So for example, in cohort one, we had class in Chicago in Oakland and New York, and now we're ending off for a graduation in dc. But for future cohorts, we'll be partnering with different organizations moving around a bit. So you should be willing and able to travel to any city or any place in the United States as what cities are

n't set in stone. An important flag here is right at the bottom, which is that participation is free. So the full cost of the program, including travel tuition, lodging, will be covered by the University of Chicago because we didn't want cost or organizational budgets to be a constraint to people doing the work, getting the tools they need. In this program, you're going to be learning alongside a powerful national network of CVI leaders. So again, leaders from across the country, from large citi

es, small cities doing a variety of different kinds of CVI work. So you can learn the maximum amount from the various practices all across the country. And instruction is delivered by culturally competent university faculty as well as leaders in the nonprofit public sector and private sector. And the thing to note here is that we're really screening for people who know the work, who understand the work, who know the communities and understand the communities. So we don't want these learnings to

just be some sort of ivory tower learning. We aren't modeling it after, for example, a booth MBA program, although those types of practices will be present. The goal here is to make sure that everything you are learning has a practical, tangible component that you will be able to implement and use in your organizations and in your work. So in terms of those six weeks out of the six months that you will be in person, half of those, so three of those weeks will be an immersive learning experience,

which will be blended with more of that academic theoretical background so that you can see how these best practices get implemented by various organizations across the country. And then in line with our more practical tangible focus, all students at the end of this six months when they've really had a survey of executive management and leadership best practices and a survey of these immersive experiences, so good practices and good work happening in CVI organizations across the United States.

After you get all that learning, everyone is required to do a capstone project in the end where you implement your learnings within your organizations. And the goal here is to make sure it's not just an academy or a certificate that happens in the moment, but really that you can take these learnings and they're used to catalyze change in your organizations, in your communities, and therefore save more lives. Finally, this is a sister program to the Policing Leadership Academy at the University o

f Chicago Crime Labs. So it's under the umbrella of the Community Safety Leadership Academies. So we have the Policing Leadership Academy and then the separate Community Violence Intervention Leadership Academy because we view community violence intervention as just as much a part of public safety and community safety as policing will be in the 21st century. Any questions on the program before we get into more of the nitty gritty of curriculum? And then we'll also have a Q and A at the end, so f

eel free to just write down any questions as they come up and we'll go over them. So here's an overview of our curriculum. So the learning modules, these are the key themes that will be present in what you will be learning. It's in order from module one, but we'll always switch around the order or particular orders of classes based on students' feedback because we want to learn and grow. But again, these are going to be the core themes that really will remain throughout future cohorts. So first

we have personal and organizational leadership skills. So a good example would be doing a culture analysis on your organization, which we had a class on, or looking at your specific leadership styles and how that blends with the types of workforces you're working with to how to build community and non-traditional workforces. Then we learned about strategic decision making. So how do you create a logic model? How do you create a theory of change based on your logic model, your theory of change, h

ow do you create and develop a strategic plan? And during the strategic decision making module, we add examples of, for example, the READI program in Chicago. We had examples from public schools and their public safety legs. So all these learnings would really be contextualized in the work of CVI itself. Then our first immersive lab would be building healthy communities where we went over more of the public health approach with life camp as the host. So life camp for example, has mobile trauma u

nits where they're able to intervene in the immediate aftermath of gun violence and help people from a culturally competent trauma-informed lens. So they were able to see the mobile units, they were able to survey, so it'll be based off immersive experiences like that. Then we went over CVI models and strategies. That was another immersive lab in Chicago where Marcus actually taught where we went over the history of the CVI field and all the different kinds of models and practices that were effi

cacious across the country. Finally, the final immersive lab was community engagement. So how do you engage your community in the process? How do you engage in politics and media to make sure that people know about your work and understand your work, how you use strategic partnerships with different types of communities in order to bolster support and garner fundraising, budgeting extra money so you can scale up your programs. That was really the goal and key theme of that module. And then final

ly, we're rounding off next week with operations and management best practices where we'll have folks like Dr. Daniel Webster out of Johns Hopkins and Dr. Joe Rogan, who's an Empower scholar at the University of Maryland who have studied the best practices in CVI organizations and how they have been effective and how certain operations and management practices have been potentially ineffective or harmful for otherwise good programs. So that's an overview of our curriculum, those are the key them

es. And then closer to cohort two will be releasing sample class names, et cetera so that you have a better sense of those classes. But because we just finished our first cohort, we're going to be taking all the feedback from the students and making sure that everything is the best it possibly can be for this upcoming cohort. So these are the core themes, and then closer to the date, we can give you a more in depth view of the curriculum if you are selected for the academy. And then these were t

he locations I talked about. We had three hosts during the immersive labs. So for example, for community engagement, we partnered with Live Free who had a really solid community organizing and community engagement leg for models and strategies. We partnered with UCAN because we knew their work on the Ready model. And then for building healthy communities, we partnered with Life Camp again, having to do with their strong wellness and cognitive behavioral intervention focus and their mobile trauma

units. So we really tried to partner with organizations who were doing the work and were pioneers in the types of themes that we were looking at. But again, this was just based off cohort one, you should be able and willing to travel to any location across the United States because there's great work happening everywhere. So now that we've kind of gone over the curriculum in depth, are there any questions about the curriculum or the program and what it entails? How many cohorts will be selected

to participate? So right now for this 2024-2025 application cycle, we're selecting cohorts two and cohorts four. In total, we're going to have anywhere from eight to 10 cohorts so that we can test for the efficacy of the academy and create lasting change. But if you're applying this cycle, you're only applying for cohorts two and cohorts four. That was a great question and we'll definitely be getting into timelines later on during the application process section. Let me add to that. Thanks Arin

. So and the reason, and forgive me, some of it may be in a later slide, but I just why it's on my mind. So the reason we picking for cohort two and four, because going forward this academy will have a research component to it, and so we're picking for two and then after two and four next year we're picking for three and five because they're going to have a certain gap in there for the research part of it. So you could easily be selected for cohort two and four, but while you're waiting for four

, you're still a part of the research piece because the researchers need to also work with the group that might not be getting in cohort two, but we know they're getting in four, but they want that has to be part of the research part. So that's why we're picking for two cohorts and that's why we have a year gap in there because they need to be able to research that process over that two year span. So I just wanted to throw that in there. It probably is later on in the slides, but while it was on

my mind, I wanted to put it out there. Yeah, thank you Marcus. And we'll get into program timeline definitely. And I saw one question in the chat about whether the calendar has been created for the next cohort. We'll be going over that during section four, which is on program timeline and application processes. But the short of it is we have the dates set for the beginning and end, but the exact weeks in the month and dates will be released closer to cohort twos beginning. So now we'll get into

the eligibility criterion. I'm just going to flag here really quickly that none of these criterion are exclusive of any individuals. We're still going to look at applications holistically, but we want to give you an idea of the kinds of things we're looking at. What kinds of individuals, what kinds of organizations do they come from, which is grounded in our why and our why. Just to bring it back to what Marcus was talking about is we want to put these executive leadership skills, these managem

ent skills in the hands of people who have decision-making capacity in their organizations because those people are the kinds of people who can take the learnings back to their organizations, take their capstones back to their organizations and create meaningful lasting change. So we really went about this eligibility criteria and with the intentionality of making a change in the CVI space in mind, but none of it is exclusionary. So here are the individual traits that we're really looking for. W

hat's the kind of person who would be an ideal candidate for the academy? This person should have a minimum of five years experience in community violence intervention work and currently holds a senior or executive level position in their respective organization. One thing that I got a lot of questions on when the application came out was whether or not you needed some sort of advanced degree. So again, because it was sponsored by the University of Chicago, a lot of folks were thinking that they

needed a college degree or even a master's level degree in order to participate. And that couldn't be further from the truth. There's no minimum educational level requirement if you are a senior or executive level person in your position who's been doing this work for years, if not decades. That to us is the type of educational background we're actually looking for. So while there's no education level requirement, we do require an open mindset to learning and growing through this organization a

s well as a high degree of motivation and interest in enhancing their own skills and trying to be as impactful as you can in the work as a result of this academy. In other words, we want to find people who are really passionate about using these learnings to create change and aren't just going through the motions and are willing to learn from the various different kinds of organizations and people they're coming into contact with. And then we also are looking for someone with a demonstrated expe

rience and implementing CVI strategies that are in alignment with the values and principles embraced by the academy. And if you want to look at the values and principles that the crime lab has, you would just go on the crime lab website and it's on our first page. But a great example. And the primary value we're really looking for is like an equity focused lens and a racial anti-oppressive educational lens. So making sure that your programs are really serving the people who need it most. And you

r approach is one of integrity in terms of organizational criterion. So what kinds of organizations are we wanting people to come from? We want people to be serving in a community-based CVI organization that primarily serves black and brown communities. Again, this goes back to our why, which is the vast majority of gun violence is concentrated in black and brown communities. And these are the communities where traditional public safety measures and policing is insufficiently protecting them. So

we really are targeting the kinds of organizations that are filling gaps in the public safety ecosystem. Organizations should provide at least one of the following services that are considered under the CVI umbrella, traditional street outreach and violence interruption, which should be paired with or can be paired with either case management hospital-based services, so like H bps, intensive mentorship, survivor services, which would be similar to, for example, a recent Napper Williams, not ano

ther child organization therapeutic services, youth development or school-based prevention. A good example of that would be life camp or even one of our participants at present, Dave Williams from the youth advocacy program or victims advocacy work. We consider all of these under the umbrella of community violence intervention work. So a good litmus test for you is if you are able to apply for those $5.5 million that was advocated and given to CVI work, you will be eligible as an organization to

participate in the CVI Leadership Academy. It is also preferred that candidates come from an organization with a medium to large size staff, so like three or more employees thereabout and that you have an annual budget of 300,000 or more. It's also preferred that the population that you are serving in your organization has a proportionately high percentage of the gun violence in America per capita. To put it in more plain language, are you serving a lot of high risk individuals to be victims or

perpetrators of gun violence? That's also something we will consider in the course of the application and we'll be screening for that in the written application, all of these criteria. So before I move on to the research component, which Barcus mentioned, are there any questions about the criteria that we're considering that's in the written application? Feel free to either type it in the chat or raise your hand. You can also wait until the end or just email me individually. Perfect. Larry, go

ahead Larry. Yes. My question is do reentry fall up under any of those categories or up under any those services that you have listed or that's not considered a criteria under this design that y'all have right here? I can jump in on that. So go back one slide, Arin, just back to that slide as he mentioned. Yeah, I mean, lemme just say, so we look at, I mean obviously reentry plays a role in the whole CVI space. We dealing with a lot of individuals in and out the joint, some home, a lot of our st

aff throughout the country. I mean doing the work is tied in. I guess if I was submitting for this, if that was what you just only did lt, you would like to see how it is in collaboration with some of the other parts of the ecosystem. Now if you just applied for this and that is the only piece of the puzzle, I don't know how strong that would be based off of just being solo bolo by itself, but if I applied and I do reentry and I can show how I'm using your city, for example, I'm making this up,

I'm a director, we run a reentry program, we have a lot of collaboration with Gideon's Army. You see what I'm saying? So you need to connect it to where it's a part of the ecosystem and not just a standalone by itself because it's not on this list here, but it easily can fall into and just like even in some cases, which we don't, oh, it's on there. I see the school-based prevention and stuff of that nature. So I hope that helps. So yes, because some of the people that was in this first cohort, t

hat might not have been their primary thing, but they had connections with reentry and reentry was a part of some of the pieces that they did at their respective organization. So it's a yes but a yes with some of those caveats that I just put on there, if that makes sense. Yeah, I get the picture, I see where you're coming from. Alright, thanks T got you. And then we'll go to Valerie next. Right? Before we do that, I think Rayhon Brown would be a great example of how an organization with a focus

on reentry still had a strong CVI lens and that their reentry services were oriented around the ecosystem. So he would be a great example. And that's a good moment to mention that our graduation will be happening on Friday next week. So just make sure to tune into that and it'll give you a lot better of an idea of the array of different work that these participants in the inaugural cohort are doing. And with that, Valerie, feel free to unmute yourself and ask your question. Okay. We're a organi

zation, it's a small organization that collaborates with other organizations like INVC, target area and other programs in Chicago. We also collaborate with the JTDC with the youth in there because what we do is we work directly with the youth that have a gun and gang violence backgrounds. And that's what all our curriculum is, is built around people that are involved in gun and gangs. We're not a big gigantic organization, but we're one that does curriculum and builds curriculum for any organiza

tion that may have youth that needs services. So we're more of a youth-driven and preventative organization than we are say a street outreach. And we also do films and documentaries, PSAs that are directly related to gun and gang violence and social issues that are in the black and brown community. So I'm hoping that that is eligibility. Yeah, so it's more, lemme say something. Thank you for that sister. So it's more of it is not so much like anything you've mentioned it disqualifies you and I s

aw the question that was in the chat. It's not a matter of that, it's just a matter we just trying to lay out some of the stronger pieces in there that we're looking for. But that doesn't mean that by all means you qualify, but I'm just saying, just letting you know what the, because the whole thing is that, I mean this whole thing, I mean we want help out our folks man. Bottom line, we want help our people out, but we also want to help out people that can go back and help out the whole spectrum

of their community, whatever it may be. And not just your one little neighborhood. We want you to be able to help out as much as Chicago as you can, si, as well as other cities that are represented here. That's the big goal right there. So it's definitely not a matter. Los Angeles too. And we do work with say second call, skip Townsend in Los Angeles and work in the juvenile justice system out there. So we have an office here in Chicago but also work in LA as well. Copy that. Yes ma'am. So just

to short to that answer, I was saying once again, definitely none of those things are like disqualifiers. I think what she's putting down is some of the main criteria we see, but there's going to be some things that are not limited to these dots and stuff that we see here because there's a lot of things that the, it's quite a few people at the University of Chicago, quite a few people that you saw on the steering committee and we take a lot of factors in consideration. I mean if it was up to Dr

. Tillmon and myself, everybody would get every single second. Obviously it's a process. We trying to raise money. So this thing could be going on for many years to come. It's a lot of good comrades in the country. A lot of y'all thank y'all for getting on this call, but it is a big field out there with a lot of people. So we got to at least have some measuring sticks that we look at. But this is not about no disqualifications for folks. It's about giving you some of the things that we're lookin

g at as strength-based we, and we definitely means we not Marcus or not just Dr. Tillmon, what we can do to get people in and spread it out. So thank you for that clarification and your question, sir. Awesome. And I'm just checking to make sure there are no raised hands. If you did have a question, feel free to unmute yourself. But so far we're getting really good questions and I think that it's going to become a lot clearer why we ask about these criterion in the research component, which is co

ming up. So I'm just going to move on to the organizational criterion into the C-V-I-L-A research component. So in addition to receiving this six month executive leadership and management certificate training, there is also a required research component as part of your participation in the academy. The reason why is that we want to be able to measure whether or not this academy is actually improving organizational outcomes. So that's why we are including a research component because we want to m

ake sure that we aren't just implementing something with an intention in mind, but that it's actually grounded in research and data and that this program is doing what it's set out to do and what we intended for it to do. So for the research, the research design is as follows. We have about 30 to 35 students per cohort. All participants are considered part of the community violence intervention ecosystem. So including intensive case management, including CVI work, including more youth focused wo

rk as well as traditional street outreach and intervention, anything that is considered within the CVI ecosystem. And we're taking a very liberal definition to this, if you consider yourself a part of it, you are eligible to be in the CVI Leadership Academy after that point. What we do in research is that we screen based off of these criteria and try to match people together. So in order to say this academy is improving outcomes and thereby saving more lives, we need to compare against, we want

to compare organizations with similar budgets to each other doing similar kinds of work to each other in similar types of cities and areas serving similar types of populations. So that's why that's included in the written application. So once we have all that information and we look through that eligibility criterion, we'll have at least 15 people who qualify for the study part of the group. And we are ideally trying to get 30 to 35, but we made sure that there was space for people who maybe the

ir organization had a smaller budget or maybe they weren't the CEOs of their organizations or they were in a smaller city, but we're still doing really important work. We made sure there was still enough space in the academy for those people, but at least 15 are going to be falling under these criterion and we'll be pairing them together. So in total for the next, for this application process, we're choosing anywhere from 60 to 70 people to be admitted. So again, 60 to 70 people are going to be

admitted. This application cycle. Once we have our core 60 to 70 applicants, we will then pair them according to these criterion and then randomly assign them into either cohort two, which is going to be happening this year or cohort four, which is happening next year. And like Marcus said, the reason why we're assigning some people to the next year is so that we have enough lag time in between the first cohort and that other group to be able to say, okay, over the course of this six months, the

se people who were similar in every other way mostly, but had the academy improve this much, whereas the group who got the academy at a later time didn't improve until a year later. And then we can say a lot more concretely that yes, the academy is improving organizational outcomes. So if you are admitted to the program and you get into cohort two, your application was no better or no worse than anyone in cohort four. It's just a part of our research design and there are no specific unique reaso

ns why you'll get selected for cohort two as opposed to cohort four, if that makes sense. And yes, everyone will have access to the video recording to refer back to along with our flyer and the slides. So this is the research design. It's called a treatment and control research design where we compare against, and the goal really here is to say, yes, the academy is improving organizations or no, it's not. We need to go back to the drawing board and make sure it works. So that's the research desi

gn. And then what does that mean for you outside of timelines? So what does it entail to participate in the research? Every single participant is going to be taking two surveys, both before they begin as well as after completion of the academy. One of these is going to be a leadership survey. It'll take anywhere from an hour and a half to maximum of two hours, and it's basically a self-report survey where you're explaining the culture in your organization, your teamwork practices, problem solvin

g resolution, all those leadership skills and core themes that appear in our curriculum. So we want to see change in leadership practices before beginning the academy and then after beginning the academy and measure that change. Then again, compare against, so again, all leaders, both cohort two and cohort four are going to be taking this survey. The second survey that you'll take is called the Community Violence Management survey, and that will also be about an hour and a half to two hours long

. So you're going to have four hours total before beginning the ACADE spaced out to take these two surveys and then four hours afterward. And this survey is more on the management practices. So how do you run your budget, how do you deal with admin data, how do you design and implement your programs and track it and monitor your performance? And other C-V-I-L-A identified core competencies that appear in our curriculum. So that's what research will entail. And then something that I feel is worth

mentioning is giving a direct answer about how this research is used because I think the elephant in the room is that research in the past hasn't necessarily helped people. It's supposed to help and people have been subjects as opposed to participants in the research process. And so when Dr. Chico and the rest of the steering committee were designing this program, we really wanted to right that wrong and make sure that this research didn't harm the people. It was purported to help and actually

would be supporting the work in the long run. So with this idea in mind, make sure that people are participants not just subjects in the research and that this research can't be used against participants. All of these are held to strict IRB standards. It's completely confidential. No one will see your individual answers, so you can feel free to admit to potential organizational weaknesses without the fear that it would impact your organization. So it's held under strict confidentiality measures

and then any of the results that come out about the efficacy of this program are released in aggregate form. So no one will be able to trace your answers back to you. So in terms of the kinds of people who are going to be interviewing you and who gets to see the data, it's completely internal to the University of Chicago. I can count on my hand the amount of people who would see this data in its raw form and we make sure that everyone who is actually administering the surveys are very familiar w

ith CVI work and have been doing it for a long time. So for example, our principal investigators are Ashna Arora and Rodrigo Canales from the Innovations for Poverty Action. So please feel free to read up on our researchers and their history so that you can feel as comfortable as possible with the idea of being involved in research before you consent to participate in the program. If you have any questions about that, again, you can reach out to me and I can connect you to our researchers to spe

ak more in depth before you make the decision to consent, because that is a part of the written application and participation in the academy. Are there any questions about the research component of the program? Okay. No, but I do have a question though. Yeah, go ahead. Hi everybody. Dawn, in order to be eligible, you have to be in a leadership role within the organization. So if you're accepted, what happens if your role changes, you get a promotion or you get. You're breaking up a little bit, b

ut I think the question was about, well, what if your role changes plenty? It's a six month long program, so actually a few of our participants now have gotten promotions or their job titles have changed or they've even gone on to found their own nonprofits. That's totally fine. Again, the thing that we're looking for is do you have decision-making capacity within your organization? So if you go off and you get a promotion or found your own nonprofit, that's completely fine. Again, the intention

behind those eligibility criteria and have to do with our why, which is putting power and tools in the hands of people doing the work to create lasting change. If you happen to have a title change over the course of six months, you can't control for that and we can't screen for that at the beginning of the application. And that's one of the reasons why. Also with that being said, that's one of the reasons why I know people apply for the first time and we have to have people apply again because

status does change. So it's not like we just keep the first application, people's situation changes over, it can change over a matter of six months, it can change a matter over a year. So that's why even in the second go round, there were some people that say, well, I applied for the first one, I got to apply again. Yeah, because we don't necessarily know if all your answers are still the same, if your situation is still the same. So that's a great question, Corey, but adding that perspective, t

hat is the reason why we wanted people to continue to reapply because we don't want to just assume that people are in the same situation that they're in when they first applied. So I did an application I think for the CVI leadership probably about a month ago, is that something need to be redone or something. So we're going to go over the application process actually in the next slide. So it'll go over everything that needs to be done as well as decisions. Right? No, but just to answer Gino's qu

estion, thank you for that Arin. I was saying if we open the application for this has been open over a month, so if you did it over a month for this one then unless there was something that you see on here that you didn't add or whatever, but that's the right application, Gino, if you did it within a month, that's for this particular cohort, this application has been open for at least 30 days now, Arin? I believe so, right, Arin? Over 30 days at least. Yep. Okay, got it. What's up Gino? I see yo

u there, bro. How you doing, bro? Yes sir. And then Valerie, feel free to ask your question as well. Okay. What I wanted to ask was I filled it out twice and I probably shouldn't have, but on the first time I noticed that it didn't, when it asked for references that you needed letters of reference and it didn't show in a thing where you couldn't attach it or were you going to contact those people. So I filled it out again just to see, to go back to it to see exactly when you put in for your refe

rences. How do you get those? Do you contact the people from the information that we gave? Yeah, so we normally will contact the people. When we first release the application, we were just wanting to collect references and then later on we added the letter component. So once you submit your application, there should be a link for where to submit the letters. And I think I answered this over email as well, but we'll get into the letter. Sorry. I didn't see when I was filling out the application,

I did it again yesterday and there was nothing to link the letter, so I just needed it. Just asked for the information on the person, their email address, phone number and name and their position. So once you submit and when a screen pops up, it's like thank you for your submission. At the bottom there's a link for where to turn in your letters. You can also just email that directly to me. If you submitted your application early, that might not have been there because originally we were just gra

bbing references, phone numbers and emails to make calls. So we'll definitely get into that during the application process. But the short answer is feel free to just email those to me directly. You don't have to worry about the part, especially if you've already submitted your application, just email it to the email that is at the end of this slide and I'll make sure it's included in your application. Okay, great, thank you. No problem. And then it seems like that's a few of the other questions,

so I'll make sure that in the follow up to this information session, that link for submitting letters is included. Whoops, are there any other questions before we move on to the application process? Okay. Valerie, you don't have a question? Do you just got your hands still raised? No, it's okay. No, all good. I just wanted to make sure. Okay, thank you. So let's go on to the application process. So for folks who have already submitted their application, I'm just going to flag here that we're ha

ving a few questions about the letters. So you can just email those directly as opposed to using the separate file upload link again to my email at the very end of this slide. The letters are anywhere from one to two pages, double spaced or half a page to one page single spaced, which just speaks to your capacity for learning to your impact in CVI work and willingness to learn through the program. It's really speaking to your values, alignment with the program as well as your prior work experien

ce in CVI work. So if you can get one to two letters, the viable references and then submit again, you can just email those directly to me. They don't need to be perfect. The goal is not to have the most amazing writing ever. It's really just speaking to your character and to your work in the field. So we aren't screening for style, we're purely looking at content so that we can make sure that the application is as holistic as possible. And these are reference letters from the original written a

pplication that you submitted. So where it said reference one, reference two, reference three, choose two of those three and then see if they can submit a letter in your favor. This can even just be two paragraphs in email forms sent to us. Then another question I saw is consideration based off of documented paperwork work. It's based off of this written application references as well as those letters of recommendation. So in this follow-up email, I'm going to include the flyer where there was t

he original RSVP link to this info session. And then right in the bottom left hand corner you'll find our landing page for the application which outlines all of this in more depth and includes a link to that digital form of an application. So that's really what we make our determinations based off of. And then, let's see, I think those were all the questions in the chat. The other major note is that in order to be a part of the academy, you do need to consent to participate in the research leg o

f the C-V-I-L-A program. And then we actually went over that in the former slides. So finally we're just going to get into the application timeline because I know there were a few questions about that. So as Mark mentioned, our application has already been open. Our graduation is going to be, well, our graduation week starts Monday, and then the actual ceremony is Friday on the ninth at 12:00 PM Eastern time and it will be streamed. So if you're interested in watching that graduation, let me kno

w and we can include that link closer to, and then in February, so starting tomorrow will be February, and then the application will close at the end of the month. So Friday, February 20. And the application cutoff time is right at midnight central time. So if you're on East Coast time, just keep that in mind that the cutoff is during central time and that's when that written application page is going to close and you can no longer submit just because we're going to be starting the pairing proce

ss for research at that time. Perfect. And so I'll make sure that when we get the link for graduation that I circulate it to everyone who is on this information session. It seems like there's a bit of interest, which is great. So end of February, you need to have your applications in. I strongly recommend submitting sooner rather than later just because we are accepting people on a rolling basis and trying to match people. And then in March, we are going to be releasing our decisions at that tim

e. So everyone who was accepted during this application cycle, we're going to let them know whether or not they were admitted into the academy, and then we'll let them know whether or not they're in cohort two or cohort four. If you're in cohort two, your orientation meeting will be in end of March or early April. And then your cohort to the actual classes for the academy will begin on Sunday in April, and then the exact week in April that we're starting, and the location will be released closer

to that cohort's beginning. So the program will begin in April for the people who are randomly assigned to cohort two. So again, 30 to 35 out of those 60 to 70 people who are admitted. Then our new application will open. And then in September of 2024, that's when cohort two is done with their classes. So from April to September, since the six month program, that's when you will graduate, which will coincide with the new application cycle participants being released. Just checking the chat reall

y quick. Yes, you can always go back to your application and edit it. Make sure that all the information before you submit is complete, but you can always edit. But yeah, just so that it's submitted sooner rather than later. Because it is closing end of February, I recommend submitting as soon as you can so that you aren't running up against the deadline in September or October. There's cohort three, but we're just going to skip ahead to this application cycle, which is the second half of people

who are admitted will be in cohort four. So in either April or May of 2025, cohort four will begin. The important flag here is that if you're applying this application cycle, you should be prepared to begin the academy either in April or May of this year, or April, may of next year. So if you find out in March that you're submitted for cohort two, we recommend talking to your employer, your organization, all your employees, making sure that they understand that you're going to be away one week

out of every month for the next six months, and make sure that you have the full approval and support of your organization and then if you're submitted to cohort four, we recommend having the conversation earlier, but making sure everyone is fully aware for the next year that from April to May, 2025 to around September, October of 2025, that you're going to be away one week per month out of the next year. So that's the general timeline for this application cycle. Lemme touch something on that ri

ght there too. I think it's somewhat been said, but I just want to emphasize a little more. I think we believe this is a great thing. I mean we want it to be expanded and continue to go, but it does require a real commitment. I mean it is one thing to apply and say it, but you have to be committed. Ain't going to be all these excuses why you can't make a week. Can I leave early? We lock in, we lock in, we don't mess around. It needs to be an emergency for we understand emergencies, we get it. We

've had a few of them, this particular cohort, but it is a real commitment. You you're going to get breaks to get on the phone. We know everybody's executive directors, but you're going to have to cut everything off when you come to the academy. You can use your breaks to call back the folks and stuff. And we had to do that. We had people say, oh, can I go out and do this Zoom or I'm the executive director, I forgot I had this fundraiser joint and all this type of stuff you got to know for that

week when you were in Chicago or if you're in LA or Oakland or New York, wherever these immersives take place, you have to be committed to know because it's like any other college. If you in college, you got to be focused. You can't just jump out and about. I mean each person, this is an investment of at least 50,000 a head. So the tuition is paid for, you're not paying, you don't have to pay for anything. There's travel included, as I mentioned there, there's hotel included, there's food, there

's all type of stuff that takes place with this and other activities, but we just want folks to know and be totally committed. And if you look at the calendar and you'd be like, you know what? I'm probably a better fit for cohort three or X, Y, Z. Make sure you know that you and I don't got nothing against nobody putting down that. I think I'll be better. You can put a little note on there somewhere and say, Hey, with the timeline factor, I think my best six months would be this part of the, may

be I'm better at cohort four. And so I think things like that help the eyes that be to be able to look at it. And we did have that happen. We had some people say, Hey, there's no way I could do this first cohort. They had other commitments going forward. So I just want to throw that out there. I'm pretty sure everybody, I'm sure I'm beating a dead horse with that one. I'm probably speaking to the choir. I just want to put it out there that this is a commitment that you have to make and you basic

ally going to have to shut off some of your business for that week because we need you to all the way be locked in with us while we try to get through these classes. That is a good flag and it's also why it's very important to make sure you have the full approval of your organization and make sure you have a strong number two who's aware of this so that they can cover any kind of work needs. But there will be breaks interspersed during the week to take a quick call. But yeah, we really want you

to be able to get everything you can out of this program and it is an intensive six month program, so you definitely need to make sure that this is a time commitment that you are able to do and it is within your capacity. Which goes to another question that I saw in the chat, I'm just trying to locate it, which is what does a typical travel week look like? Which is a really good question. So everyone flies in on Sunday, so the day before classes. So make sure that you are able to travel Sunday.

You cannot get in later than 9, 9 30 at night. But we normally want people to be getting in midday to afternoon Sunday and then you'll be flying out after session either Friday or if you're having a really, really late session. For example, during graduation, we're having the celebration reception late at night. You may also be flying out that Saturday morning or midday. So it is a full week long commitment. And then another question I saw was are these college credits? So it's not college credi

ts, it's considered a certificate program. So by the end you'll receive a certificate in CVI leadership and management practices by the University of Chicago, but it's not considered official college credits. At least not yet. I mean not yet. Yeah, the goal is if we can get this right going and have some great students and all this show the vibe for this, that would be the long-term goal to get there. But I will say that I think, I mean University of Chicago obviously is a prestigious big name c

ollege mean. So a certificate for them is getting a certificate from Yale or Harvard. I mean they are the Ivy League of the Midwest and a serious college. But I'll tell you how I feel about it. Like I told the first cohort, I think the certificate is great. I think the learning is great, but what I really think is great is the opportunity to network with other like-minded individuals across the country because there's a wealth of knowledge that's in these classes beyond just the teachers and the

professors and stuff. So as I told the first cohort, if you come to this and you're not networking with your other colleagues because that's worth its weight and goal right there, just some of the people you're going to meet that you might not even know that are doing some work in a respective city and we learn from one another and networking, it makes it a lot easier for us to succeed in this work. But I think obviously the certificate is great coming from Ivy League school like University of

Chicago, but just wanted to add that little 2 cents. I see a few other questions in the chat. One was how do you go back in and edit or go over your application? So similar to other applications, I strongly recommend printing out the application questions and writing it in a separate doc before doing your final submission just so you can do your checks, make sure it's okay. I just enabled going back in and changing your application after it's been submitted. So if you submit tonight or anytime m

oving forward, you can go directly back into the virtual application and edit. But the best way to do it is to write it on a separate document, check for your typos, check spelling, make sure all the information is good, have a few people read over it and then do your final submission. And then it wasn't a question but was a great flag. Marcus was one of our instructors during the CVI models and strategies. We had Dr. Lance Williams come in, we had T hardiman come in, JTI Newbold who was doing o

ther research. So Dr. Chico himself is doing a training. So we have a lot of people in the CVI space who are either hosting our immersive sessions or who are actually teaching the sessions. So I think that's a misnomer that's really, really important for people who are interested. This is not going to be a traditional University of Chicago booth training program. It will still have the rigor as well as the prestige associated with the University of Chicago name. But this is built by designed for

and ran by people who are in the CVI space and who know the work and are doing the work. So it's meant to be practical. It's meant to help catalyze change and inspire innovation and it's grounded in this field. So it's not just going to be an ivory tower type organization. It's going to be very similar to the types of trainings that, for example, like Marcus, what's used to running in Houston, but just more tailored for people who are leaders in their organization. So a good example is that Mar

k taught a course on managing a non-traditional workforce. And so what does HR look like in a CVI world where you're having credible messengers in your organization as opposed to a more typical workforce. So that would be a good example of how the program may look a little bit different than traditional executive leadership or management programs. Another question I see is will the cohort allow us with major network connections that are doing the same work allow the C-D-I-L-A ticket to train oth

er community groups for profits? The certificate? I can answer that. I. Answer. That. I mean at the end of the day, I mean the certificate is going to, obviously it's going to give you some, I mean you learning, it's a good academy. It's the only one in the country right now that's dealing with leadership. It has some of the best backend sponsors and people involved. And so I would say this Preston, that it can't hurt but it damn sure ain't going to just allow you to train other community-based

groups for profit. I mean that's going to be based off your relationships and how people trust you and things like this might give you a little boost, but that's based off of relationships. I mean there's people doing that that don't have no certificate, but they got good relationships that got a resume over years of doing certain things, which allows them to do that across the country. So I can't say just because we graduate through this that it's just going to open the floodgates for things of

that nature, but it sure damn sure can't hurt because it's just obviously it's another thing that you can put on your resume that you completed this, you were part of this and so it definitely can't hurt, but there's no way we can say if it's going to make that be a reality because different in every city and who they work with and how they work with 'em and that's based off relationships more than it is a certificate or scholarship a degree or whatever. We want to call anybody because paperwor

k is just paperwork. You got to have the relationships and have the trust when it comes to dealing with people and they bread. Exactly. And then will we be learning how to write up our CVI programs on our grants and budgets? This is a good question. We also had a question about hr. So I'm just going to go back to our core themes and which will be helpful. So right at the end with operations and management, one of the classes that is going to be taught is budgeting 1 0 1 and then we're also havin

g a round table discussion with the DOJ where they talk about the grant writing process and publicly available grants. We also had a class on strategic fundraising and then we're considering classes like compliance process design and grant writing. So the short answer of that is this program, yes, we'll be focusing on the process of grant writing and how to create a successful program and write grants that will be successful on both the public as well as private capacity. The question about hr,

I think we've had about three trainings so far on hr, so Marcus's as well as more of a culture informed training. So how to create a good culture in a non-traditional workforce as well as a class by Chasta Martin who was at the North Lawndale Employment Network who talked about with people who have been justice and system impacted, how you can implement progressive discipline that is really meant to help make sure that the work is getting done in the way it needs to without potentially opening u

p old wounds or recreating that sort of trauma that people have experienced, which is pretty common in the field. So we'll have a lot of HR trainings, they will be specific to CVI work and a lot of them are paired with handouts, examples and activities that can be implemented in your organizations. With that, I'm just going to check the chat to make sure there are no more questions. Feel free to raise your hand if any else come up and then I'm going to go all the way to the end of our slide. Whi

le you're doing that, I want to ask you this question My brother tank. So that's a great question right there. And so here's the thing with that right there, brother tank, if y'all see the thing he said for the five day trips, what are the rooms like? So to answer that one, I mean we getting you straight bro. Nobody's going be in a shabby motel six or anything of that nature or super eight or something like that. So you're going to be straight on that like the room where no matter where we go, w

e do our best to try to make the accommodations be straight and all the way, right? The part on here, this is a great question because we had some issues with this second part of the question, can I get my lady a ticket and bring her to stay in the room with me? So here's what I say to that, can't nobody stop you from paying whoever you want to pay for to come somewhere, but what we don't want people to do, we have sessions set up when you're here for five days, there's a lot of stuff we taking

you out to dinner, we got keynote speakers, there's more to it than just the class stuff. And so in some situations we might have a bus come get you a sprinter, whatever, if you got people come there, it is a class so they can't come to the classes and all the activities after when everything's done or whatever it may be. Sometimes these days are long and you might not get done until seven, eight o'clock, whatever it is because after class we might have an activity where we're doing something. A

nd so if it's an activity, like we went to a few games and things of that nature, we did a lot of things. So it'd be one of 'em things where I think this is without being said, they would just have to buy their situation, buy their ticket, make sure they got their own rental because not that we tripping off of that, but when you start one thing, then all the rest of the students are like, well damn, my folks could have got on the bus too or how can I? So making everybody that's got to be on your

own, but just remember, I mean it is still a school or class, but them being tucked away in the room with you and y'all do stuff. Whatever you do at night, ain't nobody tell you no to that. I'm just saying make sure you still keep a professional where you're in class and what happens after class is what happens after class. As long as it doesn't interfere with the work, it would be remiss for me to be able to say, oh no, you can't bring nobody, just don't make a distraction when it comes to you

r work in the class, intertwine it with the sessions and stuff like that. Not that you would do that tank, but I'm just putting that out there because we had to deal with that with cohort number one. So great question. I'm glad I could put a little context to it. And then class typically does go from anywhere from 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM to about five or 6:00 PM and then we normally have some community building activities afterwards, so mandatory as well as optional dinners and activities for people

to do because as was mentioned on this call, a really important part of this program is not just the learnings that you're taking but the connections you're making to leaders from across the country. So we really want to facilitate people having the forum and space that is less formal to really get to know each other, to learn from each other, to build bonds. And then we normally also have a speaker series where we'll bring in high profile individuals like for example, we had the attorney genera

l, or sorry, the DA Kim Fox from Chicago come in. We had Senator Dick Durbin speaking to us during launch as well as Kwame Raul. So there will be plenty of opportunities to yes, of course spend time with your family, but really during that week we want people to be focusing as much as possible on the program and engaging as much as possible with their fellow participants on the hotel and the travel. We are sponsored at the moment by United Airlines, so all flights would be United Airlines and it

would be economy. You would get two free bags and you would let us know your seating preference if you want to sit window or aisle and then your time preferences. All right. Yeah, I know we get into the wrap of it. I think there is one last question here. Okay, just somebody just saying something out there. Thank you all but that's our own for, that's Tiara. Thank you. I just want to say, and anybody that knows me and knows Dr. Chico, at the end of the day, we going to do our best. This is mult

iple cohorts so it, it's not like we stopping just with two and two and four, we got three and five and then it's going to be a six and eight and right now we are looking at up to 10, but we want to hopefully be able to double that and keep this thing rocking and rolling. So just know that like I said earlier, if we could get everybody in that qualifies, we can only do what we got and what we can do. We're going to do our best. It's a lot of comrades out there. I personally have love for almost

everybody that's doing anything they got to do with building up their community and making it a healthier and safer environment, but just work with us. Know what I'm saying? We trying our best. It is not easy when you got love for everybody and actually all of you are probably doing great, great work in your respective cities, but we're going to do our best. We definitely have good tensions involved in this. So like I said, we're going to do our best to dissect and try to get as many people in a

s possible. And once again, if for whatever reason, don't give up on us, don't think that we just like, okay, you didn't make it so it's over with. No consistency is going to be something. If I see somebody that didn't make cohort one and two and they come in still with good spirit and they're applying for three, that's going to mean something, I promise you. But if you turn off the hook already just because you might not have been able to make a certain cohort, I don't know, we don't know. And

it's not just a one person decision, I'm saying just continue to work with us, put yourself in our shoes when you got a great bunch of talent out there. Although we got 50 some people on this call, it's more than you all that apply, just people at work and can't jump on this, et cetera. We had well over a hundred and something just for cohort one before. So I just want to throw that caveat out there. Just know we doing our best and this is for y'all. We want to see it grow, we want to see everyb

ody be blessed. I really appreciate everybody getting on this call. I didn't even expect to be on here today because I'm not even really supposed to be at work, but I love what we are doing and so I wanted to peek in. I'm glad I see so many great faces. So nothing but love for y'all. Awesome. Thank you so much Marcus. And actually wait, am I right in saying your birthday is tomorrow? Yep. My birthday is tomorrow. So happy birthday Marcus. Happy birthday Marcus. Appreciate you. Thank you birthday

brother. Thank you. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Appreciate y'all man. I'm actually on a pastoral retreat right now. Some of y'all might not know, but I am a pastor and so I'm dialed in with God and I'm spending my birthday with some of my other pastor friends and God is good. So that's all I say. But I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Just keep me in prayer. That's the best gift you could give to me. We pray for all old people. What's that? Now we pray for all old people. Oh okay, I hear.

I know that voice. I hear you Corey. Alright, well I'm glad that I wasn't expected to get old, you know how I wasn't expected to make it to these pages, so That's right. I appreciate you big fan. You know, thank you. For joining Marcus, even though you should be on your retreat. I know, but I love y'all man. I wanted to see some of the faces and see who was able to make it. So I'm glad I was able to make it on here. I am going to jump now because I could feel my wife's pressure get off this dam

n work call. So love y'all man. We'll be in tune. I'm going to let y'all have the rest of y'all evening. Appreciate you. I'm out. Okay, peace. Thank you Marcus. And then I'll remain on the line for the next five minutes or so if anyone wants to ask more of an individual or idiosyncratic question if you don't have a question. Thank you so much again for joining this call. I know it was a lot of information, but we're genuinely so excited that you're willing to participate in this academy, that yo

u're interested in this academy. And just seeing the amount of people on this call is really, really exciting and heartening and I really hope to be able to read all of your applications. So thank you again everyone. I know you're really busy individuals and this was late at night, so it's very much appreciated. And then you can hop off. Thank you for joining and I hope you all have a great week. Hello? Hello? Hi, is there a way to get a copy of the recording? I didn't get the email with the lin

k until, I didn't see it until just now. So is there a way to get a copy of the recording or? Yes, so I'm actually going to be sending a Google Drive link that everyone can view that will have these slides, the recording and the application flyer. So once we hop off and the recording ends, it'll take like 30 minutes to an hour just to upload to the cloud and then everyone who is on this call will receive the recording. Okay, thank you. Yeah, no problem. Have a good night. Hi Arin. I had a questi

on of clarification because when I was doing my application, nothing popped up asking for the references. I just put the name and phone numbers in there. So are you all now asking for us to go ahead and collect those references now or do you all want us to wait to another portion of the review process for us to submit those letters of reference? So I think that was a question that a lot of folks had just because we weren't originally including that as part of the application and then it was adde

d on a bit later. So I'm putting in the chat right now to the people who are still on the call, the link to upload those letters of recommendation I would recommend submitting by the end of the month. If that happens a little bit later, that's okay. By middle of March will be probably the final time you can submit those two references just because we are going to be submitting the decisions by end of March. But really that end of February written application is the most essential and hard deadli

ne. So in the chat that doc is where you can upload your letters of recommendation. If it's easier to feel free to just email it to me directly, but yeah, no you didn't do anything wrong the first time around. This is our first time really launching, so we were still moving things around in that first couple of weeks, but if you want to use that doc you can. Does that make sense? Yes ma'am. Thank you. Awesome. No problem. When they email you the letter of reference, will it come from the individ

ual people who send you the letter? Do they just need to make mention of who they sending it for or so forth or what? Sorry. So you asked. I sent your email address to my references that are going to email you their letter of reference. Right? That fine. Okay. Alright. And also the other question I was asking was the people that I have listed on the application as referenced, are they the only one who can submit a letter of reference on my behalf? Is there, okay. Okay. Alright. I would say that

at least one of your letters needs to match your written application, so someone who can speak to your professional experience, but you can submit as many letters as you want and they can be for community members, other folks that you think are relevant, you can submit whatever supplemental information you would like. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Alright, any other questions, feel free to raise your hand and I can unmute you. Okay. And then I'm just going to mention one more time, the meeting is ov

er. You can feel free to hop off if you don't have any one-on-one questions to ask me and the rest of C-V-I-L-A staff. Awesome. Okay, does anyone else have any questions? Alrighty, is it Walker? Yes. First name is John. Hi, how are you? Hi, good, how are you? All. Right. I stepped away for a second when you was talking about the letters of reference. I know when I did the application I did put down the three references. Is there an added piece to that that you talked about that I may have missed

? Yeah, so originally we were only asking for those references and then we decided a little bit later on in the application cycle that we wanted two letters that were about half a page to one page long single spaced. So I put in the chat and then I'll just re-put in the chat now the link for submitting those. You can also just email it to me directly. The important thing is that you need to have your completed written application done by that deadline February 29th, and make sure to have your le

tters in, ideally by February 29th. But if you need a little bit of extra time, we can always extend that until middle of March or so. But yeah, there are two letters of recommendation from those references that you put on the written application. Wow. Thank. You Arin. Yeah, no problem. Looking forward to seeing it. Okay, any other questions, Corey, Antoine, Charles, or Delphine?