0:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village, and today I get to share a friend of mine with you. Dr. Patrick Makokoro is a social entrepreneur, an early childhood development practitioner, an educational researcher with extensive experience working in community and international development. I got to meet Patrick when we were both presenting at the World Forum for Early Childhood Education. I met him in Panama, and then we both bound up seeing each other again. We were selected as experts for UNESCO, for United Nations Education Congress, and there were nine experts selected globally, and he and I were each there and just ran into each other. He is a human who I love lea...

00:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village, and today we get to dive in with Dr. Shelby Kretz to chat about empowering kids with social justice education. Dr. Shelby Kretz is the creator of Little Justice Leaders, an organization that provides social justice education resources for educators and families. Little Justice Leaders offers a monthly subscription for parents and teachers that provides resources each month to learn about social justice. Little Justice Leaders has sent over 17,000 learning kits to parents and teachers around the world, and Shelby earned her Ph.D. in education from UCLA, and her dissertation explored social justice education at the elementar...

00:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village. And today, I got to hang out with Maria Davis-Pierre to chat about Black families who are navigating autism diagnoses and what that Black side of autism looks like, both within the Black community and outside of the Black community. Maria graduated from Florida State University with a Bachelor's of Science in Sociology and went on to obtain a Master's of Science in Mental Health Counseling from Nova Southeastern University. As a licensed mental health therapist, Maria primarily works with Black parents to provide support through education and advocacy training. Her passion for working in the field stems from her personal j...