Gaye Jackson is Houston's Lemonade Day City Director. Lemonade Day is a youth entrepreneurship program available to all children for free. All parents and kids need to do is go to the website to take part in the program. They'll learn financial literacy with the basics of running a business: supply, demand, the cost of the first and the profit that can me made from the second, it's all designed to prime kids to think independently when it comes to finances. It helps to teach people how to run a household or a business. And they have a great philosophy about making a profit: save some, spend some and share some. Go to
www.lemonadeday.org/houston

Kevin Hattery is the president and CEO of Boys & Girls Club of Greater Houston. They have been on the forefront of educating children and parents during this pandemic and their efforts are really impressive. They are helping to deliver meals to their kids, they're keeping in touch with all of them and they have reopened their clubs by following the CDC's rule. The rules are stringent. Kevin talks about how seriously all the kids have to follow the directives and how the system works. We also talk about the future and how much will keep changing. The silver lining is that a lot of their digital programs will scale in the future and allow them to serve even more youths in the area. Go to www.bgcgh.org to support their awesome programs.

Charles Rotramel is the CEO of ReVision, an organization that works to break the cycle of isolation among disconnected youth caught up in the juvenile justice system. They do it by matching youths with volunteers and these days, these volunteers are serving meals 5 days a week to keep in touch with their clients. They've served over 6000 meals since the start of the pandemic shut down. The program works. Youths matched with a ReVision mentor are far less likely to get into trouble again. They are getting what they need most: grown ups to show them the way and who don't give up on them.
Go to their website to learn more about this awesome program: www.houstonrevision.org

Bob Stokes is the president of the Galveston Bay Foundation and Haille Leija is their Habitat Restauration manager. The first Annual Houston Oyster Festival is on April 4. It'll be a day of great Texas seafood, and an opportunity to learn about restoring our oyster reefs and how crucial it is to good conservancy in the Galveston area. A single oyster will filter 50 GALLONS of water per day! They are crucial to keeping our gulf coast healthy and restaurants are joining in by recycling their oyster shells.
Traditionally, oyster shells are thrown into landfills. The Galveston Bay Foundation is recycling them instead and after a natural purification process, they put them back in the bay where they serve as a bed for new living oysters. It's so reasonable it's fun to join in. Go to: www.galvbay.org to participate.

Julius Young is the new chairman of the board of Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Houston and Will Leven is a member of the board of directors of Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Houston and he serves on the Executive Committee and Chairs the Development Committee. Their Org is extremely successful in providing after school programs for kids of all background. Their sporting and fun activities they are famous for (the major sport teams in town all help them with great freebies) are actually a hook to get kids into safe after school environments where they work on homework, social behavior and the future. Indeed, their internship program is a great success.
As a proof of concept, we discuss Julius' past since he was once a member of the program. Go to www.bgcgh.org for info and consider making a donation. Big or small, it will be helpful.

Lauren Bair is the marketing coordinator for Child Advocates and Kelly St. Mary is the sponsorship director for the 32nd McDonald's Houston Children’s Festival which is happening on April 4 & 5. They're closing down several blocks of Downtown Houston for the biggest festival of its kind in this country. It all benefits Child Advocates who train mentors to help youths going through our court system.
Child Advocates go to court with these children to inform the judge on how they're doing mentally and physically and to ask for whatever need they may have. We talk about the great training program volunteers go through and we go through the lsit of awesome activities going on at the festival, including an appearance by SpongeBob Squarepants and other child-TV celebrities.
Go to www.childadvocates.org to see how you can help to change a child's life.
Info on the festival is here: www.houstonchildrensfestival.com

Elizabeth Kennedy is the director of development for the University Libraries at the University of Houston. They are creating Open Educational Resources (OER), teaching and learning resources – aka textbooks – that are published in the public domain. This means that anyone can freely use and re-purpose them. When a single textbooks can cost more than $120 and amount to over $1000 of necessary purchases for college students, many are left without the books they need. UH is incentivizing the program to compel professors to create and use open textbooks in their courses. It's been a tremendous success thus far and they're just getting started. It also has the advantage of cutting out the greedy, corrupt academic publishing industry. What's not to love!
Go to www.libraries.uh.edu for info on how you can take advantage of their system and participate in creating textbooks.

Genevieve Keeney is the president of The National Museum of Funeral History. She used to be a medic in the US Army and she is now a licensed mortician specializing in education. The National Museum of Funeral History is opening a new exhibit honoring George H.W. Bush on President's Day. There's a lot that goes into organizing a series of national funerals and we learn about the army of people it takes and why we feel compelled to celebrate people's life the way we do. The museum also has a large collection of hearses used for famous people and their permanent collection: Icons in Ash, Life-Affirming Portraits Made From Cremated Remains is among the most unusual in Houston. Go to: www.nmfh.org

Christine Holland is the CEO & executive director of Rebuilding Together Houston. By repairing homes, they revitalize communities like the Second Ward where they are currently concentrating a lot of their efforts. Most of the work done on houses is by volunteers and you should sign up to help seal the outside of a house or help install safety features. They'll train volunteers and those are two of the kinds of easy-to learn repairs we can all help with. If you're in need of repairs, call them to find out if you qualify for help:
713-659-2511. You can also visit the website: www.rebuildinghouston.org

Cristina Cave is the community relations manager for BakerRipley and she's back to talk about FREE tax preparation services. They've helped over 320,000 households with this awesome program. People qualify if they declare less than $58,000 in yearly income and they'll get top-quality, professional tax preparation advice from certified tax preparers. Cristina also cautions against signing loans against future refunds. Those go from downright dishonest to pretty shady. These loans often "kill you with fees" and it's best to avoid them. Go to www.freetaxcenters.org. Remember that they speak your language! They will find an interpreter so anyone can get help.