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Start Local is focused on helping businesses and non-profits in and around Chester County, Pennsylvania, connect and grow together. Our aim is to bring together the many folks that make up our wonderful community in greater Philadelphia to share and learn from each other.
The Start Local podcast features interviews with business and nonprofit leaders from in and around Chester County, Pennsylvania.
The Southern Chester County Chamber of Commerce partners with the Start Local podcast to promote trade, commerce, industry, and sustainable economic development while supporting a diverse, growing marketplace.
Learn more at the Southern Chester County Chamber of Commerce website, sccc.com.
Hey, hey, welcome to the Start Local Podcast. I'm Liam Dempsey, and for our 100th episode, I am here with the one and only Eric Goodmanson. Eric, how are you, friend?
100 episodes. I'm doing well. I don't feel that old, I've got to say, but it's one day at a time.
Yeah, yeah, 100 episodes. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's pretty exciting. I'm pretty pleased with that, and I hope our audiences too. They seem to be because people keep downloading and listening.
And I don't know what the official, you know, representative symbol of 100 years is.
I know 25 is silver, but yeah, I have no idea what 100 is.
I have to do some homework on that.
Probably a casket.
I don't know.
I don't think so.
Not in 2026.
No, probably not.
Probably not.
Folks, today we are very pleased to welcome Jan Michener.
Jan is the founder and executive director of Arts Holding Hands and Hearts.
And that's a Kennett Square-based nonprofit.
focused on supporting young people and under-resourced community in Chester County.
Regular listeners to our podcast here, our 100th episode podcast,
might know the organization by its acronym, AHA.
Jan, we have had so many guests sing the praises of AHA.
It's an absolute pleasure to welcome you to the Start Local podcast.
Thank you, Liam and Eric.
It's my pleasure, and I'm so honored to be here.
Yeah, Jen, it's lovely to get to know you a little bit better here in this context and explain to our listeners all the things that AHA has going on.
So I'm excited to get into it.
Well, I'm excited to share.
It's a win all around.
It's a win all around.
Jen, I just shared that you're the founder and executive director of AHA.
And then you started, I learned, and then before we hit the record button in our previous conversations, that you started AHA back in 2013.
And you were initially looking to support young people in our local prison system, really by helping them flourish and living fulfilling lives beyond the criminal justice system, primarily through arts and arts education.
But we'll get into that in more details.
But you have since moved beyond the prison systems and you're now moving into schools and into communities and you have been for some time.
At a very high level, what community does AHA serve and how does it do so?
AHA serves the community of Chester County, but we focus first in Coatesville because where we started was at the Chester County Youth Center, which is the detention center for youth in Chester County.
And when we found out over 40% of youth that are incarcerated in Chester County were from Coatesville, we knew we needed to make that base.
And then we were invited to bring our programs to Kennett.
And so Kennett became our second base.
And we're all over.
We're in Kennett, Coatesville, in Oxford, in Phoenixville.
But our base is really Coatesville, Kennett, and the Pocopson area because that's where the Chester County Youth Center is based.
Sticking with that question a little bit more, help us understand the challenges that young people in those areas of the county face.
Well, the big challenge of Coatesville is it's a community of poverty, and it's generational
poverty, generational trauma, and a lot of generational incarceration.
So it perpetuates the revolving door into the system.
And in Kennet, the youth that we predominantly serve are the children of the immigrant families,
And their challenge is many of them are ESL, English as a second language.
And our schools are not really adept for second language students.
And so we bring our programs.
We have people that are part of our volunteers and our interns.
And we always make sure we have someone that is a native Spanish speaker.
let's get into your programs let's get into ha ha's programs jan the website makes it clear that
we we really don't have time to cover all your programs you're doing so much good work so i want
to select a few and encourage our listeners to head over to your website to learn more when they
have a moment and we'll be ensured to include the the link to your website over in our show notes at
startlocal.co so you are spearheading dolly parton's imagination library and locally you're
You're spearheading it locally.
Tell us about how the program is doing.
Are you able to deliver many books to local students?
What does that look like?
Well, we have over 11,000 children in Chester County receiving a book every single month.
And this is for children zero from birth to age five years old.
There are 60 affiliates in Pennsylvania with a little over 60,000 children enrolled in the Dolly Parton Imagination Library.
And with AHA having over 11,000, we are the gold standard for that.
And we're working now with Senator Kamita, Senator Kane, and Representative Hambridge in Norristown, where we also bring the program for the statewide Dolly Parton Imagination Library expansion.
And we want every child in Pennsylvania from birth to age five to be able to sign up and get a free book.
And for that Dolly Parton Imagination Library, we have, since we started that program in Chester County in 2021, delivered almost 300,000 books directly to Children's Mailbox.
That is a lot of books.
I'm trying to wrap my head around that.
just, you know, the logistics, moving it around. There's a lot going on there. But just in the
interest of time, because you do so much, I want to move on to another program that you have.
We've heard a lot about step up, step out, make a difference. And that program, it was created to
support high school girls in Coatesville and shifting their mental well-being to a mindset of
fighting to one of leading. So tell us about SUSO. And I'm assuming SUSO is the correct acronym
for it. Right, right.
And that
was started four years.
We're going into our fourth
year this year.
And it was started when
people
the narrative on the
street in Coatesville was
girls in Coatesville were fighting.
And so I
what is
it called? The Alliance for
Health Equity was
doing a program called
you know, Community Speaks, where you pitched an idea.
And one of my board members was from Coatesville at the time,
and she said, Jan, we've got to do something for girls.
They're fighting.
And I was like, you know, Oni, didn't you just hear the board say
I couldn't start another program?
And the next day I went in to work, lead a writing workshop with youth
at the Chester County Youth Center,
And there were four new girls, all from Coatesville.
So when I got home, I called Oni and I said,
okay, I think we need a program for girls in Coatesville.
And I pitched the idea at the Alliance for Health Equity
of we wanted to start this program and we needed funding.
And we came in second place.
So we didn't win the big bucks of $5,000, but we did get $1,000.
So I said, before I start a program, I need to find out what the girls are saying.
So I said, well, let's do a five-week, you know, brainstorming workshop for girls.
Invite girls in Coatesville to come for them to share why they think this is the narrative on the street.
And also find out what do they need to change that narrative and to go from surviving to thriving.
And I offered any girl that would come and do the five weeks that, you know, is one session a week that they would get $100.
And I had $1,000 thinking, oh, well, maybe I'll get five girls that will come.
Well, we got a dozen girls that showed up.
So already I was in, you know.
But they came, they shared, and what they shared was so powerful that even though we didn't have money, I said, we've got to start this program.
And we also did not have a space yet.
But what the Alliance did do is they allowed us to use the conference room at the Brandywine Health Center for our first year.
And we started it as an after-school 30-week program that the first 10 weeks would all be about self-care, resilience, what you need to be present.
Because when you've had trauma, you disassociate from your body.
And you can't learn because you're always in that fight, flight, and freeze.
So we need to first give the tools for self-regulation.
And so that's the first 10 weeks.
The second 10 weeks was about team building and leadership.
And then the third 10 weeks was about giving them a chance for their voices to be heard,
to pick an issue in Coatsville that they wanted to give voice to,
and then create a community service project to give back to the community,
to open a community dialogue.
And I thought, well, we'll do it for one year.
This is our fourth year.
I've got three girls that were from my original, you know, and they are my teen wellness ambassadors.
We are now, as of last year, we went from the health center to the second year we were at the Coatesville Y.
And then last year we were finally in the school.
And so we are now an official after-school program at the Coatesville High School.
I love that.
I love that. Thank you for taking the time to walk us through that. What a great story. What a great success.
Jen, you've told us a few times that you have programs where you actually go into the Chester County Youth Center in Pocopson and you're teaching and collaborating with children incarcerated there.
So the question is, what are the biggest challenges that AHA faces when delivering programs in this youth detention center?
Biggest challenge is changing the mindset of what people think about youth that are incarcerated.
I have to say every single one of my teachers that we go in and we have an incredible art therapist that does art program.
I do a writing program for healing.
We have a cultivating change cooking program on Saturday for all the youth.
That is one of the most favorite program, not only of the youth, but the staff as well.
And what the challenge is so many people think, oh, you know, well, they're in detention.
They're incarcerated.
They must have done something really bad.
They deserve to be there.
And our challenge is for their voices to be heard, for people to stop saying, what did they do, and instead ask what happened and what did we not do as a community and a society that allows for the mass incarceration of children.
And they are children.
We start incarcerating children at 10 years old.
That's also an amazing program that you have going on.
And I have to keep going because you have so many.
I now understand the challenge that your board gives you.
You're doing too many programs.
I get it.
But they're all worthwhile.
So I understand your perspective on it too.
Poll is another one of your programs.
Pop-up library lending is the way to write it out.
There are 55 pop-up libraries in key locations
in under-resourced corners of Chester County.
and you're more than halfway to your goal of 100 pop-up libraries, another ambitious goal of yours, Jen.
How do you measure engagement with a pop-up library?
Because I assume it's sort of self-service, right?
And I'm wondering how do you know if a specific location is being used?
Well, I love that you've done your research.
There are over 55 of the outdoor pop-up lending libraries, but we have indoor lending libraries.
So we actually have surpassed our 100.
And for those, we have collected and distributed over 600,000 books.
And we work with it.
Both our pool pop-up lending library campaign that was started in 2015 for Coatesville 100-year celebration.
So I think it's apropos that this is your 100th podcast.
and started our pool campaign in Coatesville for their 100th celebration.
What I found out, and the reason why, was we had found out that youth that are incarcerated,
85% of them are literate deficient.
And of adults that are incarcerated, 75% cannot read above a fourth grade level.
And for-profit prisons look at third grade reading levels to decide where they'll put the next prison in 10 years.
And what we also were seeing in Coatesville that children were starting to be suspended right at kindergarten.
so we knew that we needed to get books in the hands of all the children in Coatesville and so
it's our board one of the people on our board at the time Johnette Marcus said I just heard about
the barbershop libraries where they were putting like the the banker's boxes in the barbershops
and I had also met Arlene Ringert who was doing the laundromat library league putting the boxes
in laundromats and I said what oh and I had also heard about the free little lending library
and I said what if we could build the pop-up lending libraries and put them like in the parks
and everywhere that children congregate in in Coatesville and first I looked up the cost of how
it would cost to build the free little lending libraries. And we were doing this again with no
money. And I said, well, we can't do that. And so I've reached out to the community members.
And when I first started it in Coatesville, I went to several of the bigger nonprofits and they were
like, well, you can't do that in Coatesville. People will steal the books. And I said, well,
they can't steal them we're giving them away and so i bob becks from good works that is someone
that you i know later you will say what's what's someone that you need to contact good works is so
if you have not talked to bob becks yet he's amazing and i'm not going to tell you more
but he you know as we were running programs out of the coatsville library and his off his building
was across the street. And he had a little house, you know, that for saying about good works,
because they help repair houses for people in Coatesville. So I walked over and I said,
could you build me a little free little lending library that I can use as a model? And he did,
and I would take this around. So this is, we reached out to Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts,
different communities and had a community building and built the first 20 and then reached out to
school kids and artists to help paint them and that's how we got our first 20 in Coatesville
and then everything I do in Coatesville back then Lou Florence at the Kennett Library said
well why can't Kennett have it and I was like oh my gosh you know I it took me a year to get
going in Coatesville, but with the help of Lou and the Kennett Library, we brought the
pool program to Kennett. And so it's how it went. I always say, if I can do it in Coatesville,
I can do it anywhere. And so we worked with the Kennett artists and, again, Kennett community,
And that's where we have all of these beautiful pop-up lending libraries in Kennett.
Then we were asked to bring it to Oxford.
We did it in Oxford.
We've got some in Avondale.
We've got Avongrove.
We've got some in Westchester.
So we're just kind of, it just keeps growing.
Yeah, I love the, oh, go ahead, please finish.
But it was, as Eric said, you know, how do we measure, you know, how many books?
One is we work with the Chester County Intermediate Unit, their Discover Team, which are, you know, youth with special abilities that at the library, both at Cotesville, Kennett, and then we work with the CCOIC in Cotesville.
And the kids come with their aid.
They help label the books.
They help sort them.
We work with Peter Do-Rey of the Can It Able Network.
And that's another one, Can, that I highly, highly recommend.
And they also are a donation station.
And he's created a label of how he can also track which books are being taken.
And so we track it that way.
But for a long time, I didn't know if people were taking them and using them or just selling them on eBay.
And that's when Dana Looker, who wanted to start a brick-and-mortar bookstore in Coatesville, had found out about the Dolly Parton Imagination Library.
And she said, she went to all the nonprofits in Coatesville and said, would you be the sponsor?
because the books are absolutely free for the children,
but it costs the nonprofit that sponsors it, at the time, $2.50 per book.
And everyone said no.
And she went to one of the big ones, and they said,
Oh, you need to contact that Jan Mishner, you know, the pools.
She's the book lady.
She says yes to everything.
And she came to me, and, of course, I said yes.
My board of course went, what are you doing?
But that is how we became the nonprofit that sponsors the Dolly Parton Imagination Library in Chester County.
It's now $2.60 per child.
So with over $11,000, that program alone costs us over $300,000 a year.
and we do it through the Justamere Foundation.
They were the first ones that gave us a $25,000 grant to start it in Coatesville.
And then again, Chris Manna, the new director of the Kennett Library,
when he found out we were doing it in Coatesville, he said,
what about Southern Chester County?
So I went back to Lori Cushman at Just Amir, and I said, Lori, I have a big ask.
And she said, what is it, Jan?
And I said, would Just Amir Foundation fund the Dolly Parton Imagination Library for all of Chester County?
And she came back, and she said, yes.
And I said, well, that's not the big ask.
I said, the big ask is, will you do it for five years so we can see if it has an impact on kindergarten readiness?
But even more important, does it fold over into third grade reading scores?
And she said, yes, we will do it for five years.
Our fifth year runs till June 2027, next summer.
And that is why we want everyone to contact their senators and say,
vote yes on the statewide expansion.
Because when it becomes statewide, and there are 22 states that have it,
we want Pennsylvania to be 23.
The state will pick up 50%.
And Jessamir said they will continue it as long as we do it.
I love the organic nature of how that pop-up library campaign started and grew and went from town to town and brought in new partners and new collaborators and new opportunities and new funders.
That's really fantastic.
And I'm really excited to hear, following the conclusion of the campaign next summer, what the milestones achieved and what the positive outputs have been.
And I have to echo your kind words and admiration for Bob Beggs of Good Works.
He was on the show probably a year or so ago and maybe a little bit longer.
He's just a fantastic guy, and they do a lot of great work out at Good Works.
So we'll be sure to link to his episode.
And we were also fortunate enough to have the opportunity to talk to Chris Mana from Kennett Library.
So we'll link to his show as well.
And since we're here, I'm going to say that I've yet to hear Chris sing.
He was a former opera singer.
And Chris, if you're listening to this episode, the next time I see you, I'm going to ask you to sing because I would love to hear your voice.
But Jan, thanks so much for that answer.
I'm going to move us on to the next question here.
And in our previous conversation, you and I were talking about how AHA is pivoting to launch the Community Peacekeeper Project.
And from my conversation with you, I appreciate that the Community Peacekeeper Project, it is funded through the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency.
People might know that as PCCD.
But tell us a little bit more about the program.
Why are you pivoting and what's the aim of this new project or this pivoted project?
Well, the same year that I started the SUSO program, I also started a filmmaking program for youth on probation in Coatesville called the Restorative Justice Filmmaking Program.
And we, you know, again, I started it with no money, but I went to Jason Torres at the Chester County Probation Center.
And before COVID, the Chester County Youth Center had four programs.
Well, they had three programs.
They had the Detention Center for Boys and Girls that are incarcerated.
They had a shelter for homeless and abused girls, and they had what was called the Evening Report Center for boys that were on home arrest, you know, with the ankle, you know, bracelet, where they would go and pick them up Monday through Friday and bring them to the Chester County Youth Center from 4 to 8, the witching hours.
for different programs. And AHA was one of the programs we would do, our creative writing,
our mindfulness programs. And Jason Torres, one of the program's directors for the program.
After COVID, they stopped that. But Jason was one of the probation managers at the Chester County
probation center. And what I was seeing happening at the Chester County Youth Center was
the youth that were graduating when they turned 18, they weren't going back to the community,
is they were graduating to the prison next door.
And a lot of the youth would tell me
how they wrote more for our programs,
how they felt safer in our programs
than they felt back in their communities.
It is very easy to get in the system.
It is very hard to get out.
It becomes a revolving door.
And they entered the system for very minor things.
But then this is where they would come,
and then they would be sent to either a center for drug addiction,
you know, substance use disorders,
or depending on what their charge was, state secure.
And they would be there for like six months.
Then they would go back to their community to the same situation
that allowed them to be in the system in the first place.
Then they'd come back to CCYC.
They would have them for another 30 days or so
until they'd go to another placement,
and it became the revolving door.
But every time they came, and we were still there,
we're the longest-running programs at CCYC.
We've won national awards for our programs.
We have three books published of their writings in art.
And they said, why did they have to wait until they were incarcerated to have their programs?
And I said, we need to be in the community starting in Coatesville.
We need to offer our programs to youth to catch them upstream before they end up downstream in the system.
That's one reason of SUSO.
But I also said, we need to have a program in Kutzpah for kids on probation to give them the support where they don't end up back in detention.
And my background is theater, playwriting, and film.
So I went to Jason, and I said to Jason, what if we either start a theater program, like playback theater that I had been part of,
or a filmmaking program for youth on probation.
And he goes, do you know how to do that?
And I go, well, we'll find it.
And he goes, all right.
And literally, that's how that started.
And we now have two documentaries.
We have a short documentary, Invisible No More, Voices of Youth That Are Impacted by the System.
This year, we finished our full-length documentary, it's 59 Minutes, called Invisible No More Walk in My Shoes that we screened at Uptown Performing Arts Center June 18.
And what the people said of how it impacted them.
And it was also a call to action.
What I also saw is that the kids at CCYC were asking for restorative justice trainings that we do.
And in Kennett, we partner with Patty Hillkirk of Camp Dreamcatcher.
And she and I have gotten a grant together to lead restorative practice training for different organizations here in Kennett,
In Coatesville, I work with Justin Brown, who is the director of climate for the Downingtown School District,
and also Don Matter, who is the director of climate and belonging for the Coatesville School District.
And I said, what we need to do is pivot the filmmaking program into a community peacekeeper program.
And we'll continue with giving them the tools of media, of the photography, film, also introducing podcasting.
So I may be calling on you two to be a guest artist at one of our sessions.
But also then the probation center says we love what you're doing, but instead of a whole year program, need to do it in 10-week segments the way community service protocol is.
So we're going to have three 10-week cohorts of youth on probation.
But at the end of each 10-week sessions, we're going to do a community peacekeeper circle,
sharing with the community, bringing in the community, learning the peacekeeper,
how to resolve conflict without violence, of creating a community, rebuilding the harm,
rebuilding relationships, repairing the harm, and creating a community of mutual aid and support.
And one other component of it is we also have started, it's called the Youth Justice Advisory Board with youth that are in college.
AHA depends on interns. We work with interns at Westchester University who we give them the
training where they come in and work with us with the filmmaking, with the SUSO, with youth at CCYC,
but now we're working with also youth at Lincoln University, Cheney University, and they are,
will be leading, they'll be getting the restorative and upstanding training, and they will be helping lead the community circles as well.
I appreciate all the partners that you have and your approach that really just looks at how do we prevent people from entering that criminal justice system in the first place.
And the statistic that you said earlier that really jumped out to me was that, you know, when they're trying to figure out where to place the next prison, they're looking at places with low literacy rates.
And that's, I think, very, very telling and tells me that hopefully your programs will have a big impact there on keeping people out of the system because that's really what it's all about.
You mentioned some partners there that we've also had on the show again.
So Patty Hillkirk from Camp Dreamcatcher, for example, yet another one.
great example of local philanthropic works at really doing a great job. So you're definitely
talking to the right people to make a difference and you've done an amazing job assembling together.
And I'd love to spend all day talking about those partners. I'd love to spend all day talking about
those programs, but we don't. We have a limited amount of time, so we can't. So I want to move
on to some things about you because people need to go to your website. Absolutely. You've done a good
job explaining that and selling that so people can learn even more about AHA. But let's focus on
a moment. You teach yoga. Yoga is a big part of your life. You're deeply experienced and highly
trained as a yoga instructor. You bring yoga and its philosophies to many AHA's programs. I can hear
that in your answers. And I know from taking your yoga classes with you, you're definitely a student
favorite. People really enjoy your classes. They feel a lot more relaxed and a lot more healthy
after they complete them.
So what would you share with someone
who's just considering getting into yoga?
Well, I have kind of pivoted there as well.
I teach a free donation-based class
at the Kennett Library that's called Yochi,
which is a combination of yoga and Shagong.
And I actually have studied Shagong longer than even yoga.
But when I started Aha in 2013, I was doing trauma training in yoga, doing the yoga behind bars training, yoga gangster training, yoga prison training.
And so that's why I started with bringing yoga to, you know, youth that were incarcerated.
But the Shigong is about, and the Yochi is about connecting with yourself, with your energy, through movement, through gentle movement, through breath, through awareness.
Because when trauma settles in our bodies, our bodies hold our story.
And it's about, through breathing, it's an automatic system that we have control over.
and through learning how to breathe to calm our breath, to calm our body, we get in touch with
ourselves and we're able to shake and let it go and get unstuck so that we can, instead of being
stuck, we can move through it and be more present. But it also connects to ourselves, to each other,
to the earth and to the universe.
And it shows that we are all connected.
And what one person does affects the other.
And how can we move through with more kindness and more gentleness?
Jan, your professional background is an impressive mix of acting and teaching.
And folks, we haven't even really got into our acting background.
And she's done a number of other VIN interviews that I've listened to and watched.
I'll be sure to include some links to those over on the show notes at startlocal.co.
So we won't give away all the spoilers of that.
But the question is this, Jan.
What skills from your acting and teaching careers do you use most in leading AHA?
The power of stories to connect.
Is theater and film are all about storytelling.
And that's where we go in.
One of our first lessons we do is I have a story to tell that only I can tell, and my story is.
And that when we hear each other's stories, it's we find we have so much more in common.
And that also that we share, we all share pain.
We all share joy.
We all share the wanting to make a difference.
And it's through sharing our stories we connect.
And that's what AHA is about.
It's about taking down the walls, building the bridges, and knowing that together that we all matter.
And making sure that everyone is seen and heard and know that they make a difference.
I was reading on the pedagogy and practice page of your website that you take a trauma-sensitive approach to education healing.
And you've noted that in order for the mind to heal, the body must be engaged fully in the process.
Would you explain what that means to you and how it plays out across your programs at AHA?
Well, I will even demonstrate with you if you would play with me a minute.
Sure.
say jump into my sandbox with me. So I invite you and I invite any listeners that are around,
if it's comfortable, is just fill your feet on the floor and even wiggle your toes and then gently
press your feet into the ground, letting yourself get grounded, rooted here. And then gently notice
where your body touches your chair or if you're sitting on the floor where it touches the floor.
feeling yourself grounded and supported.
And then I invite you, if it feels comfortable and if it's available,
is to reach your arms out, spreading your fingers,
and then just take your hands up and take a big breath in
through your nose if that's available,
and gently bringing your arms down and blowing it out through your lips
as if you're blowing out a birthday candle.
So once more, take a deep breath in,
filling up your whole body with this healing oxygen.
And as you exhale, just bringing it down and filling your body, gently softening, letting go.
And just notice. Notice how you feel.
And that's what I ask is always just notice there's no right or wrong.
It's just what it is in creating that space for you to be here.
Because we're human beings, not human doings.
We're so busy doing, we forget to be.
Yeah, I followed along here in the podcast studio.
And as short as that was, as brief as that was, Jan,
I definitely noticed a little difference.
So I can imagine with proper focus and a real attention a bit more time,
it can make a huge difference.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I hope folks out there listening,
if they didn't do it when Jan was talking the first time,
go ahead and rewind a few minutes and re-listen to it.
It's well worth it.
Well worth it.
more than a handful of guests on our show have shared your organization,
AHA, as a local nonprofit that more folks should know about.
You have a lot of admirers in and around Chester County.
And we heard about it today that you're collaborating with so many different organizations,
local businesses, local nonprofits, all trying to support local children,
particularly in underserved communities, under-resourced communities.
I wonder if I can ask you to kind of think about it a little bit
and tell us about one of your more unlikely partnerships.
I have to say almost all of them were unlikely at the beginning
because it ties in where you asked.
My background was in acting,
and then I was a teaching artist in Philadelphia
with the Philadelphia Young Playwrights and Philadelphia Theater Company.
And we had done, I started a program called Hands Across the Ages,
bringing seniors and teenagers together to share their stories
and then to pick an issue that they wanted to give voice back to, to the community.
And in 2012, they picked bullying in schools
and that we need more arts education and not more guards with guns.
And their piece was called I Am Living.
And this was right before the Sandy Hook incident.
And they performed to a packed school.
Well, it was the packed Suzanne Roberts Theater.
And Young and Old shared how they had either been bullied in school or been a bully.
and that they became advocates to stop the bullying.
And long story short, several of the inner city schools where I was teaching were closed.
Funding for the arts in other city schools where I was teaching were closed.
And I went to the directors of education at Philadelphia Young Playwrights and Philadelphia Theater Company.
And I said, if they do not believe that arts in schools of poverty is needed, and instead they're going to funnel the children into the prisons, we need to be in the prisons.
And they said, we don't go there.
And I said, well, I guess I'll have to start my own organization.
And that's how AHA was started.
And I was teaching at the time, Eric knows sunrise yoga at Yoga Secrets.
And it was a 6 a.m. class.
And I went in the day after I was no longer teaching in Philadelphia.
And at the end, I said, so can anyone get me into the prisons legally?
And one of the people was a probation officer, Dawn Thomford.
And she said, well, you know about the Chester County Youth Center down the street.
It's a detention center.
And she said, oh, you need to go meet Carrie Avery and Joe Frankenstein.
Now, I had just done a horror film.
And I said, what is this, a horror film, Joe Frankenstein and Carrie Avery?
And bottom line, I went and I told them, I would like to do a free six-week yoga class for youth that are incarcerated.
And they said, are you kidding me?
And this is back in 2013 before yoga and mindfulness were buzzwords.
And in fact, many people in the communities where I was serving looked at it as, you know, voodoo and, you know, not good.
And so that was the first unlikely partnership where they said, okay, we'll give you six weeks.
And then I think they were like, go away.
and after six weeks is not only was it having an impact on the youth,
it was making a difference with the guards and the staff.
And that's where I said, well, since that worked, now can I do what I really do,
which is the writing for healing.
But I need to get paid for it because I need to bring in teaching artists from Philadelphia
that I had trained to be the teaching artist.
And I said, we need to pay them.
You know, people have no problems paying doctors and bankers and hedge fund people.
But they think that artists should just give it away.
You know, that we should just live on feeling good and making a difference.
But as I said, you need to pay them because only when you pay artists,
and paid teachers, are they valued? And what we bring is valuable. We make a difference.
We create change. And so it was, was, was, and, and then when I found out that 40% of the youth
were from Coatesville, I said, I need to go to Coatesville. And they said, well, we don't need
another art, you know, art program in Coatesville. We don't need another person coming in and
telling us, you know, what we need to do. And I was like, well, I'm not coming in to tell anyone
what you need to do. And they also said, we don't need another white woman coming in and telling us
what's wrong. And I said, you're right. I am a white woman, but I'm not coming in to tell anyone
on what's wrong. I'm coming in to find out what do you have right now and how can we come together
to work together to make sure that the youth can go from surviving to thriving.
Jan, AHA has a wealth of programs and you talked about some of your funding sources earlier from
different grants and different grants you've won through different partnerships. How does AHA fund
most of the programs that it runs locally?
Are they through grants or donations?
Or what's your funding sources these days?
It's a whole slew.
At the Chester County Youth Center, they get Title I money to pay for us.
We're a fee for service there.
The Jessamere Foundation funds the Dolly Parton Imagination Library.
And then we have the PCCD grant, which is state funding.
that we will have through January of 2027 for this year,
the Pivoting to the Community Peacekeeper Project.
Then we have a few other grants that we get.
A lot of the money is through individual donations,
through reaching out, through people hearing us like this,
And through, we're having a year-long fundraiser this year called Baskets of Love.
And we started Baskets of Love back during COVID, where you couldn't be out in person.
And a lot of different organizations that we serve, because we are not a brick and mortar.
We have this little office in Kennett, but all of our programs are with other organizations where they are.
So we brought in, reached out to 12 different nonprofits in Chester County where we bring our programs to.
And we highlighted them.
And we said, please, they're bigger organizations.
We're a small little grassroots organization.
We want people to know about them and to fund them because then funding them, they will be able to hire us to bring in our art workshops, our mindfulness programs, you know, our different programs.
And so this year I said, what if, my famous words, I always love to go, what if, you know, I'm not afraid of not knowing.
And it's like only if you go, what if we try this?
Can we know if it will make a difference?
So I said, what if we bring back our baskets of love?
But instead of it being, it was a six-week fundraiser back in, I think, 2020.
It's going to be for a year now, isn't it?
It's going to be for a year.
And each month we pick a different nonprofit that we highlight in our social media, our newspaper, our newsletter, our website.
And each month we bring in another one.
A different one.
But what's great is the one that was there before stays in our basket of love.
They don't get out.
They stay.
And we keep getting our basket.
Excellent.
support and fundraising.
I love it.
I love it.
We'll be sure to link to that particular fundraising program
over on our show notes.
We'll link to the specific page on your website.
And I want to ask you another one of our core questions here,
and it's around hiring.
Is AHA hiring?
And also, are you looking for volunteers?
You've talked all sorts of really exciting projects.
Do you have any volunteer opportunities available,
and are you hiring?
We are our pool pop up lending library campaign is all volunteers.
It's that whole program is volunteers.
And we have our imagination library story time that is also volunteers.
I have two incredible story time readers that are retired.
One's a retired kindergarten teacher.
One's a retired preschool teacher.
We would love to have more.
We're starting that, the Imagination Library Storytime at the Coatesville Library.
But we would love to bring it to as many different libraries.
But again, it would need to be volunteers.
And then we also, volunteers of our pop-up lending libraries started in 2015.
They're starting to wear and tear.
And so we need more volunteers that will either help refurbish or even rebuild and build new ones for us.
We work with volunteers that do book drives for us, you know, to always be replenishing the books.
For our teachers, our teachers start as working as first a volunteer for six weeks, working with us.
because what we do is very special.
We have our own pedagogy of how we work.
Everything we do is in a circle
and following the process of restorative justice,
creating the community agreements each time
and with check-ins and with team building
and then with our themes of being seen and heard.
So we invite people to first volunteer for six weeks.
You have to get your clearances and we work with you on that.
Then if it's something that resonates with you
and if it's within where we're working and bringing our programs,
Then we actually hire a lot of our teachers actually started with us through interning at different universities.
And they loved it.
In fact, our two cooking instructors now started as interns at Westchester University.
They graduated.
full-time. Oh, they graduate.
That graduated approach works really well with involving volunteers more deeply, and it's
wonderful you can pull from your alumni network in that regard to really make sure the most
of it and really guarantee that the folks understand the programs and deliver the most
value for you. So it's good. You've listed a number of partners today in our discussion,
and one of the questions we always ask our guests, and I'll ask it of you as well, is
is to name a local business or nonprofit organization
that more folks should know about.
Maybe somebody that you haven't mentioned
as one of your partners earlier.
And then give us just one or two sentences
to very briefly tell our listeners
why they should know that business or nonprofit.
Have you done Chester County Futures yet?
We have not.
Yay, I got one that you done.
I love, love, love them.
And Chester County Futures works with students in Coatesville, Kennett, Oxford, and Phoenixville.
And it's also an after-school program.
And it's for first-time students.
Many of them are students of first-time generation students that either will be graduating high school and first-time students going on to college.
And they start working with them from ninth grade on.
And they follow them and they get mentors.
And then they also, by the time they're seniors, take them on college tours,
work with them on writing their essays and help find scholarships with them.
We have worked with them.
AHA brought our art therapist in and worked with them in 2020.
And it was, they are the ones that created the artwork for our third book, Justice Restore 3.0,
taking the writings of youth that are incarcerated.
Then we gave them the pieces that were selected by college students at Westchester in another
program we were working with.
And then the Chester County Future kids picked the piece that most resonated with them and
created the artwork that is in this book.
And it's part of our traveling art show that has gone around all around Chester County to schools, to libraries, to churches.
Again, art shares a story the way words sometimes can't convey.
Jan Mishner, founder and executive director of Arts Holding Hands and Hearts.
Where can listeners connect with you and learn more about AHA?
On our website, which is aha.org, and it's A-H-A-H.org.
Jan, I've been looking forward to this conversation ever since you and I first met in person
after we repelled off a really tall building in Kennett Square and supported a can't dream catcher.
Thank you so much for all your time and all that you've shared today.
Can I tell you a story quickly?
It's when I was going to repel off of the eight-story building here in Kennett.
I had a filmmaking class with my kids on probation, and I was telling them that I was going to jump.
And one of my boys who had been with me for three years was like,
Miss Chan, does your family know you're going to do that?
That's dangerous.
I don't think you should be doing that.
My kids watch out for me.
Yeah, they do.
Yeah, they do.
Lots of safety equipment involved.
Usually kids are the fearless ones, but not in that case.
You're a precious commodity to them.
So they love having you around, no doubt.
Well, thank you also to my co-host, Liam Dempsey.
I'm Eric Goodmanson.
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