Posted by Sanjiv Prabhakaran on Aug 10, 2018
 
We started the meeting with a quick talk by Patricia Case about her "3 Things in Life". She showed everyone an old family picture and mentioned that FAMILY was highest on her list of things that impacted her life. Her family instilled great long-lasting values in her and she had an ideal childhood. They taught her the importance of being committed to the community. She loves reading books and read out a verse from one of the books she is reading now called Fugitive Pieces. Very rarely, she says, that anyone now reads books. She was on a flight back to San Diego and noticed that all 3 passengers in her row were reading books :-).
 
 
 
We had good audience today and in the end Bill Sutton jokingly asked her a question - "Do you know where you live?". Patricia responded "no idea" since she keeps traveling a lot now-a-days.
 
Malcolm also gave a brief update on Bocce Beer competition and mentioned that many breweries, such as, Duckfoot, etc, have applied for the competition.
 
 
Finally, Phil introduced Jabez LeBret as our keynote speaker. Jabez's partner Tom Schenck was also in attendance.  Jabez has been homeless, is a high school dropout, and was on a path to nowhere. After getting his GED, Jabez studied finance and marketing at Gonzaga University. He went on to become a financial analyst at Nordstrom, an international public speaker, author, and Forbes Contributor. He recently sold his award winning marketing agency to free up time to pursue his passion in education as co-founder of Sisu Academy, a new education model. Jabez is a coffee lover and Gin enthusiast.
 
 
He said that he became homeless at age 16 and that it was a teacher in school that noticed him and motivated him to learn. This teacher (Art Dolan) took the pains to spend an hour each week for 3 years and taught him business basics. He later decided to start a school (Sisu Academy) that can help such challenged kids to thrive in the community. He wants to create this academy where the students are boarded and fully taken care of while they are in training. The "Accelerator" concept will pay for the program so it is completely tuition-free for the students.
 
 
 
His goal is to educate these kids in a practical environment rather than traditional school formats. The kids need to engage and experience real-life scenarios. The chart shows the key factors for challenged kids to succeed. Apparently millenials lack 3 of  the 4 critical things in the chart above. He feels that Robotics and Programming must be mandatory for all kids in the current world. Social farming, music and animal therapy are many ways to train the students when they are boarding in the academy. A well-trained pool of such candidates can fill many open jobs. Apparently San Deigo port had almost 90K jobs unfilled few months ago and only 50% has been filled far.
 
They already have some students identified and there is room for few more. Their initial goal is to start with 12 students and reach 350 soon. They have identified the location of Alliant University in the Miramar area for now as the spot. They hope to get that location in 2 years.
 
 
In the end, our club acting president Vicky  awarded the Joshua Malawi school certificate to Jabez that represents donation of school supplies by DMSB to schools in Malawi in the name of the speaker. 
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