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NEWS
Thursday, June 7, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Event honors community
Downtown festival
celebrates African
American businesses
By ROB DALKA
Daily Staff Reporter
On
Saturday,
the
23rd
annual
African
American
Downtown Festival was held
in Kerrytown on the streets
of East Ann and North
Fourth. Started by Lucille
Hall-Porter, the festival is a
celebration of African Amer-
ican culture and the local
African
American-owned
businesses’ contributions to
the community.
A grand stage was set up on
the corner of East Ann and
North Fourth. Live music
and
performances
from
many different groups con-
tinued throughout the day.
Vendors lined the streets
promoting their businesses
and organizations, and many
sold food, clothes, books and
much more. These vendors
came from Ann Arbor and
the surrounding areas to
share what they do with the
people of the city. They were
made up of both returning
and first-time participants.
Charles Young, a Metro
Detroit-area resident, runs a
traveling bookstore. Charles’
Collectables and Books was
among the many vendors
that was represented at the
festival.
“I wanted to give folks an
opportunity to get books for
themselves and their kids,”
Young said. “We serve as a
recourse for parents, teach-
ers, grandparents and any-
one who is interested in
history.”
This year was Young’s 15th
year bringing his bookstore
to the AADF. He is a strong
proponent of the festival.
“It is always a great festi-
val to come to,” Young said.
“Ann Arbor is a great town,
and people always come out
and support.
Although
the
weather
was cooler than earlier in
the week, the AADF was
warm and welcoming, with
the smell of good food and
sounds of vibrant music fill-
ing the air. Throughout the
day, people from all over Ann
Arbor and the surrounding
communities came to enjoy
the festival.
Mike and Kari Victor, Ann
Arbor residents, came to
spend some of their day at
the AADF.
“Everybody should come
out,” Kari Victor said. “There
has been great entertain-
ment and food. It has been a
ton of fun.”
The festival has grown
each year, with this year’s
festival being the largest
one yet. The Ann Arbor Cul-
tural and Community Events
Coalition works on planning
the event all year to make the
AADF come to fruition.
“We love that it brings
everyone
from
the
area
together,” Teesha Montague,
the events coordinator for
the festival, said. “There is
a lot of diversity. We appre-
ciate that, and we celebrate
that. We like to celebrate our
history at the same time.”
Montague
became
the
events coordinator in 2008
and has helped plan the
AADF each year since. Mon-
tague also just started a local
business with her mother.
Ultimately,
Montague
hopes that the festival can
continue to grow as the years
go on.
“We need to extend the
AADF,” Montague said. “We
have been getting requests in
the past few years, to expand
the festival to a few days.
Hopefully by our 25th year,
2020, we would be able to
that. We’ve talked with the
city and they have totally
supported us and we have
appreciated that.”
Young says he is apprecia-
tive of how the community
works together for the festi-
val.
“It’s
a
beautiful
thing
to see everybody coming
together,” Young said. “I
think that just seeing the
smiles and responses is so
satisfying and worth all the
hard work.”
VR training helps the disabled find jobs
By RILEY LANGEFELD
Daily Staff Reporter
Adults and children with men-
tal disabilities may soon have a
better shot at finding jobs, thanks
to a research project that uses vir-
tual reality job interview training
to develop their skills.
The training has been in devel-
opment for eight years and is
just beginning to be tested and
applied in real-world scenarios.
Matt Smith, an associate profes-
sor at the School of Social Work,
joined the project in its early
stages to help evaluate the train-
ing after a prototype was devel-
oped. Smith has been working on
the project for seven years now,
and its promise is only becoming
clearer as his research continues.
At the center of the program is
a virtual character named Molly
Porter, who is driven by a living
algorithm that determines her
questions, responses and behav-
ior. The researchers refer to the
training as the “Molly training.”
An interview with Molly takes
roughly 20 minutes, and trainees
receive an overall score as well as
eight scores for individual learn-
ing objectives when they finish.
They use these scores to mea-
sure their progress over repeated
interviews with Molly.
Smith and the team researched
the effects of the Molly training
on five disadvantaged groups,
including those with severe
mental illness, mood disorders,
autism, addiction and post-trau-
matic stress disorder. In pre-
liminary testing, their subjects
were twice as likely to get jobs
or internships after the training
than a control group that did not
undergo the training.
Now, the training is being
evaluated in four different initia-
tives with funding drawn from a
variety of sources. One project,
funded by the National Institute
of Mental Health, is evaluat-
ing whether the Molly training
is effective for adults receiving
mental health unemployment
services. Another, funded by
the Kessler Foundation, focuses
on high school students with a
range of disabilities. These stu-
dents typically receive federally
mandated “transition services”
that help them in the transition
from high school to either college
or the workforce, and the Molly
training could be an effective
addition to these services.
A third project, funded by
the NIMH and the University’s
School of Social Work, works on
adapting the Molly training for
different groups of people. And
the fourth project is funded by
the University’s Poverty Solu-
tions initiative. Its goal is to
evaluate the potential of working
with Certified Peer Support Spe-
cialists on Molly training. The
Peers, as they are called, have
lived mental health experiences
and received treatment, and they
act as advocates for other individ-
uals suffering from mental health
problems.
Smith hopes the training will
be used with as many groups as it
can help. He expressed his belief
that the tool could be applied in,
among other situations, re-entry
services for people with prior
criminal convictions. He suggest-
ed that the training could help to
reduce recidivism — the tenden-
cy of a criminal to commit more
crimes — by making it easier for
former criminals to find jobs.
“We really want to make the
tool accessible and evaluate if this
tool can help other groups, too,”
Smith said. “At the end of the day,
job interviewing is something
everybody has to do. Whether
you’re somebody with a certain
type of disability or whether
you’re somebody that has no dis-
ability, it causes anxiety. And it’s a
skill set that needs practice.”
Although the training is still
in the process of being evaluated,
its success in laboratory condi-
tions appears to have translated
to tangible success for prelimi-
nary trainees. In their project
to deliver the training to high
school
students,
30
percent
found employment and 20 per-
cent found internships in the first
four months following the train-
ing. This was consistent with the
team’s prior research, suggest-
ing that the training could be
immensely helpful for adults and
young people alike.
Educators who have worked
with the training testify to its pos-
itive impact. Meredith Schindler
is the executive director of the
Ann Arbor Academy, an indepen-
dent school where a third of the
students have autism. These stu-
dents have worked started using
the Molly training at the begin-
ning of the 2017-18 academic year.
“The
Molly
training
is
designed to help people speak
more effectively about their abil-
ity to work well on a team — that
they’re a hard worker,” Smith
said. “If they’d had gaps in their
work history, it helps them learn
how to frame their responses in a
positive way.”
Schindler expressed a similar
sentiment. She noted that adults
with mental disabilities gener-
ally make excellent employees,
and that their primary challenge
is getting their foot in the door
with employers wary of hiring
disabled people. According to
Schindler, the Molly training has
helped her students develop the
skills necessary to face this chal-
lenge.
“We’ve definitely seen an
improvement in kids’ social
skills,” Schindler said. “And I
think it’s definitely partially due
to what they’re getting with the
training. You see more confi-
dence and you see a better ability
to handle some questions.”
Karen Steffan is the coordina-
tor of vocational services at the
LaGrange Area Department of
Special Education in Illinois. She
oversees a variety of work pro-
grams for high school students
and coordinates educational pro-
grams for around 4000 students
with disabilities. Like Schindler,
she has seen a marked improve-
ment in the skills of students
using the Molly training.
“It was new to all of us,” Stef-
fan said. “We all had our learning
curve on it. But it captures your
interest and certainly allows you
to stay engaged with it. … It fits in
every environment we tested it
in. It was convenient for people.
It was timely for people. It was
engaging. And it gave you imme-
diate results.”
Feedback like this is encourag-
ing for Smith and his team, who
are hopeful about the program’s
potential and eager to apply it
wherever it can help. Likewise,
for disabled people and their
advocates, Smith’s work is a
source of hope for the future.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Virtual character
Molly Porter measures
progress of workers
Read more at MichiganDaily.com