3 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