My name is Pamela Good. I'm co-founder of Beyond Basics and we bring literacy to everyone and love them along the way. Well, in the 60s, everything kind of changed. And so I was a child watching serious things be discussed, and just watching it from the outside, you know, you have the war, you had the riots. I remember the beginning conversations around bussing, conversations of the political leaders in the city. You know, people just trying to figure out a better way, knowing that things are wrong and trying to figure out a better way and not knowing how to go about it. Growing up with a family that struggled. I do have a heart for wanting to make things better for people. How it feels now, though, is that we have all these solutions that we can embrace as society. 

Illiteracy oppresses people in our nation, and yet we're not addressing it. We have a solution, where you can get a child reading at grade level in 6 weeks. We have schools full of them and yet we don't teach them that basic skill. If we embrace this, if we give it our focus and just do it, it changes everything. It empowers people that are capable. It empowers people to make the choices that we take for granted every day. It's really our choices that get in the way from us all having a better life. I mean, if it's one thing we're given, it’s choice, every second of every day we are choosing and it's either building up or tearing down. It's choosing good. It's choosing evil. And we struggle with that in ourselves. But we have the opportunity for an amazing life – here in Detroit, in America around the world... and we really have to have compassion for others to help ourselves to step into that space. And when we lead with our hearts, instead of being limited by our minds and don't blame and don't judge. You know, I think non-judgment, total forgiveness and walk through life trying to love and understand people. You know that... that's what I work for every day.