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Julianna Larsen is the Director of the Arizona Refugee Center. On this episode of Tell Me More, she and host David Scott discuss the realities facing refugee and immigrant families in Arizona right now: family separations, unmet commitments to Afghan allies who served alongside U.S. troops, detention conditions, and the gap between how immigration policy is discussed and how it is actually lived. Julianna has spent more than a decade working directly with displaced families in the East Valley. She shares how a Christmas project in a Mesa trailer park eighteen years ago changed how she sees her own community, and why she believes meeting someone face to face does more to change a mind than any argument. Topics covered:

• Operation Allies Welcome and the Afghan resettlement community in Arizona
• Why families of Afghan Special Immigrant Visa holders have not been reunited
• The difference between refugee, asylee, and undocumented status, and why the distinction matters
• What detention and deportation proceedings actually look like on the ground
• The South African refugee exception and how it compares to the broader resettlement process
• Workforce contributions of refugee and immigrant communities in Arizona
• How to get involved with the Arizona Refugee Center

This is about curiosity, and leading with questions instead of conclusions. Learn more or get involved with the Arizona Refugee Center: https://azrefugeecenter.org/

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Claire Louge is the Executive Director of Prevent Child Abuse Arizona. On this episode of Tell Me More, she and host David Scott look at the difference between preventing child abuse and neglect and simply responding to it after it happens.

Arizona's Department of Child Safety spends close to $1.3 billion a year, most of it on investigation and intervention. Prevention receives a few million dollars of that total. Claire explains why that imbalance exists, how family resource centers connect families to support before a crisis develops, and why she believes prevention is also the fiscally responsible choice.

The conversation closes with a larger idea: a reunited States of America, where individual differences are treated as strength rather than division.

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A man came into her office in a suit. Carrie Masters assumed he was a volunteer. He'd been sleeping on a pool lounge chair for nine months, showering at a gym in the morning, job hunting during the day. No address.

Nobody counts that man.

Carrie is the CEO of The Worker. She's also an Arizona native who spent 14 years of her childhood homeless, then 20 years in commercial real estate — receptionist to COO and partner. She's been on all sides of this issue. We talked about the gap between subsidized housing and market rent, why she thinks homelessness often creates addiction rather than the reverse, and her sister, who won't take a raise because it would cost her kids' medical coverage.

Some numbers: about 9,700 people counted homeless in Maricopa County in January, 53% sheltered. Families up 13% in a year. Arizona is short roughly 56,000 homes. It takes about $87,000 a year to afford the average-priced home here, and about 42% of households clear that.

The Worker: https://www.theworkeraz.org

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Tell Me More is about curiosity. Leading with questions instead of conclusions, on the issues that matter to us.

This first episode is about education in Arizona. I sat down with Kyrstyn Paulat, Director of Early Learning and Education at Children's Action Alliance. She works on this every day, from prenatal-to-three and childcare to early literacy and how our schools get funded.

We talk about First Things First and why the earliest years matter most, what literacy coaching does for reading by fourth grade, what struggling families actually need, the complexities of the ESA debate and what's coming up in the next legislative session. Arizona ranks 47th in the country for education (comparing 4th grade literacy & math proficiency and graduation rates compared to other states), and Kyrstyn helps make sense of our situation.