The Morning Groove w/ John Nasshan

0:00:00
Hey, this is Nash and I want to thank you for joining us today in the podcast. I am with an old friend, not an old friend, but a long time friend. Long time friend. Because we're not old. And we have known each other for over 20 years now. Over 20 years. And this young lady is Joni Flower. She is, as far as I'm concerned, the Cultural Diversity Foundation.

0:00:20
Yeah, the founder of it. And it's such a blessing to be here this afternoon, John, to be able to not talk about the Cultural Diversity Foundation, but our 26th annual Educational Taste of Excellence Wine and Food Tasting Scholarship Benefit.

0:00:37
That's wonderful. Now when is that happening?

0:00:39
It is going to be Saturday, March 25th, 6 to 10 p.m. at the Westgate Las Vegas Main Ballroom.

0:00:48
So you graduated to the Main Ballroom.

0:00:50
Graduated to the Main Ballroom with chandeliers, John!

0:00:53
Alright. And music, Darren Montamedi?

0:00:56
Music with jazz saxophonist Darren Montamedi, who is my heart, and people just love him and he plays his new music, he has new music out now, and it's just going to be fabulous. I call it our Butler's Sparkling Wine, over 100 varieties of wines that you can sample along with your spirits, and we'll have between 10 to 12 restaurants that will be showcasing their culinary cuisine. Our guests get a complimentary wine glass and wine tray and just be able to enjoy the festivities and enjoy the networking at the events.

0:01:27
Yeah, I have a collection of glasses from your events.

0:01:29
I'm sure you do.

0:01:30
So do I.

0:01:31
I'll bet you do.

0:01:32
You haven't had to buy a wine glass in 25 years.

0:01:36
There you go. It's going to be 26.

0:01:40
That's great. Now, I've never asked you this, but what inspired you to start the Cultural Diversity Foundation?

0:01:45
And that is an excellent question. And just to give a little back story, I started the fundraiser at the College of Southern Nevada, that was 26 years ago. And I wanted an opportunity to achieve my educational goals. And I said, you know what, when you get yours, you have to make sure that you're giving back and lending a helping hand for someone else to succeed. And that's where it all started when I started the fundraiser and I was doing some other outreach programs in the community, teaching the community how to use the internet and how to use the computer. Someone said, you know, Joni, have you ever thought about starting your own non-profit? At that time I think, how am I going to do that? How do you do it? But 19 years later, here we are and it's definitely a labor of love, but it's my passion.

0:02:43
That's great. I've done some work with some college students at CSN with College of Southern Nevada. I was part of the mentor program at Nevada Promise.

0:02:56
I'm going to go back to it. Very good. I think with Nevada Promise, again, being that mentor, especially when you have young students or even adult learners who are coming back into the college setting, they need that direction. They need somebody to help them to explore their career opportunities.

0:03:13
That's what the Nevada Promise Program is about. And Joni's website for the Cultural Diversity Foundation is cdfnv.org

0:03:20
Or you can give us a call at 702-646-2615.

0:03:25
Oh, that's great. You know one of the things I encounter often is that students who might be the first person in the family to go to college and a lot of them have only have two jobs. Two jobs. And they're trying to juggle school. And a program like yours is going to help them.

0:03:45
And not only that John, but I used to be that student working full time, a part time job, going to school in the evenings. And one of the things that I share with my students, because I still am a professor, I teach for the education department at CSN, is that I did it for 18 years. And some students, their mouths fall because they are just 18 years old. But I said education is a lifelong process. When you have those educational goals, you don't give up. You have to set your own pace and so with going to obtain my associates, my bachelors, my masters and my doctorate, I didn't give up. And we hope that our scholarship opportunities will just be another vehicle for the students to achieve their academic goals.

0:04:26
You know, one of the things I like to talk to young people about is a concept that a friend of mine gave me, and he just simply calls it NSL, Never Stop Learning.

0:04:35
Never Stop Learning. As I stated, education is a lifelong learning process. I'm always taking professional development classes or marketing classes to not only expand what we're doing at the Kultz Diversity Foundation and computer skills training for workforce development, but there's always that learning opportunity and I love taking advantage of it.

0:04:53
I do too and I continue to learn every day. Every day, especially with technology.

0:04:59
There's always new technology to learn. We can't run away from it. There's technology in the media and what you're doing. There's technology in education and what I'm doing and a lot of our students who come in for computer skills training, we have to start them with PC basics. Yeah I've

0:05:16
got someone that calls me Mr. Google because whenever they look at me and they say you know I'm not sure about this concept or I don't understand this

0:05:22
word I just Google it up. Google it and if you need to figure it out you go to YouTube. That's it. That's how I find a lot of music and artists. Yeah they put their music on YouTube. And you love jazz I'm sure. I love jazz. You know. And I could with jazz I can remember when I was introduced to it probably around 24, 25 years old and it was the best writing and studying music and from that point on jazz has just always been my go-to music and this is one of the reasons I love listening to K-U-N-B

0:05:55
91.5, jazz and more. Gee, thanks. So the event is March 25th. It is the 26th annual.

0:06:07
26 years I've been doing this, John, and I love it. It's a labor of love, but when you see the hundreds of people that come in, they're dressed and they're excited to be there, and they're enjoying the fine wines, and again, the networking and just being in an elegant atmosphere, to me, is just all the work that we put together just came to, I mean, it's just beautiful.

0:06:32
And I'm sure that when the event's over, you kind of go hide somewhere for a week.

0:06:35
I crash for two weeks.

0:06:36
Yeah. Because you put in a lot of time.

0:06:40
It's a lot. We start basically in September because we're having a silent and live auction and actually we incorporated a new mobile bidding platform by One Cause and so our auction actually goes live one week before the event and so everybody receives a text message this is where you go to start your online bidding and it's interesting because all of our bids go between 80 to 90 percent of the value before the event starts. Oh that's great.

0:07:10
Yes. So yeah it's always great to go into a fundraising effort with money.

0:07:14
With money and we're looking at it online and we're looking at our scoreboard and we're doing alright.

0:07:20
Yeah, we're starting to do that kind of thing for our membership drives. That's excellent. Where we start in front.

0:07:25
You start in front.

0:07:26
With a couple of programs we have and we talk it up.

0:07:29
Right, absolutely. And again, it's like that's your commercial. People hear it, they see what you're doing in the community, they see what you're doing with the students and they want to come out and support you.

0:07:39
Do you have any idea of a count of the number of scholarships?

0:07:44
Oh my goodness, you know, we were just looking at that and I think I looked at it in terms of the dollar value and I think we were at like $350,000. That's wonderful. And that was me starting off with, you know, awarding $2,000 here and $6,000 here and you know over a 26 year period it just builds up.

0:08:02
That's great.

0:08:02
And for our 2022 year, we awarded four scholarship awards. And so we're hoping that revenues generated from this event will be able to increase the stipends for the students.

0:08:14
And because we're in the podcast and not on the air, what is the price of the ticket?

0:08:20
Oh, that's an excellent question. The tickets are $70 in advance and $80 at the door. So you want to save that $10 by buying your tickets now.

0:08:29
Well, and the other thing to think about when you're considering going to the event on March 25th, have you been to a restaurant lately and had great wine and great food?

0:08:39
Oh, I've definitely had.

0:08:40
You can't escape for that same dollar amount. That's right.

0:08:44
And not only that, but you get to sample some things that maybe you never have sampled before. I mean our distributors and our supporters have just really gone above and beyond and one of the things that I would share with people I said the only way that you're going to get out and learn about your wines and learn about your spirits is to go to tastings to find out what you like and what you don't like and my position was if you like it you'll buy

0:09:08
it. And what better way to taste wine and food but with a charitable contribution.

0:09:15
At the 26th Annual Educational Taste of Excellence.

0:09:18
March 25th, Westgate Grand Ballroom, 6 to 10.

0:09:23
P.M.

0:09:24
That's right.

0:09:25
Some of us, yeah, okay. I know guys that do it in the morning, too. So tell me something. What are you going to be doing in the future?

0:09:34
What am I going to be doing?

0:09:36
What's the long range for Joanie?

0:09:38
The long range for Joanie is to be able to expand our programs at the Cultural Diversity Foundation. We actually have a sister website called Affordable Computer Training because people, our messaging got lost in, under our brand of Cultural Diversity Foundation, even though it said education and computer skills training, people thought, oh, do you do diversity training? I was like, no, computer skills training for workforce development and event internships. And I said, so what we're looking at to do at CDF and affordable computer training is to expand our program offerings.

0:10:11
Oh, that's great. Yeah, I can understand why some people might confuse that.

0:10:16
Absolutely, absolutely.

0:10:18
Oh, and I was going to say, and my thoughts were coming up with the title of Cults Diversity Foundation. One of the things I share with my friends and colleagues is that I lived in Spain for four and a half years, and that was my true exposure to cultural diversity. I was meeting people from all over the world, and it just became a part of my fabric, a part of my being when I connected with people. And when I thought about the title of our non-profit, and I was like, no, we need to continue reaching across the community. Cultural diversity.

0:10:51
That's great. It's very important. Our culture in general is becoming more diverse by the year.

0:10:58
Absolutely. And look at Las Vegas. International. We have people from all over the world.

0:11:05
I've been in Las Vegas now for 48 years. And it's changed so much. It has changed tremendously because I've been here for 41. Yeah, when I came here there were 170,000 people in the whole valley.

0:11:19
And look at us now.

0:11:21
I always tell people I came here when Henderson was a stop sign.

0:11:25
I can remember Henderson. It was a stop sign and a couple of trailer courts.

0:11:29
Well, yeah. I always tell people the corner at Sunset and Green Valley Parkway where Trader Joe's is now was nothing but a stop sign and a sign that said, welcome to Anderson.

0:11:41
Absolutely. And I get out on the roads and sometimes I just travel because sometimes we get to, you know, we have a tendency to stay in our own little nucleus. And I said, you know, let me drive to Rainbow and take it all the way out. And, you know, next thing you know, I'm in Mountains Edge. Right. And I'm in these other beautiful places that, and for us, I think it's so exciting to see and experience the growth again.

0:12:02
Yeah, and one of the growth things that really surprised me was that the city grew around Bob Taylor's Old Ranch House.

0:12:10
Bob Taylor's Old Ranch House, and it's still there.

0:12:12
I remember going there on gravel roads.

0:12:14
Yeah, but no more. And it's still that number one restaurant that the people love to support.

0:12:20
And you know, like we've been talking about, this Cultural Diversity Foundation is a wonderful organization. They do great things for young people and old people alike. Absolutely. And Joanie Flowers will never give up. I will never give up.

0:12:34
And as long as there is something that is stimulating, something that is my passion, something that is my love, I will continue to do the work in the community.

0:12:42
That's great and I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you were here to listen today and I want you to always tune in to the podcast and live on the radio. This is John Nashum. I've been with Joanie Flowers. Joanie's event happens on March 25th, 6 to 10 p.m., Westgate Casino. It's the 26th annual Educational Taste of Excellence.

0:13:06
And if you'd like tickets, go to cdfnb.org.

0:13:12
And do it today. You might as well. Is this tax deductible?

0:13:16
It is tax deductible.

0:13:17
Well that makes it even better.

0:13:19
We are a 501c3.

0:13:21
Give me a chance to have a little bit of wine and write it off.

0:13:25
There you go.

0:13:26
I'm there.

0:13:26
Write it off for a good cause.

0:13:28
And you're listening to the Morning Groove Podcast. This is Nashen. Joni Flowers our guest this time. Please tune in, stay with us, come back often. Please tune in, stay with us, come back often. And I thank you.

Transcribed with Cockatoo