Welcome to WUFT’s Greater Good.

Florida’s storytelling series about the organizations and people in our communities truly making a difference.

From a program preserving the voices of people across history to a museum highlighting Gainesville's African-American history, to a community center promoting connection and health, and an institute committed to improving literacy outcomes for young readers.

We showcase all the greatness found in North Central Florida, so get ready for WUFT’s Greater Good.

First, we'll visit a program documenting decades of stories through oral history.

Let's take a look.

SPOHP is the hub for oral history on campus.

Oral history is an informed, intentional conversation between two people who are creating a historical document, who are literally making history and we work with students and faculty and community members across the state to collect and record those oral histories, preserve them and share them.

Our motto is “One Community, Many Voices,” and it takes a lot of voices to make a community.

Oral history is meant for everyone.

It is public access.

That's why we do it.

So the program was founded in 1967 by our namesake, Dr.

Samuel Proctor, who was a university historian, and he launched this program, which is one of the oldest and largest university based oral history programs in the country.

Our archive is one of the largest in the nation with over 10,000, and we're adding more oral histories and sound recordings to that every day.

And we are reviving and expanding the program and what we do.

We're offering more courses and trainings for students and community members.

We're bringing our archive to life, sharing it with filmmakers and scholars and writers, and bringing those voices out into conversations that are going on around the state and beyond.

Ordinary people often don't have the opportunity to get their story told, and their story is history as much as the history told by the people in power.

And because Sam Proctor was such a connected individual, people of all levels felt comfortable talking to him and that comfort passed on through people in charge of the program, but also all those individuals who are doing the interviews.

The fact that things are being digitized allows people all over the university, but all over the state and all over the nation and all over the world to access the archival materials that are here, which is wonderful, both for genealogy purposes but also for academic purposes, for people doing research.

It's a wonderful opportunity for the university to have this facility.

Here we have, for example, projects on climate change.

We have projects on Florida politics.

We have projects on all sorts of topics that are fundamental to a wide range of audiences.

And I think one of the reasons why oral history matters, as well as this, is to transcend this bridge between the university and the rest of the society and to enable these conversations, by empowering these interviews, but also by making the university and SPOHP present in these communities, in the local communities.

We're in the midst of this major project looking at UF’s early history, and we are hearing these voices for the first time in decades, and we're hearing these phenomenal stories that no one has heard about, not only the campus, but about Gainesville, about the state of Florida.

It's going to help us rewrite the history books in a lot of exciting ways.

And so the history we have in there has been there for decades.

It's going to help us understand our world in really fundamentally new ways.

It's a very special, very unique thing to capture the voice of people.

And it's something that can be very meaningful for their children, grandchildren.

Considering these are interviews 40, 50 years past.

People can, you know, take a listen to them and hear their great grandfather's voice that they maybe in their lifetime they never got to hear.

So that's what's really exciting about specifically this digitization drive that we're doing.

And a voice is much better than a transcript.

We recently had one interview that Deborah kind of, went through and highlighted with Russell Danburg, who was a UF music professor, talked about during his World War Two service playing the piano, impressing his fellow soldiers.

And in the transcript, it's just him telling the story but then you listen to this audio that we digitized and it turns out he was interviewed sitting at the piano, and he was playing the same song for the interview that he was playing in the story that he was telling.

And that's something that was not captured in the transcript.

But because we were able to digitize that, we were able to get that extra texture and that extra part of the story, which I think is just so special.

By that time, the whole crowd of soldiers were around the piano, with their wise - mouths wide open, wondering what - where did Danburg had ever learned to do that.

So there's a few different ways to get involved.

The easiest is through our archive, and you can access thousands of our interviews through our website.

And so I encourage you to listen to these remarkable voices and stories and learn and discover.

You can directly support the program as well, which enables us to steward this collection, to conduct our field work, to bring students on these really life changing experiences.

Whether people are using the SPOHP archive for research specifically, or if they're just curious about a community and want to go hear some interviews, or if it's relatives of someone who was interviewed in the past that want to go back and listen to this person's voice, I think it's really valuable to have this wide accessibility that SPOHP has.

The cool thing about oral history is that you can go back and talk to people from all walks of life and gain all kinds of perspectives, and it allows them to tell their stories.

And you can see how that fits into the broader historical record that we now.

What I see is the accumulation of these stories, which is literally it is literally distilled knowledge transmitted in the ancient way.

This is the Fort Knox of the University of Florida right here.

This is the gold.

It never goes out of date.

It's perpetual, and it lasts forever.

Hi, I'm Valerie Daley, broker and owner of Showcase Properties.

It's been an honor to support Greater Good, now in its fifth year, because it shines a light on the incredible work of more than 200 nonprofit organizations.

Their stories remind us of the compassion, commitment, and quiet strength that make our communities so special.

At Showcase Properties, we believe in lifting each other up, and we are proud to stand behind WUFT’s Greater Good.

We hope this week's episode inspires you as much as it inspires us.

Up next, we meet a local museum preserving the history and culture of African Americans in our community.

Visiting this museum is like stepping into an arena that's going to give you a lot of history that you may not have known before.

Our goal is to present the history in the truest form that we know how.

If people call and say, I need to come, but I can't come during the hours you're open, we'll open up special for them.

We don't charge for open museum hours because we'd rather have you in here and don't want dollars to keep you out.

The Cotton Club Museum has a number of things going on usually all the time.

We have a collection of things from Doctor Patricia Hilliard-Nunn who served on our board of directors prior to her death.

And so those are always permanently exhibited.

We also have some works by a young artist, Yvonne Ferguson, who had two shows here.

But when you look at the larger exhibits that come on a rotating basis, some of them have come from artists in Alachua County, but others have come from artists here in North Central Florida and even from Georgia.

There is a general theme, and that general theme runs through everything that we do, which is to educate and share about African-inspired history and culture, particularly that of Africans in the diaspora.

Bo Diddley, James Brown, B.B.

King were on that stage.

It's the same stage.

I tell everybody, walk across the stage so you can see how important it was to stand on a place where history was made.

So here we are, historic in that manner.

On this side of town, there is no venue that looks like us.

I don't know if in Gainesville there's a venue that looks like that.

We are here to tell a story about African American history that nobody else can tell.

Our goal is to teach all of those who wish to learn.

The museum is a space that has a lot of special events that we host on our own, you know, that's curated through the volunteers at the museum.

Also like community partners that we may work with.

There are also a number of rentals that come through here.

And so that's one form of a revenue stream for us.

We do try to keep it, you know, at a pretty modest, you know, a fair rate, for people, because we want to make it accessible as possible.

One of my interests is making sure that we have fun while we are learning.

So, I initiated the Black Cowboys, Cowgirls, what we call extravaganza.

It’s a two, two day event, and it started in 2024.

It's really been a lot of fun, and we've got a lot of response from all ages.

That second day we had people from 4 to 84 riding on horses.

I have a phrase that says, “The farm is the new zoo,” because so many kids come out to this event and we have vendors come out.

We show how different foods are grown.

Black cowboys and black farming has kind of lost its way in current media.

And if we don't tell our own story, it gets lost in history.

So, you know, if we don't see it and we don't know it, then we don't understand how we move from where we were to how we are today.

So we can't improve it.

We try to do something every three months.

We have the movie nights here, which is free and open to the public.

During the holidays, we have a boogie woogie dance from way back.

So we do all types of things.

And of course, our exhibits are usually the biggest things that come in that people come to visit.

There's no better organization to talk about Alachua County's history and its culture than the Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Arts Center.

When people come here, they learn about the culture and the history of Alachua County.

And so we get to relive much of that.

But we also get to teach and educate folks about what Alachua County was, is, and what it ultimately will become.

We feel that people need to know their history and not just the bad parts of it.

So we want to teach history right.

So people will know about themselves, others.

Black history, African-American history is American history, and we all need to know it.

We're seeking volunteers.

We're seeking people to come to our events.

We're seeking information.

Tell us what you would like to see.

But it's very, very important for communities, in order for them to be healthy, to have these common gathering places where people can, they can come together, they can learn together, they can commune together, they can fellowship.

They can also feel safe together.

So, and all of that plays into this enhancement of like, how we sense local identity, a sense of belonging in the place that we live in.

It is so beautiful.

The chandeliers, the lights, the stage.

I mean, it's just great.

It's a great environment to be a part of.

It's doing such a good job of bringing community together.

At the same time, educating and having a platform to not only tell the history, but to have such an environment that's so welcoming.

It's just a great, great place.

And I always feel at home when I come here.

WUFT Amplified is an opportunity to invite local bands, bring them in for an intimate performance Kind of Gainesville's Austin City limits, if you will.

I mean, that was kind of one of the ideas that we had when we put it together It was an opportunity to invite local bands, musicians, singer songwriters of various genres in from not just Gainesville, but north central Florida and the whole state.

Bring them in for an intimate performance and conversation, where we get to hear some of their songs and talk to the members of the band.

Find out a little bit about them and their music.

You know, music, arts culture is part of the story of public media, and music is a big part of the north Central Florida community.

From the Allman Brothers Band and of course, Tom petty and the Heartbreakers out of Gainesville.

One of the things that's important about the show that viewers aren’t going to get are the hard work that goes on behind the scenes.

The talented students, as well as the professionals that are putting the show together.

This desire to tell a story through music.

In class, we learn like, oh, how to use a microphone or how to use a camera.

But for this type of production, it's like every form of microphone and every type of camera, and you really get to be immersed in the whole production of it.

It's like everything we learn in the major coming together, into this on huge production that everyone like, puts in a really important piece of the puzzle.

I worked on WUFT Amplified during my last few months of my masters with the College of Journalism and Communications.

It was a really rewarding experience introducing me to a live production and honestly, like I'm part of something bigger that like a lot of people are going to see.

I hope the listeners are entertained, you know?

I hope they enjoy the music.

I hope they'll recognize the talent and the musicianship and the enthusiasm.

You know, the authenticity that these artists have and the passion for what they're doing.

I think that's what I hope that comes across, is that they recognize the passion and the hard work that they're putting into this.

Now we highlight a community center working to provide resources for healthy living in north central Florida.

North Central Florida Community Center is a wellness and fitness center for all ages from 14 and up.

What we have become, what we were trying to evolve into is a place that you're thinking, oh man, I want to work out.

I can take my family or oh, shoot, it's hot.

Let me go to the pool.

When we say community center, we're really trying to incorporate not just the healthy lifestyle, but also providing resources for our community.

We have a physical fitness group called Fyzical.

They're a physical therapy group.

We have personal training with Fade Fitness.

Limitless Adventures, which is an afterschool program.

Dare to be different.

That’s also another afterschool program.

Rad sports has cheer and volleyball that is competitive and we have Glad Boxing.

We have a pickleball slash volleyball court, a full gym, we have free weights and then we also have machines as well.

25 meter pool which is half the distance of an Olympic sized pool, which is six lanes.

And then obviously we have our exercise classes, our pool classes, we have swim lessons.

There is healthy living and healthy lifestyle, that’s a focus, but we want to provide more than just that.

We have spaces that you can rent.

If you want to teach classes, say fitness classes, we have two fitness rooms that have a lot of empty time slots.

You also have a huge field to rent it for for practices or football.

For businesses, we have a room that you can use to do meetings.

What we also have been doing is having different community people come in and do educational stuff, and those are all free.

We have silver sneakers, which is a insurance based program for seniors, and another one called Renew Active.

We offer, I think, ten different silver sneakers programs.

Our biggest one is the Aqua.

20, 30, sometimes close to 40 people are in the water having a blast doing water aerobics, recognizing that, oh my gosh, in order for me to maintain my health, I have to move.

I have to lift, I have to do some sort of machine.

I have to get in the water.

Having those things just based on what what a physical activity can do for you physically is obvious.

The part that is to me, bigger is the mental part of meeting people in these classes.

We have a wonderful group of diverse people of all walks, and they all come here not just to exercise or swim, but to have somewhere to belong.

But we 100% try to connect as much as that member or participant would like to actually connect here, you know, we can point them in the right direction, find something that they would find entertaining or fun.

It is more encompassing than just a place to go to, to work out.

It is a true community.

We try to be as friendly as we can and accommodating as we can.

If you do have a problem, the front desk is always open or you can always go to someone that is a lead out on the floor.

They will do their best to do what they need to do with a good attitude.

So you get your workout, you get your socialization.

And when I first started I worked, it was my place to dump off all the worries of the day.

Come in, workout, rejuvenate.

The pool is like a family.

I had a stroke.

As I was coming through that process, trying to move, trying to do something, it was very hard, very difficult.

But I was motivated by the aquatics class.

Definitely a support group.

One of the reason I got him involved is, he's really active in the Special Olympics, and he's turned out to be a really good swimmer.

He got second in the state last year.

The people in the weight room have really been nice to John.

And, you know, they know what he does.

They've always been helpful.

And they always talk to him, ask him how he's doing.

I like the community center because of the people.

And I like and I like this pool.

I think it's kind of a hidden secret in a way.

There's a lot of stuff going on here, and I think if more people got involved, it would help them be able to fund more things.

Currently, we have a huge project that we have to get done, which is the resurfacing of our pool.

That pool has been the community pool for Gainesville for a lot of years.

Just based on the age of the pool, we have to have it resurfaced.

It is a $175,000 project.

We are needing some fundraising help, some donations, anyone who come out and give us ideas even of how to help with fundraising.

As far as needs, we always need donations, fundraising.

Our members are now seeing that fundraising being put to good use and clearly, visibly see a lot of the improvements and upgrades that we’re doing, and there’s so many more We have volunteers of all ages, we partner with different school volunteers, churches Also, some of the older folks can come in and volunteer.

For members or participants, people that are interested, the most important thing is for them to make the first step to come in, see if their insurance would cover a membership.

If not, we have low rates, there’s no contracts.

We’re doing better than ever.

We have a lot of updates, upgrades.

If someone’s been here, they’ve moved away from us, we just ask that they come back and give us a try.

I love this place.

It’s just so important to me for that mind, body, spirit connection.

For us to actually be here for our community.

It's the people.

It's the members themselves and it's the staff.

We do this because we believe in our community.

We do this because we believe in the people, and we do this because we know that this is making an impact.

We're striving to make this a spot for the community where all of us come together and we just grow together.

Hi, I'm Kim Smithers, co-founder and chief marketing officer with IQ fiber.

IQ fiber offers 100% fiber optic internet to residents in North Florida.

Delivering symmetrical speeds along with whole home Wi-Fi service and a simple app to manage the ever growing number of Wi-Fi devices in the home.

Because we are a local, Florida based company, we're proud to support WUFT's Greater Good TV series, which highlights organizations that are making a difference in the communities we serve.

Be sure to tune in weekly to hear the stories and how you can share and support the good things happening every day.

Finally, we learn about an institute working to improve children's literacy through research and education.

The University of Florida Literacy Institute, or UFLI, is an organization based within the College of Education that is designed to support teachers, families, and children in developing literacy.

UFLI foundations is an explicit and systematic phonics program intended for children in grades K through two.

It's structured and includes eight steps so students have a routine where they are going through drills and they are building automaticity with previously learned information.

Then they are learning something new, and they are applying those skills directly into context with reading connected text.

UFLI has been around for more than 25 years at this point.

We began locally working with teachers and children in Alachua County, but we have since grown not just throughout Florida, but throughout the United States and actually around the world.

UFLI and Alachua County public Schools has had a partnership for five years now.

Every single kindergarten, first and second grade classroom implements UFLI foundations and tier one core instruction for 30 minutes a day.

UFLI does not just give teachers a curriculum and tell them this is what you should teach.

It helps them build that background knowledge and that understanding of the science of reading.

What strategies, what practices work best to teach kids how to read efficiently.

And that's what it provides teachers, which essentially improves reading skills for students.

We also do a lot of work with families.

There are some things that it's really important for families to know about their child's literacy development.

So even before they enter school, there are things to do that will provide kids with an advantage when it comes to reading instruction.

Probably the most important thing is reading aloud to kids.

There is a parent resource hub available on our toolbox.

That has a lot of resources and information for parents.

I'm not only an implementation specialist, but I'm also a parent of a rising first grader.

And so I use all of those tools and more at home to support him as well.

Literacy does start first in the home.

He knew his letter sounds from when he was three.

But it wasn't until kindergarten when UFLI was being implemented in the classroom and at home that we really saw, the connection and word reading begin to happen.

And so being able to connect what they're doing in school and at home is really important and gives them even more practice.

The UFLI foundations toolbox materials can of course be used by educators teaching the UFLI foundations lessons, but the supplemental resources can also be used by community organizations, after school programs that are supporting students, receiving this instruction in their local schools.

I think one of the things that UFLI is able to do is bring us all together with a common goal.

Groups like United Way of North Central Florida, the City of Gainesville, Girls Place Afterschool Program, Kids Count Afterschool Program, and many others, have all come together in our community to decide that literacy is important.

And we feel that literacy is necessary for all forms of success academic, social, and economic.

And it's so exciting to find that our community partners also feel that way.

UFLI has been really instrumental in our Reading Pals program.

They're having weekly sessions with a mentor to really build the confidence, love for learning.

And we've added the UFLI component to it.

Those third grade reading levels are really important, because that's kind of your transition to, hey, I'm no longer learning to read, but I'm reading to learn.

And then they start falling behind, but they can get passed through, and then it becomes embarrassing for them to say, don't know how to read.

And it could take a turn on a life.

So really, it's important to make sure that kids are reading by third grade so that, hey, they do have the confidence and they do love to learn And I think what’s really unique about UFLI is anyone can do it at any stage in the game The City of Gainesville hosts three afterschool programs UFLI works with us with all of our sites, primarily located at our Albert Ray Massey Center and our East Side Community Center We’ve partnered with UFLI since Fall of 2025 I was so excited when Jennifer approached us with the idea because I had a history of working with America Reads in my former role at the library partnership and saw so much success in the relational and interactive approach It gets them engaged, it gets them excited It builds those relationships and that consistency that we know are connected to literacy success.

Kids Count was established in 2007 after a group of concerned citizens realized there was a pretty serious discrepancy with literacy rates between east Gainesville and west Gainesville students.

And so what began as a very small grassroots, academic afterschool sort of programing, completely free to students grew into now serving 70 students 5 days a week with an academic focus afterschool program that is completely free and comprehensive.

Our students often times come from hard places.

They are experiencing hardships that no child should have to experience.

And UFLI is a great equalizer Knowing that it’s evidence-based, knowing that we can use this with our students and see growth is remarkable.

If I could describe UFLI in one word, the word would be equity It creates an equal opportunity for all students to become readers and all teachers to have the tools they need to help their readers succeed.

The fact that we are making such an impact with children but also with teachers, making teachers’ lives easier as they see their children experience success Those things are just irreplaceable.

I love UFLI I love UFLI I love UFLI I love UFLI I love UFLI Thanks for watching WUFT’s Greater Good Visit wuft.org/greatergood to learn all about the organizations featured here.

You'll see past segments and a whole lot more.

And please do your part to help the greater good.