Francha Davis is the Executive Director of the Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) Progmam of Montgomery County. She has been with CASA for 24 years and Director since 2003. In the US, every day 1,900 children become victims of abuse or neglect, and 4 of them die. CASA Montgomery is a network of 951 cummunitybased programs that recruit, train and support citizen-volunteers to advocate for the best interest of abused and neglected children. Empowered directly by the courts, volunteer advocates offer judges the critical information they need to ensure that each child’s rights and needs are being attended to while in foster care. The objective is to get children out of foster care and into permanent homes.

Julianne has been a teacher for 25 years in private and public schools as a long term sub pre-k through HS including special needs children. She became Director of the NIH Children’s School in August 2012. For the past 10 years her focus has been teaching children with special needs including academic, emotional and physical difficulties, which qualifies her for the NIH Children’s School position. In connection with the Clinical Center (medical and phyciatric), Julianne runs a “one room school house” for 5 to 25 children ( pre-K to HS) from all over the world, many with English as a second language or no English. She told us stories of challenging student cases.

Carol is a Ph.D candidate from China ForeignAffairs University. She is from SW China and studied American diplomacy and China – US relationships. She is a Fulbright scholar at George Washington University. Her English was very good. After living and traveling the US for 10 months, Carol has a new understanding of US culture and appreciates US “good values” such as our democracy, women’s equity, individualism vs collectivism, tolerance and diversity, transparency and religious freedom.