Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage, Gloria Alvarez. Hi, good evening, how are you? Good, I'm glad. It's such an honor to be here at FI and this amazing conference, and of course it's a huge responsibility to have the last week of tonight. Two weeks ago I was presenting a new book in UFM Madrid. UFM is the first university of Guatemala and the first in Latin America to open its doors in Spain. So give a clap for that. So I want to talk to you about the power of ideas and the power of course of freedom and storytelling. So I'll start. Who is a fan of Game of Thrones here? Raise your hand. Hi, so this is Tyrion Lannister in the last episode saying, what is what unites people? Is it gold? Is it flags? Is it armies? No. It's stories. The power of storytelling is something that unites humanity as nothing else. So inspired by Tyrion Lannister and also by this guy that you might know, I want to talk to you about the story and the powerful things about freedom, UFM and my personal experience defending liberty. So Steve Jobs talked a lot about connecting the dots. But you cannot connect the dots looking to the future. You connect the dots looking to the past of your life. What are the things that connect in order for you to find your destiny? So because of this, I want to talk to you about my personal story in UFM. First of all, I didn't choose UFM because it was the only libertarian university in the planet. I had no idea about this. I didn't even know who Mrs. was or who Hayek was. I chose this university because it was the only one in Guatemala who offered the career that I wanted to study, international affairs. And then I also decided to go for political science. So I graduated of both majors there. And I went to my parents and I said, this is what I want to study. And they were like, what are you going to work on? And I'm like, I have no idea. But I love all the contents of this career. So I was there. And of course, as you know, in UFM you start to have deep in courses about economic process. One, two, and three. It charts semester courses. Then you have Mrs. Philosophy, Hayek Philosophy, Public Choice, Law and Economics and all this amount of knowledge that I didn't know by this time that only in this university they teach you it. One of the beautiful things about UFM is that it unites everyone that fights for freedom. The monetarist, there is Auditorial Milton Friedman, the Austrian economics, the Ludwig von Mises Library, there's also the Bastiat Hallway and of course the Atlas Schrock Monument. So the power of Manuel Allao is that he made this environment where all the freedom fighters could unite in what they have in common, even though they're different disciplines, right? One of the first books that I had to read even before starting school was Animal Farm. And of course, when I read Animal Farm, it made a lot of sense. As some of you may know, my dad is Cuban and my grandparents, well, they ran away after the Communist Revolution and my other grandfather from my mom's side, he was Hungarian so he also fought the Soviets. So, you know, you gotta say that I have something in my DNA. I'm the best product that communism has come up with. Because without it, my family would have never ended up in Guatemala, right? So this made sense, but the fact that you know that communism is wrong doesn't immediately mean that you're all for free markets and limiting the government and taking it out of the economy. I still thought that the government had some role to do on it, right? And I remember that it wasn't economics what really convinced me about liberty. I remember that when I had my first courses in economics I used to joke with my professors and if some of you know Ricardo Castillo, Caio Castillo from Marroquín he gave me classes and one day I went to him and he still tells this anecdote until today and I went to him and I said, you know what, Caio?  And he was like, oh really? What are you gonna do? And I'm gonna put a drugstore, a pharmacy. He's like, what? You're not even studying nursery, you're not studying medicine. Why are you gonna put a pharmacy?  And he's like, what?  And I'm like, yeah, that piece of paper is gonna say don't you worry the free market cures everything.  And I'm like, but guys, for you it seems to be like that, right? Once we have free market, we're all gonna be free and everything is gonna be amazing and it didn't make sense to me, you know? I remember thinking about, Paris Hilton was in fashion at that time, I studied between 2003 and 2007 and I was like, how is it that if Paris Hilton purchases a $50,000 necklace in LA and if there's free market, eventually some kid in Guatemala is gonna get medicine, you know? It didn't make sense to me. Until I started studying more philosophy and it was because of Frederick Hayek and Bastiat when I read that being free is all about being responsible of the consequences of your acts. And actually this liberated me because I was in a moment of my life where everyone had something to say or what I should study, where should I work, what should I do. And in the moment that I read that being free is being responsible, it liberated me from everyone else's opinion. And he was like, yeah, sure, I'm gonna make my own decisions. That means that I will have my own burden but it also means that I don't have to be always paying attention to what everyone's plan it's towards me. Either it's a government, either it's a dictator or a majority or even another individual. So this is me finally graduating. As you can tell, I was really happy about it. And in the moment that I graduated I thought these ideas were amazing but yet they were quite utopian for Latin America and especially Guatemala. I thought that these ideas were not good enough for the reality that we were facing. So I said, I wanna go out in the world. And I started looking for scholarships online and I happened to be accepted at the Cato Institute, I did an internship there and what I liked about Cato is I saw how pragmatic they were. They were fighting the Democrats and the Republicans and doing public policy and I was like, hmm, this is interesting. This is a way of getting from the academia to the real world and do politics. So I thought that what I should do is go into the international aid world. I was going to fight them from within. I was going to work in the World Bank or the IMF or the UN or Oxfam or some of these huge NGOs and I was gonna introduce them to free market, right? So, yeah. I couldn't study where I wanted. I got in NYU and I wanted to study with the professor, William Easterly that some of you may know. He wrote The White Man's Burden and he worked in the World Bank for 15 years until he found out that it was a complete waste of time. But because I didn't have $50,000 and I didn't want to get in debt, I didn't have the money to go to NYU so I decided to go to Europe and I actually ended in a very Marxist university called Caillou-Lubin. So Marxist that this is the place where Catholic priests mixed Marxism with Christianity in something that was called the theology of liberation that basically was the excuse of the Catholic Church to become part of the Marxist guerrillas that we all had in Latin America. So imagine how Marxist that university was. And I decided to study a master's degree on anthropology, international development, and cultures. Sounds beautiful, right? So, when I started giving them papers about the need for free marketing in my country to liberate everyone for poverty, there were like, you neoliberalist, what is wrong with you? Capitalism is destroying the world. So, of course, I never graduated from there. My thesis was banned. Yeah.  And then I went to Rome and I worked with Senegalese immigrants, actually. And I remember one conversation with a Senegalese guy who sold Chinese bags and purses and wallets. And he said to me, you know what's the most Hippocratic thing about the Europeans? Whenever Bono of U2 makes a concert about let's save Africa or Oxfam asks them for money or UNICEF, they're happy to give money to save Africa. But that money goes to my dictator. My dictator uses that money to implement chaos and violence in my country. So it's impossible for me to work there. So therefore I have to come to Europe. I do it in an illegal way. And the money that I earn here goes straight to my family through Western Union. It doesn't pass through the corrupt hands of the government. But what do they do to me, Gloria? They don't let me work.  They don't give me papers to work. So if the Europeans want to save Africa, cut the crap, at least stop the aid and let us work. And if they don't want us here, at least let the free market happen because the European Union does this not only with Africa but also with Latin America. It's impossible for us to work. So because of this, I ended up very frustrated. I had two bachelor degrees. I had two post-graduate degrees. A master's degree that I couldn't graduate from. All these studies, and I was like, my God, I don't want to work in a political party. I don't want to work in an NGO. What am I going to do?  So I went back home. And because I didn't want to work in anything of what I studied, I went back to the radio. I used to be a radio DJ. That was my part-time job when I was studying in Francisco, Marroquín. And so I said, yeah, I want to go back to the radio. And this was my first radio show when I came back. And it was set to me. You know what, Gloria? You have all this knowledge. Why don't you use all the knowledge that you have and talk about it on the radio? And I was like, all right.  And he's like, why? Well, I'm a libertarian. And he's like, what's that? Because you have to understand by the year 2010 the only people talking about libertarianism wearing UFM. But most of the people out there, they don't know what libertarianism was.  But also the left wing hates us because we're not socialists. And he's like, that sounds interesting. I want that on air. And I'm like, okay. So how do you start selling libertarian ideas to a young audience from 14 years old to 30 years old and their parents who are listening to you because they're driving their kids to school? So I started with what I knew and what I knew was scholarships. So I said to them, you know what, guys, the government is not interested in educating you. In fact, the dumber you are, the easier for them to buy for your boat. So if you want to educate yourself, you have two options.  Because of this, I became the crazy lady radio who talked to you about scholarships and the show went up in ratings. And you know what I found out? That freedom of expression is directly upwards with the amount of rating that you can give. As long as you can have a rating, anything goes. So one of the things that I was coming to understand was the power of technology. And I don't know if you have watched this YouTube video. It's called iSmartphone. And it grabs the same principles of iPencil of Lyonna Reed to explain that no one in this planet knows how to make a smartphone but how powerful a smartphone is. Because of my job in the radio, I then work in a bank doing their social media. So I learned about the power of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. And then I worked in a cellphone company, the biggest cellphone company of Guatemala. And I understood that this is the teacher of the future. That in order to liberate the minds that have been captured by Marxism in all the schools, not only state schools, but now private schools where the rich kids go, now it's cool to be socialist and like Bernie Sanders. We have this Marxist mentality both ways oppressing the amount of young people who think for themselves. So I said, I think the solution is here. And I started doing activism in my country. I was protesting in the streets because this is also useful and important. In order for libertarianism to be successful, we gotta get out there. We have to be, you know, we say in Spanish, library mouse, but also a bar mouse. Whatever you learn in the library, you have to take it outside to the bars, to the parties, to the streets, to the protest. Otherwise, we're not gonna be successful. So because of my activism, I got invited to a parliament in Spain. By this moment, they only know me in Guatemala. I'm the crazy libertarian girl in the radio talking about scholarships and how the government should be limited. But then they invite me to Spain and I give a speech. And I didn't know that this speech was being recorded. And they put it on YouTube. And because of this speech, that I have it here, yeah, which, you know, basically I said what was already making sense in my mind. Let's dismantle populism through technology. Let's use our cell phones and let's start, you know, putting away all the lies that Hugo Chavez, Lula da Silva, Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Evo Morales, and all these dictators that we have in Latin America are trying to say to the world. And guess what? Apparently, this idea that for me is like, you know, common sense resonated with everyone. In three days, the video got one million views. And I started getting calls from Argentina, Miami, Venezuela, Colombia. Oh my God, what you said, it makes sense. And I'm like, really? The libertarian, crazy ideas that for decades have been relegated to radical and extremists are now something that people want to hear. You know, it's like finally in the market of ideas, the demand and the offer are meeting for people who defend freedom. And from this moment on, I had two choices. Either I go down my bed and hide and expect for the YouTube video just to pass out of fashion until the next big thing comes up. Or I take this opportunity like Steve Jobs said and start connecting the dots. And I decided to do the second. And since this moment on, I started working all over Latin America. I had given more than 1,000 conferences. I have given support and knowledge to young students, to people in politics trying to tell them that libertarian ideas do make sense. Because of this, I got an invitation to go to Venezuela, right? The zombie apocalypse of the 21st century. And my father was so mad at me.   Imagine my father, he has the Cuban mentality of the dictatorship, right? So I was like that. If I don't go to Venezuela, I don't have moral grounds to talk about how horrible this regime is. Because what about if everything that they have told us is a lie? What if actually Venezuela is in the case? But it's not the same talking with socialist, cool, young students from Berkeley who love Bernie Sanders when they have never gotten to Venezuela when you have been there, right? So for me, entering Venezuela was pretty much when Luke Skywalker was entering the Death Star, I didn't know what was going to happen. I didn't know what to expect. And it was horrible. It was like watching Rome after it was invaded by the barbaric peoples. Everything destroyed. People dying in the street. Scarcity all over the place. Everything that my Cuban grandparents told me about communism. Seeing it in the first flesh and then real for me for the first time. I got in so much trouble. I filmed a supermarket expropriated, nationalized with nothing. No goods, no food whatsoever. The KGB of Venezuela, de Sevín, followed me everywhere. It was really disappointed to get into meetings with the opposition which actually is also socialist. I mean when you tell them that the only way of getting Venezuela out of this mess is privatizing the oil and legalizing drugs and there is illegal drugs, money and the oil in the hands of the dictatorship this is not going to end. It's really sad when you see that there are Venezuelans dying every day and no one in the opposition has the balls to defend capitalism, private property and free market. It's really terrible. And the only woman doing that is Maria Corina Machado. And unfortunately she doesn't get the press that she should get because she is defending the right ideas. So I'm going to go back to this conference of the opposition of Venezuela that actually don't agree with free market. So since that moment and speaking about Star Wars because this is another thing that I do a lot I take movies and I try to take out of movies the important messages about the individual freedom the self-esteem the importance of fighting for ideas so I have done radio shows about how Star Wars is actually a story that starts with the blockade of free market in between the planets and that's where it all starts when they start to block free market. Since then I've been doing the battle of ideas all over Latin America. How do you measure the impact? Well you can never know exactly what I do know is that for the first time in my life I see that current ideas are making an impact and more voices are coming up in Argentina people like Antonela Martí in Spain, people like Maria Blanco Juan Ramon Rayo, Diego Sanchez de la Cruz in Chile, Axel Kaiser in Brazil, Instituto Mises I mean finally in the market of ideas and especially in the internet which is not controlled by the government and is not controlled by the conservative school in the internet which is the freest of all the countries libertarian ideas are the ones who are always winning. The demand for these ideas is what young people are looking for. Why is this so crucial? Because bad ideas lead to bad realities and good ideas lead to good realities. Bad ideas socialism in Latin America state mercantilism and conservatism in the sense of sexism, racism, classism, not teaching evolution in the schools for young girls to know how to manage their body biologically and responsibly these have an impact and the worst of all these impacts of course is the Venezuelan case more than 4 million Venezuelans have fled and ran away from the consequences of bad ideas implementing bad realities 4 million Venezuelans and counting plus the thousands and thousands that have gotten killed so we've also done a job of explaining to people how we got here I published this book called the populist deceit with a philosopher and lawyer Axel Kaiser from Chile of course there are all the guys there starting with Fidel Castro because one of the things that Latin Americans do not understand is that this is a strategy that has been in place since the 1960s when Castro comes to Cuba he starts implementing a copycat of what he did and that's why we had Marxist guerrillas in Guatemala El Salvador Nicaragua, Peru and of course the most famous of them all in Colombia the FARC because they're not only a Marxist guerrilla they're also a drug cartel so in this book we try to explain Latin Americans this is how we got here and this is how we get out of here but I also published this book How to Talk to a Socialist because in my travelings in Latin America I saw that the Marxist mentality has poisoned all the minds of the young people because socialism offers you quick solutions to hard problems there's poverty so let's just give away the wealth so what I try to do in this book is I get the image of the coolest politician young guy that we have which is Ernesto Che Guevara who was a sociopath a homophobic and a killer and I don't believe that my region can have peace or prosperity when the young guy by excellence that everyone applauds is Che Guevara it's really sad when you see an LGTB protest or parade and they use Che Guevara when the guy killed a lot of homosexuals when he was in Cuba and he hated them and he was not only homophobic he was also racist but in this path I also found that our enemy for freedom is not only socialism it's also estate mercantilism it's also conservatism but not conservatism in the Anglo-Saxon way where you try to conserve free market no, conservatism where you try to conserve sexism, classism racism privileges from the government to your business which has created oligarchs super-rich oligarchs in Latin America that most of the people despise and this is why they vote for socialism to have revenge so then I wrote this book How to Talk to a Conservative right? because this discussion has been going for decades in the Anglo-Saxon world but not in Latin America in Latin America, sadly there's still not like a good straight division in between being conservative and being a libertarian and in order to do public policy sometimes we need to talk about things that conservatives just want to ignore on drugs it's a complete failure all the ways you see it but they don't want to talk about it so if you want to do politics in a very libertarian way either we step out of both of these collectivist extremes or we're not going to be successful so I launched this book like three weeks ago and of course in the cover I go for Margarete Thatcher and I go for Margarete Thatcher and I put like this cool sunglasses because I think the woman was pretty libertarian by her standards she ruled in the 80s she decriminalized homosexuality which was a crime in England and that's why Alan Turin decided to kill himself because he was put in this program of let's cure the gay away but she also decriminalized abortion so by those standards she was very libertarian for her age I don't know any conservative right wing women right now in 2019 in my region that would dare to do that but also because she said that at the end the ones who betrayed her were not the socialist were the conservatives of her own party which every time that she wanted to push for more free market the conservatives were like no no no we're gonna lose allies on the other side and she was like I'm not here to have friends I'm here to do the right thing and I also get inspired in this book by Hayek's why I'm not a conservative and also by Anne Rand's conservatism an obituary which she has in her book capitalism the unknown ideal and basically what I'm trying to do here is to say guys liberty is one it's economic liberty it's individual liberty that doesn't mean that we are pushing for subsidies no we're just pushing for free market to have the options for people so from this point on I have not only work in Latin America I have had the opportunity of speaking at CPAC of working with John Stussell of being in the European Parliament they gave me the lifetime achievement award of Freddie Hayek and I'm like you're already giving me a lifetime achievement award I still have decades to live right but I'm very aware that I'm standing in the shoulder of giants of great giants that have come before us even before classical liberalism people who have fought for freedom and freedom is such a delicate torch that needs to be passed from generation to generation so I have no idea of the impact of my work and you will never have a real grasp of what the impact of your work can be maybe the impact of your work will have results in centuries to come Manuela Yao when he decided to make a university in Guatemala he said if I put a political party no one will vote for these ideas because no one knows them if I put a magazine no one will read it only the people who already agree with me and that's going to be preaching to the choir and so let's do a university and we start changing minds and thanks to that decision in the 70s right now in Guatemala we have a libertarian radio libertopolis radio and it's not only heard in Guatemala it's heard all over in Brazil they also have a libertarian party so you never know what the impact of your work can be in centuries to come and when we understand that freedom is what Ana Julia Cooper said the cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class it is the cause of humankind when we understand this we know that we're not working to win elections we're not working to free a country we're working to liberate people's minds in order for them to make their own decisions so where do we go from here we were talking last night with some people from Atlas Network and we were talking about how other sciences neuroscience astrophysics DNA genetics biology are coming up to the conclusion that in fact individuals we are wired to be free and I think that the next step for libertarianism is to get along with all these sciences and start teaching new generations that freedom goes beyond economics I don't know if you know this guy Jason Silva he's Venezuelan and he has worked with National Geographic he's done this show called Origins he has an excellent episode on the origins of money as one of the most important technologies that humanity has come up with he didn't got to this conclusion because he studied at UFM or because he's a libertarian it's because these are people who are studying evolution and science and humanity has come up with ways to collaborate pacifically and voluntarily Cosmos of Carl Sagan and now the new series of Neil deGrasse Tyson shows us that actually the cosmos works for freedom as well every time that humanity has freedom it prospers and every time we understand that we're responsible for the planet and the results also Harari with sapiens and Steven Pinker in this book and in the blank slate conclude that communism is terrible that every time that the individual is submitted to the will of the collective everything goes wrong Harari has in sapiens one section on money that looks like the speech of Francisco de Anconia and Atlas Shrugged yes I know sometimes these guys are fatalist I know sometimes these guys are taken by the left like their idols but in fact when we read them carefully we find clues where we can find things in common and they are great storytellers and this is why Tyrion Lannister said that stories are so powerful because if we can also communicate that freedom is something that evolutionary has made humanity better we have better chances at alluring to more people another excellent branch that we need to tap into is the environment market solutions for pollution we have to get away of the discussion either if the climate is changing or not changing who cares what are we going to do with the pollution that is evident the pollution that I have felt I live in Mexico City and we had an air crisis not so long ago I've seen plastic in the seas by tons and you know one of the things that we freedom fighters agrees that when reality shows us something we should not ignore it we should work to solve it so I think that we have another great opportunity at speaking about market solutions for pollution and also now there are people talking about the possibility of the death of the death the possibility that we're not going to die anymore the possibility that maybe in two centuries people are going to live forever and with genetic processes and you know reverting age people are going to live longer what are we going to do with that time what's going to be the right philosophy the right ethics to live forever and these are debates that I think libertarians have a lot to say about so I want to leave you with this quote that I used in the speech when they gave me the lifetime achievement award the importance of knowledge and ideas is the most important thing of all because knowledge and ideas is what shapes our reality since it's the only thing that no totalitarian dictator can take away from you nor expropriate and this was taught to me by my grandparents and my parents the only treasure the only wealth that no dictator can nationalize from you or expropriate or take away from you is what you have in your head so invest in your brain because if you have to start all over in a new country this is where you have all your wealth not in the material world it is the brain the most valuable of your properties the tool to solve problems the key to start over and create wealth and progress so if we're going to tackle the brain as the most important of all the wealth creation tools that we have we have to tackle the brain all of its branches psychology, art sports, genetics biology, nutrition, sexuality not only economics thank you very much and have a wonderful evening


Hello everyone. I am Ritu Bharatwaj and I'm a senior researcher with the Climate Change Group at the International Institute for Environmental Development. Here I work on the issues of climate change, loss and damage, social protection, climate resilience and child-centered adaptation action. Prior to joining IAID, I have worked with Government of India, UK Government's Department for International Development, as well as national and international NGOs. My research spans on the issues of climate change, disaster risk production, climate risk management and how climate-induced distress migration and displacement creates vulnerability for communities and the global south. In my presentation today, I will cover how the impact of climate change and environmental degradation is deepening inequality, driving migration and creating vulnerability to modern slavery and trafficking. Well, we often link the notion of slavery with colonial era, but figures show that far more people are subject to slavery today than any other time in history. Slavery practices in these modern times can take different forms and often categorized as forced labor, bonded labor, dead bondage and sex trafficking. But all of these are interrelated and in many ways overlapping. For example, a person suffering from dead bondage could also be forced into bonded labor or forced labor. Similarly, a woman suffering from dead bondage could be pushed into sex trafficking. Figures that you see on the slide clearly indicate that modern slavery disproportionately affects the most marginalized members of the society. According to the global estimate of modern slavery, 40.3 million people worldwide are living in slavery, 71% of which are women and one in every four victim are children under the age of 18. Clearly, the picture is very grim, but what is crucial to understand is that while several socioeconomic, cultural and institutional factors shape the risk to modern slavery, they are increasingly considered to be made worse by climate change impacts. Climate change and climate induced distress migration is worsening the existing vulnerabilities of slavery. Evidence indicates that the nexus between climate change, distress migration and slavery exist along at least three pathways. First is in context of sudden or extreme climatic events. For example, cyclone, floods, hurricanes, which leads to displacement of communities where they are forced to stay and survive in temporary leave camps or shelters. Very strong evidence exists indicating that human trafficking increases in the aftermath of such events. There are many evidence for this. For example, in Bangladesh, women who were left widowed by cyclone Sidra, they were targeted by traffickers and driven into prostitution and hard labor. Similarly, following the annual flooding in Assam in Northeast India, women and girls were forced into slavery and marriages to make ends meet. The second pathway indicating this nexus was shown to exist in the event of slow onset disasters like drought, desertification, sea level rise or erosion, which results in crop loss, drinking water shortage, food insecurity and so on. Now situations like these, they push community dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods to pursue dangerous or risky migration opportunities. Because they are in despair, they're left with no option for survival and livelihood. Research in the brick sector in Cambodia, also known as blood bricks, they map the intricate details of how farmers whose livelihoods have been undermined by climate change are forced into intergenerational bondage. The third pathway for this nexus was shown to exist when climate events are combined with conflict. This final pathway normally exists when forced displacement due to conflict is further precipitated by traumatic events such as drought or famine. These circumstances or pathways that I've just talked about, they can overlap or intersect. But similar dynamics were seen to drive vulnerability along all the three pathways. Firstly, climate change is worsening the poverty and inequality. And secondly, it is placing people who are already in precarious situations in position where they reach the limit of coping capacity and are exposed to trafficking. And I will illustrate this with the help of three case studies. The first case study is from Chitrakoot in India. This area is inhabited by tribal indigenous community called coal and they are traditionally being dependent on rain-fed agriculture and forest for the livelihood. This region in the recent times has also been exposed to droughts, longer dry spells, extreme heat and rainfall variation. And all of that leads to frequent forest fires and damage to their crops. Now in absence of alternate livelihood option, holes are forced to migrate and work in nearby store mines. They work there under inhuman polluting and exploitative work conditions. People working in these mines, they often come back with lung diseases which is caused by constant inhaling of dust and polluted air. Something which could have been prevented through simple protective gear. But most of these migrants, they work on informal contract and engage through middlemen, which means that they have no accidental or health cover. Women who migrate along with men, they also end up working in these stone mines. And they are sexually exploited by the mining industry contractors which are locally known as Dados. Now in many cases, men migrate leaving their women, children and elderly members behind, which also leads to another form of exploitation. Now desperate to make their ends meet and feed their family, women are often forced to take debt from the local land owner, which then lands them into vicious cycle of debt and unending physical and sexual exploitation. Second case study is from Urichar in Bangladesh. It's a river island and it has been exposed to cyclones and flooding in the past. So community here are used to dealing with these impacts. But in the recent times, because of climate change, the frequency and intensity of these cyclones have increased, resulting in more frequent floods, coastal erosion and sea level rise. Every household here has faced displacement at least three to seven times, which means that even before they are able to recover from one climate impact, they have faced with another. And that compounds their marginalization and vulnerability. And that has a more detrimental impact for women and girls. Families who see their land eroding, they rush to marry off their daughters before they are displaced and that often results in child marriages.  The third case study is from Lake Chad Basin, which many of you may recognize because of the conflict with Boko Haram and the ill-famous kidnapping of the school girls. But what many may not know that even before the conflict with Boko Haram started in 2009, people were forced to leave this basin because of the impacts of climate change. Droughts, longer dry spells, extreme heat have become a common phenomena in this area in the recent times because of the climate change. And combined with conflict, it has resulted in more than 5 million people being displaced both internally as well as across the border. Now these multiple internal displacements and livelihood loss have particularly acute impact on women and girls who are then exposed to the vulnerability of trafficking and modern slavery. They're forced to work in an exploitative working condition and then they face gender-based violence. Men and boys on the other hand, frustrated by livelihood loss and displacement, are often become more vulnerable to being radicalized by the ideologies and recruitment by Boko Haram. The three case studies clearly demonstrate the strong nexus that exists between climate change-induced distrust migration and the vulnerability to trafficking and slavery. Even the latest IPCC report has noted that the greatest single impact of climate change could be on human migration with millions of people expected to be displaced because of shoreline erosion, coastal flooding and agricultural disruption. Now various analysts have tried to put a number on the future floor of climate migrants and the most recent assessment by World Bank, which came out just before COP26 in late 2021, puts this number at 216 million by 2050, which is quite a huge number. But one thing to be noted here is that this number only accounts for internally displaced populations. It does not account for those who would be crossing the border because of these climate impacts, which will make these numbers grow up by several millions. And one of the most vulnerable regions to these migration flows would be sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, the Pacific and South Asia, also one of the poorest regions of the world. Now one can imagine the scale at which such displacements would expose the vulnerable community to the risk of trafficking and push people to the dark sides of these migratory flows as victims of trafficking and slavery. Now the problem with us here is one of time because of the speed at which climate change is happening and two of scale, the number of people it is going to be affecting. And we have all seen that in last one month, several thousand, in fact, million of people have crossed the border of Ukraine because of the war with Russia. But if you compare this number with the one that we are going to expect because of climate change, it is not comparable. The simplistic image of coastal household depending on subsistence farming being forced to pack their bags and they move to a safer area, it does not happen in real world. One can see migrant workers trying to cross the Mediterranean English Channel on a regular basis in precarious conditions, trying to enter Europe and many of them dying and rude. But this situation will not subside, it will only increase in the current near future. And so far, there is no home for climate migrants in the international community, both literally as well as figuratively. And that's why they land up on the dark side of these migrations. Right now, the burden of providing for climate migrants is borne by the poorest community and countries, those who are least responsible for climate impacts, and they're left to fend for themselves. And these climate induced distress migration and displacement is not just leading to slavery and trafficking. It is also hindering the development of the society and community in these developed countries, by increasing the pressure on urban infrastructure and services, by undermining the economic growth, by increasing the risk of conflict, and by leading to worse health education and social indicators. It is clear that the international community has to face up to the prospects of large scale displacement caused by climate change. Now, based on current climate change scenario, a certain amount of distress migration and displacement is already logged in. But how much of this will remain logged in or increase in future would depend on international communities effort to deal with this issue. So what can we collectively do to address it? We first need an international recognition of this problem that a nexus like this exists. So when climate change impact happens, it leads to distress migration, and that does expose people to vulnerabilities of slavery and trafficking. And that also leads to several secondary and tertiary impacts. There's a need to understand the dimensions of these impacts. And not just understand and recognize that it's also important to acknowledge them in international policy discourse, particularly within the UNF triple C framework. And there should be a willingness to provide climate finance to strengthen the right space social safety net of these vulnerable communities. Second, we need to extend financial technical and policy support to the least developed countries for them to be able to manage the risk of climate migrants. Firstly, for them to be able to take anticipatory action and move people away from marginal areas where displacement becomes inevitable. And secondly, to help them undertake in situ adaptation efforts so that people are not forced to undertake distress migration in the event of climate impacts. Thirdly, at the national level, LDCs also need to recognize this issue as a priority in both development and climate policy and integrate these priorities in their national climate resilience plans, migration response plans, as well as national development plans. While we are expecting the policymakers and countries to do their bit in dealing with this issue of modern slavery and trafficking, we at our own individual levels can play a role in addressing this issue of modern slavery by becoming conscious buyers. And I try to explain this with the help of an example. Well, we all love to eat chocolates, but next time when you go to buy a chocolate, make sure you look for this brand called Tony's Chocolate Only. This brand was launched purely to raise awareness about slavery and child labour issues across the cocoa industry. Tony is now, of course, a leading brand purely established on the word of Mark publicity and without any form of paid advertising. If you ever open the bar of Tony's chocolate, you will find that instead of regular squares, it has unequal squares and Tony's bar had been divided into unequal squares because it represents the unfair and unequal cocoa industry, where the company CEO gets paid in millions, whereas a child working at the end of supply chain is devoid of any rights or proper compensation. So next time when you go and buy a product, make sure that you buy a product, even though it's slightly higher price for something that supports the rights of workers across its supply chain. But having said that, I would also say that while companies like Tony can be credited with creating awareness among the consumers and doing some good, it is also important to understand that by doing so, it may be excluding supply chain that may not be able to afford compliance with their business norms or anti-slavery policies. And brands like Tony's chocolate only need to invest and share the burden of creating social safety nets for people working in their supply chain in least developed countries in terms of insurance, health cover, employment security. And apart from a commitment to source product from supply chain free of exploitation, companies also need to come forward with their commitment to create new supply chains in vulnerable countries and regions, particularly targeting areas that may have been recently devastated by climate or natural disasters. So yes, we can all do our bit, particularly the national governments, the private sector, as well as us at our own individual level. Thank you for listening and for your interest on this topic. The research and the evidence that I presented today is the work of IID and a number of our partners in the global South, particularly in the South Asian and the Western African region. We are shortly proposing to come out with another insightful paper on this issue and which will also cover policy toolkit and provide more dimensions of what drives vulnerability to trafficking and slavery. And if you have an interest, please be on the lookout for this paper. Thank you.


Welcome back to Investor Intel at PDAC 2018. I'm joined again today by Carol Klipp and Carol is really the number one online media influencer I think in this space today. Carol, you're all over social media and all over it. Our industry should probably give you a big thank you. What drove you to get so involved? Thank you very much for this praise and of course it's a lot of very hard work because you know when I started my blog it was very interesting. What I found of course English is not my native language but thank you very much but what was very interesting before you can write even a very short article you have really to study the subject right? And Twitter is great in a sense that it's discipline your mind because you are communicating with very short messages so you have to know your subject. You have to be there frequently otherwise people will not be following you and you have to be interesting otherwise people will be bored. So I love this way of communicating, of expanding this education and of course it's very easy but very hard when your investors can always hit you back and ask the questions about the company. You're certainly out there and accountable for what you have to say aren't you? Exactly and you know I found it maybe first time ten years ago then it became crystallized for me five years ago why a lot of mining executives or executives are shy of this kind of public stance on a lot of things and now I know because once you said something or you wrote the tweet you are responsible for that knowledge if you are sharing it or for the actions which you are thinking will be for the best benefit of shareholders of your own company and then shareholders will always can show you tweet. Kirill you was talking about this, where is it? So it's very very interesting sphere when you have almost immediate response from your core investors or participants in our industry. Well I've been on Twitter a long time but LinkedIn not so long and I'm amazed at how much information you get out on Twitter. Sorry on LinkedIn. And you know what is very interesting? Sometimes I don't know one hundred percent about the particular subject. For example I'm quite good about lithium, lithium batteries, electric cars but for example I don't have a clue how many electric buses are sold in China. I can just fly one question out and I will receive like ten top experts tweeting me back and then I can check the source like within half an hour I know the best knowledge maybe from another person all across the world. So it's fascinating what social media really how it opens us in a sense that we can not only educate other people with our knowledge but also we can gain and crystallize the knowledge in the industry very fast. Well Kirill thank you so much. We're lucky to have the chance to talk to you today and we'll look forward to seeing you again soon. Thank you very much Jeff.


We did, I think we came up with some ideas and good strategies and some good ideas and I touched upon it. I felt like how Samaritan touched upon this, how care healthcare users kind of did a little bit of this. But what we're thinking about, and what we sort of came up with in terms of an overall objective, is to really look at building a strong network of partners that lead the Latino community in efforts to build strong talent platforms that lead to good jobs in our communities all over Texas. And making sure that we include, breaking down the internal and external misunderstanding and lack of appreciation of value of all of our Latino community members, whether they're Native or other Indigenous. And so, kind of breaking it down into the four little categories that we have. We talked about talent platforms and making sure that we inform our community members of what those prime lines to those good jobs and those good careers look like and how do we get there. We talked a lot about apprenticeship at the Gold Standard and how to learn and learn so that we have more access to those opportunities. We talked about local talent for local jobs and making sure that that's not just includes a conversation in terms of diversity, but then also looking at what we need to do to better enable our community to have the skills to get to those local jobs, those tech jobs, those healthcare jobs that are especially here in San Antonio are really predominant. And again, making sure that we have mentorship. And we talked about mentorship in terms of not only that human investment and that personal investment in talent and mentorship, but also that capital investment. So how do we have more dollars put towards industry members into our community members and our programs? We also talked about power building. So that's that strong network of partners. And making sure we talked a lot about asset passing. I heard that throughout already. But also we called it power mapping and making sure that we leverage those organizations that have already been doing a lot of really great work so that we really do have that seat at the table. But making sure it's a focus, not just focusing on advocating for our issues that really, again, building that next generation of leaders. Making sure that we have the alliances, and you talked about this earlier, that this is where corporate partnerships is probably going to be the easiest because this is right in their zone and this is what they care about. They want to see that future workforce come to that. So they're going to be highly invested in terms of time and hopefully dollars in this space and making sure we leverage those. We talked a lot about a funder table. We don't really talk about the foundations that are very interested in this space. How do we start to bring them all to the table and really hone in on what can we have them invest in our communities to make sure that we are getting to the places that we want to go. And then again, we're talking about increasing engagement, voting, and empowering our younger generation. We are a young demographic that we're not really taking advantage of informing that generation of who we are, where we're at, where we've been, and how we move to the next level. Talked about good jobs and said, what is a good job? There's a lot of, there's a, there's a variance, I think, in a lot of people's minds of what that is, but we broke it down to, we talked about the living wage, but we want higher wages for our community members. We want to support entrepreneurs and those individuals who want to start their own business and how do we help them get more access to micro-lending. We want to talk about comprehensive employee benefits and I'll say the word unions are not a bad thing. So we want, we want to make sure that those employees are protected, that all employees are protected, particularly our Latinos. Talking about making sure that there is workplace employee safety training so that those of our, those that are in our community that are more in the labor intensive sectors, they are protected as they go into their jobs. And then making sure that we have strong economic development strategies. I've heard a little bit about city, county, and ISE engagement and that government engagement. This is where how can we make sure that government officials really take a look at if we're going to relocate companies here and we're going to give them incentives, what are they doing in return for our community? So that's community investment. Are they taking in more high school students to have that work-based learning opportunity and experience? Are they taking colleges? What are they doing to help us just as we are helping them come into our communities? And making sure that as we talk about, we talked about the living wages, higher wages with making sure that there isn't a elimination of the benefits. So that cliff, we don't want people to, well, yes, get higher wages, but what if they need that childcare services? And I see my friend from Workforce Solutions, Alamo, and all the benefits and services that they provide to the employees. We don't want to see that eliminate if they do get higher wages. And then the last thing we did talk about is it would be impossible not to talk about it, but immigration and making sure that we do protect a... Fortunately, we all have the SB4 past the house. It's probably going to get signed by the government in the next couple of days. And that really has a detrimental effect to our community and those individuals that are not documented. So we want to be sure that as we continue to have the conversations about labor and employment in certain industries that specifically are using undocumented workers, how do we help protect them? How do we help ensure that they have... There are regulations to protect them and make sure that they are not left high and wide or treated in-community. And so we talk about human rights protections for these individuals and making sure that we end the workplace rate. And some of the last comments were really making sure again, wraparound services in terms of legal representation and that they aren't just treated as something other than who they are which is a human being. So back. I'll say the best for last. So we are the education group and I'm going to have one person from each of our three breakouts come up here and share a little bit about what we talked about. We had a lot of GT folks and gifted and talented folks in our group from practitioners and academics to community organizers and lawyers. And we really talked about actually... So we started the conversation on education about what is the existing infrastructure we wanted to talk about before we talked about the how and what are our action steps talk about what are the issues. And so we talked about some of the existing infrastructure in education in the Latino community about what's already been done. And so part of what we went over was this Latino and higher education policy agenda. If you haven't gotten a copy please see these to make sure everybody has copies. This was part of an effort in over 14 different summits and eight different cities where the Latino Education Task Force commissioned by the Senate Senate Caucus and the Legislative Caucus really put together the Latino agenda rather than being reactionary in a proactive way put together a agenda and that was done with over 70 organizations. And so our group today we talked about what is not in this agenda. This was in 2014 it needs to be updated and there also are emerging needs and things that weren't included in here that based on people's experiences in the room need to be added. Just one quick example so I mentioned SP4 and really the intersection between education and immigration obviously there's going to be even more need to focus on that after the climate SP4. So we talked about the what issues and then we moved to talk about we identified three areas in how do we move, we know what some of the issues are, how do we advance that agenda forward and particularly so the Texas Legislature and other decision makers pay attention. And so we identified three major areas where we need to build action around parent and community engagement number one, number two how do we better involve the business community and then number three a communication strategy. And so I went Chris for my biggest director of LULAC in Dallas to come up and talk a little bit about communication strategy and basically the question so we asked what does success look like what are our existing assets and finally what tangible actions we're going to take after today. Can you all hear me? So the first thing is to build a team of neighborhood captains based on face communication is still one of the best ways to get messages across so we don't want to dismiss that entirety so neighborhood captains I think is a great way for people that are involved in the community to reach out to their immediate neighbors and get our message across about policy issues and that's a direct and easy way to have policy briefings with people that usually aren't aware of what's going on. Second is identify research needs and centers there's a lot of centers policy centers all throughout Texas so we need to take advantage of that and have them work with them and tell them what are some of the research that we need and have them do that research for us and that will help them because of course they need to be doing research in their centers and we need that research to be able to create better policy for our community. Communication for Asian captains we need to utilize technology and all the new programs that are out there to be communicating with people that are that are not as connected as we are but are on Facebook, Twitter all the time so having a communication plan is an easy way to communicate with them on what's going on what they can do to be active and the resources aren't there we just need to train people to be able to do that so what we're going to do is work with small groups of people throughout Texas so that we can train them and they can go back to their communities and hopefully train some other people and just be able to have a better strategy when it comes to online organizing Last, the building capacity with existing organizations there's a ton of organizations out there but we don't always communicate efficiently so what we're going to do now is have a highs and lows in 2017 legislative session so that we just have a clear picture of what went on what people can really what were the issues and how we reacted to that and it's just an easier way for people to see everything that happened because we might not have the big attention about the whole legislative session fundraising for style we need people who can solely rely on volunteers to do the work because their volunteers they have a lot of things they program their own jobs so we need to build capacity and raise money to be able to hire some of these people that will be on call for us hopefully especially now this time volunteers still need them but we want to also build an internship program for some of the organizations that we have so that we can maybe get them a college credits and it will get on the resume but also be able to use their knowledge and their expertise and time to be able to communicate our message to us yeah that's great and now we have got to talk a little bit about the business of interest groups I'm sorry I'm putting together in a working document that we're coming to share with the public sure I'm having a good time here so what we talk about for business in the internet is really just the importance of having mainstream business in Texas not just Hispanic chambers not just Hispanic business support pro education agenda whether or not and probably especially not if it's branded as a Latino education policy agenda and we feel like that the very the biggest asset for that is that there's a very compelling business argument for that and some of the immediate action items that we thought I were around especially polling not just around issues that are included in the education piece of the agenda but all of the issues that we've been talking about the last couple of days and figuring out where there's alignment in the business community and where there's the most support for the business community for various policy issues we also talked about some specific programmatic things especially around building entrepreneurship in high schools curriculum and mentorship programs and the importance of that and I think that the other big piece is something that we talked a lot about the importance of focusing more capacity on local elected officials city and county level of policy change and seeing where we can promote policies at the local level that can be duplicated or scaled up those are the big takeaways John Gonzalez mentioned that it's home to the most fortunate 1,000 companies in the nation so really trying to figure it out Dr. Schildman would you want to come up? so arguably the most important thing that we talked about is the community engagement so community engagement we feel that parents and school need to be engaged in instruction of parents not just to do manipulatives and cutting instruction papers and stuff like that but to actually provide instruction to parents we talked about alternative lantern centers and the communication of the courses is these were the areas that we used to contextualize the poison we're trying to answer so we had to actually think of some real issues so they could get us to answer the questions that are even more important the first question was what does success look like in parent engagement so it was making sure that it's not top down but then it begins the people that we trust parents trust their teachers parents trust the teachers and the news comes from the teachers they believe that first before anything else they're key part of their communication there again you know a real important part to this is the listening you have to listen to the parents you have to listen to the students and of course you also have to listen to the teachers and administrators and they develop an action plan not just develop it but implement it and actually have the results come out as a result but then we feel that that is part of what we feel that success looks like is to engage here by being inclusive if you're not then you're missing a point so if you're dictating you're telling people what they should do you're not learning from them as to what needs to be done once again this is focused on the parent engagement parents being engaged so what are our existing assets for the community are parents to begin with are assets and reaching out to a lot of community organizations that we have are assets are churches that people trust organizations that really need better involvement a lot of the working quality are assets and they need to bring down that language to a grassroots level so that parents know about it we need to see quality many of them haven't been presented or allowed to participate in the conversations that led to the development of that policy yes we ourselves are the best assets and if you don't think of yourself as an asset it starts with us what are the resources what are the resources for capacity gaps well we need more leadership in the community parent leadership they need to be important and they need training on issues that are specific to the things going on things going on in schools right and so I've heard from several people who have talked about internships and mentoring absolutely so building the capacity within our communities building that capacity so it continues and moves on and they'll have to be heading on other people coming down to tell us about why they're closing a school or why they're making this school an alternative school or why all those inter-expanded 3K programs to keep another building open or charter schools or in charter schools or in district charter schools and all of that what info or data are we missing I think communities need to know how to organize more we need leadership there are many examples that were brought out in terms of places that have these kinds of sessions and organizations to do that we need to get that out following up on that is there are different methodologies of how to do community organizing and so that's what we're talking about training, making sure that the community is training how to do actual community organizing and it's important with different methodologies we're not talking about trying to do something because that's the way it should be done there's some methodologies to do effective organizing and so that's what we're talking about and what data are we missing we're talking about parent engagement parents need to know about graduation they need to know about the demographics of students who are going to or attending alternative schools and why and why they're attending charter schools and how many are attending charter schools they're like well I'm a bad one parents need to know about marginalized groups like long term many of their own kids could be in the trip to becoming a long term they don't know about that so they need information but the information of policy and all of this must be done at a grassroots level so that parents understand the issue first or probably part of the issue they understand what's going on and then that's going to get so hard because it's a good good kid to that issue of community organizing and policy in fact the officials for example whatever level they might be could be at the school level but if you don't know what you're talking about and don't know what the policy is how many you're talking about so it's important to bring that policy understanding to the grassroots level and speak a language that's spoken at that level so if you wanted to do one look at that different patterns to do that different languages these are first and so it should be done but there should be a strong understanding of what policy is and then who are our stakeholders still missing still missing from the table that we need to bring in teachers, students individuals that people know and trust in the community and trust trust them we have to have board members that represent us elected officials representing areas working then city council state representatives community organizations church groups and business all of those are the stakeholders but it's got to be people that are working in the community and that we will recognize and support where is our third member where is she there she is because she had a lot of examples that she provided that gave us that informed us in putting this kind of points together yeah that's what we used that natural experience to have it exhausted to come up with this ideas I think it's accurate to say the best for that honestly I mean you saw where I did mention that when you look at each of the areas relative to what we've been trying to get at today in education they speak of things they still also want to do right, they need to be done and but you saw all the elements in my speaking out of turn and some of those strengths are not in some of those other components and let you know how do we cross and connect bridges among those components because they are interrelated and we're not going to answer all those questions here I do want to come back when we say that I'll put it together in the content of this symposium it's going to draw on all these notes and we'll hopefully try to thread something and hopefully we'll be surprised because we don't necessarily cover everything when we do this degree so we'll just see how it goes on that level but that said I just kind of let's just open up the floor for any set of questions in terms of the different groups and as well as the overarching question is what do you think we should do next okay from your own perspective and so whoever wants to just kind of start with either of those questions or what do you feel we should do next yes sir the subject of gentrification came out to one of the groups Austin has a major gentrification problem going on and we're still learning how to figure that out if there was any conversations or pieces to share about that we ever brought that up I'm interested in learning somebody brought it up in terms of gentrification earlier on the whole housing and we'll talk more about it for the exact some kind of conversation pieces that I can take to talk about gentrification my question is part of the problem what we can do now is that gentrification not only happens in permanent areas I see it starting to happen in Hawaii the nature of both areas that are being built all of a sudden it's a property that people have been paying for in 20 years all of a sudden what I just started to go on why are they still the same problems what happens to the person of the family whose value increases by 2,400% in rural areas there's only 20,000 there are practices that have an increase part of what we're trying to do is that you try to include as many people as possible one of the first groups that we try to find is the rural legal aid so that we can have some representation as part of the 20th century that can easily apply for any group that is going to be experiencing more experiencing gentrification if it's in urban areas your councilman and your neighboring councilman might be also invited in our case in rural communities we have to invite commissioners what we try to do is find out if the majority wants to sell they want to keep more often than not surprisingly they prefer to keep their property once we start talking about what are the alternatives they can weigh big money into what is it that you're going to be able to participate if they ask my opinion my opinion is not worth it my opinion is simply if you want this piece of land give me something that's equal for a rural life but if I'm not paying any more my piece of land then I want you to give me something more about everything people start begging off because yeah my piece of land is worth 80,000 with a house how much is 80,000 going to buy anymore now once you get people the more people you ask to the table the more complicated things you're going to get the more people you ask to the table you're not going to get that many more opinions you're going to get that many more people looking at how it's going to affect the councilman how it's going to affect the commissioner how it's going to affect the neighbor too many times there's a very small group of people that know what's going on the beneficiaries are something in poquitos I want it public I want to invite everybody because I want to know what's going on although it's not what it is okay, probably what you want but you make it public everybody starts finding out what's going on everybody's going to know what's going on whether it's creation or not this is black and white there's benefits and reasons there's people that can lose but the more people you invite to every generation is going to occur the more it's going to get complicated the more people are going to find out or want to make sure that everybody's getting equal it's not going to be the opinion of the people it's going to be the opinion of a lot of people so for us anytime we have any kind of issue or any kind of complaint we ask we ask what the group wants but the group is not just people that are living here the group is going to include politicians there's going to be a lot of different people to bring everybody to the table you make it public that way you want it going back back room so for us the same thing whatever happens in urban areas it's going to happen in rural areas and for all these of all places they don't have water they don't have storage but it's going to be gentrified because here's what the news for how it ends up here I wanted to answer your question around the next step and actually try to answer a little bit of that question can y'all hear me so I think one of the reasons the education group did really well was the sharing of case studies and in my work supporting people to do grassroots organizing work case studies are crucial because part of building hope for us in our communities is that we have to know that some people want something somewhere and the case is true for us that we have whether it's here in Texas in other parts of the country in Latinos or even in Latin America we take some of the stuff but as a next step I would suggest one is accumulating case studies of places where the Latino community has fought gentrification issues and won and fought our own people because part of the work that I did when I was learning to organize was actually fighting our very own Henry C. Nettles building condominiums in Chicago so there are case studies where we have won two I think that there are broad case studies across every issue area that we cover today that we could and part of my job is to do that so I would welcome the opportunity to do that with other people yes I just would like to say our name that's right I forget we're across patents I don't know is Miranda Rathasaw currently working with the Highlander Research and Education thank you okay I wanted to explain to you a little bit about what I understand as an entire 27-year bilingual teacher in Austin gentrification they started with a master plan I don't know how the master plan got started but Scientist Elementary was the only brand new school that we knew it was on the list out of seven or eight schools let's face it I'm pretty sure that we started with people that wanted to pull up except for clients so what we found out is that we go to this meeting at Austin High okay and it was like these schools that were included and thank God that the principal managed to get the families of us and the teacher went on the bus to here and they didn't make any sense where they were because they called it the Alternative Learning Center as everybody was saying there's a special letter and it's like a master's school or what is it so when they met at our school they said thank God that all the teachers were there visiting to this guy he sounded like he didn't see on and then there was another guy who was a teacher that managed to speak English and all of a sudden he said get to the point they had all these flyers and he said what are you talking about who is it going to affect the body of the teachers the robotic ears maybe you're going to do something similar to a charter school it was like what are you talking about it sounded like so finally one of the teachers said well is this related to the body even though you met 14 times this is the second time you met with us we want to where is the input of the teachers where is the input of the parents you know how could these people get away you know and then later on met with some of the teachers I didn't get to go with the answer because some of the teachers were telling me guess what this scientist elementary the fact of it is like many is about why because it's right here on IE 35 and Holly and yet scientist has a lot of history of what the library is this is where we first started the segregation a lot of the American we had to move to science so to me you would think why did they consider books elementary bringing in those kids to make sure we have the numbers versus turning it into something else I guess it was going to be an LGA school it's going to be a teen school you know so this is why we have to be very careful when people come up with that we have to understand anyway I just wanted to share that with you give me your name again I want to connect with you my brother teaches at Sanchez and my sister is at Sanchez and they've been crying forever people wave their hands like that and then the other thing is let's face it now the gentrification a lot of Latinos live up there and it's like where are they and it's like we don't want you know we need because a lot of time the teachers have to move to a little school because of lack of students you know sometimes the teachers are totally merchant we can't do that depending on the age level because of that assessment test you know so it would be nice if we had a place where most of the students in this space it is promoted in two ways I was talking to this class group and saying that there was this professor that came in from Michigan and talked about that I know him and I had to take him for the episode and he was telling me that he and his college we have a two year your language college which I thought I never had heard of that which to me sounds something would be ideal since we're very close to the border we have a lot of Latinos coming here but in this space sometimes they're from the working class and there's nothing wrong with going to your college and then you can work for a higher university education anyway that's what I wanted to share thank you again you know the question is what is it you know in this case one question to another group about education relative to this process of what we're trying to do and what our next steps are I just I'd like to follow up but just like we're saying that's a good example of what's going on in Austin the taxes developers come in buy the property, sell to the developers prices continue going up taxes continue going up that's why you're having to move it now and here for example you know I need to understand what the tax rate is mindset that can't go above 10% and yet this the tax law that just went out has had something over 15% and over a series of three or four years and so if we talk to this you know what it's going to continue going up so I think that that's crucial that we understand that what we're dealing with is there a state law that prohibits taxes going up above 20% you know if there is well this holds county commissioners I guess the county commissioners that are that are actually about taxing it there's something to look at for the future as we continue organizing there's going to be more substance on that issue so we can develop a real policy you know for it I certainly for my point would agree with that because if you take that in terms of the other cities for that and what's going on I mean I got my own education a year and a half ago in attending one of those committee hearings that was in San Antonio on the property tax and as well as some other hearings from the franchise tax and it's really interesting and I won't surprise any of you the one that I went to the UTSA a year and a half ago I mean it was packed that three extra chairs there must have been 300 people and I have to tell you the developers were there there was no grassroots community speech out there and yet you know I was discussing oh my god and how things are in balance on the property taxes so on this one I know it's a different one capacity in that area but you know we sure being you know kind of sort of gassing so what's the implication for 192 I think they had something in them I agree with that like I said earlier the past equality didn't start with the 8500 but I wanted to speak to the issue of gentrification in Austin and to us here is from Austin okay so I mean gentrification basically the whole city has now been gentrified one of the things that I don't think we're doing enough about this so the key resources service resources like healthcare education were in the inner city where people lived where they could go out of bed and so now not only have our council members and all of our people making policy in Austin have allowed that gentrification to happen they're not thinking about how they move the services infrastructure to serve the people that are moving into Cairo and Ibiza so that's the other key that we don't talk about it's almost like I don't need to sound hopeless about gentrification in Austin but it's like a done deal very few people from our community can afford to live there but while it's not a done deal we must continue to push council members to build and figure out how they're going to use your infrastructure for services for the people that are moving to the east Austin where there's there's like food council and there are food sensors there's a lot that we can talk about just my five cents to your question what do we need to be doing in Austin as well as well as trying to stop gentrification we have to figure out how to deal with infrastructure for certainly educating people I think the question what do we go from here is how much is the policy center here willing to continue to host the site in terms of the strength I think it's a really great central location it seems like everybody's registration is well organized and at least we can stay in touch with each other I think that's the basic perspective I don't think any of us in here invested two days to just to put the next paper itself so could stay focused on the next action steps is there a timeline for that question to come up is there a timeline to be looking at you mean in terms of trying to generate the thesis report before to actually get results out of it there is not a timeline and I think part of it was again I said in the beginning can you walk from here that would be helpful if you work in the other one whether the document itself now it could be though maybe a spoke only from the sense of your question of the timeline right now there isn't but whether or not in the context as we look at everything that came in from what we did could we just go ahead look at projecting some kind of timeline around some of those issues that are up and what could be done I don't know but you want to say something but we will continue pushing this this agenda and providing the venue whether we're talking about three months or we're talking about five months that is a question but I think that we very much want to continue this as a post discussion I want to think under the questions of issues around genification I want to kind of make another link not if one is better than the other or in terms of what should be the priority but I want to come back if we if it's true that in fact we have children in a home environment that they're at risk today as we're sitting here over 2.3 million okay simply because the family is low income and when I say family that's a two-laws whole family one household family that's a caregiver who's a grandma who's trying to raise those children with limited resources now education provided the best example of some level of progress more than maybe some of these other areas okay at this time if we get equitable funding tomorrow okay that would be a tremendous victory let alone all the other issues that are in education okay to what extent are those impacts immediate on that family to reduce the risk of that child in the home today okay so if we get equitable funding we should we're going to have hopefully a level of resources to facilitate change within the education system at different levels to maximize and for our kids to get out successful and that's going to be a process of them getting out successful but for that family right now even the kids are going to go through that they're still at risk even if you get equitable funding so gentrification if you primarily solve gentrification and not kick those families out of their home or when people mention the living wage or some other mechanism or accessible daycare so our employment where people are not cheating we achieve it out of their wage so I think some of the things that will bubble up is to have an understanding that we can achieve this and we need to achieve it in education and I would say that probably there's probably some elements in that in achieving that are immediate in others in terms of the impact on those children in those homes relative to the education but again it's not mutually exclusive that that's the only the only reason I'm saying this because I think sometimes we also feel education is the only answer well it is an answer a crucial one but it doesn't solve what's going on with the kids at risk right now in those families by virtue that they're in a situation that their resources are not there so education I know one of the issues is maybe better self education or not in terms of connecting education and I notice on the employment side I notice one of the issues with trying to find a vehicle for mentoring for education and training and I know that labor employment is tying out to education so how do we mesh some of those priorities because they also have a little bit more immediate effect in terms of raising the economic mobility of that family and so I'm just I don't know what all those connections are I'm just trying to illustrate some examples so that as we don't get whatever sort of document as a working graph how do we make those linkages because we want to support each other because what education is doing in terms of some of their organizing we need to do some of that and I'm just very before so yes there's going to be a document this platform that we've been referring to but these things again are not mutually exclusive part of the reason that we have this is that we knew that there would be G-spot sparks in here right so you may not be aware of it but there is in your material a directory of everybody that registered as well so those folks are here or somewhere in your material because yes we're going to go ahead and mention the plan is there is this the deliverable for lack of a better term than this conference is going to create so our hope is also that there will be collaborations between TSA and maybe individually or across what have you and yes continue to be a resource for one another first and foremost and then for our entity so that's sort of the idea as well I think that we really need to answer the question of following up next steps and I think we need to have an understanding that there will be a document that comes out of this discussion we had excellent discussion in our education group we had different perspectives different experience different professions and it was very very good I'm sure it was no different than the other groups but I think it's imperative that we're going to have a final product and we need to set a timeline we need to set the next steps and we need to agree that at some point we're going to have a document that's going to be variable that's going to be something that we can use when we're marketing our position to business, to legislators and to other key parties so I think it's important that we talk about that right now and I would suggest that we perhaps consider after we process all of the information send it out and then get feedback from all of us and then reconvene as groups again and then continue the mission and I think this is something just like you saw the white paper that argued very clearly it took us two years to do that it was toward individuals and it was a tremendous amount of effort we were not funded we did it because the people that did it were mission and I think you have the same kind of people here but there needs to be somebody that applies step one, two, three, four because if we leave here today without that I don't think we're going to accomplish all of us would like to accomplish and I see that as a tremendous amount of respect I mean that's exactly what we need to look for in terms of, you know, again the mechanics as you already mentioned I'm going to repeat, I think from the perspective starting with the document you know and I'm just going to project you know I figure we probably need anywhere from six weeks to two months to bring that together it's a lot of content and get that to folks and if we follow that through for feedback and concurrent with that feedback begin to think of a schedule when we could reconvene because I really think that's an excellent idea to reconvene and see what the next step is for I'm not sure I mean I'm looking for you guys to help me in terms of what do you think the next steps are I think I can get as far right now to say this is what we think we can have a product, a draft product to get back in your hands allow amount of time for you to get feedback so that I would recommend that we kind of do after that feedback comes in do that next draft that's the one when we reconvene you have seen that sort of next draft because people have been given an opportunity to feedback on to it that's an initial step in terms of a timeline with that for us from that first draft feedback, get it back to you anywhere from two to three months and then one with the next things that you put on the table that's what that next step was and that wrote into specific actions if that's what you referred to so we'll just discuss that and see what comes next so you would just say follow up on the set in terms of the format of the paper the report I think is really important to connect all of the systems in my review mission that I'm in Canada this morning is the importance of looking at all of these issues of the interaction issues of policy I put it in here and I think that is key for an effective messaging now to talk about how to communicate so I think that's really important in terms of the format I don't know who's the team who's going to be putting all of this together here is the I'm going to offer a review of whatever I'm not sure that I understood the point around messaging how it's sort of Yes, the message we talked about communication so the policy that you and I want to be today's non-competition discussion that we have has to show the interaction clearly for all of these issues that we discussed before this issue This is not a personal question just to answer something about next steps I know that in our group we did have a conversation that made for Latino policy so that there's a focal point that all sorts of different types of organizations that are connected to Latinos can actually turn to for data analysis and strategizing for policy So you're suggesting that in the context of the next step to see that Nivea is an objective to pursue and it was brought up by Mike to pursue a thinking development I was with Labor I made a proposal that has three points number one is a what I'm calling but right now a policy development center, Latino center that continues the work that we've done here and I've begun this today to relate development behind the policy proposals that we want to see implemented and the next one the other two points are about how what do we do next that's that first is building that center second how do we implement Latino agenda and that is the two two points strategy what is it that we need to create political pressure groups all all elected officials and dear press of all the elected strikes accountable for enacting our Latino agenda as well as local and certainly as for us here because I assume that most of us are working with community nonprofits and we're all from day to day and from a daily basis occupied without the work that we need to do so we don't have time to do the policy development, the implementation the lobbying and all that what we need is a group that carries our agenda forward at the state level in Austin, the state of agenda organized this group would be 501c4 they could do lobbying so they would have they would be printed off to carry forth our agenda collect from all over the state the local power agenda formulate the program for action and then put forth through the legislature with the politicians there I will say you know it's a really long term strategy because we know the reality of what's there in the legislature right now but that doesn't mean that we have time to wait for something else