Welcome, everybody. I'm excited to be the host for this session. My name is Tom Oman, and I am a venture capitalist. And I have, but not in the impact investing area. So I'm here, I'd say, also as a student to learn from many of you and from our two other panelists here. I have a background in education and worked previously as an academic on race relations issues. And in the nonprofit arena, I have quite extensive experience with Planned Parenthood in the New York City area. I'm the board chair of the largest Planned Parenthood in the country, Affiliate. And one of the large food banks in the state of New Jersey delivered 220,000 meals a day during the pandemic and have spent a fair amount of time in the last few years giving back in a world that has been very, very generous to me through the course of my career. And I am very happy to introduce our two panelists to you, who will tell you a bit about themselves. Tim Ran and Mira Siva, and let them introduce themselves. And we'll get started. OK, I'm Mira Siva. I'm with Habitat for Humanity. And we work on a fund called the Shelter Venture Fund, which does impact investments on housing-related innovations. It's a global fund. We have made 12 investments so far globally. And it's an in-house fund. So it's on our balance sheet. So we don't have a certain number of years by which we need to exist. So it's a lot of patient capital. The investment sizes are pretty small. We come in early in the seed stage, about 300 to 500 ks, our ticket size. And yeah, I mean, our sector focus includes building material, building technologies, and digital solutions, water and sanitation, and renewable energy solutions for housing. Hi, everybody. My name is Timothy Ran. I'm managing partner and risk-core ventures. We are emerging markets focused venture capital fund. We are focused on two specific outcomes, as an impact fund versus climate resilience and second is financial resilience to things, obviously, very intertwined, investing really across South America or Latin America as a whole, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Sectors of focus are ag tech, thin tech, and climate tech, although we've done a few investments in property tech, which housing would fit within. And a few other sectors like last mile distribution and logistics. Great. I think a big picture question to put out on the table for us is why housing is important to Habitat and Mercy Core and how the linkages that we see existing between housing and other important factors that matter in terms of economic, social, and health benefits to people in our society. And I guess focus primarily on the so-called base of the pyramid. People have been less fortunate than probably all of us in this room. And I guess why should it start off with why should impact investors' care about housing? So I turn it over to you, Mira, for your thoughts. Right. So I think if you are an impact investor, you need to provide whatever is the funds mandate, both the financial return and the impact return that you set out to do. So it could be like providing livelihoods or creating jobs, or whatever is it that the funds mandate is. And I think if you are in the impact sector, while getting financial returns in the general space is a little easier, it's not easy as so many of the startups fail and whatnot. Relatively, trying to go for this double bottom line return, you will find that after the very easy things are solved, like financial inclusion sort of issues are a little easy with microfinance and others, when you drill down one more layer, you find that many of the issues are interconnected. When you try to solve education as a problem, you will find, well, why are education outcomes poor? That may be related to there is no stable livelihood or other issues in that community. And I think housing is one where all these factors sort of come together, and in some sense, solving housing as a problem will help address all these other allied issues, like health outcomes. It is related to livelihoods and climate change, which is a big issue and becoming bigger by the day. So I think housing is one area which is not one vertical. It's more a horizontal that sort of cuts across these different impact goals. And different impact investors can add that housing lens to their investments to see where are the intersections of where theirs meet. And there is also the housing element, like instead of any financial inclusion, a housing microfinance loan or a housing renovation loan or making your house more resilient to hurricanes and whatnot or any of these climate issues and insurance others to those are a financial solution which also has that housing base. So that's where I feel investors can play a role in including housing in their portfolio. Very good. One of your investments, Earth Enable, I think is a good example, maybe if you just mention how Earth Enable combines some of these benefits. So Earth Enable is a company based in Kewanda. And they do urban floors with newer material. And there is a lot of health benefit outcomes from not having a dirt floor and having this flooring. And that is also improving the quality of housing for people. And here, as Tom nicely pointed out, he is one of our board of advisors. So that's how he knows this all very passionately. So he's just letting me speak about them. So that's one where there is a lot of health outcomes and a housing angle. And that has worked out really well that there is the households pay for it. It's not a philanthropic model. But then it's somewhat subsidized right through the connections and others that have it as in that. Tim, could you share your perspectives? Yeah, I mean, I think. So my intersection with housing and emerging markets goes back to essentially my first job in Cambodia, working with first finance, microfinance, right out of College. And it was providing, or it is providing, small mortgages for first time for the most part homeowners in Cambodia. At that point, essentially, a home loan would typically require 70% upfront down payment and then interest rate of around 20% to 30% per year, which priced it out of any Cambodian's reach. Average income at that point was anywhere between $25 to $100 a month. The group of initial shareholders, mostly expats and Cambodian people who'd been there for years believed Cambodia was at an inflection point. There would be wage growth, real economy growth, and that the financial institutions there were kind of overpricing the risk and were not really prepared to go through a process by which they could assess how a property might move from the informal market to the formal market. And so I think that for me, seeing the first clients, first hand, because it was a small loan book at that point, getting the formal title, getting a mortgage product to this house, which would have been unimaginable for them 10, 20 years before, to me, kind of started that journey of, well, this can really be a transformative product. I mean, as in the US and many developed markets, land in a house is the most valuable asset. It's the place where our wealth is generally kept and we have for the long term, in emerging markets, I think the World Bank's recent estimate has 72% of people live on land that don't have secure tenure over, however that's defined, hold their conversation. And then in many markets, that unsecured wealth that somebody has is probably by an order of magnitude the biggest asset that they're gonna have, their inability to leverage that for some sort of gross mortgage, to build on it securely, to invest in it, if you're a farm, there's all these secondary effects if an individual has secure access to that and access to financing and that's kind of seen as a formalized asset. And so I think the more I personally dug into and our fund did, we started to say, well, this is similar to other sectors, really kind of a cornerstone or maybe a keystone of a lot of other things we invest in, but we didn't necessarily know how to approach it, right? Because when you approach housing, I think from a traditional sense, the first thing that comes in my mind is construction. But I think as Miro, you can get into more, there's a lot more opportunities around that that we've been able to kind of explore, I'd say opportunistically. Maybe you could just pick up on that and talk, talk about the other factors, the complexity as well as the opportunity. Sure, sure. So, you know, in the first finance, Habitat also has a debt fund called the micro-build fund, which on-lens to organizations like First Finance, right, that to the consumer facing loan. So that's one aspect how Habitat tries to solve the various issues in the market because housing is always a multi-dimensional problem. There's always the regulatory bit of the policy and land being the largest issue where government and other involvements do come in. There is also the material and those aspects of it. And then the supply side, right, with the builder and builder finance and all of that. And then in the system, there's a lack of transparency and issues that go along with that in the primary and the secondary market. So it's a very somewhat of a complex system. And Habitat has a larger ecosystem to have different approaches to try to work on these things. But for the fund itself, we try to focus more on, well, what is somewhat simple that could be solved and scaled in a way. And we have found some themes that are interesting that way. For example, like building materials and building materials from waste plastics or from agri-waste and others. So we do try to look at smaller spaces where we could go in and try to create an impact that way. And those are, I guess, trying to start from the periphery and edges rather than getting to some of these core problems which we understand are rather complex and too much for one small fund or an organization to take on. And that's where we are also trying to see what maybe the partnerships one could bring on and right, who may be the other co-investors who like as Tim was saying, in the land titling and other space, we do need other partners who have different solutions and approaches to come together to solve those issues as well. So before we, one thing I wanted just to state that has been probably one of the most sobering statistics I've ever heard in my life when I heard about it and it's stuck with me obviously. Number of people who have inadequate shelter in the world at this point, roughly 1.6 billion people. I mean, just think about that and think about the human suffering that is on a daily basis generated by that situation. So powerful, so sobering, so for many of us inspirational in trying to work to make a dent. You know, I mean, this is obviously something that is not going to be solved and it's going to be worked on over a long period of time but it's certainly worth working on. Could one of you talk about this concept of minimum viable complexity, which I am not sure I can explain and would love to have you explain to the group and how you think about it in terms of the work we do? Yeah, I stole this from Gregory Landua from Regen Network who will speak here tomorrow. So we can get his definition but I think the way, you know, for us we like to think we are systems level investors recognizing we are a very small investment fund and that tackling things like climate change and climate adaptation are the definition of systems change and all of its complexities. And so I think the duality we grapple with is we want to try to make investments that we think have outsized impact but at the same time we recognize that we're going to need kind of pathological collaboration with government, other investors, other entrepreneurs, nonprofits in order to actually affect that. And so the concept we've applied or played around with has been what's the minimum viable complexity necessary in a particular model or approach that will actually meaningfully move the bar. So to give you an example, you could have a one-off investment in a single insure tech providing homeowner's insurance or some other single product. That relationship to actually solving the housing market or leading to more housing construction, what have you is quite far removed. But when we look at an investment thesis around that particular single solution it's looking at what else would need to shift in the market? What are the other investments we might do? What are the other investments other players are doing like shelter fund so that this kind of fits within the ecosystem solutions? And I think that's the way we've kind of approached it as well as in single investments that are trying to do something a little bit bigger and more audacious. If they try to take too much it's probably not going to be a sustainable model or a positive customer experience but if they take on too little that directionality as well as that kind of lack of like external factors is gonna be at least an impact in commercial risk. So that's the way we kind of frame I guess all these investments we're making so that we can try to see where they can kind of have that outsize impact towards a bigger systems change. Mara, would you like to build on that? I think I haven't heard this word that much before in the past but that's kind of how we also do look at it that things are very interconnected and you just go in with just one bandaid or one approach which may look like it is giving you some results in the short term and making some progress but it will interface with some other solutions which may be at friction with this and unless that is solved you may hit that roof on scaling and so you just need to have this whole change pathway and understand the various systems at play here and to see what is the ecosystem around the solution how is that moving and what may be the other players we may need to influence in some way we are others that need to come in and influence in some way and yeah that is where we go long on a thing or just say that yes this is a good idea but this is not an idea as time has come because all these other things have to come in place and then piece our investment expectation on the timeline for when things will happen according to right where not just this technology is progressing but everything else around it. Yeah nothing to add one thing I think that within the housing sector in particular compared to other sectors we look at there is a requirement I would say of government involvement there's also a tremendous amount of government subsidy and intervention for better or worse depending on the market and there's a lot of companies that are playing within that which wouldn't exist in other markets because there are market failures and so I think one thing we're always assessing and reassessing in the case of some of our investments in this space is they might be solving kind of a government or market or public failure but should that continue to exist is it best for us to put our capital there where does that company potentially look at actually non-profit models better for this or some sort of data unit so I think housing in particular is interesting because depending on the type of capital you're deploying if especially if you have multiple vehicles to deploy or you have multiple angles like Habitat does you can kind of look across the spectrum of investments that would need to make the housing market more effective and try to pull those levers and I think that one of the areas where this works quite well is when again you have a consortium where you have a particular fund like Omidia Arizona a lot of great work in this as this Habitat where you can kind of look at a research level like researching what are the data gaps working with governments cadastral systems or land registry systems to kind of get that piece sorted out and then look at like all the different types of prop tech financing investments I think it really does to some degree demand like a systems approach because otherwise it's very difficult to mobilize or feel confident about putting capital on any one of those. The U.S. housing market is very different from the markets you are investing in and in the U.S. it's major construction, major capital expenses and how would you characterize our non U.S. markets in terms of their qualities and attributes? Yeah so definitely housing markets are very different across geographies and in some cases in different regions in these geographies and the middle income housing may look very different from the low income the urban from the rural and all of that so that's why one just sort of needs to look at what is the problem you are solving and actually what is the solution and how scalable that is and we do find that some of the problems are not the same but they tend to rhyme in the sense yeah I mean like you know I've kind of seen this in Kenya as in Myanmar as in some pockets in India and such and solutions may differ in some cases because what could work really well in Kenya may just fall flat in the Indian context because of this interconnectedness. Do you have an example, a specific example that would make this clear? So if we look at rental markets as an example I mean home ownership is one issue, one aspect so rental markets is one where there's a lot of where there's a lot of urbanization that's happening and people are moving into which is happening a lot in many of the emerging markets where there's urbanization rate is very high what are the rental market solutions one could come up with and that differs actually I'll go into examples in India itself between cities where the tenant landlord relationships and the agreements because housing is a state subject in India the rules around the agreements and the terms and the issues around it are very different and hence the solution sort of needs to be very different as well right but there are some common issues and common pain points which some of the digital solutions are able to solve and then leave that last bit to the local market so yeah. Your perspective, Tim. Yeah specifically on like models that haven't been transferable or yeah certainly well so when we look at the spectrum of kind of housing investments broadly and Mira can probably do much better than I about this but you kind of have the funnel from the land construction and management all the way down to the financing and then in between there's how one manages rentals there's secondary market rentals and all sorts of things but I think the one that we've seen that's most contextual is really around that land titling and formalization piece as I mentioned 70% of the world's population doesn't have secure access or tenure over their land even if they have the building and have some sort of title and theory it probably won't hold up in court whether it's subject to being pushed off there's all sorts of negative ramifications of that however every country in the world more or less has very different ways of how they parcel out land, how they do legal registration there's all sorts of socio-cultural aspects and how you get that through customary titles in West Africa versus formal titles in other parts of the world versus Indonesia where you have to have the Bupati who signs everything off it is incredibly complex and so we've seen companies that whether they focus on land data like polygon collection or land registration or land titling they've really faced barriers and doing something highly scalable just because it's so different across every context and even within a specific region and the cost is typically high I guess once again they're kind of covering for what is a failure of the market a failure of public goods to do that and so that's one where I think there's been grand hope of how this might be streamlined with technology across a lot of geographies but the reality is that it's just too different and too costly to find solutions that are truly global in nature Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the ability to have housing solutions for developing countries where impact investors will move in that direction to be more proactive and get out of their silos and think of housing as a cross cutting investment opportunity more going down through the passage of time are we at the beginning or is this a position that will not expand dramatically over time Okay, I am definitely optimistic and that's because of all the SMSM around housing interestingly because it's like the best time to invest is when there's blood on the streets so there is a huge housing crisis and as you said 1.6 billion people do not have access to a decent shelter and by decent it's not like homelessness per se but the quality of the homes and how vulnerable they are to any disaster and there is the climate change lot more issues that we would see in the market with floods and cyclones and all of that plus as I alluded to the urbanization is creating a different sort of crowding in cities while there is space in other and if the infrastructure is not developed people will not have the quality of their housing will be very poor so there is a huge opportunity and it is a public good and in the low income housing segment definitely and the governments have not been able to deliver when things were a little easier and it's only getting harder with the climate change and right urbanization and all these factors sort of thrown in and hence this provides a new sector or a sunrise opportunity for people who say okay here is a large market I mean barring some cases as Tim was saying in the land registry side there are lots of solutions that are scalable like building materials they may be like some flavored differences but solution that works in one place could definitely scale across geographies there and these are materials that kind of bring a lot of these aspects of circularity and provide more thermal comfort or more affordable provide local livelihood with local production and using local material so there's a lot of opportunity to bring a lot of different investors who may be coming at it with different angles and use housing as a way to have the solution so and I think people have not been thinking of housing as an answer to some of these other issues or where there's housing playing the change they want to see but I think when that opens up housing will become more interesting because it is a large problem and there are new opportunities with the shift that's coming so yeah, Tim? Yeah, I mean I think it's no secret that some of the world's richest people made their money on construction and housing, right? There's lots of negative externalities as a result of that but when you just look at the figure that 950 million Africans are going to need new housing construction by 2050 there's somebody is going to respond to that or some group is going to respond to that. There are ways like everything I feel like now as we're an inflection point there are ways this can go in a good way, a better way, or a very bad way but I think what gives me optimism is that there's been so much investment largely in the backbone of relatively cheap cost of capital the last 20 years in all sorts of circular economy housing, modular housing there's been little bits of exciting developments in different types of financial structures around how you finance housing in different methods and again habitat, micro-build you guys have been at the front of this there's been a lot of interesting developments in financing kind of public goods around land tenure data, GIS data and so forth and so I feel like it is slowly moving maybe slower than we would like towards a constellation of these different service providers being in a position to actually work together and meaningfully deliver housing that can be climate resilience and meet the demand of these markets but again this to me seems like one of those where it's very tricky because all this ecosystem has to be developed and kind of moving together and if financing is ahead but we don't have the construction if we push ahead with construction but without care to who actually owns the asset and has the ability to own it it doesn't really create the type of reality that I think would be optimal for the people securing that housing Yeah just to add to that right like I mean there is a lot of I mean the construction and the housing industry is large right I mean trillions of dollars but it's just the question is for whom are these homes getting built and how right and I think that's what provides the opportunity for us to change things here Yeah well I want to make sure we have time for questions from those of you who are here but before we turn to that I wanted also to get one or two examples of investments that you have made to take the you know strategic concepts and focus on a an investment housing related that you feel you're excited about and let me start with Tim Yeah I can't just pick one but I think that so I mean maybe I'll just pick a few layers really quickly so I mean I think you know first and foremost we've done two investments in kind of the property formalization space to me again this is just going back to DeSoto's mystery of capital there's just a massive amount of unrecognized wealth and untaxed wealth if you're looking from a government perspective in the land assets that 70% of the world has and so any sort of technology that drives down the cost to essentially formalize that and to provide security over it has massive impacts and because it's potentially trillions of dollars worth of either government revenue or individual revenue or B2B revenue it's a huge revenue opportunity to actually do that formalization so we have two companies doing that one is Meridia which does it through ag value chains helping farmers map out their land and get secure land titling depending on the local forms and then Suio and Columbia which is doing that mostly in peri-urban areas of Columbia so that's like the basis property formalization then I think beyond that we've done a number of investments in specific types of financial services that are touching houses around different types of insurance for households and then a third level we have started investing in companies that are looking at kind of that data procurement as well as analytics for urban design and other types of insurance products so we have investment in cloud to street which provides direct observation of floods and then secondarily provides credit risk and a lit or sorry creditless analytics and insurance product designed for floods why this is important is because a lot of areas of course we know in emerging markets are a huge flood risk and number one and then number two governments have to be able to pre-position aid to respond to disasters and then ideally design urban areas and thought more thoughtful ways or drive housing construction in ways that will avoid these types of calamities so cloud to street provides that analytics data both to governments as well as insurers to essentially influence how housing market develops as well as provide all sorts of other types of insurance products great good examples Mara so Tim covered Meridia which is habitat is a co-investor land title is the basis for like home loans and a lot of service availability so that's one that's quite exciting and that's a very scalable solution they are in multiple continents with that solution and those are the ones that are very exciting one more I would like to touch upon is EcoSTP which is an investment in India which provides power free I mean zero power water sewage treatment solution and this is interesting because low income households do not treat their water that much which leads to pollution of water bodies which leads to health and other issues and when they do there is no electricity or it does cost so they tend to not do that the solution is zero power and hence it helps improve the health outcomes and there is power saving so there is carbon reduction so here is one solution that is very adaptable in rural and remote areas that's all multiple issues so that's one that I'm very very exciting very exciting well I think we have time for some Q and A and with help I'd like to see if people have questions that can be addressed thank you so much for the work you guys do it's really admirable I'm curious about your capital and your structuring so I've been trying to narrow it down but if you could both just kind of characterize maybe as best you can are you investing as a non-profit or have you restructured in some way you know as an LLC or something like that and where have you at the end of the day you are a non-profit or stemming from one or an NGO or whatever so where are you sourcing your capital what are the return expectations to either your your board or I don't know if you have outside investors or not or if it's simply just coming from within a you know a corpus or an investment portfolio or whatever so you basically get my drift you could both characterize that for me I'd appreciate it that is not one question that's right I'm sorry very good ones very good ones Steven Samuels, Vice President at Volunteers of America yeah I can go a quick non-profit, your structure yeah source of capital return of capital expectations yeah I got it so yeah we are we are kind of the the misfit venture capital arm of Mercy Corps which is a global non-profit we are structures and LLC holding Co and Delaware wholly owned by Mercy Corps all of our money comes in through our current sort of well our first vehicle which is an evergreen fund all comes in through Mercy Corps which capitalizes Mercy Corps development holdings so essentially we answer to a single LP which is Mercy Corps we have the ability to yeah set our own terms we just have to recycle the money it's like it gives us incredible flexibility as fund managers to target whatever risk return profile we're looking for as long as it fits within the impact pieces that we have then we have another vehicle we are fundraising for at the moment which is a more traditional GP LP vehicle that's not we're not investing actively out of that one then the third is a separate vehicle which is a grant fund that allows us and we've actually done more in the housing well we've done two in housing out of that that allows us to kind of test out the application of and the impact of blockchain and blockchain derivative technologies in climate tech and financial technology so that's grants so those are three vehicles so we also sort of have three vehicles one is the micro build fund which does the debt financing you know to the wholesale lending that's structured as an LLC separately the fund itself is an on balance sheet fund so it you know it does not have a separate structure the you know money comes from the donors and our return expectation is it's an impact first return so the so that we it should meet the impact goals and you know should be aligned with the goals of the organization the financial return part we are a little flexible and because we don't have a fixed a year or so of return we have had returns already in the fund but yeah it's it's just for how does that help the organization to grow further rather than you know we need to exit by this time frame and all that we also have a grant making arm through which we do test some ideas which are a little early through we have an accelerator program and a grant that sort of goes with some of the the them have an and then when it's a little mature is when the fund comes in and invest and yeah we are the fund has been in operation for five years and we have had investments that are like five years so it's still yeah great thank you so another hand at least one two hi there thank you so much I have two questions I guess you could pick one one you listed that you know harrowing statistic earlier like 1.6 billion people I'm curious to know what you think needs to be happening at different layers of the sector in the work that you're doing to actually get to solve that problem because I'd imagine it's orders of magnitude beyond where we are right now and resourcing systems etc so I'm just curious to hear in your biggest imagination of what would be required to be put in motion to actually solve that problem and I'm also just curious is the solution in access to ownership or is it in access to shelter and you know what's what's really the roadmap there my name is Kat Lindroth I'm with CBData maybe I'll answer the second one which seems a little easier use my imagination and be the hard one for Tim here so I think it is twofold actually it used to be that there is no access to housing ownership and that's where habitat started with more on the focus of the ownership model of housing but I think with more urbanization what we are seeing is there are actually two problems and so that's why we also work on modular housing and in other solutions which are a little temporary it's not like you're you know this is a home that I pass on generation to generation hundred years sort of thing and and you know to like you need a decent place to live which you know is not too hot for you right you know and creating you all these issues and giving you that space right for people to explore and live right so so it is actually two different problems that we are seeing and there are issues in both here that gives a larger problem for you to imagine now Tim yeah if I were to pick out like two cogs within the problems that are around that the first one the World Bank has thrown tens of billions of dollars that I can remember maybe a hundred plus billion dollars at like property formalization and land registries with relatively mixed success and this is not to blame the World Bank this is just a really hard problem so I think the core data and mechanism by which land is attributed to an owner or community or to a government and then how that transacts is a massive issue that that we as humanity need to figure out how to get good at better at and there's lots of bright spots but I think that's the key one whether that's for investment capital or some quasi-public private partnership is a whole long conversation we can have over beer but like I think there's like that's that's a core one for me the second is I think the why I would pick out would be the financing piece I mean there's a there's a pretty rich construction market out there already that's kind of outside the impact investor purview usually it exists in all these markets there's better ways to do it there's more resilient ways and all these different things but that's that's that's going which is fantastic and there's lots of great entrepreneurs like shelters help support it and then others that are out there but the financing pieces is I think still one of the cruxes and so I think access to affordable again this is more the ownership side access for at least to own affordable long-term financing in these markets the ability to drive and crowd in more financing that is at a lower cost or appropriate for kind of the risk is a huge opportunity so we we just launched a pilot on their third vehicle on the blockchain one with Empower which is essentially testing this out like how could we essentially crowd fund capital in order to finance least own models and Mozambique and with Casa Royale and Empower so we're testing it up and we'll see kind of how that looks is like a stream of financing over a five to ten year period for kind of these mortgage products but that's another one that I think really there could be a lot more innovation with them so we have habitat has habitat has imagine the answer which is you know in in three words is the affordability of the homes at the home itself costs less in in some ways to to built and deliver and access to the people you know who who do not have access even if it is affordable in the sense of you know at the house itself may be priced at X but you know do you have EMI's and write other solution that's the access part and then the third is the quality part because you know you could get lower priced houses but you know they may fall apart right so those are the three pillars which would help solve this problem for the 1.6 billion yeah what are the solutions we don't know but yeah those are the things that need to be answered so we have time for one short question with too short with too short answer hi i'm lisa hanson founder of global urban village i know mirro we work together on some projects i find that when talking to people in the sector and outside of the sector that it can be really intuitive to talk about building material innovations like incorporating circularity into a brick for example that's easy to understand and you've touched on many of the harder to understand elements in land entitlement etc but i wonder if you could speak a little bit to the decarbonizing solutions that have to do with building management or urban and density solutions okay that's an easy one for 30 seconds thank you so yeah i think you know digitization is is one in the construction sector particularly the housing should solve a lot of issues you know transparency being one right i mean there's a lot of issues in i mean this this may be an alien concept in developed world but in emerging markets lack of transparency causes a lot of issues and you know adds to a lot of i guess trust deficit which leads to you know higher cost of credit and right various issues so that's one you know that we are looking for solutions on and there are many with the mobile phone and right cheaper access to the digital technologies that are out there the urban planning and yeah the architectures and all that is not an area we have looked sort of closely into but because i have also not seen many investable ideas around it as a product right but that's the piece where it is you know you can push your thing this far but then that's where in the system change you will find that's where you will hit a wall and you need to work on that and habitat is not the one that could work on it that's where you sort of need to bring in partners like the world resource institute or others right that we also do some work with to say well how do we work together so that there is a you know a fully systemic solution and not just one piece is like this is the greenest brick that goes into this really bad overall system solution right so yeah if i could just add in the pilot i mentioned within power i think part of the intention is to tie the financing to climate resilient housing which means they essentially act as the property developer which is then subcontracting materials in the right type of housing that they feel a matches the income stream of the least owned product but also is the best quality possible house they can deliver for the subset they're targeting to i think there is point like you could deliver any housing at that price but they want to try to deliver one that as a lowest carbon footprint but will also be kind of the longest term and most resilient so i don't know if i have a great answer to it other than i think it largely depends on of course the amount of consumers but also that the integral kind of property developer lens and you know are they pushed to drive down their cost or meet some regulatory standard or can you create enough consumer awareness or demand or financing demand that would you know allow them to choose essentially that type of construction versus another


For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. The 20th of September marked one year of anti-government protests in Egypt. Citizens across the country took to the streets demanding the resignation of President Abdel Fateh al-Sisi, defying a ban on public demonstrations. Since then, close to 400 people have already been detained and one protestor was killed. Last week witnessed a series of demonstrations marking the first year of massive anti-government agitations. Demonstrations were conducted in the Governorates of Giza, Almenia, Alexandria, Ben-Isuev and Cairo, among others. This year too, a call for protest was given by businessman and whistleblower Muhammad Ali. It was Ali who first called for the protest in 2019 as well, leading to tens of thousands participating in nationwide demonstrations. While corruption was a central issue for the protest last year, this time around, people are also protesting against the spiraling inflation, frequent demolition of houses and the mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Police used tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition to repress the protesters. Security forces also imposed curfews in several parts of the country to prevent the demonstrations from spreading further. According to various human rights groups, last year the government had arrested over 4,000 protesters. Estimates have found that Egypt currently holds more than 60,000 political prisoners, including lawyers, journalists, activists, writers, politicians and also members and supporters of the banned Muslim Brotherhood. The Human Rights Group Committee for Justice has estimated that close to 1,000 prisoners have already died in custody since July 2013, when LCC came to power. Most of those in jail are being detained without any charges or are awaiting trial.


I'm mixing colors, nope, I'm mixing custom colors, et cetera, I'm trying to make a bright red, right? I just wanted to be like a real bright red with almost like a pink. Hey everybody, we're gonna do a pour, cause it's pouring down rain, it's not really that bad, but it's probably 65 degrees out, it's raining, and we got inspired to do a teal and red and gold pour. So another reason why we decided to do this is because we wanted to test this new resin that we just used on some countertops, we'll see how that set up tomorrow, but we wanted to see how it would work with mixing in tints and all that stuff. So we're gonna try it with regular acrylics, with craft paint, with ink, and with spray paint, and with the Meron body powder. I don't know what you're doing with spray paint. Okay, we can just use the Meron. So we're gonna test it with all these different types of paints and see how it reacts. The reason why we use this instead of the regular Envirotex light that we usually use, there's some right there in the black. The reason why we're using this is because this stuff is supposed to be some of the strongest for bar tops, I should have printed it out, but it's basically, it doesn't react to UV, it's UV resistant. It resists bacteria, it's the least, how do I say that? Like it scratches the least of all the resins that I've done research on. I can't even remember the PSI that it can withstand, but it also is water resistant, alcohol resistant, chemical resistant, and you can put up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit on it, or 260 degrees Fahrenheit, Celsius, sorry numbers, so 500 degrees Fahrenheit, 260 degrees Celsius, which is bananas, that's over twice the boiling water. So in terms of what we use for our countertops and things like that, it'd be really great if we can get this to work like we get the Envirotex light to work. So this is a test on many levels as well as doing a pretty piece of artwork. So to prep this, we prepped it like we do all of our canvases. This is on a gallery wrap canvas. Basically we gesso it down, or you can use house paint, and then we sand it, and we paint it, we sand it, and this creates a tighter tension on the surface so that it doesn't bow in the middle. If you want to see a full tutorial of that, check out this link right here, and it gives a full tutorial. But to sum it up, we just paint it, sand it, paint it, and sand it, and that tightens up the canvas. I think that was thunder. It wasn't, it was a tractor, it was a good construction over there. That's twice I'm wrong in three minutes. I'm doing good. So for this red that we're using, it's a combination of three of those. It's a hot pink. Three of those, just all of that. Yeah, it's three. Look at that. Pick one of those. Of three of those. Two more. And then also two more. If you guys want to know the formula for that one, I'll put it in the comment box below. So this is a two part resin. So it's a one to one ratio, and it says to mix it thoroughly. It's basically just like every other resin we've used. It's got about the same consistency, thickness. It's a little thicker. It's a little more like a honey. Should we have heated it up? For a heat up pro tip, check out right on how we work with thicker resins. So the reason why we put a clear down first is because resin will roll over itself easier than it will raw.  So if you work with watercolors, then you know how that works. That water will follow where it's been. Same with resin. So we do just a thin coat of clear before we put any colors down. Are we doing a puddle pour? So of the colors I have up here. We're not using a white. We're using this to act as the light shade. It is sky blue light number 551 by Amsterdam. We're doing something new. Well, not that new if you've watched our videos for a little while. It's a powder body paint. This is by Mehron. It also comes in a silver and a bronze, I think. We're using gold. And Mehron, if you're watching, we sent a lot of people. I don't know if you've noticed. Maybe we can tag Mehron. A lot of people have actually gone and bought that powder because of our videos. So there's a spike in the purchase of your gold body paint. And a lot of people ordered the silver as well. And the silver. It's because of our video. You're welcome. Um, the next color we're using is Peacock Teal by Deco Art. I think this is like a satin finish. We're using Bombay Turquoise by Doc Martin. We're using Bombay Magenta by Doc Martin.  It doesn't take much. Typically, we put in a little at a time, measure out how much resin you want per color before you, like, don't put the paint in your cups first because you can always add more. Can't take it away, obviously. So for the inks, we usually use about a dropper full. And for the thicker paints like the craft paint and the acrylics, we usually just put a drop, I guess. So while he's doing that, we use Mural Paint Markers. I don't know where you can get this in stores. It's not a Hobby Lobby in our area or Michaels or Joann's. You may have to order it online. It's Mural Paint Markers and this color is Stop. How appropriate. Got an easel. I know, but easel's not like a national. We mixed in also some Koreatex Airbrush Color in Fluorescent Hot Pink and there was another one. I believe it was Primary Red by Art District. If you put too much paint in, it will turn into a marshmallow fluff consistency and that is not a good time to try to spread around. It's dead. Do you want to take some gold? It's starting to get warm already. It's like putting paint in this. It makes it, it doesn't, look at that. Like it's not flowing. I think it's mainly with the thick paint. What tests are for? What that gold body paint mixture looks like. Beautiful. If you're new to the channel, you'll be excited to see what this turns out like. This is so bad. Just leave it to the side because I don't want the rest of your colors to start setting up. It's not setting up, it's just, it just gets there. Your other ones are still workable. Let's see these little tiny bubbles that are in it, yeah, you can see them. Putting heat on it erases the bubbles. You can use a heat gun, you can use a torch. If you use a torch, make sure you're away from all open flames, obviously. What? If you use a torch, make sure you're away from all open flames. Yeah, like big open flames, you can, it could be a problem, right? You have to be careful around other forms of flamery. Because you already have a flame in your hand, I don't, yeah, I can't further combust. I don't get it, I don't understand your, just know that it's science. It's really, it's really not. It's e-science. I believe that. I don't have a ragged hand to team. The goal is just amazing. I haven't seen a color that's next to that. Oh god, this is so thick. Okay, so now we know it's not good with crafting. It did that with the white on those countertops too, it got thick quick. This one's not as thick. That's the ink? Yeah. But it doesn't look like, I think this is like an opaque ink. It doesn't look like this, you can't like see through it, which I wanted to be able to see through it.  Is it hot? No. Not at all, it's just. Marshmallow fluff?  Now I have to mute that. I wanted a light color. Do I just put some raw white in it, like spray paint? I cannot believe how thick that gets. Now we know. You think it was just the amount or like did you put the same amount of like that paint? I don't know babe, I just put it in there. See, I want the colors to look like this teal. I want them to be clear, like transparent. That's really interesting, that'll focus. Do you know those little flecks of gold coming through? That is not a reflection, that is just bits of gold just popping up. God, it's like already setting. Let me show you how to put gold in the middle. Any left? We've got a little bit in here, do you want me to put it on it? Do you want me to put it on it? That's crazy. It's not going anywhere. Give me a straw. Look at that. And now I wish the camera could really see what's going on with that. It's absolutely bananas. Never seen something sell like that that wasn't white. We did black that one time, but... Felix? Yeah. This reminds me of Journey, the band Journey, their album cover. It reminds me of like a psychedelic cenote. And I can't even handle these cells. You can put it on this so I can see if it's level. Is that bright red, the red that you made? Mm-hmm. Alright, I will put the description of that red in the description box below for sure.


ir services take that first step to better hearing call us today on 07491 13296 connect hearing connecting you to life calling bus air and expressway passengers if you're traveling between dunagall and dublin on expressways route 30 x 30 we recommend booking your seat online at expressway.ie for the best travel experience most people are booking ahead to guarantee a seat and you get an advance email in the event of any service disruption all passengers can track where their coach is using expressways real-time passenger information and our customer care agents are available by phone seven days a week have a great trip with expressway if you have a job to do this weekend did you know that watson hire still have their brilliant weekend hire deal available you can hire any item on friday keep it until monday and only pay for one day that's three days hire on any equipment or machinery for the price of one so there's no excuses to get that job done this weekend book airy to avoid disappointment by calling watson hire in letterkenny okay now we begin to meet the entrance for this year's mary from dunlowe festival 2022 we say good morning for us to india kennedy donagall mary india good morning to you've been on this program before i have yes gregg how are you getting on i'm gregg how are you doing i'm good why did you decide to put yourself through this i was going to say put yourself forward for this well growing up we would have been always seen the parades we've been in the dunagall town community band so we would have been marching passing all these gorgeous mary sitting up on the stage and in the past it would have been something that i never thought i would have done but i decided in january to go a bit out of my comfort zone so i applied for it and i said if i get it i'll stay at home and if i don't i'll go away for the summer and thankfully i was chosen as the dunagall mary so it's really quite important to you then because you know you've maybe you can do it next year but you've put on plans on hold for this yeah i just thought this i think this is the right summer for me and it's been just a fantastic experience from the start like we've been so welcomed by everybody we've been to and it's such a proud moment for me to be able to show all the mary's everything that our dunagall has to offer yeah you kind of hosting some of them as well these are the local mary's who sort of end up doing that don't they but also you're seeing parts of the county through this process that you haven't seen but certainly not you know in this context yeah like i've never been up sleeve league before i've dropped past it i've never admitted that that's criminal i know it's a disaster it's so bad but oh my god it was just fantastic like and then we nooks and crannies at dunagall that people a lot of people would never even say that are just brilliant and also this is a platform as such you know it's not it i don't want to make it too serious but you're looking to get involved in politics you're studying politics you know and i've seen with previous mary's they can use this as an opportunity you know to sort of make a point or for it to be to to form part of the work i'm not saying you're necessarily going to do that but um who's to say why not i think it's definitely boosted my confidence a lot i wanted something to kind of bring me out into the world and help me build up my confidence and this has just been a fantastic way to do it and as you said i do hope to go into politics and something like this i can't talk you out of that no no i don't think so no greg um do you do you think you can see yourself in elected politics or maybe working behind the scenes in politics or what might you i hope to go out in front and go as an elected um i think there's so much to do in doleagall like i was speaking to a lot of businesses are saying that they've been a lot quieter than last year and i think tourism is something that we really need to look on and supporting these businesses i was speaking to the owner of the cove in armoire island who said it's a lot quieter and she employs a lot of the locals on armoire island we need to ensure that people like her have a business for years to come so she can employ the locals and keep bringing people to the island yeah i think you'd be a great addition to politics so please don't be discouraged uh shannon hester bayone mary good morning to you how are you getting on have i got your mic up are you well doing good how are you i am good so tell us why you got involved where is bayone anyway i know just for the listeners that don't bayone is in new jersey of course yes it's in new jersey and there's a really strong irish community in bayone even as we've hopped to and from different places in dunny gall i have met so many people from bayone it has been great to see some familiar faces so i just got involved by being an irish girl in bayone now you've put down the fire holes and picked up the sash yes yes yes a full-time firefighter reserve call-up whatever it might be yeah i'm a full-time professional firefighter and um how did you is what brought you to that um job it sort of put together all of my interests you know serving the community that's what that job is all about helping others um i ran track in college so being fit is something that's important to me and that kind of forces me to stay in shape because my life depends on it um and it's a really cool uh thing that i'm only the fourth ever female firefighter in our town so that's really a fantastic achievement and this is a decision you were training to be a teacher weren't you so you come to some crossroads and says right i'm running towards the flames rather than yeah i was a teacher for a while before but i'm so happy that i made the switch yeah and you're very active you love scuba diving are you going to get a chance to do that around here you know all the wrecks that we have all the amazing underwater attractions i'm not sure that i'll get a chance this time around but i'll definitely have to come back and is this your first time in ireland it's my first time in ireland my first time in europe so yeah it's a big trip for me yeah all right we might be trying to get out of here but anyway i'm sure you mean the continent yes no we're happy in europe i think for that for the time being uh right okay also uh elizabeth libya mccole uh dunlowe mary how you getting on good how are you great it's good to have you uh with us i think always the dunlowe mary's an interesting one isn't it because i know lots of people from around the area will have grown up through this but you really really have because you're from the town and you've been out and about every year yeah absolutely yeah so tell us why you decided this was the year that you say right i'm gonna have a crack at this well like i think every young girl in dunlowe like looks up to the mary's and always wanted to be a mary but um i just thought this year's i'm in the town and i'm the right age just to kind of get involved and meet new people so yeah and it's not i mean you work in the community you've been involved in the local marching band playing music all that type of stuff so dunlowe's incredibly important to you yeah it is important to me yeah right and a big shout out to all those in sharky's top service station absolutely yeah hi guys they've given you the week off have they oh just about yeah all right and uh come here you want to become a special needs assistance too and and particularly you want to stay local in doing that do you why is that important to you liby just to help the young ones because when i was a school i needed help as well so i know how much they struggle so i just want to make a difference in the young people's lives in dunlowe yeah it's difficult isn't it when you hear each other's stories because they're all so compelling aren't they and for all for different reasons and for the right reason and you've all achieved so much or hope to achieve so much it's tough isn't it and i think maybe is that why the bond comes from a wonder that you thought you know disrespect for each other or definitely like we've come from such different areas and such different corners of the world but the minute we met at 12 o'clock on saturday we've just become inseparable since like there's we've gotten on so well there's been fashion shows at 12 o'clock at night and running around in the morning getting ready but it's just been so good and i know that we've all made friends for life now yeah okay and you'll have hometown support but there's a number of will as well uh liby listen it's been wonderful meeting all three if you are probably overrunning here uh because we've lots of people to me but india great to have you back on the show again as well shannon great to have you here a lot of remarkable interesting story as is uh liby uh elizabeth liby mccoll's this year's done low mary thank you for joining us as well all right take care of yourselves all right we look forward to seeing you at the weekend all right if you just want to make your way out we'll get our next three in oh wait six sixty twenty five thousand by the way if you have a message or you want to say something give us a text uh on our wait six sixty twenty five thousand whatsapps and uh sms's you know yourself will give us a call on 07491 twenty five thousand again thanks to uh india shannon and elizabeth we're joined in studio now by the doblin mary and michelle mcconnellow good very good morning to you and michelle morning how are you keeping after look and make sure you get the right mic up how are you keeping good yeah how are you enjoying it so far i'm loving it i love i've been in love up here i love mary i've been up here i moved up here for covid and i think that's when i really fell in love did they not have covid in doblin they did but no i think it was just it was so hard up in doblin because there's so many people and you really couldn't leave the house whereas we have a family house up in mary and i think it was just the fresh air and everything and you could go down to the beach and was that's when i really different lifestyle and you've stuck with it now you're able to stay here and work remotely you're like one of these remote workers that's or or of no i'm studying early childhood in college so i'm down in dc of st pat's for that um but i've spent the whole summer now up an hour and more teaching and taking care of the students over there in the gael talked yeah and national school teaching is uh where you want to go isn't it yeah or our we've a new course now in dc of st pat's they had their first graduates last year but it's a new course so we do law and social working as well so it's a really broad you can go into but i'm kind of thinking the social working side of it which i've really enjoyed but you're at that point and the way you're studying you've you've choices and you can see where your head and your heart leads you at some point okay and you're a keen runner you completed a marathon a full marathon is it or is the v hi women's marathon right and i completed this year so it's 10 k and i did that for a charity which is very close to my heart and this is for children with life limited uh limiting conditions and yes right across the country and there's a number here in donna gall as well that uh rely on on on the the organizations that you fundraised it for yeah so it's really neurological um which i mainly based on my dad has a neurological disease and i have epilepsy myself so um it's really close to my heart and fundraising for that charity was really important to me good stuff it's important to you beyond the run those yeah okay yeah i get you um have you do you have to are you doing a performance on the night or is that is that a secret can we ask these questions no yeah close to your chest yeah so each one of us have to do like a little show i know i want to know what it is i myself am doing a poem through irish lovely yeah so it's really about the irish language and getting it back up and running all right now i'll have to watch what i say here for fear of a writ or something caroline galvin is this year's belfast mary good morning to you and thanks for joining us caroline hello how are you i'm doing fantastic so why did you decide to get involved in the mary from donnellow so i actually am living in donnellow at the moment but um i was originally born in america and then my family moved over about seven years ago so there's about 15 places you could have been the donna gall of the mary from really yeah definitely belfast is definitely the most random one but um i'll take what i can get but yeah so i my sister was the chicago mary in 2019 right so i just wanted to follow in her footsteps because she had a blast and she absolutely loved it wow so she was telling you what she went through and you thought i would like yeah exactly we're very similar to each other so i knew it was a bit of me when she was going on about it so um and tell us you are studying in belfast are you i am yes okay and you want to be a sister yes right did you have any particular area that you want to focus on if and when qualified when qualified yeah so i um did my undergrad in city planning and environmental policy in ucd and then i kind of decided to go away from city planning and i really enjoyed environmental policy but i've always liked law as well so i eventually want to be a sister but specialize in environmental law and even interesting hockey where did that come from yeah so i was in boarding school in tebrari and when i was 14 i picked i didn't then it didn't have any american sports really so i had to just take like take my hand and all them try the different one yeah yeah i could have but hockey was the easiest to pick up you know because gaelic isn't really that much in america like i never really had a chance to play it so um i picked up hockey and i really loved it and then when i went to undergrad i didn't really get a chance at it but then when i went to queens i decided to pick it back up again you're enjoying the whole experience as well as everybody else love it love it yeah it's great has there been a highlight so far other than meeting people and forming bonds or yeah i really enjoyed the night in cast hughans see i used to work there so it was really nice to get back with the team and everyone have dinner in there but i'm really looking forward to the gala ball as well which is now apparently uh you have to wear a tuxedo which i didn't yeah very fancy okay um amasha what's your highlight been so far um of course meeting all the girls we've really clicked really quickly and it's really nice to see her actually all staying in the same house so we have all our any any arguments or anything is anyone going to give me some gossip that's been some disagreement um i don't think there has there hasn't really been any disagreements we've all had i'll come back to you on thursday okay shona the docket is the geltuck mary good morning to you thanks so much for coming in thanks very much for how are you keeping i'm doing good yeah i'm enjoying the week so far all right now um what's your interests um well as i'm representing the geltuck i suppose it's obvious that one of my interests would be the irish language but um i'm doing my undergrad in irish ant history and so i have a keen history interest in history as well how do you think we are doing in terms of you know sustaining what we have in terms of of the spoken language and its courage and encouraging its use i know there's a lot of resources and effort being put in not just in the geltuck but in the likes of letter kenny and elsewhere do you think we're making some inroads there i think we are making progress um and i know it's it's very hard to judge something like that but um i think we are and even maybe it's just because i am a bit more interested in most but i can see the the difference the different activities that people have on at all times for children and adults and it's not just about irish classes like there's loads of irish classes available but i believe strongly in making irish a bit more interactive and you know people having a good time while they're speaking irish or trying to learn irish and i think maybe most people find it daunting to sit in the classroom and learn irish so i find that there are a lot more activities now of learning irish while doing something else alongside it it's a bit immersive as well and maybe focusing on the spoken to begin with and then we can start worrying about the absolutely the grammar and all that because you know if you because most of people are just looking to have conversations in irish anyways and i think people too with irish are now more open to engaging with someone trying absolutely you know because they used to be you used to get a sense of not snobbery i'm not saying snobbery but i just did no yeah but now people are saying right you know at least you're trying and i'll engage with you and and that encourages people to sort of not be shy about the three sentences they have start with that and see where you go from there absolutely and you believe you might have a role too in promoting our language abroad not just within the girl talk to within the county the country but further afield talk to me a little bit about that well as the american marries were saying earlier on they have like good connections with their irish culture and i would love to travel abroad to these irish communities and kind of just see if i could do anything for them in regards to language because i know there are irish learners in america and canada and all across the world there's irish communities in dubai now in australia so we are expanding but i would love to go over it and i don't know you know you couldn't expect to teach them like well how we are here at the minute but i would love to go in and you know get them back into their irish heritage and then they can do the effort from their end just to to light a fire absolutely and you know start brilliant stuff and what are you looking forward to for the remainder of the week um i think i'm looking for well the legail that's going to be great but i'm especially excited for our visit to the crawly distillery which has recently opened i haven't actually been yet i've never been to a distillery i wouldn't even know what would be in there well neither do i'll tell you after thursday no i'm looking forward to that because it's been it's near i'm from rana fast originally so it's very close to rana fast and um it's been under the progress for a few years now so i can't wait to actually go in and see what it's like in there okay well listen it's been lovely meeting all three of you thanks so much uh and michelle caroline and shawna enjoy the rest of the week enjoy the weekend that's i think you know a lot of the fun stuff as well it's all fun though but uh the weekend is going to be particularly good i think so thank you all three of you for joining us the dublin bell fast and gail talk to mary we'll be uh introducing uh the next three entrants after we take this break stay right where you are the nine till noon show is brought to you by letter kenny credit union digital loans now available apply online or via our app today and get your loan transferred directly to your current account the bank of ireland and nether kenny currently have vacancies for welcome advisors working as part of a collaborative and dynamic team successful applicants will have the opportunity to work closely with personal and business customers and build a career with the bank submit your cv to evan bol in bank of ireland nether kenny or email evan dot bol at boi.com who still hasn't managed to get the barbecue out well better late than ever because at lidl we've got sizzling 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you will find us beside Donahue motorhomes on the port road for an appointment call<PHONE_NUMBER> gmg stone just what your garden needs okay let's say hello to katelyn finn first the london merry hi katelyn i'm not following you around you know we keep pumping into each other in london absolutely how are you keeping absolutely fantastic we've been waiting for this for a while now it's great that it's actually happening hopefully it's matching all your expectations i'll exceed my expectations absolutely it's been fantastic tell us how you got involved in this so i helped out with the festival taking pictures and following the marys around in 2017 18 and 19 and just thought it was a fantastic opportunity and decided to apply and then in april 2020 i was told i was going to be the london merry you're over in london at the moment um you're a teacher and also you have a very prestigious title of being the first voted student life president what's the student life president so um i'm the first female student life president at it marys um so i help to run all the societies to organize events i sit in the board of governors at the university so all of the important decisions i am the spokesperson for the students to make sure that everything that's decided is in line with the students wants and interests now you'll have no bother getting up on the stage on sunday absolutely not you're no stranger to the stage you love that stuff you love the arts don't you yeah i graduated in wednesday last week and i made a speech in westminster cathedral in front of about two and a half thousand people so i'd be up to play dull doing that was it all right how do you prepare for something like that give me some tips oh i don't pretend everyone's naked that's what one of the pieces i don't think that would help me i thought that'd be a horrendous thing to do that's what they say no i just deep breath um yeah it was it was an emotional day and the leaders of the university were like whatever you do just don't cry um yeah it was a fantastic experience and like all of the marys i'm sure you've got a really proud family don't you that follow everything that you do and uh what have you yeah absolutely nanny mary and onion grand i'll be listening out in portugal at the minute portugal okay lovely isn't that nice yeah why would you be listening to the radio out in portugal what are you doing i'd have to tune in to you greg that's such a nice thing to say um i feel like it's guilty moving on now because you're so polite uh kira galahar murphy's this year's glasgo mary kira are you living in uh glasgo yeah i'm back in glasgo now i was at uni in daddy for four years um there so i'd graduated last me and i'm now back in glasgo is there a big difference between life in dairy obviously it's this life as a student though but life in glasgo you know there's strong connection between the northwest and scotland of course but when you're living in the two different places miles apart not really okay i've supposed you walk around glasgo and as they say half of glasgo's actually from dunny go so you walk around and everybody knows everybody almost um everyone's in the same circles and whatever so when you come over here you're walking around and there's people from glasgo everywhere you go so apart from the student life thing there wouldn't be that much of a difference yeah now you're another one with interest in music and an interest in gaelic football was that honed in uh glasgo yeah so i picked up the banjo in glasgo through irish minstrels um when i was about eight or nine and started gaelic football through turquino harps also in glasgo um when i was young and i've just kind of carried it through when i went to uni was playing gaelic football and playing music at uni which was good kind of got more sessions over there than i would have at home but i'm always over every year for the all island fly um so it's always a natural it was a natural career progression for you then with given your interest to start studying sports and physiotherapy yeah so i'm undergrad in sports physical activity and health just i knew i was interested in sport but wasn't sure at that time what i wanted to go into um so now i'm going to do my postgrad in sports physiotherapy yeah and and how familiar have you been with the mario from dunlow and what's the experience been like versus your expectations so my grand is actually from run fast so we still have a house there so every year we would come over here for six weeks and we'd be in dunlow for the festival you know up and down the main street so i always was a waiter at the festival and everything to do with it and knew a few of the glasgo madeies throughout the years um so when i was younger as everyone did looked up to them and was like oh i want to do that one day so i'm delighted this year to get the opportunity to come over brilliant and it's great to have you here olivia izowski is this year's philadelphia uh mary uh good morning to olivia thank you so much for calling in as well oh thank you for having us how have you been to harlem before yes i've been a couple of times my uh families from here okay um what's this experience been like when do you arrive ahead of um this competition it's not a competition such but this event uh so i got here a little over a week ago i was staying with family and then i've never actually been to dunlow i was staying with family in uh outside of denigaltown but i have loved dunlow so far yeah because dunnigaltown's lovely dunlow's lovely but they're two different places aren't they and you can do that in this county you can travel north south east and west people have different accents different attitudes different geographies astonishing in this just that's just one kind i know i even said last night i said these people are so kind i thought all people of denigaltown were kind but that people have done low are so kind i love it now you are um involved in irish dancing very how did you get how did you get involved in that in philadelphia uh so my grandmother actually started a school and back in 1962 um and when she unfortunately passed away my mom and aunt took over the school and continued on her legacy of irish dancing to the next generations and is that something you're going to do i hope so yes i actually still do teach irish dance lessons to the young young kids uh and help them out a lot of brilliant and you're studying nutrition and dietetics is that concluded at this point and what does that mean in terms of careers where do you go uh so i just graduated from college studying nutrition uh so when i get home i'm going to start a master's program uh to become a registered dietitian and i hope to work in a hospital setting helping people with diabetes right now i'm reliably informed you had a bucket list and one of those things i don't even have a bucket yet but one of those things on the bucket list was to meet daniel o'Donnell right now sometimes yeah i know i know but sometimes you know they say never meet your idol that's what they say now i want to know so do you have met him or not did you did your knees go in we actually got a photo together he got up on stage with us and the smile on my face i don't think it could have been wiped off for the rest of the day and then i was getting messages from everyone in philadelphia screenshots of the photo of me and daniel holding my teapot purse and i'm not kidding i think i'm going to frame that photo in my house when i get home it's incredibly down to earth though did you expect that i actually did meet him before in new york and he remembered me i met him right before kobe i i i think he's got an earpiece you know i there's no way anyone could repeat have such a fantastic memory because he remembers people's names he is fantastic like i said he might have an earpiece he might have an earpiece and a team of people in a van following him around with face recognition software or something no it's remarkable and i think that has been other than all of his other talents i think that's been one of his keys to success because there's that personal personal he never remembers my name but anyway that's fine i suppose i'm uh no that's that's not true listen all three of you um do you think the highlight's passed or is it to come uh what do you think euro um it's been well i only came on monday because i had a wedding at home um so i'm looking forward to the rest of the weekend what a what an event come to after a wedding is it one of those two day weddings yeah oh my god so the wedding was friday saturday so you're just coming around now got the boat over on sunday so i'm coming back but uh yeah i'm looking forward to the gala ball and mahery coastal adventures and you katelyn uh i think the parade on sunday is going to be the highlight yeah it's going down the main street and down low i think seeing the girls look up to you like your disney princess this is just yes it's the most amazing feeling yeah um olivia uh daniel you can't just meet him again i know to meet him on friday meet him on sunday i know i keep saying i think i can't wait to see the interview i'll probably be blushing the whole time listen all three of you thanks so very much indeed thank you very much for having us um the very best of luck and continue to uh enjoy it okay back after the break stay where you are the night old news show is brought to you by letterkenny credit union offering low-rate car loans with fast approval apply online at letterkennycu.ie or in office today green shoes in letterkenny and fulcara have shoes for every occasion all your favorite brands from unahili tommy bow and echo to kit applebee marcosi and sketchers plus many more shop lk and one for all gift cards are gratefully accepted in store green shoes in letterkenny at market square and letterkenny shopping center fulcara and online at greenshoes.com green shoes with the perfect fit for every foot is the appearance of your staff important to your business it's the first point of contact for customers when entering your premises at c&m and broidery in letterkenny they have a huge range of clothing covering all areas of the workplace it's widely known the customers warm to and trust employees that present themselves well have your company name and broidery are printed on all your work uniforms contact c&m and broidery on 07491 28097 and get your staff looking their best your specialty is quality tiles bathroom suite and wooden floors who is the best range of tiles and dunigol the best wood flooring the best bathroom suites five-day bathroom refits and who's been tampering with my questions that'd be me croffer tiles castle fin that'd be them 07491 43942 the seventh annual letterkenny busking festival is on saturday the 30th of july with musicians and singers performing all along the main street with entertainment from two and buskers performing from three to five it's a great afternoon of street entertainment the letterkenny busking festival on saturday july the 30th see letterkenny busking festival on facebook for details dance the night away this saturday night to patrick finney and his band in the abbey hotel dunigol town that's this saturday the 30th of july doors open 9 p.m. dj steven dory kicks off the night followed by patrick finney and his band at 10 30 admission only 15 euros in the abbey hotel dunigol town okay now we meet our final uh three four today sheersha maloney stevensson is the new york mary uh good morning to you and thanks so much for joining us good morning how are you keeping good good i'm having a great time and you're a chef i am and a quality control operator at the center for discovery so what is the connection between those two are they two different roles or are they intertwined well i'm a food quality control coordinator so the center for discovery is an assisted living residential center uh most of our residents are on the spectrum we have all ages from very very young to older population and my job is i work in the warehouse there and i help manage the food getting from point a to point b we do raise our own livestock we have our own organic farm so most of our stuff is grown and raised internally but we also do purchase some things so i look over the stuff coming in and make sure it's good quality i get to have like taste of strawberries and stuff just like they're delicious give me another one to make sure yeah and then i make sure um it's safely handled um and your work was recognized to you received the Irish Echo newspapers 2021 community champion award lovely honor to receive yes yes no it was it was amazing and they threw an absolute awesome party in new york it was great at um at roseo grates okay fantastic um and you're uh following in the footsteps of your mom is that correct yes yes yeah my mom and mary i'm sure she's watching um she was the 1984 international winner and what did she think uh about you deciding to sort of have a go at this as well she's absolutely thrilled yeah she's super excited yeah yeah okay and when did you arrive over um i want to say i got here on wednesday i mean it was a long trip from new york yeah but let's go with wednesday it's fine yeah okay and i've been you've been here before have i have yeah the last time i was over was for the 50th anniversary festival okay yeah so you've had that sense of it and what has it been like for you in terms of your level of enjoyment so far absolute dream i mean that the house that we're staying at lachmila lodge is amazing clare there is absolutely wonderful she's thought of everything you forget something especially those of us who came from the states i mean like we have outlets we have plugs extension cords whatever we need to get ourselves all beautified you know and it's for the course of this uh these interviews that i realize how incredibly boring my life is so fulfilling uh you're involved you you're of an interesting fencing yeah right now this is not by the way this is not building fences everyone so she's not available it's a school talk to me about the sport so um i when i moved to solomon county um i was looking to like meet friends and stuff in the area um and i saw an ad on facebook for a fencing club so your way of meeting people is to put on a mask and poke them in the chest and fight them i guess yeah sword fight them backward way of coming at it with the spoils afterwards and beforehand yeah i guess like um it's a good exercise especially because now i'm more of like an office setting with food rather than cooking all day and i need that physical activity you know and it's reaching advantage do you have a good reach in fencing or are you confined in a space or can you work that to your advantage oh yeah no definitely i actually i like um sword and buckler is probably my favorite you get like the little shield and a short sword um but rapier is another one of my favorites because that's long and that's really like all about timing but the first one's kind of medieval isn't it yeah you've got that sense i'm not saying it is but it feels like it okay listen lovely to speak to you we'll come back to you maybe i'm sure um katelyn like us the washington dc mary good morning to you thanks for joining us great to have you with us i'm so happy to be here again is this your first rodeo in arland donnie gall have you been here before what's your connections rodeo to donnie gall and i absolutely love it the rugged beauty the wild atlantic way um my mom was born in michelstown county cork so i do have connections here to ireland and i'm a very proud irish american yeah and cork i mean it's a long way from here to cork i'm temporary for that matter um so it's very different up here different accents you know different uh geography geography you've enjoyed it though yes like the accents are very different i'm catching on to some of the phrases and some of the irish words as well so i'm enjoying that as well all right now um talk to us about some of the things that you're interested in well i love fiddling i love dancing i love painting i do dog portraits back at home um i love nature i love all different kinds of art jewelry making i'm a very artsy person yeah okay and uh everyone loves dogs and everyone loves pictures of i've noticed that in here in donnie gall there's dogs everywhere everywhere yes not most most of them don't have owners they're just dogs everywhere yeah there's kind of floating around and you've uh you're a graduate in art history and ethnic studies what's ethnic studies so it's kind of like a little bit of everything in american studies like there's irish there's jewish studies um african-american studies it's kind of like a conglomerate of all the studies all together yeah okay and you have an interest in and emerging all of this and how you've come to want to be working with the fbi uh talk to talk to me about that there because i presume it's about sort of um what what interests you about would interest you about working with the fbi recovering lost and stolen art so i want to aid ukraine and maintaining their um cultural identity and locating their artifacts that have been looted or stolen so i like to help them with that effort and it's a passion that's not necessarily about value that's about the history too and there's a lot of importance isn't it yeah importance yes i want to do that and i love art as well so i'm trying to tie in both of those things to help the people and to recover the art plus it would be fascinating to do yes does everything um what has been your highlight so far what are you looking forward to uh caitlin well i love the music i've been enjoying the music we're sharing tunes all the marys and some of them are quite good with their songs and their banjo playing and fiddling playing so um i've enjoyed that but mostly looking forward to the fashion show and the gala it should be really good fun yeah exactly and that's the mixed bag isn't it yes you've got the the cultural element of it the music element of it and then sort of the glam side of it a little bit of everything i think that's what we offer here um sarah lawlor san francisco mary last but not least how are you getting on sarah welcome to arland how are you keeping i'm doing well thank you thank you for having no it's our pleasure um you've been here before haven't you yes this is my second time in denigal right okay so you've done the initial tourism stuff and now you're home now yes yes this feels like home thank you you are a teacher yes okay what what age groups do you teach i teach uh first class uh after school care so i take the children after school when they get off when they in the afternoon when they they are dismissed by their school teachers i pick them up and i take them somewhere else on campus to help them with their homework extracurricular activities snacks and uh recreation yeah and you're also heavily involved in volunteering as well aren't you yes and uh i'm starting to do acting as well all right um where where we hope that would go well stage screen mixture of both let's have it all why not yeah excellent at all and how do you get involved in acting is it about classes or uh or just getting involved in uh i took uh classes in high school and in college and i was also involved in plays as a child like in my school plays and i started i just started acting actually a year ago when i did a screenplay on youtube and i actually won awards in new york all right well done i'm maybe more motivated i just started i finished a feature film just recently in the premiere was a few days ago i'm so very excited so i was very happy about that but i am very much involved with uh volunteering and i'm very happy with that because in life you know the quote is oh well the world is your oyster you know the world is your oyster but i very much like what president john f kennedy did say in his speech don't ask so much what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country and i've been i try to live by that quote in my day-to-day life brilliant stuff exactly and stick to your convictions isn't that what it's all about katelyn uh like us thank you thank you thank you for joining us also seer shimoloni stevensson great to have you with us as well sarah lawler thank you and we look forward to hearing more from you over the course of the week and enjoy the rest of the week okay we have to take a quick break and then we want to squeeze mary and isabel uh in so we'll be back after the the nine till noon show is brought to you by letter kenny credit union digital loans now available apply online or via our app today and get your loan transferred directly to your current account years ago i used to dread my motor insurance renewal then a friend told me about omalie scanlan insurance in balibu fae and danlo 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apply via their careers page attention all pet lovers and owners gary's pet world letter kenny is open seven days per week offering the very best value on all pet foods accessories grooming and care products call in and let our staff help you spoil your pet today you will be amazed by the range of product for all pets with exceptional value on all leading brands alternatively you can browse and buy online at petworld.ie and we will deliver to your home don't just do okay in your career do great at all state don't settle soar don't procrastinate innovate don't do mediocre do magnificent at all state great work great life great people where great opportunities await search all state and i careers today all right you're very welcome back to the program isabel bolger is little miss mary from dunlow good morning to you thank you very much for joining us thanks for waiting how are you keeping i'm good are you enjoying it yeah i'm enjoying the whole week yeah and you're from leash not primary school yeah i'm from leash and spank and how did you end up taking part in little miss mary well my granny is here from dunagall and we came up to visit her and then i just started going to the hall and the disco and then i won in one year wow fantastic and how proud's the family you're very proud and you've got your lovely sash you've got a red cape you've got a crown you just wore the sash with us today yeah so you feel pampered it must be nice to have all the attention isn't it yeah we're going around princesses okay now your replacement will be picked at the children's disco on saturday that's where you were originally title isn't it yeah back in 2019 yeah and you're 10 now yeah i'm 10 so you've gone into double digits since you've won you're growing up is this now giving you a taste for the competition in the future to be the senior mary would you like to do that yeah i would i would like to okay what do all your friends in in knock primary school think of your achievement yeah and they're very proud and are you going to be upset hand in the crown and the sash over on saturday or do you feel your time is done you fulfilled your role well i'll be a little upset but it's time for another little miss mary now okay and what do you like okay what hobbies do you have i like Irish dancing and i also do swimming very good okay well it's been lovely meeting you enjoy the rest of your time and uh it's good you're very good what a lovely speaker finally mary war just in a couple of seconds you know there's so many people it takes to support the relatively small amount of people that are keeping this show on the road at the moment absolutely and i i'm here today would like to thank all especially the Dunlowe traders who have come together to make the festival happen to our coordinator Deirdre and to all the businesses in Dunlowe they've been wonderful and very supportive of us but not only that but the people throughout the country who are hosting the mares for the week we had a wonderful time yesterday in Glenn Cullum Kail Shleeve League Rusty Markle today we're going to be hosted by a number of people in letter Kenny and all throughout the week we'll be supported by businesses and we're very grateful to that without those people and people like yourself who are given up their time at the weekend free am i sad um there wouldn't be a festival and people all down through the years the committee is all down through the years who have come together to make sure that Mary from Dunlowe has survived for 55 years on behalf of the present committee i would like to thank all those okay um the future is bright with uh people like people are the future is very bright with people like Isabella okay and um of course the committee of Deirdre and um air award um they're very young i'm the golden oldy here you know but it's great to see the young people um stepping up to take over the reins yeah we're not going anywhere yet so let's let's not get ahead of ourselves all right Mary listen you're looking fantastic and uh i'm sure everyone wants to thank you for what you're doing so i'll do that on their behalf thank you so very much thanks Isabella thank you take care of yourself it's lovely having all of you in uh right okay it is time for us to take a break for the news now and we're going to be handing the reins over to John Breson my apologies running over a little bit at two minutes past 12 it's time for that news update and we say a very good afternoon now to Mikaela Clark thanks great good afternoon