Let me ask you a question. How much can $150 get you? Is it a pair of earbuds? Or is this a dinner in a nice restaurant? Or is this a very comfortable massage? Do you know that $150 can pay for a full year tuition for a kid in China? Do you know that this $150 can also pay for a family who never had internet access for a few months? Today, I'm going to show you how to make a bigger impact using $150. This is Dr. Nancy Lee from DrNancyD.com. I help people transition from worker B to a product manager and business leader. Today, we only talk about how can we make a bigger impact and be happier. If you like this video and believe in the mission I'm trying to achieve, please like and share this video and make sure to subscribe so that you'll be notified every time when I post a new video every Wednesday. For most of you guys watching this video right now, your property is already in the tech industry or trying to join the tech industry. $150 may not be a lot of money for you, but it can make a huge impact. Do you know that in the Boston area, about 20% of their families do not have computers at home. About 16% of the families do not have internet access. Can you imagine that? No internet access during COVID. How can you even function during COVID? You cannot even watch YouTube right now. But there are people out there who are underserved communities, wasn't able to get this fundamental easy access to education to internet. I believe in education because education is the biggest equalizer. But why I deeply care about those kids? Because I was one of them. I came to the US with $800 in my pocket and have never been to a vocation until age of 20. This is the first time sharing with anybody. To be honest, it is a little bit embarrassing to tell people that you were poor. Because my family always focus on two things. They focus on putting food on the table and also focus on education. Like, vocation is something rich people will do. No, we save the money for something more important than that. Therefore, I never had vocation until age of 20. And for a little while, I was very ashamed, afraid to tell others and just to face myself. But I realized that I cannot change my past. I should focus on my future. And gradually, I started to embrace who I am. Actually, right now, I'm very proud of who I am. I was lucky. I was able to make a transformation through education. But do you know that there's so many little nancies and out there who didn't get access to American education, who didn't know they can actually apply for scholarship to the US? So I really want to help them out because I was one of them. To be honest, I don't think I deserve talking to you guys right now because I was one of those kids. Never can imagine I have a YouTube channel helping people out and teaching people how to become a leader in America. But my long-term goal is really to help more kids who are in the underserved community to bring education to them, especially the entrepreneurship. So let me tell you what the $150 can do. There is a real person, a boy 14 years old living in Jiangxi province in China, which is the same province I came from. And her family income for the entire year was only $1,000. His mom was sick and his dad made the living by collecting recycling bottles. The tuition of him going to schools in China is only $150. And to be honest, most tuition are free. You just need to pay for books and do those pay some like fees in the schools. Given her family only makes $1,000 per year, it's really hard to even send a kid to school. Then recently, I discovered this non-profit organization called OCEF, who is helping kids like that and gives them donations to help them go back to school. And they also send the grades from the kids and also get in touch with the teachers. And I was very great to find out that within a year, and this kid was the top five students in the class. Education is equalizer. Let me also tell you another story. And this specific person lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Her name is Yves Des. She doesn't speak English at all. She speaks Spanish and you can see this actually in the video. And herself actually never had the computer education. Didn't know how to really use computers, not mentioned to build a website. And there is a non-profit organization in Boston called Tech Goes Home. They bring internet access and computers and the trainings about technology to Ethas. And by now, when we film this video, Ethas already launched a blog with showing her virtual craft business. So basically, she has lots of hand-makes up. She was able to host it on her website, on her blog, and have people to pay it. And on top of that, her kids was able to use those computers and internet access to do remote learning. And he said that he loves learning math through the computers. I'm so proud of him. Do you know that there are so many kids like this that need help? Those are our next generation. That's the reason I decided to do the one-on-one matching fundraising campaign for those non-profits for free. I personally have been working and supporting and donating my own money to those non-profits in the past few years. And I know their mission. I also know the founders and the executive directors for the top three organizations I'm supporting. So I'm doing the one-on-one matching. What it stands for is any dollar you donate, I'm going to match one dollar as well, up to $10,000. And I'm also going to add more personal money to it as well. I know you might be thinking, oh, I don't trust them. I think the biggest fear for lots of us, especially Chinese or immigrant, you might be thinking, oh, what if they waste our money or it's a fraud? And to be honest, because this is a big concern for myself as well. And that's why I have met the founders and those executive directors for those non-profit organizations. And on top of that, myself had a volunteer in those non-profit organizations. So I know they are doing a great job and they're not going to throw our money away and into some fraud as well. I will personally hold them accountable and watch their result by spending our money and helping those people. And on the other hand, you might be also thinking, I'm not rich. Why am I donating? I won't wait until I make lots of money. But do you know that you don't need to be rich to make an impact? $10, $20 is good enough. I know people out there who is like, well, once I make $1 million, $10 million, I will donate. Believe me, once they hit $1 million, $10 million, they still do not donate. The reason is they have a different belief system than us. You don't need to wait until you're rich to make a big impact. I personally believe that the secret to happiness is to give and serve a purpose bigger than ourselves. That's also the reason you guys ask me all the time, Nancy, why you have time to make YouTube videos, you have a full-time job, also teaching people how to become a product manager. How do you have so much energy? Don't you feel burned out? I don't because I'm serving a purpose bigger than ourselves. This gives me so much happiness and so much energy. That's why I encourage you to do this as well. Now let me share with you what are the top three nonprofit organizations I support and I have met before. The number one organization is TAC goes home and they bring technology to underserved communities and teach them how to use computer and bring Wi-Fi and bring computers to them. The second is called eSchool for girls and this is totally speaking to my heart and they teach teenager girls from underserved communities entrepreneurship. They represent the future of our nation. Entrepreneurship. The next CEO, I'm so proud of them. And third nonprofit I support is called Boston Glow. Glow stands for girls leadership and organized women. They teach teenager girls how to become a future leader. So those are the three nonprofit organizations I support. If you donate any money to them, make sure you mention that in my name in the no session and those nonprofit organizations going to collect all the donations together and I'm going to match your donation on one-on-one matching as well on top of that donate my own money as well. And there is a bonus nonprofit called OCBF which is the one supporting the boy I told you earlier and they recently brought it to my attention because some of my friends started recommending them to me. So myself is going to do some donation to that organization as well to start to validate are they fraud, are they real, are they really making a big impact or not. So I'm going to keep you guys posted in 2021 on top of that. If you know any nonprofit you think they need my support, please let me know because I'm going to make any free video for any nonprofit to help them achieve their mission as well. My final words for you is that there's no small donation. There's only a bigger impact.  I wish all of you a fantastic 2021. I'm going to see you soon. This is Dr. Nancy Lee. Feel free to check out other videos I produced for you. We produced lots of great content in December and make sure to like and subscribe and I'm going to see you soon. Bye.


The National Reconciliation Committee of APC on Monday submitted its report three months after inauguration. The committee was inaugurated on October 12, 2021 by the party's national chairman and U.S. governor, May Malabuni. Historicosile harmonized and integrated members of the party in order to cement all cracks and seeming differences. A member of the party's Caretaker Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee, Ken Nnamani received the report at the APC National Secretariat in Abuja on behalf of Governor Nnamani. In his remarks, Governor Nnamani commanded committee chairmen Sen. Abdulahi Adamu and other distinguished members of the committee.


You are up next. Hey, thanks. Let me know if I can see my screen and the screen. I will just say it. Yes, I can. Please go ahead. You have four and a half, five minutes. Thank you. So what I'm going to talk about is how do you, how do you build a code search engine, which is primarily for small teams and, you know, for your own personal needs. At Grammar, we use GitLab to actually save all of our repository, to save all of our code to a repository, and then, you know, maintain CICD and push the code regularly and so on. But whenever someone wants to search for a code, right, what developers usually do is go to, go online, maybe search for a specific module and see, and then modify the search results to see. It's not exactly fitting their needs, and they go to their own previous code, previous code basis, and try to find the right sample and then, and then confirm it further. What I'm now proposing is a very fine-tuned search engine, which is specific to your need, which is what most of our use cases are. And show you how to do that using simple NLP techniques. So I'm just going to show you, if you want to use, if you want to define cache for my endpoints, and whenever you create your APIs, you don't want to fetch your data each and every, each and every time. You want to cache it for a certain period of time, if they are static files like JavaScript, or maybe some data files, you may want to cache it for a long time, maybe one year. So, and if you go to GitLab and search for, let's say, how do you cache? Right, because that's something you do. You realize that there are no reasons, and then you actually need to select some project. Let's say I will select some project called GraphStarts. Even here, it is going to show me a bunch of results out of which I have to find out what my YAML file is and then figure out the right snippet for that. So instead of that, what Discover provides is, you can just search for the keyword cache. And depending on whatever your index, it's going to prompt you results for those, from those specific projects. And you can click this specific link and look for the cache, and then just copy paste the snippet either from here or maybe from wherever you had the search engines. So how does this work? You can just go to the configure window and then add some specific project and then submit a request for indexing. This is the UI aspect of it. But in the background, this is what is happening. So let's say I've shown you the example for YAML files, but if you were to search for Python files, how do you do it? You take every Python file and identify all the functions in the specific script. And within each function, you then identify the function name, doc string, function calls within the specific function and also the method calls. You then stringify each of it, maybe split it and then identify if the function name is, let's say function underscore name, maybe split it by underscore, I mean all the snake case strings. And if you have camel case strings also, let's say function name with n caps, you also split that. You do the same for each and every string in the function name, doc string, and also the function calls and the method calls. And then you form the whole entire string, the whole document, right? Then you do a TFI idea on top of that. What that will then give you is a matrix of rows and columns. Each column will be your single word. Each row is a function you're trying to identify. Depending on how deep you want to go, maybe you want to just identify the file first and then you want to identify the specific function I'm looking for. So I hope you liked it. If you want to check out, go to bit.com. Thank you.


Hello everybody and welcome back to my channel and now there's some I just wanted to share with you because I didn't realise this and I Wish I'd pointed it out before in the video where I did the DP832 to 832 a hack Because I know that there's quite a few people out there don't We don't relish Let's just get it here. Okay here. We're going to options We don't relish and doing all this and going through for 28 characters Understandable, okay, but what I noticed was and if you can see here is I didn't put in my RS232 But when I did the hack for to change it to the 832 a it automatically put it in there Now why is this? Well, I went and looked up on the rival website and all of these the 832 a pre-installed So you get it all Which means if you just do the one hack and I'll put a link in the description For that video if you just do because I've just short-cutted it for you so you can do it easy If you do the one hack you get everything installed for you None of that individually going through it one by one and having to do that 28 character job dial Okay, I just thought I'd share that with you guys and I'll catch in the next one. Bye. Bye


So I was browsing Dread earlier today and I saw this post that was actually made by a hidden marketplace admin not a Dread admin, but you know an admin of a hidden marketplace that advertises on Dread and I'll just tell you up front Whoever the guy is that made this post He must be very very confident in his op sec. Okay. He's very brave dare I say a little bit based and Possibly even a little bit foolish. Okay, watch till the end and let me know what you think about it in the comments below And speaking of base my open base shirt is available on base.win And you can save 10% off on base.win store-wide when paying in the base cryptocurrency Monero XMR. So let's get into This post on Dread man. So this is made by the user big boss chef chief, I don't know what that's supposed to mean of arctype and This is um his name on Arctype like if you're actually on that forum marketplace, whatever is Obama phone and The title of this post is an open letter to governments and law enforcement. He's calling them right out guys After arctype became the number one market since ASAP announces retirement I think not only will this market be in the focus of the government and consequently law enforcement with an immense and Disproportional amount of resources more than ever But I also think the attention can be used for something more impactful than arctype being taken down one day I know you deep down already know well You hate to admit but such a takedown will not change anything at all. Let me elaborate and give some food for thought It's a little bit difficult to read We have not created this issue We have not created the market around arctype the drug market has evolved and exploded over the past decades We are not the reason humans crave drugs more than ever again. We have not created this market This is something only corporations worlds bigger and more powerful than our small project here do truly bad humans they Create issues and provide the solution. We did not create any issue It was there before and will remain when we are gone deep problems in our system and society Did if you don't notice rising tension in people living lives They would prefer not to live the way they do left and right there could be two reasons for this You don't want to notice or you're blatantly lying what we are actually doing However is fueling and pushing an inevitable radical change Everyone reading this can name someone who should cut down on ibuprofen and a glass of wine or other Socially accepted drugs there are nothing other than that drugs in addition Usage of illegal drugs is probably more common than one might think Judging from a few customers whose information went past my eyes as part of our work supporting their purchases Behind both of this lies the same drive. They are looking to improve their current life and feeling Why would they do that if everything is great? Coming back to the introduction of this letter. We have not created this issue In fact, I think we are as much resisting the pointless Solution by the government giving tremendous resources to hunt dealers and operators of services like ours in order to push said government Into a new proper solution as we improve the problems of a business sector with such a strong economic structure And the illegal nature of it brings with it at the same time Rival gangs literally taking out lives that mean nothing to them robbery and attacks on in-person transactions in no way to have a visible reputation tied to a vendor that is closely being watched By an independent staff team to reduce harm caused by substances as good as possible Believe it or not the only gang clashes we have are kindergarten discussions about reviews We also don't want something stolen from someone Which is why we are mainly about drugs and don't allow credit cards or other fraudulent goods here Well, this all sounds great We surely cannot ignore the fact that some person might have lost their life as a result of a trade on this platform Rather than as a direct customer and user or by being a customer from a reseller of our platforms Products in real life. I hope the number for this is close to zero And I am truly sorry for every negative impact this site also has But I am also confident that we saved more of them with this platform They will buy the drugs with or without a digital way of doing it that puts a barrier between Rival dealers and the customer and their dealer Some even need to purchase products here as literal medicine because they just cannot afford it going the legal way While I'd love to see nobody taking any drugs at all We clearly try to make the inevitable as pleasant as possible Just again, the underlying issue does not go away with us Shouldn't it make you think that I asked you to address the core issue which would make archetype and all market All future markets obsolete at some point or at the very least reduce the customer base quite a bit When I was a kid I used to think that law enforcement and the police as the front line of It is protecting us from evil. The government wants the best for all of us They protect you from the man and black coming into your house at night. I quickly realize it is not quite as simple I absolutely believe there are heroes without capes amongst them Think cases like no limits fun and Peter Scully. I applaud and thank you for your work But when you look at how resources are wasted hunting down markets just for the next one to pop up a few weeks later You might think about it again. The agencies and agents involved will be looking forward to a great career after an operation like that And they are the definition of just doing their job But who was saved by this wasn't your initial motivation to make the world a better and safer place Not even your experiment of putting Ross into prison for multiple lives has made an impact and When they're talking about Ross talking about dread pirate Ross creator of the silk road To be fair it did have an impact you showed your tyranny and the world was watching over 500,000 people have signed his petition by now You motivated some of us to continue his legacy. I don't think this is the impact you were looking for though You wanted to make an example out of him with the sentence that is so out of range that it is hard to grasp You ended his life for the mistakes you make while he started something back then he also did not create the market nor the issue Not everyone in the history of markets had the same motivation looking at all the exit scams I must admit that I fear most are in it for the money There is nothing wrong with doing it for money and the money is the money to be earned in this economic sector is quite inviting For sure they are just playing the game They were put into when they were born into the system while I hate to say this even the exit scammers did their part here Every single market showed you over and over again. You will never stop this ever You may arrest me tomorrow. You may arrest me in a week I'm not hiding in paranoia, and I'm not running after this letter You might rub your hands when you got me for having the audacity to address the real issue You should work on I almost feel sorry to tell you the following about a potential bust of any market or staff member You have accomplished nothing other than potentially collecting some money and making the average dough feel better in front of his television at night When he sees agents in suits patting one another over their great success against horrible crime I wouldn't even be surprised if you let markets grow just to have more money to collect in case you managed to do so I will be replaced overnight Even the entire market will be replaced with the next head of the Hydra in no time You might put my body in a cell some of us might even be Traded as capital between countries for money and favors. Isn't it funny how justice works? However, it doesn't matter to me. This is bigger than you and me. Please start working on the root cause We are a symptom. We are archetype This letter was not approved written or read by other staff members of archetype prior to publication Their opinions motivations and beliefs may vary greatly written by archetype staff member Obama phone So there was a whole lot written there, but honestly, I agree with just about everything that Obama phone said here so the problem that he's talking about of course is drug use and That is not a problem that dark web marketplaces created. Okay, every substance on there for the most part has existed Long before dark web marketplaces long before computers even or at least, you know chemical derivatives of substances that existed before then are Probably mainly what's sold on there and it's one of those things that we Really know for a fact Prohibition of these substances doesn't work here in America. We had the prohibition of alcohol Okay, alcohol was illegal for a period of time and almost immediately After alcohol was made illegal you had this criminal circuit that got created, you know Al Capone came up as a bootlegger That's how he made his money. You know, that's how Those mafias really came into play and I think the golf cartel as well You know, they originally got started by smuggling alcohol into America from you know through the Gulf of Mexico from Mexico And to this day, they're obviously still in business except they're just smuggling other substances that are illegal As well as human trafficking and all that other stuff. So But you know focusing on the illegal substances Clearly the prohibition isn't working. I'm also pretty sure that the percentages of Addicts and things like that, you know when we talk about the public health issue Right because that's the whole reason for these laws, right is we don't want people addicted We don't want people committing crime to feed their addictions We don't want people dying from their addictions and you know, reducing their quality of life reducing the quality of lives of people around them But none of those percentages have shifted. Okay, everything is more or less the same Whether these substances are legal or illegal and in some cases, they're a whole lot worse Again here in America, we have more people Incarcerated per capita than any other country on the planet, right? This was we landed the free but yet we have the most prisoners and when you start looking into What people are in jail for? By and large, it's for things to do with substances. Okay possession Distribution manufacturing etc etc So I'm pretty much with him with you know Obama phone with the idea that The government putting all this effort all this resources all these taxpayer monies into Busting these markets. It's it's really just a waste of time The whole reason that these markets Exists is because of the prohibition of these substances if you could go to CVS or Walgreens and buy these substances there would be no archetype They can't compete with CVS and Walgreens. Are you kidding me? I don't know how many, you know Billions of dollars those companies are worth but obviously they've got the storefronts. They've got the Distribution they've got the supply chains. Okay, they could make Pablo Escobar and El Chapo and all these guys look like a complete joke And that's the other thing too, you know by these substances being illegal these People who are you know, I guess the real bad guys, right like the cartels these people who Are littering the streets with bodies and dismembering people and you know putting videos of it online and stuff like that These guys are so rich because of this prohibition again, they couldn't compete with the American pharmaceutical industry Especially when you look at the substances that are actually being sold because the majority of the money in Substances is in stuff. That's completely manufactured. Okay it's no longer in the Organic stuff that you might have to get from Colombia, right? It's in The kind of stuff that Breaking Bad was based on which can be completely made within a laboratory anywhere in the world it's stuff like You know fentanyl which again made in the laboratory can be made in a laboratory basically anywhere in the world and People choose to do these substances at the end of the day. Okay adults who Know the risk or at least you hope that they know the risk. Okay. It's kind of where harm reduction comes into place instead of teaching people that Things are more harmful than they actually are or just lying to them about what stuff does instead teach them about LD 50s teach them about Responsible use and and obviously advise them not to use substances, but at the end of the day an adult is gonna do what an adult is gonna do and Other things like overdoses could also I believe largely be curbed by legalization so even on The dark web where you have I guess some Level of effort to regulate stuff, you know, obviously there's admins. So maybe it's a little bit more regulated than the streets You still have vendors on there that sell big stuff one of one thing that's apparently really rampant on the dark web is people selling opiates You know, I guess heroin or you know, whatever other nickname for it And it's not actually that it's synthetic, you know, it's um fentanyl and and maybe even car fentanyl in some cases, which is like a It's like fentanyl for elephants or something.  I mean, they're you know, I guess such an addict to regular opiates that that's the only thing that really gets them off or whatever, but For your average joe, you know, for your average person that thinks they're getting china white or whatever if they try this stuff and it's fentanyl It's gonna kill them Uh, so that's another issue Which to me is one of the biggest issues with Just substance abuse in general Which could largely be curbed by legalization. I mean if you had something that's You know, you can buy at a drug store or a liquor store Maybe have designated dispensaries like they have for weed or whatever And it's dosed out for you I really think that would reduce overdoses or at least it would make it um less likely for somebody to Have an accidental overdose now as far as um, you know, obviously I agree with the spirit of this post but uh, this post itself being made by Someone who is a dark web admin. I mean this is um, you know, obama phone. He's administrator of a in marketplace This is the kind of thing that I would consider to be pretty bad op sec and here's the reason why so obviously um obama phone, you know, whoever the real person is that wrote this is Speaking English or writing English as a second language, right? There's a lot of grammatical mistakes, um possibly some spelling mistakes and This is also kind of the case if you actually go to uh, archetype I don't think i'm actually going to show archetype this site because it's you know, this video is already in enough danger as it is Even though it's purely for educational and technical purposes but um You know, if you go there for yourself, you'll see that there are some spelling mistakes and grammatical mistakes throughout like the instructions of the website so That's the kind of thing where law enforcement is going to make a copy of that and they're also going to compare it to Data that they have mined so Remember the nsa is collecting every plain text text message That goes through on the internet, right? Because you know, if it's a regular sms That's not encrypted and even if you're like, oh, I don't use sms, but maybe you use whatsapp, right? You have Maybe some relatives that are in another country. You know, that's a reason I commonly see in the comments for why people need to use whatsapp Okay, that's end to end encrypted with facebook's encryption facebook works hand in hand with law enforcement And with busting people on the dark web for certain things as I've talked about on this channel. So If this person is using similar Texting styles, you know to what they have written here In their whatsapp messages that stuff could be mined as well and possibly used to unmask this person's identity Not to mention that He's obviously calling out law enforcement, right? He's trying to make them I guess feel Guilty about whatever it is they're doing, you know their investigation into arc type or other hidden marketplaces So maybe that's going to be something that causes them to Target this person a little bit more specifically But yeah, let me know what you guys think In the comments below. Do you agree with the sentiment? Do you Kind of feel the same way that I do that Posting something like this with all of this text that can be mined and analyzed and possibly used to Deanonymize you As a hidden marketplace admin is a bad idea. Let me know in the comments below Like and share to hack the algorithm and have a great rest of your night


In this presentation, we will calculate the present value of cash flows for bonds using tables. Support accounting instruction by clicking the link below giving you a free membership to all of the content on our website, broken out by category, further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical, reasonable fashion, making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files, and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again, click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. There's a few different ways we can do this and it's important just to know what the different ways are so we know how we can do it in different settings and know what other people are doing when we're in essence getting to the same point with different methods. Tables are very useful if we are in a situation where we are having test situations because often tests will allow us to have a calculator but a very simplified calculator that doesn't allow us to use present value functions and the table will allow us some kind of in between zone so we don't have to do the actual math of the formula but we don't get to use the calculator as well and so we do the table. So just note that it's the same thing in practice of course you would probably use a calculator or Excel so we'll show how to do that. You want to know that we're doing the same thing with these different methods and use the tools that are available to us whenever we're doing these different methods. So here we're just going to use the tables to do the same type of calculation that we saw in terms of math calculation and that is here's our information we've got the bond and it's a face amount 100,000 stated rate the rate on the bond 8% the market rate the rate that's not on the bond that we think is just the market rate is 10% semi-annual payments and there's two years so that means there's going to be four payments because we pay every six months or twice a year and there's two years so the cash flows we know that the cash flows are going to be 100,000 at the end and we know that there's going to be interest payments of 100,000 times 0.08 that would be for a year divided by 2,000 4,000 so we're going to make four to two two years two times a year four four thousand dollar payments or times for sixteen thousand dollars worth plus the 100,000 that we're going to pay back at the end so the total cash flow we know is 116,000 but that's not present value cash flows because all those happen in the future there's two components to the cash flows remember one and this is why we love bonds so much when we talk about cash flows because there's one cash flow that's just a lump sum at the end and one cash flow which is that annuity which gives us a good way to use our two types of tables and formulas for cash flow so we always want to think of that separately if I want to present value this first I'm going to present value the 100 that we're going to get at the end and then present value the annuity so let's do that first we're going to say first we're going to take the present value PV of one that's kind of like the table name we can call it and we're going to take the face amount of a bond so we take the bond face amount and that's going to be the 100,000 and all we have to do then is find the correct you know number from the table to plug into here to figure out what what we should be multiplying by and that's it so the difficult thing is one finding the correct table and two just making sure we're using the right percentages to look at it the tables look intimidating but if we know how to do that we're okay there's going to be at like four tables that they may give you here when dealing with bonds we want to use present value tables so anything that says future value we can eliminate those we're not looking for future value that typically brings us to two tables that have a present value and we call it present value of one or present value of an annuity typically and if you look at the tables you can kind of tell you can say well hmm if I'm talking about present value of one for example I need to multiply this hundred thousand times something less than one because I know the answer is going to be something less than a hundred thousand so if you look at a table here you can say well all these are less than one that looks like the right table whereas if I look at the table for an annuity they all are over one so that doesn't look right that's that's going to work for an annuity so that means that this looks like the right table it's going to be present value of one here's kind of the formula if we were to do it with the formula but the whole point of the table is not to have to do that this table is derived from the formula and now we just need to pick out you know our our correct spot and we know that we're going to use the market rate here because we're present valuing at the market rate not the stated rate on the bond but we think what's actually happening what's the real rate in the market which is something that we have to kind of guess at we don't know that for sure it's not on the bond but it's going to be given in a problem and we know that there's going to be two years but that means it's it's semi-annual so there's really four time periods and this is going to be the other kind of confusing thing we're not going to go two two years out we can't because there's going to be payments within that and so we have to use four time periods so the periods will be four but they're not yearly periods and that means we can't use the interest rate of 10 percent because that's 10 percent a year so what we do then is take that 10 percent divided by two and five percent so we're going to have four time periods two times two at five percent and so if we know that then we can just go okay four time periods at five percent it's going to be this amount so point eight two two seven so remember that point eight two two seven that's what we're going to use and then we can just go back up here and just type that in here point eight two two seven now that may not be exact because of rounding but it's four decimals out so it's pretty it's pretty good and i'll just put here that it's four periods at point oh five or five percent on the table that's where we're getting that number from and so then we're just going to present value of the bond face amount the amount that we're going to pay at the end is just going to be equal to the 100 000 times this number we'll just multiply them out there it is so the math of course here is very easy the only difficult part is finding the table finding the right number on the correct table okay so in order to do that we need to know the correct rate and the correct number of periods which is different to the number of years and different than the yearly rate you have to break it down to whatever period rate we have okay so then we need the present value of the other piece present value of annuity now the annuity we could do this remember remember that there's four four thousand dollar payments four four thousand dollar payments so we could present value each one of them using this same method not this number that would be the number used for the last one but we could go to this table and say okay well it's going to be five percent for one year out times four thousand five percent two years out times four thousand five years three years out this number times four thousand and five years four years out and then add them up that would work possibly with four time periods but if we had more than four time periods it would be very tedious to do that way luckily there's another table for us it's the annuity table so that's going to be down here and again you know which table it is because it's got to be something over one in other words what we're going to do is take this four thousand that we know how many payments there are there's four of them that would be sixteen thousand so what we need to do is multiply that four thousand times something greater than one but get to a result that's going to be something less than sixteen thousand in other words we're going to multiply something that's going to be greater than four thousand obviously and less than sixteen thousand that would be that's it has to be in there somewhere to be present value and that's going to be multiplying by something greater than one so once we get the right table we just do the same thing we're going to go five percent for a semi-annual rate the yearly rate divided by two and then we're going to take it out for how many time periods did we have two years four time periods so it's going to be this three point five four six zero so remember that number so it's going to be that number i'll say then we're just going to go back over here and we're going to take the i'm going to write that down before i forget it okay so we'll we'll put that number here actually i'll put it underneath here and we're going to say this is going to be the interest per period which is going to be four thousand we're going to pay four thousand four times for every six months four periods two years and then the table once again is going to be i'm going to give the same indicator but just note that it's a different table it's the annuity table that we're pulling this number from but it's going to be the same four periods at five percent if we multiply that out then we're going to say the four thousand times the three point five four six zero and whatnot and that's going to give us the present value of the interest payments say and then if we add those two up then we're just going to say that we have the present value of the one hundred thousand plus the present value of the interest payments so it's issued then add of course a discount and again you can think about this it should make we're going to say well there's going to be four thousand cash flow times four four periods plus one hundred thousand at the end one hundred sixteen that's how much cash flow that that we're going to have but we're actually going to to present value that at only ninety six four fifty four because the eight percent rate that we're paying in interest is less than people could get elsewhere which is the ten percent so what does this mean in terms of recording it well if we were to record this then uh we're going to say that is cash affected if we were to issue a bond yeah it's going to go up so I'm going to say cash is going to go up and it's only going to go up however for the ninety six four fifty four even though we're issuing a bond the payable the loan amount kind of the liability that we're going to pay at the end of four time periods two years is one hundred thousand and the difference then of course is going to be the discount which i'll do with our plug formula negative sum and that's going to be the three thousand five forty six and that's going to be the discount so here's our journal if we post that out then cash of course is going up bonds are going up and then we have this discount so we got cash here we got the bonds going up and the bonds minus the discount is the carrying amount of the bonds so again note that when you when you see this in book problems they're probably going to ask you to either calculate this or to do the journal entry and when doing the journal entry they're probably going to give you these two numbers just so they don't have a really long problem so and then when they do this they probably don't ask you for the journal entry because it'd be a really long problem or to post it so just note that you often these two things are kind of in limbo and separated in book problems and you got to kind of know if you know what they're doing and how to put them together it makes more sense


Hi, this is Pat McDonald, your host for Vote for Vermont, where our tagline is Listening Beyond the Soundbites. My special guest tonight is Adana Curtin, who is the chair of a very long-titled committee, Governors' Committee on the Employment of People with Disabilities, correct? Correct. GCEPD. That is how most of us say it. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Ben's a little late this evening, so if you see him sneak in at some point in the show, he will have arrived on time safely anyway. So we always ask our guests to talk a little bit about themselves and if you could do that for us. Sure. So I came to the Governors' Committee by way of having worked in the world of workers' compensation through the Department of Labor that you're familiar. And I recognized that there was this opportunity to have a voice for injured workers and their return to work after their injury. And so that is what led me to the committee. And I had worked previously for the State of Vermont Vote Rehab as a transition counselor, working with youth to encourage them into the world of work, either directly out of high school or after college and assisting with their employment planning beyond high school. And I had worked at the time with Diane Delmas, who was the director of Vote Rehab. Who is still here. She is. And let's say we had Hugh Bradshaw on the other day. And I was surprised that Diane was still here. She's been there, thank goodness, because she does a good job. Yeah, she really runs a great ship over there. So I got in touch with her, actually, and I asked her about the committee. And she is a member. She is a mandatory member, as state agencies are, represented on the committee. So I was really fortunate to bring those two worlds together, having worked for the two agencies. At the time, I was working for a private vote rehab company that did workers compensation, disability case management. And so blending those two worlds and really encouraging people to just continue thinking about not only employment of people with disabilities, but retention of employees with disabilities was really the impetus for me. Well, I must say, I think things have changed a lot in that world of getting people to work and certainly keeping them working full time or a long time. I asked Hugh, what's the change? Some things was different. Because when I was there, it was a little bit of a struggle. And I was delighted to see that things are different. And I'm thrilled. So this must be an exciting job for you. It really is. The governor's committee has the opportunity to really pull together representation from business people, people with disabilities, state stakeholders, and service providers. So it really sparks a great conversation from the many perspectives. That's a pretty, we can skip to talk about the committee. It's a pretty large committee. Is it not? You've got like 20, 23 members. So there's mandatory representatives, I'm sure, from the Department of Labor, and all vote rehab and those kind of things. But are there citizens and people from the outside world? Yes, so we have people with disabilities who are strong advocates for employment. And we are really always so pleased for their input above and beyond all. We have business owners and business members who have themselves supported the hiring and retention of people with disabilities. And then service providers, which is where I fell from my last role in the realm. So people who are not employed by the state but who are providing services to employing people with disabilities. Next week, we are going Tuesday, which is certainly off cycle for when we do these things, to Waterbury where they have equipment that's designated to help people with disabilities at work. Yes. And Hugh suggested we go on. I'm very excited because I've been doing some research about it. And there's so many new things that are out there that can help people. Yes, actually, my current role as field services manager for Vogue Rehab, the assistive technology program falls under my world. So it does. Well, we'll be there at 1 o'clock next Tuesday, I believe. So I'm bringing one of the cameramen from here, and we're going to shoot off-site. Yes. I thought that's a visual thing, not a, oh, well, you have a lot to oversee. It's a full-time job, I'm assuming. It is a full-time job. And then some, right? It is, yes. For you. So what is, like, when was this established? 1963, originally. And then it was amended some years later. It was originated by the Medicaid Integration Fund and really was charged with informing the governor of any issues related to employing Vermonters with disabilities. So you wanted to talk about that a little bit later, because that's, how do you do that? I mean, how, first of all, it's a small state, but not that small. So how do you know what the disabled folks are dealing with and what the employee, I mean, how do you put that together to be able to advise the governor? And I'm sure with that report, there's some recommendations. Right. So I think it happens in a bunch of different ways. The committee itself, I think, is an avenue to do that because we have all those people around the table who are providing their input. And we start every committee meeting with what we call mission moments. And so we ask everyone around the table what it is that has happened to them between meetings that is to this cause, right? So anything that has any outreach they've had to individuals that have sparked the conversation of employment and retention, anything, any questions that have come into them, anything they've observed. And so it starts out with a conversation, just keeping it real. What are you seeing out there? What matters to you?  Let's talk about it, and let's see what we can do with that information. Do you meet with the groups of employers and groups of folks with disabilities? I know, well, we forgot to mention, to me, one of your most famous members of the Sterling Beoples. Sterling has been on this show, I don't know, I think four or five times. We've done lots of things on the, and what she's done herself to try to get employers to hire the folks with disabilities. She has a website, and she's very active that way, and always speaking somewhere, but she's a... She is a rock star in her own right. She is, well, she won that... Rising Star. Rising Star, can you believe that? I can, and she deserved that for sure, and she really is, and yes, so she is on our committee and has been for a couple years now, and she actually helped recruit from the Center for Disability Inclusion that is within UVM, and so we have Darren McIntyre, who is from there, also sitting on our committee. Yeah, people are drawn to Sterling, she kills me, on her Facebook, she's got a picture with whatever star, like if she goes to some convention, she's got a picture with whoever, the keynote speaker, a star, and she's funny, but she belongs with the Green Mountain Advocates, and do you speak with them, or maybe Sterling translates back from the committee, because they're a very active group? Yeah, so part of our charge also is to stay involved and build relationships with other agencies and organizations that have similar missions, so we partner with BCIL often, and the Vermont Coalition for Disability Rights, and so yes, we are attending different events that they're putting on, APSI, which Sterling sits on, so yes, we involve ourselves wherever we at the Green Mountain Self-Advocate conferences that they hold, we also have representatives from veterans, we have the Director of Veterans Affairs, Bob Burke on our committee, and Larry Forsyth, who is with Department of Labor, who assists employees who are veterans getting back to work, so we go to veteran events that are held, so we do try and just maintain those relationships. And are employers open to talking to you about hiring folks with disabilities, because I don't know whether they'd be worried about the additional, maybe if there is additional support that's required to hire, but I think what a great feeling of satisfaction to be able to do something like that. Yeah, I mean, it certainly runs the gamut of how comfortable and willing employers are to be as honest as they need to be, I think, to ask the questions that present that barrier. I think that CWS, Hugh Bradshaw, and now Piper, who you had on recently, they have done a lot with Weber and the BAMs to really promote those open conversations and that idea that they really are operating from this dual customer approach where they understand that employers have the needs that need to be met and they have jobs that need to be done, and they want a very clear understanding of what that job is so that they can introduce people who are a good match. And I think, you know, as long as there is that sense of openness and that willingness to just have a very real conversation, I think it breaks down a lot of those barriers. I mean, Hugh walks the walk, talks to talk to me. He's like a Mary Moulton and they just believe and they love the people that they serve, so you can tell them. I think that clients can feel that too. I absolutely agree. And you know, there is really something pretty contagious about that feeling when you see people who want this so bad, they want to succeed, they want a job, they want to be productive and tax-paying, yes. And when you see that happen, it's pretty powerful and you just want to keep doing it. The last Disability Awareness Day, which we'll talk about, because it's coming up pretty soon, we were in the cafeteria and the governor came, and of course you have a whole roomful of people with disabilities, and the governor was talking about meeting people for jobs and looking for people, and I'm sitting thinking to myself, hello, this entire room would raise their hand and say, you know, pick me, because they want to work. And in a lot of them, because oh, I know what it was, they were looking at taking away the money of the self-help people that I don't, I apologize for that. The personal care attendants. Personal care attendants, and so there were several, their maxes, I spoke to him for quite a while, and these people are successful as long as they have some, just a little additional help, which doesn't take away from the employer.  Yeah, I think that overriding message that people with disabilities are underemployed, and or unemployed at a ratio that does not compare to the general public, and yet statistically, they are more loyal employees, and I think all of us, right, when you think about it, we gain our social network, and our self-worth, and our identity through work, and it's very important for people. That's great, I just think it's amazing, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the new technology. I've just heard a lot about it, and I thought, well, this'll be really interesting. Yeah, so you must be meeting with Tracy, probably, and Graham.  Yeah, it's an impressive trial center, and it was previously right in the Capital Plaza, building on the second floor. Oh, no kidding. It used to be over there, yes, and now that the new site is available, it's right at the ground floor of the state office complex, and it's much larger, and the equipment, I, myself, took a tour just a few days ago. That's very impressive, so I'm really looking forward to that. So, I guess the employee, I think I'm gonna struggle with it. How do you, when you first approach an employer, how do you get them to realize the benefit of hiring? Of course, I guess the job markets will stretch these days, it's hard to find anybody to do jobs, but how do you convince them that this is the right thing to do, and that you would make the right match? It's the person's character and abilities, not so much the disabilities, it's the abilities that you're matching. Yeah, that's right. I think it starts with trust in relationship building, and I think people put a lot of time and energy into fostering those relationships with employers, and getting them to understand that this really isn't just about being nice and doing something kind, although it is, and it's wonderful. It really is the idea that in this process, they will find wonderful employees, and that's everyone's goal, and that hiring people who have been introduced to them by supports allows for that communication to be ongoing and continued, so that if there is an issue that comes up, there is an opportunity to have help in having those conversations, both for the employee and the employer, so that if there is miscommunication or misunderstandings, there is a buffer to have those difficult conversations. And are you, I'm sure you and your staff and maybe Hughes are available if something goes awry and some things need to be adjusted and stuff for the employee and the employer, I'm sure that people come and help to get things back on track. Yeah, that's the whole idea. So the first part is to be proactive and make sure that the job is as great a fit as you could imagine it to be for both. And then next would be to figure out if there were some reasonable accommodations to be considered, maybe it is AT and maybe it's using devices that will make the job more successful for someone make the work environment a better fit. So after trying to accommodate it and seeing if it's the right fit, then yes, then it's that ongoing, just checking in when needed and just continuing to foster that relationship so that they do feel comfortable reaching out and having the conversation. Years ago when I lived in Tarrytown, New York, I worked for a company whose mission it was to hire almost all people with disabilities. I was hired and there were several people in my kind of jobs with a lot of traveling and stuff going around. And it was the most encouraging. Nobody paid attention to anybody's disabilities. I mean, it was just, let's get the work done and let's get moving, it was great. At first I wasn't sure what to expect and I was there maybe a week and I'm like, oh, this is like any other place and it's regular people and doing regular things and it was amazing. It was just fun and you didn't think about it after a while. Fun is a great word and that diversity that happens in the right work cultures, it improves the environment for everybody and it does. It creates just an overall better feeling and I always think about that for the case of workers comp too that I knew that employers who were good about bringing employees back after their injury meant that it was likely that they were having less injuries happening in the company and that they had probably a higher retention rate because they were treating people well and that always works. And so companies who tend to hire people with disabilities are overall good employers and they probably hire better talent and keep them. Well, I think they look beyond, they look at the person. Yes, it's about the abilities. How they think and what they do and what the CEO of this company was disabled himself and he just decided that that's what they're gonna do in their company and it worked great. They were very successful so it worked great. I bet they were. So you have a tagline, I guess that's what we call it. It says barrier free employment for all Vermatres. How did that come about? Well, I think it's the idea that you sort of just touched on that when we look at people as individuals and their strengths and their abilities and focus on that, because all of us, let's be honest, all of us have things that we're not as good at as others. Well, so here's that. Yes, that's true. And aren't as strong in some ways as we maybe wish we were or others are. And we've all just landed in positions that have focused on our strengths if we're successful in those positions. And so that's really breaking down the barriers. It's really looking at what people's abilities are, looking at people as individuals, figuring out how they do contribute to the work culture and the job itself and that's how you start breaking it down. And then there's the flip side for employers. And I think it's breaking down the barriers that they see a lot of times their myths and a lot of times the concerns that they have are based on things that maybe others have told them or... Preconceived notions of what it's all about. Yeah, and so when you're able to dispel those and when we are able to offer exposure of all the successes that happen out of these great job matches, I think people respond and they want to bring that into their own workplace. So I think exposure, this show is, we are so appreciative of being invited because it's more exposure to having this conversation and encouraging even one employer to think about reaching out to us. And I think if you take a little time to get to know the person, I mean, we were talking about Sterling.  I think she blew my husband away because when I was introducing, of course I've been talking, I talk about Sterling at home all the time, Sterling this. We all do. And she just said, she's amazing. I mean, she is. She is amazing. She's so quick. And funny is all get out. Oh my God. But anyway, but I sadly, I don't know, I've got to watch the time here. I talked to her, but I sadly, I went to a funeral down in New York in Territown, where I used to live. And there was a woman sitting opposite me. I didn't know her and she was with her daughter who was a Down's syndrome, not a child. She was a woman. And this woman did not think like Vermonters with children with disabilities. She, I don't know how this child is ever going to exist when mom passes away or gets too old today. She is so, thinks this child really can't do much. And I was looking at her face and her eyes and she's all, she's alive and well. And I was talking about some of the things that we do here in Vermont. And the mother, oh no, no, no, no, no. Thank you for trying. Oh, I'm like, you've missed an opportunity because I could tell she wanted to communicate and she wanted to be part of the part of what was going on. And mom just was, I think she was afraid. Yeah, I think that is where it comes from. And, you know, as a transition counselor, when I first moved to Vermont and I took the job as a transition counselor, I did, I witnessed parents who ran the gamut of that level of protecting versus allowing that what we call failure, risk of failure, right? And so the ability to let, we all do that as parents anyway, but there is, sure, an added fear around that. And we have at Vogue Rehab, there is the transition counselor program. Tara Howe is the manager of that program. And it is a great effort that is put into having these conversations within now much younger and getting involved in this idea of transition as young as 14 and potentially younger to really start to show what's possible and have those conversations. I think this mom needed to talk to somebody and I said, where'd you come to Vermont? She was looking for, we've abolished them here. Sheltered workshops. They closed the one that her daughter was in and she was very upset about it and I said, well, we don't have them in Vermont because we think they can do much better things for them rather than the sheltered workshop approach. That is actually, when I graduated from college, my professor was also a program director at Goodwill in Massachusetts and that she got me my first job out of college as an operations coordinator at Goodwill and my job was to help transition people out of this sheltered workshop that was in Salem Mass and it was a wonderful experience because I did, I got to see that change. The spark in their eyes, I'm like, whoa, I did this. Yes, and the people who thought they couldn't, who did and how that trickles out and there were still a lot of sheltered workshops in Massachusetts at the time that I moved to Vermont and when I moved here and learned that that was not going on, it was a happy day. Yes, well, I know we talk about that a lot. Now you publish, I have to get on this newsletter list. You publish a quarterly free email, right, e-newsletter. Yes, abilities. It's called call abilities. Could you talk about what you try to cover in the newsletter and different stories if there's any one that you might wanna share with us? Sure, so it tends to be quarterly. Sometimes we put out special ones for special reasons. We always like to highlight the award winners for our Spirit of the ADA awards. We like to highlight if we've been to certain events, we do the Business Expo every year. Oh, do, great. Yes, we have been, I learned that I think this year they're doing away with the B2B. It's almost like speed dating, but you get to be in front of an employer for I think it's 15 minutes. Oh, no kidding, really, oh. Yeah, I have to find out for sure if that's true. But so we were scheduled right out. I think sometimes we would see 13 employers and we would just explain what it is that we're looking to do and people would sign up in advance on the schedule to be partnered up and have these conversations. No kidding, I've been there most every year and I don't know where I've been. I didn't understand what it was, that sounds great. Yeah, it was upstairs on the second floor. Yes, it was a wonderful experience and I would be sad to know that they really did do away with it. But a lot of employers that signed up, the first question I would ask is, what was it that drew you to meet with us and the first thing was usually Governor's Committee and people just attached sort of a Starstruck way about it and then next was Employees with Disabilities and a lot of the people who would come and sit down with us had family members or they themselves had a disability and wanted to tell their story or the story of their loved one who went to work and wanted to just sort of promote that and they were already doing that at their companies and wanted to let us know that they were doing it which we very much appreciated. We had this wonderful communication with Vermont Gas when we were there one year and they informed us about their efforts with veterans and disabled veterans and how much they made an effort to when people were deployed to bring them back after their deployment and made every attempt to make that a successful smooth transition back for them. That's excellent. Good for Vermont Gas. Nice for them. So people can sign up for this. Can they not through your website? For the newsletter abilities? Yes, we would love that. Yes, it's... And they can just go online and you can put your name and email address and okay, I'm gonna do that. Yes. Now you mentioned awards.  Could you talk a little bit about what you do for recognition? Sure, that's sort of our overriding event of the year. So we started in about April where we outreach to get nominations for employers who are representing the spirit of the ADA which is the name of the award. And so that falls under a couple of different categories. So it's employers who are accommodating the application process. So employers who may interview in a different way, who may override their usual practice of online only applications who will be willing to do it in sort of an old fashioned meet and greet, perform informational interviews. And then for people who accommodate the workplace in the way that you might imagine through assistive devices and assistive technology or to modify the actual job in a way that makes it work for the individual, maybe accommodating hours, whatever that might look like. And then lastly, who really do sort of just embrace and encourage the idea of making it a real, just a very natural landing spot for a person. And so for the past few years, so when we started doing this, we think had about three award winners and then it just kept growing and we kept redesigning it. So it is now at the point where this year I think we gave out 17 awards statewide and we opened it this year to the general public for nominations. Before that, we had been mostly going through CWS and Weber and Vogue Rehab who were offering up nominations of employers that they knew. And we realized that there are a lot of employees with disabilities who do not receive supports from state government or service providers. And so they may want to be recognizing their employers or people in the community who know of these employers who wanna recognize them. So we were pretty jazzed to do that and it worked out really well. We had this one young man from Williamstown who is an excavator who was on a snowboarding trip with his school and high school and had an accident that resulted in a spinal cord injury and he was very skilled and talented mathematically and had thought he was going in the direction of CAD design and one day his dad rented an excavating machine to just work in the backyard and he got up into it and decided that that feeling of being in this excavator was really what was what fell right for him. And so he went into business for himself as an excavator and then was hired by American consulting and engineering in Williamstown to do work for them. And this business, just an amazing group of people who they had their shop that at the time did not have wheelchair accessibility. They built a ramp just because he needed to get in and get his paycheck and get his work orders and never thought anything of it. Just that's what he needed to do to get his employee who he respected and valued into work. And so the employee, Eric nominated this employer. We chose this award winner and every year when we compile our list, we reach out to the governor and the governor's office and compare schedules for our month long of October events. We usually try and do two a day and break them up regionally. And so we presented him with the schedule and this was one that we knew mattered a lot to the governor. He talks often about his dad returning as a veteran who is an amputee and double amputee and working for BGS downtown. And so the governor attended this award. Yes, it was pretty powerful. And so those stories are just invaluable and that recognition to both the employee and the employer by the governor and by the community is pretty great. And a lot of times legislators come out to our awards. And do you have a way with the Capitol Plaza? No, we have the awards themselves when we're presenting the awards. We have them at the work site. And so they can invite all their employees and then their local legislators, anyone that they... So the governor went to this guys' whistle now? Yes, and it turns out that was who worked on, I want to say maybe they drilled his well or something 15 years ago when he pulled up. He set up and here before and yeah, so that was pretty great. The governor tells that story about his dad a lot. He does. Every time I've heard it for, when it's appropriate he tells the story and it's always so emotional for him because I know he had great feelings for his dad and his dad just did great family, great, I think four boys. Four boys? I'm not sure. But anyway, a whole bunch of kids. And life was great, so that's great. So speaking of disabilities, I think we were supposed to have Elaine Casey with you who's the vice chair and also executive coordinator for the GCEP. Can you say that without GCEP? You'd ever take a little practice. And could you tell her story a little bit and especially what she's done with the Teddy Bear Company? That is, there's some pictures of the bears and I'm gonna put them on at the end of the show. Yeah, so we are so disappointed not to have her here and we did not to have her here but she's asking that we could, after disability awareness day, if we could come back again, talk about what we did there. Absolutely. Introduce it to Eileen and ask her in real time her story. But the short of it is she was a runner and was wearing out her shoes, one shoe. And she kept going to, I think it was New Balance to ask for new shoes. And the man who had known her for a long time because she was such a runner said, you should not be wearing out these shoes the way you are. You need to go see a doctor. And she did and the doctor said, you have cancer. And it showed up through the shoes? And well, she was having pain in her legs and she thought it was the shoe. So she thought if she kept replacing the shoe, the pain would go away. But the doctor confirmed that she had cancer and notified her very quickly that she would need to have her leg amputated. So she did. And she was at the time working for WCAX and in sales. And so her job required her to really hustle, right? And so she started the process of being fitted for a prosthetic and realized that insurance did not cover it. And she had great insurance coverage through WCAX. Insurance didn't cover a prosthetic device. It did not. I can't even imagine the rationale that went behind that. No, and she will tell you what they said. I did. I'm gonna be angry. So she went to Vogue rehab and asked for assistance for the cost of the limb. And they started the process of trying to help without, also told her about low interest loans that she could apply for. Ultimately, they were able to secure funding to cover the cost of her prosthetic limb. And then she, in the meantime, decided that she would single-handedly start advocating for this to go away. So she worked to develop legislation with her legislator at the time. And they put that bill up and it passed. And she has since been successful reaching out to other states to help other states also advocate for that. Well, you definitely have to come back because I'd love to hear that story from the source. That's amazing. And what's keeping her today, and she told me that she gave me permission to share, is that she was flying back from a family visit in Florida and her leg was swollen from the air pressure. And because of that, they needed to remove the prosthetic and it was difficult for her to get off the plane and then here today. And she said, you know, it really goes to show what accessibility matters and what accommodating matters because that was completely out of her control, right?  And if, you know, you imagine what that's like in other people's jobs who are traveling for work and would have that situation. And if an employer was not understanding what that would mean for someone's livelihood when it's completely out of her control. I'm hoping the airline was sick. They took care of it. They would know how to do that, I hope. Yes, yes. She said she was in good hands, yes. Well, thank her very much for all of that. So tell us what she did with this, I love this, the Vermont Teddy Bear Company. This is just spectacular. So the Vermont, because she was a runner previously and they had known that and continues to run and she is also, I believe, chair of the Vermont Adaptive, Oh, no kidding. Adaptive Sports. Right. And so she remains very active in athletics. She organizes at Trap.  A 5K, 10K and a half marathon that they do in the trails at Trap. And she herself has a running blade. I was just going to ask if she has that. She does. Forget what they call it. But I guess they're running, but those things are fascinating to me. I would love to see one in, I see it on TV, but just to see how that works. We'll make her wear it to the interview. Yes, I think it's amazing. And she can run a little left for us. We know it from the Blade Runner. Yes, yes. So, and she runs the Vermont City Marathon on a relay for WCAX each year. So the teddy bear company found this out and they were, they had decided that they would indeed make teddy bears that showed this side of life. And so they made a running bear and a veteran a disabled veteran bear. And I believe there was a third that was also represented. Yeah, there were actually four of them. I'm trying to remember now what the, but there were four. And the difference was they said, is they used, if I called up and said, could you make a bear for my niece who's lost her leg, they would do that for the niece. But now they decided to have a line of bears in advance of anybody asking for them. And apparently it's going really well. How fabulous. Yeah, it's pretty, and there are more and more companies that are just building that into American Girl Doll Now has a wheelchair for dolls. Yep, Barbie also, so yeah. It's great, good for them. It's improving slowly but surely. So is there, do they just sell the bears or are there things that are written with the bear to encourage the new bear's owner or anything? That we're going to have to ask Eileen when she gets back. I don't know. What an opportunity to talk about different places you can go for resources and that's great.  She, yeah, she really, she has her hands in many things. That's great. She's a pretty powerful woman, yes. That's excellent. Well, I had a woman that makes the Vermont Brownie company, Vermont Brownies. She's now with the Vermont Teddy Bear Company and it's bears and brownies. Okay, all right. And you can buy the bears that come along with the brownies. So they're being very, very creative over there. To follow. Oh, those are so well made. We should do this. Yes, I have one for each of my four children. Oh, do you? Yes, I have one. I have a legislator. Do you? A doll. When I was in the legislature, somebody gave me a legislative doll with a vest and a little carry on thing and said, you know, had the seal. So, and then that's going to, does she, do you guys take that places and use the bears at all? We haven't yet, but that's a good idea. Yeah. I mean, just to, if you're visiting people, that's great for you. You know, if we could talk about disability awareness day, that's pretty exciting. That's coming up and you also, I'd love you to read the names of the companies that got the awards. Sure. Because I think they deserve some recognition too. Sure. I'm thinking that maybe we'll bring the bears and have them that day. You should, you should. Yes, I really should. How nice to see somebody, I mean, I got a big kick out of the legislative bear. So, and my husband has one of, he was a state trooper, so he's got the state trooper bear. And you know, they just, hey, that's me. It's cool. I know it's a bear. It's wonderful. It's still cool anyway. So, for the past few years, I think this will be our third. We have pulled together the award winners from the previous year and the current year, and we invite them over to the Capitol Plaza on Disability Awareness Day. And in the morning, we have a work group, sort of a working session with these employers where we pick their brains, ask them for sort of their best practices of hiring people and retaining people with disabilities, and asking for their advice really on how to get this message out. So, earlier you asked, how do you break down these barriers? We have found that it is a real powerful way to do that is by using employers to talk to other employers, right? So, they listen more when it's someone who's gone through exactly what they're going through with regard to their shortage of workforce, you know, filling those positions that are hard to fill. And so, when they hear from other employers that this is an opportunity on how to make for an even better workforce, they listen. So, we use this opportunity to pull them together and ask them those questions. It's facilitated by this woman, Tiffany, who is part of workforce development at CCV. And it's a pretty organized morning and then we leave there and go over the last two years the governor has accommodated us in a way that he brings us into his chamber and he meets with all the employers and thanks them for their efforts, asks them to share any experiences or ask any questions that they want to. And then, we have arranged to have them recognized on the house floor. And so, one of the legislators will stand up in the past, it's Ben Bilbozzo. He's not there anymore, he didn't run this year. No, he did not, but Mark, Mark. Oh my God. I should know and. Mark who? Yes. So, he this year has agreed to, Mark, that is hot off the press that just happened in the last couple of days has agreed to be the one to introduce them. So, they come into the chamber a lot of times, it's the first time some of these employers have ever been to this state house. So, it's pretty exciting for them to come in and meet the governor and then to go in and stand up and have the legislators notice them. So, that's been pretty wonderful. And, I think this year, our topic is going to be, each year we pick a topic last year, it was transportation being a real issue, going around to the awards. We had been asked by one of the award winners who was the Aquatic Center down in the West Lab, White River area. They had talked to us about how they were trying to get more employees who were from downtown who would be able to take a bus and stop right there at the center, but they could not make this bus stop a reality. And so, they were trying to figure out how else to make it possible for employees to get to their location. And so, we got in touch with Ross McDonald from Govermont, who has undergone this big right, to make more transportation solutions. Oh, he's doing great. And so, he came in and he spoke to the employers and offered himself up as a resource and showed the launch of his new Govermont website, which was pretty wonderful. And then this year, we are looking to establish a Vermont professional network out of these. Yes, and I think every year they say to us, contact us throughout the year if there's anything you think we can do. And so, I think we have identified this as an opportunity to, if we form this committee of professionals who are doing this, we will start to use them in a bigger way. And so, that's what we are going to jump start. Kudos for sure. Yes, on the 27th. Yeah, I was sad that Bill left his button this year after him trying for years, this man was so dedicated to workforce development. They finally passed a bill that is so focused on workforce development and technical education. So, he was in here talking about the bill and I was so glad he left on that note that he finally got them to pay attention and to pass this bill. So, maybe they are paying attention to workforce development. Yeah, I think they have to. Bill Bata was our, we gave him a special award this year for being legislator of the year for this effort that he has definitely just been wonderful at. And we had also this year made a special award for our state agency award. Last year, V-TRANS was nominated as and won the Spirited the ADA award. And we decided that we need to each year try and make an effort to recognize state agencies that are taking this on.  They get the, hey, you work for me, what are you doing? Right, right. And just to thank them, it makes a big difference. And they deserve it. They do. And this year it was the veterans home. And the veterans home has done a tremendous job, not only at hiring people with disabilities, but they are that double edged sword where they also bring back their employees after they've been injured. They do a very good job at bringing their employees back. So we recognize them down there at the veterans home. And Bill Batso was also recognized during that same event. So it was a really big turnout in Bennington. It surprised me when I was doing my research on Bill, what a great artist he is. Yes. And a recognized artist. Yes. He's got some pieces of artwork all around the state. It's just, it's like, Bill, really find the time for this. So, and talk about disability awareness day is February 27th. So it's all day at the state house and the Vermont Center, the Vermont Coalition for Disability Rights is the umbrella organization that really spearheads the day and they really pull out all the stops. So all day long, there are workshops and some rallying and some advocacy and education. There are booths set up to really represent different organizations that are on the front of disability awareness. And so each year they pick a different theme. I haven't learned yet what the theme is for this year. And then they sort of make the day around whatever that theme is by having workshops on the theme. And there was, two years ago, it was workforce. And that was a pretty wonderful day for the governor's committee to be part of that day and blend those missions. Yes. I'm trying to decide, there was one work where Max Barrows was facilitating it and they had different groups of people come up with a theme and present some personal stories about what happened to them under this theme in there. I showed it a lot on the video we did. These people have just, they were just amazing to be able to share their feelings and to do it in a way that was really meaningful. I was sitting there kind of gulping things down a little bit because I live in a, I sadly live in a cocoon sometimes I think because I don't see what's happening out there sometimes. Two people and the things that they deal with, discrimination against the disabled and stuff. And I feel, I don't know why, but I just don't, I don't. And when you hear them, because sometimes when I hear, oh, there's all these problems, I'm like, where? But they know. Yeah. And they weren't mad. They weren't, you know, shaking. They were just saying, here's what happened to me and here's how I felt. And I'm like, wow, powerful. Yeah, the endurance and the perseverance that is witnessed through these people who just every day work twice as hard to do, twice as much and it's powerful. Yeah, it is. No doubt about it. I made sure I kept that on the show. I hope that people watched it. So we're running out of time a little bit. Is there anything else that you would like to talk about that we didn't touch on? I really would just encourage employers to reach out and to ask the questions and there is no wrong question. We are open and willing to hear any concern or field any interest. And I think in this labor market, people need to be as creative as they can to find good employees. And that is what we are offering, the opportunity to enhance their workforce and their work culture and to bring on some really qualified, wonderful people. And I think it's important for them to know you don't just make the connection and leave. You're there to help them and the employee whenever, right? Absolutely. For ever, ever. Absolutely, as long as either of them or both of them want us. That's great. Well, it was a pleasure meeting you. Same. Thank you and you are welcome back anytime. Okay, great. So listen, thanks for tuning in. I know you enjoy this program. We'll see you next week. And in the meantime, keep listening beyond the sound bites.


I'm very excited and impressed with the project, Painting for a Purpose. A friend of mine, Tina Edwards, who's co-founded with Jane Ellis, this exciting rather unique new idea, which has to do with using art as a way of fundraising to help young people improve their school setting. Anything in the school that needs improvement is open for conversation as the grants are available to young people.  I've never ever in all my years in education and in the media heard of a project that allows and encourages young people to use their good ideas. There's an auction every fall where painted pieces of furniture that are painted by adults and kids together and and individually as artists, formal artists who are known in Portland as well as novice artists who are inspired to paint, where people are there to buy these whimsical wonderful pieces of art to have in their home as a remembrance also an honoring of the young people who are serving their schools and communities. I'm here with Annie Martin. Annie, you are one of the successful wonderful applicants of these grants for painting for a purpose, right? Yeah. Yeah, tell me about yourself a bit. Well, I'm in sixth grade. I currently go to King Middle School. I came here to present Scott last year and applied for a grant here and made the Boulder Garden. And how did this come to be? Where did you get this idea? Well, one of the teachers in the school, she took me in for a meeting at lunch and she said, Annie, I think it'd be good for this project. Why don't you come and try it? And I said, okay, we can meet again at another lunchtime and we can talk about what we might like to do. Because you were talking about ways to improve your school? Yes. And where did the idea for a garden come from? Well, I know I I really like gardening at my house, but I also I wanted a place where people would be able to sit and enjoy and learn and maybe come out and eat their lunch and have fun ideas like that. And was there some conversation in your school about things that needed improvement or where was it specifically something you had been thinking about? Well, I was in the student council and the student council took a survey and we asked the kids, what do you like about the lunch room? What don't you like about the lunch room? What do you think is the problem that happens in the lunch room? And one of the major problems was noise. So they thought what we could do was maybe have some kids eat outside or eat in their classroom. So that way there would be less people and it would be quieter. So if there was an outdoor space that a class could come to, then they could come and eat out there. So how do you feel about this garden you're sitting in now? Mainly I'm proud because I can do something like this and have everybody else be able to enjoy it. Yeah and I see your name is right there on a plaque. Yes. What does that feel like? That feels really cool because it's like I'll be here forever. Yeah and a good idea that you had to improve things is here forever. Yeah. Does that matter to you? Yeah it does because it helps not just when I was here but everybody else who will be here too. What do you think about students applying? Do you think students have good ideas? I think they do have good ideas but sometimes they're afraid to share them. So this helps give them a little boost to share their ideas and let themselves be heard. It encourages them to be able to try things that they never tried before or not be able to try because they didn't have any resources or any idea how to do it. So do you continue to have good ideas? Usually I see other, sometimes I see other ideas and I go oh that's cool maybe we could try something like that or I could bring that up to one of the teachers and that might help the way kids behave in the classroom or something. So the fact that somebody listened to this idea and now here it is, how does that inspire you for now as you move on in the world and as you grow older and older? What does that teach you? It teaches me really not to be afraid to share my ideas and tell them to other people because they might like your ideas even if you don't think they will and they might help you make them a reality. I've always wondered about this because I spend a lot of time with kids. Imagine the whole world is listening to you right now. Let's picture the whole world is listening to you. What is it that you know about life that you would love people to understand? Probably to always keep on trying and to never give up no matter what you do because you probably will exceed eventually. I have one last one. What makes you happy? Oh what makes me happy that's a hard question. Lots of things make me happy. I mean I like school, I like my family, I like animals, I like relaxing here. You seem to be such a happy young person and do you inspire other kids to be happy because you are? I'm a really optimistic person so I think so. I can tell that you are and you are a perfect person for us to be talking with because everyone needs to understand what it is that you know and I'm happy for you. Thank you.