Hey, welcome back YouTube. I'm Zeke and welcome to the dream green show. Today I'm going to show you my methods on how I pick my winning stocks without having looking into the earnings report and all the checking balances that other people do on how they pick their winning stocks. Today I'm going to show you my simple method on how I pick my winning stocks in this video. Enough talking. Let's get straight into the video. Welcome back. Okay, guys, I'm going to give you three of my strategies that I use when I'm buying a new stock on how do I choose? Why did I choose this stock to buy in the first place? And if I did choose to stock, where were my parameters? Where were my guidelines that I have set for myself in order to go ahead and purchase this stock? The number one way that I choose to the pick a stock is if I see and know the company, I have to be a believer in the company. I have to know the company.  I'm not going to invest inside a company just because someone tells me. I'm going to invest inside a company that I believe in and a company that I use. That is the most important thing. I'm going to invest into a company that I use.  The reason I picked up those companies, not just because they were doing a phenomenal during the outbreak, but because I actually use these products in real life. I shop at Walmart. I see them being innovative inside of their stores. I see them being very competitive with their competitors putting up Walmart's all throughout the country and they pay a really good dividend. So I'm a product and I use Walmart and one of the things that I look for if I am a user of a product, because sometimes I buy products that not everybody use. So it might not actually be a good company to invest in. It's if I see advertisement, if I'm driving down the highway and I see a billboard that says Walmart, if I'm watching Hulu and a commercial comes up that says Walmart, if I'm watching TV and a commercial comes up that says Walmart, if I'm watching a movie and some of the characters in the movie goes to a Walmart or if I'm watching the cartoons and those characters goes to Walmart. That's how I know that this company is relevant and they're paying for that advertising and if a company can pay that much for that advertisement, they're making a lot of money in order to advertise that much. So that is one of the ways that invests a company. Another example would be Coca-Cola. Everywhere I look, I'm a big user of Coca-Cola. I drink Coca-Cola. I added that into my portfolio not too long ago. If you drive down any highway for 10 or 20 miles, you're going to see a Coca-Cola advertisement. As soon as you walk inside any corner store, the first thing you're going to see is the big Coca-Cola sign, two for $4 or anything like that. So Coca-Cola does an amazing job at advertising. Every Christmas, you're going to see those Coca-Cola bears and it's a very large company that spends a lot of money on advertising. I like to see that in products that I use. So before I pull up my Robin Hood account and show you guys all of my stocks that I buy and why I bought them, let me explain the other two reasons that I purchase stocks that I add into my portfolio other than just brand recognition and companies that I trust and that I use and companies that I actually believe that can grow into the future. Okay, the second probably not the most important, but it's highly important thing that I look at when investing into a stock is the trend of the stock in this market cap. The market cap has to be above $1 billion. It has to be above $1 billion. I know it sounds like a lot of money, but every stock that I have inside my portfolio is over $1 billion. That doesn't mean that every company inside my portfolio is doing extremely well. It's just that I know that this is not a very small company. Any company under $500 million to me, I consider a penny stock and penny stocks are very risky. If a company doesn't have much cash on hand and they are a $500 million company, I don't see them lasting through any recession, any crisis, any virus outbreak type of news. And it's a very risky company to invest in. So every company that I have inside my portfolio have a lot of stocks inside my portfolio. Every single one of them are above $1 billion. I actually just purchased a share of a company that's over $1 trillion. And I think you guys know what company that is. I'm going to show you in a second. So make sure that you stick around so I can show you that my $1 trillion company that I have inside of my portfolio. But yes, anything under $500 million, I consider a penny stock. If it's from $500 million to $1 billion, you're safe. But I see it that like you're gambling in a small company, you could pick up a couple of shares for $2 or $3, maybe $3 to $7. And you're hoping that that company goes from $37 to $70 within the next year or the next two or three years. It's a bit of a gamble. You can make a lot of money that way, but you can also lose a lot of money that way. There's nothing wrong with it. I'm just telling you guys my method on how I invest into winning stocks. And that brings us to my third method. I actually have a very large dividend, well, not large to me. It's still, it's large to a lot of people. It's still a very small dividend portfolio. I have a dividend portfolio. So I do look at the dividends of the company. Not every company I have in my portfolio pays out dividends. A lot of them pays out dividends. Some of them don't pay out dividends, but I do look at the dividend payout of these companies. If I'm investing into ETFs, I like my ETFs to pay a pretty decent dividend. If not, I want them to have a steady growth over time over the last five years. I want them to have a steady uptrend over the last five years. But I do look into these dividend paying companies. And if it's not an ETF and it's just a regular company that pays out dividends, I look at their dividend payout ratio. So if it's a REIT, I like my REITs to be anything above 5%, anything above 15, 16, 17, I've seen some REITs that pays out. REITs is just real estate companies that pays out very high dividends. And some of them pay out 24% in dividends. I don't find that too safe. You can make a lot of money in dividends that way, but I don't find that safe that their dividend pays out so high. They're paying out so much of their earnings that they don't really have enough money or capital to really reinvest back into the company in order to keep that company growing in the future. So I don't like my dividends to be too high, but I also don't like my dividends to be too low. So I do look at dividends, let's say AT&T, they pay out a pretty good dividend. I'm going to talk about AT&T in just a minute to give you guys an example of a stock that I would buy and a stock that I wouldn't buy in just one minute. But let's say a company, I'm buying a company that's not an ETF or a REIT and it pays out a dividend of 3%, I'm going to take that as long as I'm a believer of that company. Now if this company pays out a dividend that's over 10 double digit percent, I'm not leaning towards adding that into my portfolio because that seems like a risky stock to me because I don't believe that can grow. And also if their dividend is under half a percent, under 0.25%, it has to be an amazing company for me to invest into something like that. But if not, I'll probably pass on it or I'll use it as one of my growth stocks that I see growing exponentially fast in the future. So let's go ahead and pull up my Robinhood account so I can show you guys exactly what I'm talking about. It will make a lot more sense once I show you guys in real time exactly how I pick my stocks. So let's pull that up right now. Okay, so I have Robinhood pulled up right now. My account is sitting at $16,538.26. I'm a little bit down on the day. I'm down 1% on the day, $38 in the aftermarket. But let's get into a couple stocks that I recently added to my portfolio and why I recently added these to my portfolio. So you guys can use these techniques to add more companies inside of your portfolio. So to get everything out of the way right now, I'm going to go to my $1 trillion company, Amazon. I purchased Amazon at the perfect time I think down in the $1,900 range. Amazon is now at $2,456. I'm up $543 from the time I purchased Amazon. I bought the dip and now Amazon is up. Now let's see if Amazon fit my criteria when it comes to me buying picking new stocks. Amazon brand recognition. Yes, Amazon is a very large company. Advertising is everywhere. Whenever you want to check out on anything online, it's going to pretty much redirect you to Amazon to buy a product from here. Their customer service is amazing. They deliver straight to your door in one or two days. I'm a believer in this company and I'm actually a user of this company. You can watch me of their movies in their shows using their fire stick. So Amazon is a pretty dog on good company. So I use that company. Check. Check number two, market cap. Market cap is $1.2 trillion. So Amazon is no penny stock by far. They have $1.2 trillion and they market cap. The only thing Amazon does not do is pay dividends. But with a company that has grown over the last five years, 464%, they ain't got to pay me no dividends. They could just keep growing their company other than paying out their investors dividends. They could keep reinvesting that money back into the company because five years ago you could have picked up Amazon for $429.92. Now it's at $2,405. So you ain't gotta pay me dividends as long as you're in the upward trend over the last five years. The dividends to me does not matter. Reinvest that back into the company and continue to grow. Now let me give you guys an example of a company that I would not buy. This company is Wi-Fi WIFI. It is a cell phone provider company, Bingo Wireless. Have I heard of Bingo Wireless? No, I have not. Do I use Bingo Wireless? I have not. When I go to people's houses and they have Wi-Fi or the cell phone provider, I've never heard anyone say they use Bingo Wireless as a cell phone provider or internet provider. So that brand recognition is not so big. Over the last five years, they're up from the last five years from $7 to $13. But over the last year, they had a pretty significant downtrend all the way since September 28, 2018. The last two years, they've been in a downtrend. So it's not looking too good for me right there either. Let's go to step number two. The market cap is $600 million. It's nothing wrong with $600 million, but I said I like to invest into companies that is over $1 billion. So it doesn't quite fit my criteria when it comes to the market cap. So the brand recognition is not there for me. Also, the market cap is not there for me. So I would not invest into Wi-Fi personally. There's nothing wrong with it because if you're looking at getting a Bingo at $13 and thinking it's going to get all the way back up to $30, you made a significant amount of money. You made a very large amount of money. You would be up almost 200% if you buy a lot now, thinking that it'll go up in the future. But that's not my style of investing. Okay. All right. And style number three, dividend yield. They pay no dividends at all. So the market cap is too low for me. I don't recognize the brand and they pay no dividends. So that's not me. Now, let me give you guys a perfect example of the exact opposite of Wi-Fi Bingo Wireless. And that company would be AT&T. I own 12 shares of AT&T. Right now, I'm down $208. AT&T is at $31.16. If we scroll down just a little bit, their market cap is $221 billion. So they're well above the $1 billion market cap that I'm looking into. AT&T, everyone knows AT&T. They play their commercials. They have their own football stadium. Okay. They have their own billboards. My cell phone provider is AT&T. So AT&T brand recognition is up there. Two, their market cap is $221 billion. And three, their dividend yield is 6.75%. If someone was to ask me, hey, I want to invest inside a Wi-Fi cellular provider. Should I buy AT&T or should I buy Bingo Wireless? I would personally suggest that they buy AT&T. That's not the best company in the world. They pay a pretty good dividend and they buy far and not a penny stock. Bingo Wireless is not the best company in the world, but it's also not the worst. It's just my style of investing that I've been having success with so far. I would suggest to my friends to buy AT&T instead of Wi-Fi of Bingo Wireless WIFI in personal preference. At the end of the day, could that company shoot up and he make more money than me? Yes. Could that company shoot down and he lose all his money? Yes. So it's just a personal preference. And I'm showing you guys my investing style on how I invest into the stock market. Let's take a look at one more company that I did not tell you guys about at the beginning of the video. So this is a little sneak peek for everyone that stayed to the end of this video. Make sure that you subscribe and hit that like button. Okay guys, I'm going to be doing another giveaway when I get to 4,000 subscribers. So make sure that you subscribe in order for you guys to win that giveaway. So here's my another tip that I use in order to invest into winning stocks. Okay, so the fourth way of my investing style is to invest into stocks that you need. Stocks that you need. What do you mean by what do you need? Stocks that you can't, companies that you can't really function in society without. Okay guys. So one of those companies will be Waste Management, WM. They pick up trash. Okay. If this company was to go bankrupt and stop working today, no one trash will get picked up.  They have one of the biggest waste management companies in the world, WM. Let's put that up right quick. I have one share of waste management is sitting at $106. I'm down $2, but they pay out a dividend of 2.15%. Their market cap is $44 billion. And this is a company over the last five years that has been on an upward trend. Five years ago, Waste Management was at $49. So it's up $113 from the last year. All right. So this is what I mean by invest into companies that the world, utility companies, that's what I mean that you can't really live without. And another one is water. Okay. Let me bring that one up for you right quick. All right. This one is WTRG, Essential Utilities. It's basically a water company that used to be WTR not too long ago. Over the last five years, they have an up trend up 62%. And before the news came out, they was up 100% over the last five years. Their market cap is at $10.5 billion. And they pay a pretty good dividend at 2.27%. Okay. So this is another utility company that, you know, that we need in order to survive. So this is how that's my fourth way that I pick companies to invest in, other than just throwing money into the market, hoping this company blows up into the future. This company pays a high dividend. So I'm going to invest all my money into the stock and hoping that I beat the stock market in the future. You could do that, you could win, but you go also lose. So I'm showing you guys my strategy on how I invest into the stock market. All right guys. So I gave you a couple of my tips and tricks that I use to add new companies into my dividend portfolio. Hopefully you guys use some of the tips that I gave out in this video in order to help grow your portfolio, other than just guessing on companies in the stock market.  If you don't ask, they're probably not going to hit that thumbs up button. So go ahead, hit that thumbs up button. It really helps this channel out a lot. It'll only take a second to do. And if you guys want to see my full portfolio and be a part of the 4,000 sub giveaway, make sure you subscribe to this channel so you don't miss out. Other than that, I'm Zeke from The Dream Green Show, and I'm out. Peace.


As librarians, previously you were custodians. You just looked after, not just, you looked after a repository of valuable intellectual property, mostly books in the old days. But now already in the last 10, 15 years, your jobs have changed. You are now looking after resources of all different types. Some of them are digital, some of them are still books. Some of them are journals and so on. But in the last few years, now your job is changing again. Now you guys are beginning to help lecturers create resources. So you're becoming not just custodians, you're becoming creators of knowledge. All right. So keeping that in mind, that now you're beginning to put together some original resources and you're not just looking after other people's IP. Now you actually have a role of creating knowledge. So if you're using OERs, how can you adapt what someone else has done and then share it more generally with others? So that's what we're gonna look at in this next LP is how do you adapt or change open educational resources or open content? All right. Just checking, is everyone online here for that? If you are signed up for publishing Open Access, then you can come back at 1300 hours. You can have a 45 minute break and you can come back. Then Tony's gonna introduce that learning pathway. I'm going to introduce the second one, which is adapting open content. Just to confirm that is in 45 minutes time because people are on different time zones. So publish Open Access will start in 45 minutes. Nice. Cool. So I don't feel obliged to be here for the whole session. If you are doing finding and publishing, then you can have a little break now. Okay, please be back in 45 minutes. All right, let's have a look at the next one. I'm gonna share my screen again. Sorry, give me a second. I'll get myself organized. Yeah, yes, there's the green line. I'm just checking. All right. Welcome everyone. Lots of talking. Adapting open content is the second learning pathway that we would like you to analyze and also learn from. So as mentioned previously, this is about how you can change the OERs to better suit your environment. Okay, again, we would like you to wear your evaluators hat. We wanna know to what extent it works. We wanna know if we found it accessible, easy to use, whether you found it interesting, engaging and so on. So again, as Ephraim has pointed out earlier, we would like you to fill in the baseline first, please. So to do that, can you come into the moodle? I sent out the moodle password on Friday. Please, can you find your password? Make sure you got in. We did a count just now and just over half of you have already got into the moodle. Can you then click on adapting open content baseline? Okay, fill in the form. It's a Google form. Can you tell us what you know already? And if you don't know any of it, just click, I don't know, all right? Hopefully at the end of the learning pathway, you will be an expert. All right, so I'm going to, the next thing in the list of the moodle course for adapting open content is the learning pathway link. You can click on there, it'll take you to the link. Remember, we said that we would like you to do the assignment. We wanna know if you assimilate the skill. Can you do the doing after the learning pathway? And we want you to upload your assignment here. So you'll click on there and you'll see there's a, oh, I haven't got it, because I am the boss, all right? But you will have a button down here which says submit the assignment, okay? And I would like you to do it there. After you've done it, we'd also like you to fill in the user experience survey. We wanna know how you experiences. That's how we're gonna click some of your data. And then if you want the certificate for completing the course, you have to make sure that you've accessed all the documents from within the moodle. The moodle is gonna issue the certificate, not me. And it's waiting to see what you've done. That's why you have to log in so we know who you are. All right. You can see at the moment, it's waiting for two activities to be completed before it will issue your certificate. Your certificate will be digital. It will be emailed to you and you can also access it from this link. You can see at the moment it's gray, but when you've completed all the tasks, this will become active and you can get your certificate. Certificate is endorsed by Affleah and we'll be very appreciative of your insights and your input. Okay, are people clear on the role of the moodle platform? Normally for CPD, if you were to use these, we wouldn't think you need to come through the moodle. It's just because you're part of a pilot and we wanna have all your data. We wanna understand what you did and how you experienced it and so on. So that's the only reason we're using moodle for the pilot. When you're running these CPD courses at your own institution, you can just go straight to the learning pathway and that's where we're gonna go now. So you click on this link here, Learning Pathway, Adapt Open Content. Click. All right. I'm gonna just stop sharing for a moment and then reshare the, because I need the second screen to come up. Give me a second. All right, can you see it on the screen? There should be a lady and a guy. I'm assuming, I'll get my chat up so I can keep an eye on what you're saying. All right, here we go. So this works best if you've done finding open content because it's assumed you've already found something that you would like to change, all right? So this learning pathway provides a quick and simple solution to adapting open content for new purposes. As we mentioned in the previous introduction, that's kind of the value proposition of OERs. All right, so what are we gonna do in this little learning pathway? Well, you're gonna cover these type of things. So number one is why would you want to adapt it in the first place? I mean, what, why? What's the value proposition of changing someone else's resource? So we'll unpack that and have a look. And then we start talking about how do you adapt OERs? What's possible? So a popular way of talking about that is the five Rs. So we will look at the five. There they are, retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute. Okay, so those are the five Rs. It's quite a popular way of understanding what you can do with these open resources. Of two of them, though, are of particular interest to us. It's number three and four, revise and remix. And the reason why is because these Rs, or these uses, allow some type of adaptation. You're allowed to change the resource, okay? So we will, in the course of this little learning pathway, unpack those two in some detail. Are you familiar with the five Rs? In the chat, if you want, you can tell me to what extent you have heard about the five Rs before. So those of you who have never heard of OERs, I doubt you have. But for those people who said they were familiar, so I can remember Richard said he was familiar. Can't remember, yeah, sorry. Do you know what the five Rs are? So in the chat, please let me know if you're familiar with the five Rs. Okay, so the first thing we're gonna look at then is how do you revise? So we're gonna look at some editing tools. We're gonna make sure that you can find the right resource. You're gonna show you how to download specific online materials. We'll show you how to save and edit. And even there are some tools where you can edit online. So we'll look at those. And then the next column is remix. So we are going to look at, what's the difference between an OER collection, which is really a collection of OERs, or an OER remix, which is really the mashing together of multiple OERs. So they're similar, but they're not the same. So we'll look at that. And then we'll show you how to mash our OERs together into a new resource. And we'll just talk about the practical considerations. Then the assignment is to do it. You wanna see if you can revise a remix. So we're gonna get you to do it. And then you're out. All right, here's our outcomes. Why adapt? What's a good resource to adapt? How do you revise a resource? And how do you remix a resource? So we're gonna look at those. Okay, so here's that part about, so now I'm going to take you through a little part of the learning pathway.  And we'll reconvene at the later stage. We'll mention when soon. But not too far away. And we would like you to have completed the learning pathway and also your assignment by then. So keep that in mind. It's rare that you find an OER that is perfect. Okay, quite often wouldn't mind just tweaking it a bit or shortening it or putting a picture in or putting in some captions or putting in a local case study or translating it or so on and so on. So there's always something that could be a little bit better. And it's not like a textbook where you have to adapt your teaching to suit the textbook. Man, now the textbook is malleable. You can change the textbook, especially open textbooks, all right? So the idea then is just what would you like to change? And there's a little introduction. Here's our little guy. Let's just play the video. He kind of tries to give you a scenario about why you might want to do this. Okay, let's just have a look at that list again. All right, so what are some of the value propositions of adapting? So if you think about it, if a lecturer came to you and said, oh, I need a psychology one course or I need a biology introduction to biology course. All right, that post that lecturer could sit down and then just create it from the curriculum. So the curriculum will normally tell you what are the topics and how many hours and all that type of thing and then they would have to sit down, do some research and over quite some time, start building the thing, all right? But now we've opened courseware. We can save time now. We can actually take a generic course that already exists that someone else has authored and then fix it to suit the curriculum, fix it to suit the students, fix it so that it suits the institution. And as we mentioned in the previous one, the previous learning pathway, the license allows this to happen. All right, so you can save time is number one. Number two, you can benefit from the experience of teachers who have taught the subject before. So this is a big benefit for new teachers. Often some of our senior students become, or given a lecture ship, become a junior lecturer, but they've never taught in their lives before. They've never created a course before. They've always been the recipient of the course. So now we can ask them for the section that they are going to teach to actually take an existing course or resource and actually start changing it to better suit the local environment. So you can benefit from the experience of others who have taught the subject before because you're, and then you can improve it. It's also cheaper than buying many expensive texts. So in the open education, finding open content, there's a section on textbooks. So you can even find free quality textbooks for the, especially for undergraduate courses, okay? So, and the nice thing is, unlike published texts, which you're not allowed to touch, you're not allowed to copy the pictures, you're not allowed to reorganize the textbook, nothing like that. No, with the open textbooks, you can actually adapt them so that they're better suit the curriculum as your institution calls it. So therefore they are cheaper because you don't have to create a completely new textbook. You can just fix an existing one. And then the nice thing, of course, is it's legal. Okay, there's none of this copyright or being sued. I don't want to mention any names, but one of the African universities I was working in was facing a big law case because one of the publishers wasn't happy with what they had done by making copies of various texts and so on. So it's legal. So you don't have to worry about being sued or anything like that. So those are some reasons why open content does make sense. All right, so in the chat, I would like you to say then, as a librarian, what are some of the common problems you have helping your lecturers find appropriate content? Can you think in your context, what are common problems in terms of finding resources or using exhaust resources? All right, so in the chat, I would like you to answer the question on the screen. In what ways do most education resources need to be different to better suit your learners? And you can go to town. You can tell me about the inappropriate pictures or the costs of the texts or the journals. You can say that they're in the wrong language. You can, what are the issues that you have with a lot of your resources for your learning context? What are the types of things that could be better? All right, so in the chat, I'd like you to try and answer the question on the screen. Thank you, Andrew. So people just think about it now. Sometimes, you can find catalogs of books, books listed, but maybe they are too expensive or maybe you don't have sufficient phones or maybe the books come and the examples there do not have the African context you have wanted or sometimes the language, even if it is English, it's like hard to break down. You're not really sure of what they're talking about. So these are just challenges. And then you know that so many institutions keep on introducing new courses and you don't even have books for them on your shelves. So challenges like that are what Andrew is asking you about. So just list them in the chat so that we'll have an idea that these ones are what you face. These are the things that you find difficult in getting materials for your faculty members, for students and for the teachers. So just write in the chat books. Thank you. All right, we'd like everyone to make at least one post. So again, we want you to write a sentence or two. Can you identify how many of the resources that you are on offer in the library could be better? What could be different so that they better suit your context? Maybe they didn't understand the question, Andrew. Okay, I've seen, all right, good. Raheela has written. Raheela said the ability to identify the right resources. Thank you, Raheela. Raheela, who is that with you that's sharing your device? Yes, we can see someone in the car. Yeah, there are two of you. Is that okay, at least she has said something. Excellent, all right. What we're trying to get here is for you guys to tell us which of, when you're looking for resources, what are the problems that you have? For example, and I don't want to answer, I'm in Joburg, what do I know of what's happening in Nigeria? I don't, what do I know what's happening in Ghana? So you must tell me what your librarians, this is your thing, okay? So which teaching resources or teaching and learning resources, how could they be better than what you've got on the stacks at the moment? What you've got, is it out of date? Is it in the wrong language? Is it, or is the language pitched incorrectly? Or are all the case studies Western? Or to what extent are these resources expensive? Or, I mean, come guys, this is your thing. What are, how could you improve the resources that you've shared with the students and that you share with the lecturers, okay? So, Ralia said that just identifying the right resources is always a struggle, saying that they're never quite right, okay? But I would like to know how could they be better? Come, come guys, are you sleeping? Have you fallen asleep? My voice is that boring. All right, there's the question on the screen. How might most education resources be better? All right, do you find that in your language, maybe you want it in your local language, maybe there's not enough, I'm trying to remember. West Africa. Hello, Andrew. Yeah? Hello, Andrew. Yes. Yeah, sometimes what I've experienced myself when I was still working in a library, you order for books, you see titles and you order. By the time that you get them and the lecturers come, you find out that it's not really, it's closed, but it's not really what they want. And then the way that concepts keep on cropping up new things happening, the rate of information coming up new things you find out that once you get a book, by the time you buy it, process it, put it on the shelves and people know other things have come up already. Right. But it becomes outdated quickly. So that's a major problem for many African libraries. And you can't tree away the book. So you keep it there and the people who come and say, okay, this is what you have, but this is what we had. Current best practices. I had to capture and put in books and then they will appear on the shelves immediately in libraries. I don't know if that makes sense. No, it does. And I think that's common throughout the whole world. All right, the idea that the time it takes for a textbook to be authored, published, printed, distributed, processed for the library and then made ready in the library, a lot of what it was talking about is already dated. It's takes so long for that process to happen. So that could be one way that we could use OERs is that we just adapt something that already exists so that we can make it up to date. We can make it ready and appropriate for a particular context. So I like that. I see it. Another thing Andrew is that, you see, it's not that Africans, we don't write, Africans write, but because we are, is as if we don't really have a deep culture of data that captures maybe case studies. You find out that maybe case studies like in an area like management, you find out that case studies are mostly from outside of the continent because we don't have enough stories ourselves. It's not that those things are not happening in Africa, but we are not used to capturing data or capturing our stories with data that can be used perfectly as this is how it happened. These are the research findings. These are the research data. We don't have them much in Nigeria. So they use case studies outside of the continent and you find out that it's not really the same because the values are different. The environment is all different. So that is a problem with many of the texts that we get that we acquire for African libraries. And I think that's the beauty of OERs again is that as African stories become available then we can swap them into these adaptable resources. So the nice thing is you don't have to write the whole textbook. You could just say, all right, we've now found some local case studies. We will now incorporate them into the text. So that's another example of why you would want to adapt an open educational resource. You don't have to write the whole textbook. You just populate it with local ideas, local stories. And I see we've got... It says the times are changing but most students in our part of the world still are not too good in using online resources. So much is still required. Okay, that's changing and it's changing fast, all right? If anything, it's our lecturers who are holding things back. You'll find that the students pick that up relatively quickly. They're of a generation who are not too phased by technology and they're curious and interested. So it's a generalization and there are some students who do not. But I think our biggest problem in terms of changing and starting to use online resources is our lecturers. And maybe you guys, because you don't write in the chat. So the thinking then is we need to get our generation on board and fast. Otherwise, we'll become less relevant. I've put currency there because I was thinking of what Nkem was saying about keeping things up-to-date, changing needs of users. It says Aloysius. Yes, if we're gonna say relevant and make sure that the resources we're offering them are relevant, then we need to be able to be up-to-date in terms of the latest trends, both technology, but also the way people learn, all right? We're finding that students now want their courses on their phone. We're finding students don't necessarily want to come to campus because they are working or they're in lockdown or they're protesting or whatever. So we're finding that changing needs of users is always changing and therefore we need to make our resources adaptable so that they can work with those users. Ngozi says, the authors are afraid of submitting their resources for OER. At times, internet connectivity and low bandwidth is another problem, okay? And that is what we have, I agree with Ngozi and that's what we've discovered is that African academics are extremely conservative, okay? They often believe that their work is inferior to what is happening around the world and that is a load of rubbish.  Our problem is that we don't publish enough and we don't get things out there enough and we don't show the world or tell the world that African is good. Well, it can be good. So the idea then is we gotta get past that mindset, all right, that our resources are not as good because it's rubbish, all right? At times, internet connectivity and low bandwidth is another problem, I'm afraid that is true but it is changing and it's changing fast. So as more and more cell phone companies put up these masts, we're finding that in most African countries, the costs are coming down and the bandwidth access is getting better and better. In some ways, in Mozambique, for example, it is now easier to put things online because people distributing paper books is so costly and expensive and the roads are so bad that the costs are astronomical. So it's actually cheaper to put things online because their connectivity is quite pervasive and not everywhere, but it's getting better and better and better because people don't mind paying for cell phones. So things are changing and they're changing fast. So don't use that as a reason not to go forward. If anything, within five years, it'll be a completely different picture to where we are now. All right, are there any other comments? Okay, that was pretty poor people. How many, one, two, three, four of you, five, tried to answer the question, are you sleeping? All right, sorry, you can see I've been talking for two hours, I'm getting tired. I'd rather you do the talking. All right, so when we look for OERs and we find the licenses and if you're in the last session, you'll recognize these, okay. Which ones are you allowed to adapt? So again, we're gonna go, let me give them, can I give them numbers? Let's go, column one is, so we go down. So one, two, three is down. And then four is the one at the top of the second column. Right, so in the chat, everyone this time, don't go to sleep. Everyone, which of these six licenses can you adapt? Any ideas, do you remember? If you haven't done the first tutorial or listened to me go through it, then you might struggle a bit. But can you give me which ones allow you to adapt or revise the resources? Okay, so the numbers are the first column, it's one, two, three, and then four, five, and six are in the second column. Have they got a pen in Zoom? Yes. Do they? Where's the pen? Yes. Where's the pen? Let me help, let me help a little Andrew. Okay, so one of them is, you can't say, you can't leave from, it doesn't say, the last, annotate, where's that? Yeah, it's not being on your system, it's being disabled, unfortunately. All right, so you have to listen to me people. I would like you then to now look at the six licenses. We're counting them first column, one, two, three. You can move your cursor, we can see your cursor. This is number one. This is number two. This is number three. This is number four. This is number five. This is number six. All right, so which of these six licenses based on what we mentioned in the last hour allow you to change the resource? You're allowed to adapt, to repurpose, to make it derivative. Andrew, I wanted to help us a little bit. Yeah.  You know that you can't adapt. So number six is out. Good. Number five is out. And also the N, D. Yeah, because of the N, D, yeah. Number four, non-commercial purposes. Can you change it? Share a like. Yes, you are. You can change it. Yeah, share a like. Share a like, it just means that the new derivative must have the same license, but you can change it. Yeah. All right. This is number three. Number three again, non-commercial. Cool. Can you change it? Number three, can you change it? You can change it. You can, but it must be for private purposes. Not necessarily. The fact that it says non-commercial just means you can't make a profit from it, but you are allowed to make a new version of it. All right, so it doesn't restrict you from changing it or translating it or putting new pictures in or adding African studies or whatever. That doesn't matter. You can do that, but you just can't make a profit from your new derivative. Okay, your new version. So you can. So the answer is yes. Number two, can you change it? Yeah, you can. Yes, you can. Yes. Yeah, you can, yeah. Definitely. Nice one. The first one's the best one for us developers. We love number one, because it means you get on with it and do what we like. Obviously, we have to attribute the user, but we can change it. We can adapt it. We can translate it. We can put pictures in number one. All right, so well done, Nkem. You've got it correct, 100%. Cool. The two you can't are these number five and six. All right, because, as Nkem pointed out, it says no derivatives, no new versions. So those two you can't. But if you find a resource with these four on, then go for it. You're allowed to make changes. So all those things that we were talking about, how to improve resources can be done. All right. Can I ask a question here, Andrew? Please, can you go up a little? Yeah, like I shared yesterday about the cost that we are going to run with Wikipedia that we got a grant from. The curriculum that we are going to adapt from OCLC, the license it has is this number two, CC by SA 4.0. So why that 4.0? All right. In the video, I don't know if you saw, if you were here within the first hour, we showed a video and the person said that the copyright law in the US, all right? And then they went on to discuss pros and cons. But every country has some type of a copyright law, all right? And the idea then is, if we talk of the copyright act, then there are certain restrictions. They're all pretty similar, but they are worded slightly different. And obviously they have to slot into the existing policy environment of that country. What Creative Commons has done is that they have made national chapters of their organization, which means they have an office, basically, which keeps tabs of what is the issues in that particular country. So a lot of these licenses keep being adapted as the copyright act is adjusted or amended or changed. And then Creative Commons responds by putting out a version. So like you saw a version 4.0, it just means the fourth version of the Creative Commons response to that local legislation. So it's ready for the lawyers. Should they ever wanna take someone to court over the Creative Commons license, then there's a specific version that they will argue over of the license. Okay, so each country tends to have a different version of that license. For us users, the 4.0 means absolutely nothing because we more or less work at this level that you're seeing now. Are we allowed to make changes? Are we allowed to share it? Bloody, bloody, bloody. So we tend to work at this level, whereas the lawyers need to get down into the legalese, into the specific wording of the act and the licenses. So yeah, they've told you they wanna work within that specific license. And it needs to be one for each country and there are a couple of international ones as well. Is that on to you? All right, thank you very much. Yeah, I'm good. All right. Andrew, I'm just alerting you to time. Five, two, one. Yay, I don't know why, I got tired today. I'd be glad to hand over to you guys that you could do. Well, we will take a little break. That's why I'm just saying if you could end a tiny bit early, so people can have a comfort break. Okay, cool. Here's, I'll just use this last activity. When you see these in the learning pathway, remember that you can just, this one is for drag and drop. So it's very similar to what I asked Kim to do. And so, to which of these licenses permits repurposing and which ones don't. All right, so can you change a resource that has this license? And then you can drag it and you can say, no, that's a restrictive one. And if you get it wrong, it flashes back into the pile.  Okay, so if you see this in the learning pathway, that's how you use them. All right, I'm gonna stop there and I'm gonna encourage you guys to have signed up for adapting open content to work through in full, in your own time, at your own pace, where we're gonna encourage you to do it in two weeks, but we'll give you the actual data at the end of the session.  Where is my Moodle?


Hello friends, I am Dr. Apoor Guel, I am a laparoscopic and general surgeon and I am consultant at Manipal Hospital's Ghaziabad. Today I am going to talk about hernia. Hernia is a very you know common surgical problem which we come across and unfortunately surgery is the only option which we opt for hernia. So hernia surgeries earlier conventionally they were used to be open surgeries but now with the advancement of laparoscopic surgeries and robotic surgeries hernia surgeries can be easily done laparoscopically as well as with the help of robotic surgical system. So any type of hernia whether it's in guanyal hernia which is very common in males or ventral hernias like small umbilical hernias or epigastric hernias which is common in females males both of the you know population and incisional hernias as well which is the large hernias which have occurred after any previous surgery. So all these hernia now can be dealt laparoscopic treatment of hernia is a very good option because it's a minimal invasive approach and there is no extra incisions very small incisions and patients is discharged early whether the very next day of surgery good recovery early recovery and patient is back to work within a short span of time as compared to the previously open surgeries which we were doing for hernias. So if you want to get treated for hernia surgery get it laparoscopically done and we can consult at our hospital thank you.


I think this, that's the harness anyway. It's going to take pictures of everything that's in front of us, every tree sap is. It's just like snapping, snapping, I'm not doing anything, so that's kind of cool. My name is Imer O'Neill and today myself and my son Kai are becoming citizens scientists. We're going to go around and we're going to see how accessible our local area is. And then this can be used to generate information to help people so that the route that you're taking you know you can get there without much difficulty. Whether you're using a boogie, you're in a wheelchair, whatever it may be. My name is Pardick Domer. Not having access is very difficult. On the other side of the road is a flush corp. I would be able to access that, but I can't get down because it is flush corp. If you're going to places it takes a lot more planning than a wood for a neighbour body person. I'm Avien Burd from Crowd for Access. Crowd for Access is a partnership between citizens and data scientists coming together to map the accessibility of footpaths in our cities and towns. What is happening to the footpath? It's getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. We're gathering data to learn about all of the problems that pedestrians encounter when navigating urban areas. What are the issues here? If a boogie is trying to get past, they're still going to the road. No, no, we're not happy with that one. We want to empower people to seek change.  I want to make sure that we get a good shot at this. The app automatically blurs any personal information that you might capture, such as faces or car registrations. The mapping is very easy. I'm doing the road, I've earned the media, so I know where I'm going. What I'm doing it for those are people, so I'm hoping to tell them off in their area. This is our local area, but we're actually spotting things that I wouldn't have recognized before. We've got no bumps. We've got no color change and this is an entrance to an estate. Just imagine if somebody is visually impaired and they're expecting to find the bumps. That's not good, is it? We also need citizen scientists to take the data from the photographs and put them into online maps and you can use the photos that you've taken or that others have taken. The more information you have on the map, the more places people can access. It's going to make life a lot easier for wheelchair users, so I thank you in advance. I'm really excited to be part of this project, to be a citizen scientist, because I think it is so important that everywhere is accessible for everyone. Good job. We're making change, bro. To become a citizen scientist and get mapping, visit our website and you can take part in one of our workshops or just get mapping yourself.


Good morning everyone. Thanks for being here today. It's good to be with Treasurer P. Check and many other partners to talk about a new important tool in our housing toolbox, which the Treasurer will discuss in a few minutes. It's no secret that Vermont faces significant challenges and housing is a big one. We've been focused on the lack of affordable housing since my first term in office. We worked with the legislature and created a $37 million housing bond, which leveraged hundreds of millions more in private investment, making it at the time the largest housing investment in state history. Then a few years later, when we first received federal dollars during the pandemic, I made it clear housing needs to be a top priority when we again work with the legislature to secure hundreds of millions of dollars more. In my time as governor, we've seen a historic level of housing construction and more new units coming online than we've seen in decades. But we know it's still nowhere near enough, especially considering the recent flooding. The initiative the Treasurer will talk about in a minute is another helpful step, which will support housing for critical income levels, affordable units, workforce housing, missing middle and upgrades for some flood impacted communities. As we make record investments, I've also made this point. This isn't just a money problem. We need more regulatory relief to I've been pushing for desperately needed reform, including to act 250 when I was in the Senate as Lieutenant Governor and as my time as governor for the last seven years. We did take some important steps this year with s 100. But we need more. But I want to thank those here, including legislators and housing partners who worked hard on that bill. As another example, when the legislature came back to session in June, I provided a list of suggestions, including moving up the implementation date for s 100. And almost all of them were accepted. Another helpful step forward. That goes to show when we focus on the issues that actually help them for monitors and not get distracted by politics, we can make a difference. Initiatives like the one that we're here to talk about today will continue to move the needle. And I want to thank the Treasurer and his team for their collaboration with mine and for his focus on this issue. If we all pull in the same direction on housing, we can continue to make progress. So with that, I'm a little bit commission. Sorry, Treasurer Pete. Oh, that's it. Thanks, Governor. Well, thank you, everybody. And thank you for being here this morning. You know, I think all of us in the room have a story to tell on housing, whether that story is for ourselves, a close family member, a friend, you know, who have recently struggled to find housing in Vermont. I know when I talk to businesses all across Vermont, they talk about housing being their number one challenge. They talk about how they'd like to expand their business. Now they would like to bring on new clients. But they can't do that because they can't find the workforce because their potential employees can't find housing. And it's the same story when you talk to organizations that provide critical services to our communities. Hospitals can hire nurses, schools can't hire teachers, first responders can't hire new recruits because all of those individuals are unable to find housing in the communities that they would like to serve. And as the governor pointed out, the July flooding has only exacerbated this problem for hundreds of remonters that are now trying to find permanent long term housing, which is unavailable. That's why I'm so excited to be able to make the announcement today. This $55.5 million investment that comes from our office will leverage an estimated $340 million of additional capital that will all together support over 1100 units of new housing throughout Vermont. I want to first thank our Treasurer's Office staff for their excellent work in expanding this program and identifying projects to support and making sure those projects were strong and the organizations that we are investing in have a strong financial track record as well. Vermonters can be rest assured that their tax money will be well protected while also earning a return and getting the economic impact of more housing throughout the state. I also want to thank the governor and his administration, specifically Josh Hanford, also Gus C. League, Sarah Waring, the LIAC committee for their help in identifying projects for us to invest in. It was critical to have their support and expertise as we wanted to find the best projects that would have the biggest impact. All of this money is coming out of our 10 percent in Vermont program. This is a program that the legislature established that allows the Treasurer to invest up to 10 percent of the state's cash on hand into economic development and job creation. We identified very early in our term that housing was the number one economic issue our state was facing. And I was glad to see that the local investment advisory committee that advises us on these matters agreed with us in that regard. Also, because we've had a tremendous increase in the amount of cash on hand as a state, we were able to expand this program significantly, which makes the capacity that we have today to make these critical investments. These investments are in the way of low interest loans to the projects and low interest loans at this moment in time with historically high interest rates are a critical way of continuing to support housing, even though interest rates make that a real challenge at the current moment. In terms of the projects that we are supporting, I'm also very excited about that in terms of a portfolio. You mentioned you heard from the governor that this is going to support housing across the entire spectrum. For example, the $50 million that will go to the Vermont Finance Housing Agency, 14 million will be set aside for traditional affordable housing. 14 million will be set aside for economic impact housing that will support employers that are looking to expand housing for their workforce. Six million will be set aside for small and emerging developers who are looking to serve underserved communities, including rural communities across Vermont. Six million will be set aside for flood resiliency and sustainability as we look to recover from the July flooding. Five million will be set aside for home ownership and another five million will be set aside specifically for manufactured homes, and we'll hear from more Collins in a minute with more details on their proposal. Additionally, we'll spend $5 million with the Vermont Economic Development Authority, which will go on to support a project in virgins that is a assisted living facility that will expand that capacity of that unit to 65 additional beds focused on low and moderate income seniors. So this is a critical investment as well. Not only will provide 65 more beds for a population that we need to support, but the hope is that it also has a ripple effect through the community as individuals and seniors that are looking for assisted living facilities, leave their homes and make them available for others, including young families. And then last a $500,000 investment with the Northern Forest Center to support a project in St. Johnsbury that will take a home that or take a building that at the moment is underutilized, has no apartments and very limited commercial space and transform it into a nine unit apartment building with two and three bedroom units, which are in critical need across the state, with also two commercial units as well. And this is a project and investment in right in downtown St. Johnsbury, which we're also very excited about. And beyond these economic benefits that we'll surely see from this investment, you know, we also know that one of the major social issues facing our status in terms of the lack of housing is its exacerbation of homelessness, challenges around serving effectively mental health and substance use disorder treatment. And that one of the main drivers of homelessness are a low vacancy rate and a high median rent in a particular community. And unfortunately, in Vermont, we have some of the lowest vacancy rates and some of the highest median rents in the country. So more housing is needed to make sure we can stabilize and bring down the cost of housing and solve these social issues as well in the long run. So with that, I'd like to turn it over to more Collins from the Vermont Housing Finance Agency. More. Hi, as the treasurer said, I'm more Collins. I'm the executive director of the Vermont Housing Finance Agency. The HFA is almost a 50 year old organization that has existed with a mission of furthering affordable housing throughout the state of Vermont through supporting homeowners as well as renters. This award of $50 million from the 10% for Vermont program is going to support just over 1000 units of housing 1000 homes in Vermont. About two thirds of those will be dedicated to rental housing. That will be cover a range of rents and incomes of people served. So some of this will go to support traditional affordable rental housing, such as folks or places that can rent for about, I'll say $1100 for a two bedroom, I'm sorry, one bedroom apartment. And then in addition, there is also we've heard from employers and municipalities about the need to support market rate rental housing. So this would be a one bedroom apartment maybe renting for $2,500. And through the loan dollars that VHFA will be able to give to developers and builders, we hope that we can expand the housing market and expand more of these rental units. About 100 of those apartments we anticipate through our traditional affordable rental programs will serve those who are exiting homelessness. So it's a broad spectrum of who we're trying to address here. The other third of the units will go toward home ownership. That may be an expansion of a really successful middle income home ownership development program where we have been funding a VHFA using state resources, creating affordable starter homes. But a lot of that probably is also going to go to support infrastructure of home ownership. And the way it used to work back in the day many decades ago was that communities would often have the resources to put in the sewer, the water, the lighting, the sidewalks, all the infrastructure needed. And then developers would come and just build the homes and communities were welcoming of that development because they knew that those residents and those workers would revitalize that community. But budgets get tighter and times change. And now those infrastructure costs that used to be born by municipalities no longer can be paid for by those stretched thin budgets. And so those costs get pushed on to developers. And so by investing in that kind of infrastructure that can create an environment for housing development, we can make housing more affordable because those costs don't get pushed on to the buyers of those homes. Included in these investments are investments also in infrastructure and residents of manufactured home communities or mobile homes. They are a combination of home owners who often have rented lots in co-op and nonprofit housing communities. And so we plan to support them with this investment as well. The money is going to be adaptable and responsive to market needs. It might flex a bit between home ownership and rental and the types of loan products that we're talking about. But as the treasure laid out, we have six different investment areas in terms that we're looking at. But we need to be responsive. The flooding in July taught us that especially. So we are setting aside some of the funding so that we can make sure that we have flood resiliency and sustainable programs going forward. So VHFA's role here would be what it's been for the past 50 years. We will structure the programs that this money will fund. We'll take in the applications. We'll perform the due diligence. We'll do the underwriting and issue the loan commitments. We anticipate that this money will start to be deployed within the next few months. And that would all be in the ground being put to use over the next two to three years. The treasure laid out the funding and how it's going to support traditional affordable housing, market rate rentals, small and emerging developers doing small deals that can be the kind of infill development that we often see, especially in our rural areas. There's going to be support for home ownership, manufactured housing, and I mentioned the flood resiliency. So these investments are going to rely on and help us partner with banks and credit unions and lenders so that we can leverage other resources because 50 million dollars as much as I very much appreciate it is not going to solve our housing crisis right now. But we need more tools in the toolbox because this housing crisis is impacting all of us. It's impacting those who are trying to leave the Hotel Motel programs. It's impacting our flooded manufactured home residents. It's impacting renters who are trying to find a place to live, new Vermonters, homeowners who are and those trying to become homeowners and it's impacting employers and communities that are trying to grow. So we anticipate that we will be able to take this money and launch these programs very quickly utilizing a lot of the infrastructure that's already in place and are very excited about this opportunity. Next, I'd like to invite up the commissioner of housing, Josh Hanford. Thanks more. Thanks, Governor. Thanks, Treasury P-Check. I don't have a lot of remarks to add to this program other than just to say anytime we talk about more resources to support housing, it makes me happy and I was pleased to serve on the advisory panel that the treasurer in his office set up to review these projects and support all three of these these investments. It's going to result in a lot of new housing across a broad spectrum of need and a lot of creative new new tools and projects presented there. I want to say that right now I want to put another plug for an existing program for flood impacted renters, the BGAP, the Vermont business assistance grant program. Remind folks and then in the media here ask you to spread the word. Landlords are businesses. There is money available in this fund. It's still accepting applications and a rolling basis and this money can help repair your apartments to get people back into them if they've been damaged by the flood. So please, please submit your applications to that program. Reach out for help. The money's approved on a rolling basis and there's still funds available. With that, I'd just like to say, you know, I've been honored to be working with the housing partners up here and the governor and serving in this role and, you know, more housing opportunity, more housing choice is what Vermont's future needs. So thank you. Thank you, Josh. Before opening up to questions, I just wanted to remind everyone that this Saturday we'll be collecting flood related tires at the library granite museum from eight to four. So whether you're an individual municipality or business who has tires found from the floods, you can drop them off and we'll dispose them at no cost to you. Also, in the good news category, this Saturday at 7 a.m. AOT will be opening up another 20 mile stretch of the Memorial Valley rail trail from Cambridge to Wolcott. This will mean about 73 miles of the 93 mile rail trail will be fully open. So that's really good news. So with that, I'll open up to questions. Governor Commissioner Peechak said Vermonters can be assured their tax dollars will be well protected. Some of the state's new housing and evolving loan funds supported by our transfer tax payments have an extremely poor record of payback. How will you avoid that? Well, we'll do the best best we can, obviously. We want to make sure that the investments are safe. I will probably have Treasurer Peechak answer the rest of that, but we'll all work on this together. Yeah, thanks Governor. So that's a good question. I mean, obviously from our perspective, this pot of money has a lot of flexibility, but it needs to be paid back. That's our most important item. So the partners that we decide to partner with all have strong balance sheets. They're all providing guarantees for the projects. In some in one instance, at least the project itself will have a lien on it. So the projects will be well secured either from the balance sheets of the organizations or from the specific projects themselves. More, you said that your organization is going to be a worry in the loans. But it sounds like there's already some sense of very specific projects that are going to be getting this money. So I'm wondering how we can know with such confidence that these projects are going to be funded if you have yet to go through that process. Fair question. First off, I was invited to speak today, but I just want to point out that we have the executive director of VEDA here, as well as the Northern Forest Center who also were funded through this project. So those are some specific projects. Also, as you can imagine, in the past year, the affordable housing developments costs have gone up 34 percent. And so what we have is a pipeline of projects that are just waiting to fill in those gaps of funding so that they can move forward. These are oftentimes fully permitted or a designed and approved properties that because of cost escalation now they just need a little bit of money to move forward. So we're looking at that kind of pipeline to know example projects. Additionally, there are other projects that may be a little farther out and have some of their funding but not all of their funding and they're looking at needing more resources. And so that's part of the pipeline that we're considering. But then there's other projects that are new and emerging and we don't know yet. And so there is an open call to say that we're going to be publicly announcing this money and these programs. And so we do welcome. It's not that there is all the money is spoken for already. There is a bet and especially the treasure I think wisely encouraged us to set aside the six million for the flood response. Not knowing exactly how much the income the insurance proceeds are going to come up with or the FEMA resources are going to be able to provide. And so some of this money will be able to fill those gaps that are still unknown. So the confidence comes from the pipeline that we know about which is pretty robust as well as knowing that we the meeting to make this award was a public meeting held on Friday and over the weekend our office got six phone calls from developers and builders who had somehow heard about it before even this press conference. So I think that the interest is really there and we all know that the need is there. How did we land on the 1100 in terms of units like what went into that calculation. So I'll just you know part of it was an estimate from the Vermont Housing Finance Agency and then combined with the specific projects the Vita project that will add 65 beds and the Northern Forest Project that will add nine. So the thousand or so that more referenced is an estimate of what they think they'll be able to support not just with the 55 million but with the 55 million plus the hundreds of millions of additional capital that together will support the thousand units from the VHFA's estimate. You mentioned that these might be low interest loans. Do you have a sense of what that rate might be? Yeah for sure so it depends on the duration but for example a lot of these loans are less than 20 years so if you're taking a loan for 20 years the interest rate would be two percent if the loan were less than five years it would be one percent. So it's a flexible rate based on how long you're taking out the loan but that is the critical piece here is the low interest rate. That's the part that will help drive down the 30 percent plus increasing costs will be providing low-cost capital these projects. Go ahead Martin. If I may those interest rates that the Treasurer just quoted were the interest rates that VHFA will be paying on the state's deposits back to the Treasurer's Office but the actual interest rates that developers get could be very different for we're trying to blend in other public and private resources and so that's what the state is getting in terms of an interest rate but not necessarily what developers are getting. I would still anticipate that loans to developers would be below three to four percent though. So the Investment Advisory Committee signed off on this one sum of 50 million dollars and said here are the buckets we want that money allocated to and then now it's up to VHFA to decide where precisely that money will be ordered. Yeah I think that's right Peter. So we we asked for applications back in June you know we received 40 plus applications that all had various ways that they planned on investing the money. Some of them were direct projects some of them were projects that were indirect so like VHFA they would take money and then invest it directly. We you know in terms of the vast majority of the money in this pot focused on those entities that had the specific expertise to be able to find projects that would have the biggest impact and the biggest need but also to be able to leverage the additional funds to make the biggest impact. So that was the strategy for this first round of announcements. The LIAC committee does make recommendations ultimately it's the Treasurer's Office who's responsible for making the final decision on which projects get funded. And will there be some kind of butt-foretests more on where you'll have to determine that if not for this loan this project won't go forward? That is what we've done for the last 50 years. Yes we always look and try to braid together resources so while this 50 million dollars will support about a thousand homes if you do the math of a per unit investment that doesn't make affordable housing on its own. So what we need to do is we take we would take with that about 125 million of other public resources through the state or through the federal government as well as we anticipate about 175 million of private dollars and together this is going to support about 325 million dollars of economic activity which will support Vermont's communities. And so we always look to see how to best and most efficiently braid that money together. Where do we where can there be private investments like from employers we see more and more stepping up to want to contribute to housing where do we need our partners like the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board that receives state dollars and where does that come in and then where can other federal tax credits and other public programs also support this. It all comes together. And so that's why I think it's important to know that all these programs get very complicated very quickly. And so I appreciated Mr. Page's question about the repayment of these. These will be amortizing loans that do get paid back and VHFA is putting its balance sheet behind guaranteeing that repayment. But there are other types of public programs that have different models like zero percent silent second loans we call them where they are investments that are very much secure and still invested publicly but don't have that aren't built upon that same kind of repayment model that this program is built on. And when you're building affordable housing when you're building any kind of housing it's very expensive and so you have to layer all these things together to make it work overall. Treasure can you explain in layman's terms what is cash on hand why do we have more of it right now and why is it money we're able to loan out. Yeah for sure. So when this project when this program was originally created back in like 2014-2015 the state on average would have maybe two hundred three hundred four hundred million dollars sort of in its bank account if you will. So this is money that's been appropriated or will be appropriated in the next year but it has not yet been spent. So it's been it's either waiting to be spent or waiting to be appropriated. So since the pandemic there's been a dramatic increase our cash on hand this morning for example was over 2.1 billion and it generally has sat over two billion dollars for the last two years or so. A lot of that is federal money that has come in but also a lot of it has increased state revenues. The budgets are bigger in the last few years that means there's more money to appropriate and there's a longer time until it's spent. So we anticipate you know the cash on hand being pretty significant for the foreseeable future we don't know if it'll be two billion dollars you know that would mean that we would have even more money to invest but we took a conservative approach knowing that we could reasonably expand the program up to a hundred million dollars and have this money available today to do investment. Recently there were folks here in Vermont that were assessing our credit rating from that mistake and has has our housing crisis or the housing crunch has that had any effect on how some of the credit folks are looking at our state? Well you know whether it was our one-on-one meetings with the governor and myself with the credit rating agencies or it was the day that we spent in Vermont with them you know housing was like the number one issue when we talked about the venture capital investment that's been made in Vermont at Hula with a bunch of venture capital principles you know housing was the issue that came up time and again in terms of the issue holding back the businesses to grow even more. Similarly when we were talking about advanced manufacturing you know housing was the critical issue beta technologies global foundries they're all struggling with housing and even when we had a specific housing related discussion we invited employers that you know are trying to be creative and building their own housing for individuals so I think the message was quite clear that there's been a strong demand to move to Vermont that that demand continues but that were restrained in our growth by our housing stock so that's reflected in their rating reports when they say you know Vermont has seen demographic changes and that's a good thing but we want to see that continue we want to see that population continue to grow and get younger and have a younger workforce but that can only happen if we have more housing we still were rated you know double A plus which is the second highest rating and had you know really favorable visit with them overall oh senator I mean so welcome thank you I oh has the governor not spoken no no oh okay go ahead I thought there was there was a Q&A we would love to have you say a few words be like thank you um I just took every back road between here and basin harbor to be here so that doesn't mean you have to quote me but it's just really I would go anywhere in the state and stand with almost anybody and particularly our governor commissioner Hanford who is it's going to be a huge loss for the state when he leaves to push for more housing in the state and in fact I just left the Vermont lodging associations meeting where we heard from hotel owners and lodging facilities that they are using some of their hotel rooms and otherwise rooms that would go to tourists to house their own staff because they are simply the end of their capacity to hire people otherwise I thought I was coming at the tail end just to say that the legislature has a very unique role to play in making sure that this money that's being invested is actually well spent we need to get regulatory barriers and hurdles out of the way we need to make sure people have certainty and they know the timeline on which they can build a project because otherwise we lose a lot of money to litigation and to that uncertainty and to project delays and that is not a good use of taxpayer dollars that is not what people should be paying for and some of that burden goes on our lowest income earners who then end up having to pay more to access that housing or we're unable to build as much housing as we need given the great work of our affordable housing partners so that's all I wanted to say definitely didn't mean to step in front of the governor thought we were we were coming to the end and then I go on to the law school where they have an exhibit right now on the color of law and I teach around issues of an equity related to housing our gap in being able to afford your home is the largest contributor to the income gap and the wealth gap in this country and if someone can afford their first home they can find a place in vermont and they can gain a foothold in the economy and grow their family and be a strong contributing member of our community and that is what we should be fighting for thank you want to reiterate again thank you very much for coming as I said before S100 was a critical piece of this and it will be tremendously helpful in the future we need more regulatory reform but Senator Rahm Hensdale was an important partner in that passage of S100 so thank you very much for the questions yes so housing has been obviously a pretty big topic here today and we have Commissioner Ann for you we'll be stepping down at the end of September so I guess how could that possibly affect this program we're just housing going forward as it is a pretty pressing issue not to have a commissioner at the end of September to kind of overseeing everything well we we will have a commissioner we'll have an acting commissioner at this at this point in time and while we you know we rely on Josh a lot and he's been a great partner a great member of our team and we're going to miss him but he's not going far with him going to VLCT he will be helpful in that regard as well but we will we will do our best to backfill fill his shoes so to speak and we'll we'll continue to make sure that the housing is a primary focus for us would it work more like saying interim commissioner come when he's done or is there going to be somebody full-time it'll be interim Governor switching gears for a second as you know UBM health network recently wrote a letter to legislators highly critical of your appointees to the Green Mountain Care Board how do you respond to that criticism and do you think it's appropriate for these hospital officials to be writing such a letter near a critical budget vote well again we don't have oversight over the Green Mountain Care Board this was something the legislature I had put forward number probably maybe a decade ago and and I do I do appoint the members of the Board after they are fully vetted by another panel and I have confidence in their ability to to work their way through this process they're the ones who have oversight and this is critical I mean this will their their budgets will have an impact on Vermonters every day every day Vermonters and so they have a role to play and we'll see how it all that's out and but they're they're doing their job and switching gears again across the country there's debates going on politically about whether former President Donald Trump should be able to run again due to the 14th Amendment where do you weigh in on on that today? Yeah, I think we have to be careful in some respects we don't want to impose a restriction or for someone who is accused we'll see how that all works out and we'll let the courts figure that out as well but but obviously I'm not a supporter of former President Trump but at the same time I want to make sure that we continue to be democracy on the respects of the rule of law and and he is accused but he hasn't been he hasn't been tried and adjudicated thank you we've got a few folks on the phones then we can come back to the room we'll start with Keith the Ronald Harold I have no questions at this time thank you thank you Tim McQuiston Vermont Business Magazine Governor, there had been some talk about maybe re-instituting any COVID mask or other mitigation because of the increase over the summer it's kind of subsided as you know the last couple of weeks but is that something that you would that you could be on a table going forward if things get worse during the winter? We believe we went through the pandemic we've been through a number of flu seasons this COVID has I guess transformed into more of a flu-like symptom and and disease so we feel that people should take it upon themselves they know what to do to protect themselves if they choose to wear a mask they should that's what they should do if they want to and just take all the precautions we talked about during the pandemic you know get your get your flu shot get your your COVID shot your vaccinations wash your hands keep a keep a distance during during this season and and wear a mask if you choose to but but if there's talk of imposing a mask mandate that's not coming from us Are you playing to get the the new booster it's just about available now I am when I want to make sure that I can get I'd like to get them at the same time so I I need to weigh that out I think there's a and may wait for the next the next version right there you go Ed Barber Newport Daily Express Chris Roy Newport Daily Express Tom Davis Compass Vermont Thanks Jason Governor you started this press conference talking about the need for more regulatory help to help help us increase the speed in time of which we can increase the housing what are the top things that you would like to see accomplished at this ledger that would be added to S100 or a new bill Well we have had many suggestions we've we've put forward in legislation over the last seven years I would say it dust off almost any of them and I think that would be be helpful so we'll continue to work with the legislature I know Senator Rahm his sale has has said that this is a priority for their committee as well so we'll work together and try to to adopt something that works for everyone because you know when you look at what we're here for today the $50 million here the $37 million we put forth to begin with all of the money the hundreds of millions of dollars both of these programs did leverage and will leverage plus the $250 million that we put forth out of ARPA money and all of that will leverage it would be a travesty for us to be held up by regulatory reform that is just redundant and so trying to find ways to get through that redundancy is is something that's a priority for me but I believe for many legislators as well will you and your team be putting together a specific list for the legislature that you'd like to see them accomplish in a bill yes yes thank you appreciate it off of that last question Governor you and your team have been pushing for exemptions in downtowns in urban areas but as we know many of them are in the flood plain or next to rivers given this flood I mean is this making you rethink of where you'd like to see Act 250 exemptions well we've asked originally we had asked for exemptions throughout I think the final version it came down to some of the more downtown areas and I still think there's a role to play for the downtown areas not every downtown although many of them are in floodways but not all of them so and there's ways to mitigate that as well and those are the conversations we're going to have over the next few months both with FEMA and legislators and communities about how do we become more resilient how do we mitigate and I've you've heard me talk about this before but I think it's all and trying to create more storage capacity for some of the the rainfall that we see the tremendous storms that we've experienced and we're going to experience more in the future but how do we store that water while we wait it out and that's the key and I think that there is an opportunity here to do do just that but also create more housing at the same time do you see any of those 1,100 units that we're going to be creating do you see any of those being specifically earmarked for people who lost their hopes or in flood? I don't know or on the table right now but I also want to be honest that someone who may have been living in a manufactured home who didn't have a mortgage doesn't want alone probably in order to rebuild their home it may be necessary and if they're interested in that then we'd like to look at what may be possible but I go back to the idea of needing to braid together resources so that we can really meet the needs that they're at so yes that's on the table is something we're looking at but the actual trying to understand what individuals needs are and what their financial capacity is to pay back these loans is also going to have to be an important factor speaking of this place for monitors Mr. Roy can you give us a status updated on your agency's project related to that? Sure thank you very much good morning right now we had over 200 people who qualified for assistance from FEMA for direct housing those are people whose homes were either destroyed or they met the qualifications of at least $12 per square foot for damages to their home based upon that population FEMA has been calling them and asking them do they need assistance from us in finding housing for up to 18 months and we are at the point where I think we're around 60 some odd people have said yes we could use some assistance and so we're looking at different options and as we discussed previously there are three different options that we're looking at one is is direct house a lease where we find a location and release it for them the second is finding multi-family properties of at least three apartments to be able to repair and lease out and then the third option are the FEMA mobile homes that many are familiar with and so based upon the individual's desire and the location they're at we'll explore what works best for them if the answer is the the mobile home it will depend on do they have a property that they would like it placed on so if you were displaced from your home and you're in a flood plain that's not going to work but your brother has a location that's close by that you can place a unit on they would off that up we would research the spot and if it's suitable we would place it there and then the last option we're talking about is taking a look at group sites and I think many have heard that we're working with Montpelier for a potential site location for that I think there's a city council meeting this evening we'll discuss that if that looks like it's a probable location we'll move forward with exploring that as an option the biggest thing we understand is that winter is coming very quickly and we need to move with all speed so that those who have been displaced and need our help are placed in a location that they can use up to 18 months until they find a permanent solution thank you sir you might be willing to ask this governor do we have any sense of how many people have opted for buyouts we don't at this point in time that's a longer process I don't think that it would be a significant number now because it it takes a while it takes the the community they're in to to go along with that and it takes them deciding that's what they want to do and it has to be offered and so forth so I think that's going to be coming in the weeks and months ahead is that yes sir the whole true okay governor I I just wanted to double the checks and numbers that I believe are heard from from our colleagues building costs up 34 percent for affordable housing in the last year and the market rate for a one bedroom apartment $2,500 can I get done it? yep and um I mean all those what someone can afford is going to be based on their income so when I say $2,500 for a one bedroom apartment that's to say that if you look at the median of what people are earning in Vermont you know what they could afford renting a one bedroom apartment the increase in housing development costs are being driven by material increases labor shortages and I'd say construction delays and then it's taking longer to get housing built and therefore there's longer carrying costs and construction loans have to be out longer and all that and so we're seeing that as those the time drags on that it increased the cost overall of housing which is why I too will add my voice to the chorus of saying how important S 100 was and the partnership between the governor and the legislature to get that done because that should help speed up some of that process which can make housing more affordable apart from the flood why is it taking longer because of supply chain interruptions and material delays we know of a property we cut a ribbon on affordable property up in the islands where it's age restricted property so there's two elevators to serve the residents and they had to open the building with just one elevator in place and there's a elevator shaft that is covered up by locked utility closet door appearing because it took so long and the cost was so much to get that second elevator placed we're hearing nationally and across New England about long delays in electric transformers and how in New Hampshire I was just with my peer who said that they have more than one property that is fully built able to be occupied but there's no electricity in it because the transformers are taking so long to get to New England and so you add up these things that may not seem like big issues until they are big issues we can't open buildings if we don't have electricity and we can't serve folks especially those with physical needs if we don't have elevators and we could go on and on from there there's been some stabilizing of cost increases that we're starting to hear about but we are hoping that that continues but everyone I talk to and listen to no one is expecting a real drop in costs we're hoping that the escalation slows down Richard Wabi of the contractor says that legislatures recently passed law requiring licensure for contractors is slowing down the flood relief work he was quoted in Vermont business I think have been in the business is anything to that I think it's more just those workforce challenges that we face pre-pandemic pre-flood and still impact is greatly today so and that's why the housing is so important and you know it's like the old adage what came first the chicken or the egg I don't know the workforce challenge the crisis we face is impacted by the housing or vice versa and so we need those workers here to build the housing but the same time we need the housing to bring the workers in so we are choosing this path and making sure that we build the housing so that we can welcome more people in and we will be reaching out you know this there's an economy of scale when you have so much money going into housing when you add everything up is literally you know hundreds of millions if not a billion dollars of housing that we're contemplating here with all the leveraged assets so that brings opportunity and it may bring outside contractors from other states in to take advantage of the situation this morning down in Washington Senator Sanders and some other representatives senators introduce legislation to extend the child care stabilization act which throughout COVID held millions of parents and their children along hundreds of thousands of providers I guess in the past few years how is that national piece of legislation held for mom the funding is planned to run out on September 30th how could that impact the state going forward it has helped us out and it helped out you know a community that we desperately need we need more youth we we need more kids and for our schools and for for our economy and so we we I think this is going to be an important piece of that and it's been very helpful thank you all very much thank you all very much


Hi, my name is Morris Gervais, farmer, owner, operator here at Berry Hill Farms, just outside of Berry, Ontario. My parents purchased this farm in 1968 as a tobacco farm. And so when I was a boy growing up here, it was a tobacco farm from 68 until 79. And then for a combination of good luck, but also good vision, my parents realized that they wanted to kind of exit the tobacco industry. They had been growing strawberries. And tobacco for a few years. So they realized that probably strawberry farming was going to be a decent way to make a living and they could still make a go of it. And so they got out of tobacco. And so ever since 1980, we've been growing exclusively fresh fruits and vegetables and selling directly to the people that come to our farm. I enjoy the challenge of working with nature and of growing crops. I really enjoy that. And I am very cognizant of the fact that it's not always easy to do. And sometimes it's things are completely out of your control. So it's always really satisfying when you're able to get a good crop to the table. It's long days. It's hard work. It's it's hoping for good weather so that you can get the harvest in. I never have to be up very early in the winter time. That's the seasonality of being a farmer. Today, I was up at 430 to get ready for five o'clock. I had to check on an irrigation motor, make sure it was greased. It's been very dry. So we're irrigating and then have everything in order and ready to go. So that my crew of workers knew exactly what they needed to do at seven o'clock. We got everybody working at seven o'clock. And then here we are today doing an interview. So there's no two days the same. Summer and early fall season is the best time to enjoy berries. Strawberries used to be only in June and July. But myself and farmers across Ontario have begun recently growing day-neutral strawberries. And so now we have strawberries available from the end of June here in Berry right through until October. Day-neutral strawberries are strawberries that flower regardless of day length. I graduated from the University of Guelph in 1989 with a degree in agriculture. And there's no strawberries really that we're growing now that even existed, you know, 30, 40 years ago. So it's always continually changing. The varieties we're growing now are new and improved and better varieties in terms of flavor, harvestability, yield. Yeah, so things are always changing. So we're always continuing to innovate. And many growers in Ontario now are using protected culture. They're growing strawberries inside of greenhouses. So there's things are continually changing. Some beautiful sunny days like today enable the strawberry to really, really develop a super sweet flavor. It's local, it's fresh. And we're not growing varieties of strawberries that need to be shipped across the world. So we don't have to have the firmness and the rugged shipability that a California strawberry needs. We can pick a strawberry at its peak of flavor and its peak of juiciness. And it's on your table in Ontario here the same day or the next day. We're even faster than that here at the farm. If you come to the farm, our workers, as I mentioned, you started at seven in the morning. The first berries come in at eight o'clock in the morning. Our market opens at eight o'clock in the morning and you're buying berries that were picked moments ago. So, you know, we can really shorten the farm to table aspect. It's as short as it can be, really. So that's why we can offer such flavorful, juicy, wonderful strawberries to people here in Ontario.