Okay, as you can tell today we are happy to have you at this event. We are going to talk about how mobile speaking hotspots can boost your library and how to create everything associated with that. And today we do have guest speakers involved, three from libraries and one from mobile beacon site in addition to the TechSoup staff that's on. If you have any questions, drop them in the chat, we'll go from there. Just a little bit of housekeeping. Again, questions, you're already using it, dropping into the chat. In that way, we'll answer it as we go. If you have specific questions that you don't want to get buried in the chat, feel free to use the Q&A function. That's how those two different. And if you need captions, there is a setting in Zoom to turn that on. So you'll probably have to go like Zoom settings and turn on the caption. Also two, within three working business days, we should be sending the supporting, the slides, and any other resources that we share to you. So again, that'll be coming over within three business days to your email, to you and to everyone that's registered. As you can see here too, I just wanted to give you some more information. TechSoup is starting a peer to peer community group called Quad. And within Quad, you'll have access to exclusive events, technical support, exclusive technical support. And you'll also get to know other like nonprofits. You'll be able to resource share with them. And it is just a great initiative to come and join us at. Also too, the membership will include memberships for up to 10 users from your organization. So if you have more questions, feel free to ask us. And we'll be happy to have you learn more about Quad. And also too, Vanessa has kindly dropped the Join Quad link. So you can check it out in the chat. All right. And here is today's agenda. Today, we are going to be going over introductions, which we've already done, favorite book. We're going to talk about the benefits. TechSoup benefits for libraries from there. We're also going to have a mobile beacon overview. We'll be talking about the bulk ordering process for those that have multiple sites that we like to order. And we'll also talk about different testimonial use cases from libraries that have an internet lending program. And then after that, we'll just have it open for questions. So you can interact with us, the panelists, and everything else that's going on. So we look forward to you joining us today. We're going just going to go through it. Okay. Also, these are your speakers today, which is me, Shamira McNeil. I'm a customer success manager at TechSoup. I help out with multi-site branches, sorry, nonprofits, like libraries, and other nonprofits. We will also have Shasta Keating. She may appear. And if she does not, then Joe Garcia will be doing her part. He's a program manager for mobile beacon here at TechSoup and other hardware programs. And then we'll also have Thomas Tepfer. Sorry if I said that wrong, but he is the business development for libraries education from the mobile beacon side. And so a lot of this is available with his help. And we also will have three library speakers that we will talk more about later on in this presentation. So like I said, we're excited to share all this information with you and I'll be passing it over to you, Joe. Thank you so much, Shamira. Welcome everybody. Thank you so much for joining us today. We're very excited to be here. And, you know, we just wanted to take a couple of minutes to, you know, just to review TechSoup and how we serve libraries. Many libraries out there, this might be your first time interacting with TechSoup. And some of you, this might be a recurring relationship that, you know, that we've come to foster. But TechSoup's mission is to build a dynamic grid that leverages technology to enable connections and innovative solutions for a more equitable planet. And that's really what we're here for. I've been with TechSoup for about 10 years. I started working with the client services team. So I've really seen how we are giving back to nonprofits and how we're bridging that digital divide. Next slide, please. So what is TechSoup's approach? TechSoup's approach is to connect, activate, and transform. We connect by connecting nonprofits through technology tools, services, and knowledge that supports their operations. We activate the use of technology via digital skills courses, community building, digital literacy education, and we transform, supporting organizations through their digital transformation journeys in various ways. Next slide. And TechSoup has been supporting libraries since 2002. We recently did a look into what libraries were purchasing from TechSoup over the last few years. And from these products here on the screen, these are examples of the most requested product by libraries since 2020. So in the first vertical, we have software. So that's the Windows operating system upgrade. And then also office standards. So if you needed to update your office system, then that was there as well. Services, the top, and I believe the only service that was used by libraries since 2020 was the QuickBooks data migration support. This is a new vertical for us. But it's growing really rapidly for us. And, you know, we're trying to offer the different services, IT services, support that nonprofits and libraries are using. And then hardware here. So hardware, the top hardware for libraries was Mobile Begin, who we're going to hear a little bit more about today. And then also TechSoup refurbished hardware. So desktop, monitors, laptops, the sky's the limit. We've really been working with a handful of different refurbishers to really keep that catalog full, diverse, and, you know, relevant to nonprofits and libraries' technical needs. Next slide. So now I'd like to go ahead and welcome our guest speaker today. Actually, not yet. I'm just kidding. I'm going to go ahead and pass my back to Tamara. Tamara is actually on her major market development team, customer success team. And then I'm going to share a little bit about what they do. Yeah, as Joe just said, yes, I am on the major market development team, which handles multi-site nonprofits. And that is also a part of the customer success team, which deals with a specific set of customers. So you'll definitely know if you have one of us assigned to you. We basically, it's from the mobile, sorry, from the MND side, we handle major functions like bulk ordering or bulk registering of sites and changing anything on set sites, so account management. But we basically help multi-site branches that have 10 locations or more just help with their TechSoup account and anything they need, be it invoicing, ordering, all of that stuff. We also internally, we let TechSoup know, hey, these are specific needs that multi-site nonprofits need because they are a little different from say like an enterprise nonprofit or like a nonprofit that's on the smaller side with less than like 10 people. So again, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at the MND email that is listed there, which is MND at TechSoup.org. You'll probably hear from me or some of my co-workers such as Jonathan Mules or Ashley Henderson. And then we are the team that simply deals with multi-site nonprofits. Okay, and I will slide it back to, I think it's you, Joe, again. Oh, not a problem. It's actually Tom, sorry. It is Tom. I'll introduce Tom, not a problem. Tamara, can you make me an event host, please? A co-host. Sure. Thank you. Yeah, so now we're going to hear from our very special guest, Tom. Hey, everybody. My name is Tom Tepper. I work for Mobile Beacon and I come from you from the Great State of New Hampshire where it's 23 degrees and it was 60 the other day. So a fun time of the year for us up here. But yeah, Mobile Beacon. Who is Mobile Beacon? Well, we are a nonprofit. We're based out of Rhode Island, but we're also a national nonprofit. And our mission is to provide high-speed and low-cost mobile internet access to our anchors of the communities.  So through the unlimited broadband service that we have, I like to summarize it even shorter by saying, spend less, help and connect more. Through our unlimited service, we're able to basically help organizations maximize their efforts, be it through their philanthropic efforts, organizationally be able to save money on their budgets and reach more people and help more in the communities. So we can go on to the next slide. All right. So why do we do this? Obviously, many of you all are here in the hot button topic out there with digital equity and inclusion. That's our primary mission is to really assist with that. The digital divide is huge, especially we all noticed it during the pandemic. We're in four years removed from it. And especially more so, there was a lot of households that didn't have access to a proper broadband connection. It was estimated that over 28 million households don't have a lack of proper access to broadband. And being that you're all from the libraries, we've found that only about 22 percent of libraries actually check out hot spots for lending programs to be able to provide to their community. So that's why we do that, to be able to provide that access and how we've done it over the years. What we've done it equivalent of more than that of 7.25 million through our various resources through the anchor institutions. We've helped out over 14,000 organizations. We've also given over 41,000 mobile hotspots delivered to low income individuals and families. And we also have various programs throughout the years for grants and whatnot. And we've been able to donate over 64,000 devices. Next slide. All right. So the reason why you're all here is our partnership with TechSoup and what that looks like. So we've worked with TechSoup for quite a while now. We're able to have a donation program for the hotspots. It saves the cost of access for you. And we can give you a little bit of inside information for all of you joining today. It's not out there, but we are working on. We traditionally have had 4G, but we're excited to talk about that. We're also going to be have a 5G offer come soon. We've had a lot of requests for that. So I know many of you that worked with us before. You asked for about 5G. Well, good news. It's coming because we've also lowered the cost of 5G to be 120 for the year as well. So very good news. So who's eligible to get the donation program at TechSoup? All nonprofits with a 501C3 designation and obviously public libraries. And if you're a public library, you do have to be in the IMLS database or be listed as a 501C3 nonprofit with the IRS. And also, if you have branch libraries, those are eligible as well. We just ask that all branch and libraries are TechSoup members. When you talk about how many you can get through this donation program, the great news is that this runs for a fiscal year. So it runs from July 1st to June 30th. So if it's 2024 and you've used your allotted already, it refreshes every July 1st. And with that, you're able to get, on the 4G side, 11 donated. And like I said, top secret news. 5G, we're going to have a program with three donated and we'll go over the pricing here shortly. And then there's going to be 11 discounted. And these are all on top of. So it's not just limited to only 11 4G. You can get 11 4G plus the 5G as well. And again, those run from July 1st to June 30th. And what's the benefit of a hotspot? Well, we've talked about it. You can run a lending program, which is a lot of the library's primary use of these hotspots. But the other thing is, you may need it for facility support. I know up here in the Northeast, we get power failures all year from windstorms, ice, bad rain, you name it, power can go out, and you may need access to the internet. It's a good resource for that internally in your organization. And the other thing I like to highlight is that any staff member can also take advantage of getting a hotspot through us to be able to use for your personal or professional development. You're continuing education and you get any access maybe outside of work and outside of home. You're sitting at a cafe and their Wi-Fi's not that good, and you have a hotspot in your bag, power it up, and as long as you got cell coverage, you'll have an internet connection. All right, so next slide. Okay, so here are the devices available, and we talked about some of the costs. So our 4G hotspot is a frequent T10, and through that, through TechSoup, the $15 admin fee per device, you get 11 of those. Now we'll haul off the presses, our 5G option. Again, through TechSoup, there will be a $30 admin fee for up to free, and then they'll have discounted $155 admin fee, and you get 11 of those, and that's a normal cost on those are $190. Now for the service, the service will be given for 4G and 5G is $120 for the year, and that's unlimited. So the way it typically works is you have the process as you order through TechSoup, you'll get codes, and then you go to mobile beacon and place your order, and you basically pay for the service to us. We do also charge shipping and handling based on the number of devices you order. So when you talk about speed, what can you expect? I do know on 4G, you'll be able to watch Netflix and do Zoom calls, help with homework, any of the standard stuff you can normally do, and the big difference between 4G to 5G is that speed and bandwidth. So for those that are game maybe, 5G will be a big advantage, and also if you need to have more people connected, you'll see the less degradation in the speed, as you have big household or group of people using it, it won't be as degraded. And another good use for libraries that I forgot to mention that I have a few reach out recently on, is if you have a bookmobile, a hotspot is perfect for you to be able to reduce system support, even be able to provide access to the community throughout in a park when people are hanging out and they want to get that connection, just another service you can provide. So when it comes to coverage, what can you expect? Well, all of our hotspots use T-Mobile's coverage, so whenever you get coverage with the standard T-Mobile service, you'll also get coverage with us. So we'll actually have our coverage on our website, and you can also use T-Mobile's as well, to guide you through whether you get coverage in your area or not. And then lastly, I'd like to highlight a few features that we also offer. We also can have SIPA filters, which is like the adult content filtering if you're not familiar with it. That's optional. We can also give you usage reports to be able to see if your hotspots aren't being fact used.  All right, so next slide. Now, how do you get your donation? Well, I'll hand this back to Joe. Not a problem. I got you, Tom. Thank you. That was very, that's very, very insightful. Thank you. So steps to request your donation. And this is just basic. This is for a single location that is looking to make a, you know, a purchase through TechSoup, or a mobile beacon purchase. So the first thing that you want to do is you want to check your network coverage. You want to make sure that these devices are going to be feasible in your area. So you always want to check the coverage. You're going to place the order for a single location and you're going to pay the admin fee.  These additional steps would be to contact mobile beacons to make payment for shipping and handling, and also for the annual service fee. It's quite the process. I mean, especially if you have six, seven branches that you're looking to order multiple devices for. So we really refine this process. We work with mobile beacons to, you know, formulate a bulk order process that would serve larger nonprofits and also libraries with a single purchasing department. Next slide, please. So bulk orders for hotspots. So just as I mentioned, this is popular among nonprofits, public library systems that have single purchasing departments that may want to purchase multiple devices for multiple branches. One thing to note about ordering hotspots in bulk order is that you need to have at least a total of 55 devices. So that's going to be at least an order of five orders with 11 hotspots. And it can go any which way. I mean, you can have 10 with five or six devices for each brand. And as long as we hit that 55 total, we should be good to go ahead and process the bulk order for your branches. Now, the benefit of placing a bulk order with TechSoup and Mobile Beacon is there's going to be a single payment. There's going to be a single payment for multiple purchases for multiple branches. Another benefit is TechSoup's major market development team will register, they will update TechSoup membership for each brand. TechSoup will then place a bulk order and bulk payment for the entire order. So that takes off the time that it would take to go in and place payment and process each and every order. We'll go ahead and do a big bulk manual processing for you. And then from there, once everything's all paid and good, then we'll go ahead and send Mobile Beacon the thumbs up. Mobile Beacon will then go ahead and place the bulk fulfillment. They will bulk process your order and they will process the order fulfillment. Another benefit of bulk orders is lower shipping and handling costs. And at nonprofits and as libraries, it adds up, especially every little dollar. So if we can help alleviate that for you with the bulk order process, by all means we will. Next slide. So this is a flow chart that we put together. This is for new and old returning Mobile Beacon customers. And I just really wanted to lay out the process for everyone about what a bulk order or what the bulk order process looks like. So I want to talk about the first few steps because those are the most important. Well, the first step is to prepare your bulk order form. And just as Tamara mentioned earlier in this presentation, this presentation, this slide deck will be sent to you after this presentation. So you'll be have access to this URL that we've embedded in the presentation, which is to the bulk order customer information form. And you basically want to just fill that out with all the relevant information. And once that is filled out, you want to go ahead and contact TechSoup. You can do that by either opening a support ticket. URL is embedded in this ticket as well or in this slide deck. Or you can email them at mnd at techsoup.org. And from there, we will go ahead and walk you through the rest of the process. It's quite the process. But once again, we want to make it a nice easy list for everyone. And this is what we came up with to help support bulk orders in the Mobile Beacon program. All right. Next slide. So now we're going to talk a little bit about hotspot lending and community services. So this slide here, this is a visual school, hold on a second. Oh, here we go. This is a resource guide that was created by Mobile Beacon with some very, very helpful information around creating an internet lending program. It takes you from start to finish, just things to keep in mind when setting up an internet program and things of that nature. And once again, we've embedded it in the link through this PDF in the slide deck. So you'll have access to this after the presentation. But just a lot of really good information to think about when you are first initiating this type of program. All right. And with that being said, now we would like to go ahead and move into some hotspot lending programs and cases. As the program manager here for Mobile Beacon on TechSoupsend, one thing that I've noticed is libraries all have their own things going on. You know, they're all managing these different programs. And one thing that I wanted to kind of see is I wanted to share some information, like what's working for us, what's not working for us. So we've invited three very special guests today who have very robust internet lending programs in their community to come and speak to you about what's working for them, what's not working for them, and how they're managing their programs. So please let's welcome our first speaker to the platform. Please welcome Sarah Harvickson, the manager of collection management services at Santa Cruz Public Library. Thank you, Joe. And hi everyone. Thanks for being here today. I'm going to share just a little bit about our experience with lending hotspots here at Santa Cruz Public Libraries. I thought I'd share just some of the lessons that we've learned along the way and then some of our success stories as well. Like many libraries, we did not have a hotspot lending program until we had to close our physical branches in March of 2020. And we quickly realized, you know, we kept our Wi-Fi on so that patrons could come to the buildings or, you know, at least the parking lots and access Wi-Fi. But we realized quickly there's a real need out there and we need to get a hotspot lending program started. So we first started with offering some AT&T hotspots and it wasn't the best experience. We did not work with Mobile Beacon through that process. We found they were really expensive and there was no block allow portal. So a lot of them went missing really quickly and we weren't able to turn the data off. So we quickly realized, oh, we need to work with TechSoup and Mobile Beacon and bring some more hotspots on. So we started out, I can't remember, it was a smaller number like maybe in the 30 to 40 range of hotspots that we brought on. And so we knew that we had learned some lessons from the initial offerings of those AT&T hotspots and realized we needed a secure way to circulate them. So we found some little small plastic boxes with latching lids and we put labels right on those boxes and then labeled the hotspot itself and the charging cable. So we found that was a really secure way to keep that hotspot safe and then keep everything together. We also realized the need was there, but a lot of people didn't know what a hotspot was. So there was a lot of working with staff to explain what a hotspot is and why it would be useful if you don't have internet access at home. And we also created a quick start guide and it's double-sided English and Spanish. And so that's been really helpful and it includes pictures as well. So like an arrow showing where the power button is. So for someone who's brand new to hotspots, they can get started on their own without having to call library staff for help. So we've kept the circulation policies the same as other materials in our collection. It's the 21-day checkout. They're renewable as long as no one else is waiting. For the most part, we haven't had any that have been able to renew. We've had really lengthy holds lists. We were in this past year able to order another 110 hotspots to add. So we're up to 140 now. And they for like maybe two weeks, we didn't have a holds list, which was amazing that we would just have them available when people would walk in. But now we've got a lengthy holds list again. So we're looking forward to July 1st when we can bring some more hotspots on board. An important thing that we learned is to keep a spreadsheet to record all the data about these hotspots. So make sure we've got the serial number recorded, the call number that we've given the hotspot. And then we've got a column for if we have used that block allow portal to turn the data off. So we can all go to one place to see what's going on with one hotspot. A couple of things we're keeping in mind is missing pieces. We have had a couple hotspots returned without the SIM card. And so we didn't anticipate that we thought we'll charge from the missing hotspot. But we don't charge for a hotspot missing the SIM card, which is actually of course the most important piece. So yeah, we're still learning as we go. I want to be mindful of my time here. So I want to just mention a couple of the additional use cases outside of our traditional lending program. We partner with a working farm called the Homeless Garden Project. And so we have staff who goes there and they work with those people who are working at the Homeless Garden Project who are experiencing homelessness and they bring a hotspot with them and they bring resources with them and it's been really helpful for outreach events such as that. And we have a library bike mobile, which is a bike with a trailer that we take to events such as farmer's markets where there might not be Wi-Fi. And so then we can help people with their information needs right then and there. And then we've also we go to a place called Janus, which is an addiction treatment center. And then we bring the hotspot with us when we go. And we actually use that hotspot to provide internet access in order to check materials out to people there without having to rely on their really weak Wi-Fi that they have on site. So we're really happy about that. Just some success stories we have heard from patrons just overwhelmingly positive feedback on these. We've heard that people have used the hotspots to participate in online job interviews, which they wouldn't have otherwise been able to do a lot of education attending classes and webinars that way. And then also another success story is someone who needed to leave home for a little bit and they had families staying with their kids and they wanted to set their family up to be able to allow internet access so they borrowed a hotspot and we're just so grateful to have Wi-Fi for their family and their kids. So yeah, I think I'm probably close to time, but I'm happy to take questions as time allows later. Thanks, Saul. Thank you, Sarah. That was so insightful and yeah, very, very nice. And just a little insight for everybody. Sarah actually presented at our last webinar and they just did such a wonderful job. So I wanted to invite them back again to share with with their fellow librarians and library staff. All right, next we're going to have Karen Moore. They have a supervisor of digital inclusion at the Indianapolis Public Library. Thank you, Joseph. And thanks for having me present today. So I'm from the Indianapolis Public Library, which as you can see on our screen, we currently have 270 hotspots. Along with that, we have the option for Chromebooks as well. Out of that, our 16 branches are our lending branches where we only have or that just lend hotspots only so they don't have Chromebooks available. So I'll start with why that is because one, our loss rate is really high. But going through this program and how it's set up, which is very similar to what Sarah said, we do our current 21 day loans. Devices do have to be borrowed and returned from the same location.  We also have videos prepared as well. So people that need something to watch also while listening. We have that as an accessibility concern. We also provide options for where else they can check out. So for example, if they want to check out a Chromebook, but there's not a hotspot available, they are allowed to go to an additional branch and check out the alternative device. So we use air table actually as a maintenance for that. So we have links to the block allow. We've run it through our air table spreadsheet and just basically correlated with what things need to be, you know, past due or what things that need to be awaiting a reset request from Mobile Weekend. I will say it has been a complete turnaround from when we first started. Mobile Weekend has been really great and I'm knocking on wood that it maintains that way. But we have had really good experience with them. Previously, we were with AT&T and there was a lot more steps to manage. And that's not downing AT&T, but it was just a lot more steps in the transition with Mobile Weekend. Now that we're solely Mobile Weekend has been a really good experience and process of getting things, you know, turned off when they're overdue or back on and back in service for patron use. So we also do a survey when we lend out devices when they come back. And a common thing we learn is that education was a popular use. So with that, we picked one of our quotes from a patron from a survey. And this was just to indicate that it's not just one person that's potentially using the device, but it's multiple. So in this case, we have someone who was graduating high school, they were using it for education, their classes, their partner were using it to play their game, and then their stepdaughter was able to watch Puppapig. And that was her little heart emoji added to the survey as well.  And my particular branch that we work out of is the central library downtown Indianapolis, but we serve 25 different locations. So all of that, we thought, you know, how can we expand and how can we increase? And we just see the need for it because a lot of the hubs for Wi Fi is going to be, you know, local neighborhood spots or the library, where often people do come. But this is something that they can take with them. We see this with a lot of our unhoused population, you know, this is something that they can have on their person. And whether they're, you know, watching a movie, they're staying safe, they're secure, you know, they can be in the comforts and confines of where they are placed at the moment. And then you have people, you know, even myself, my children, they are in school, they all have tutoring and sessions and Girl Scouts. And, you know, we use hotspots when we're on the go because they're all doing something at a different time. So having the device and bridging that technical divide, this has been a game changer, because, you know, we just need access. And then also in rural areas, I work with United Way with the Digital Equity Coalition. And, you know, we are noticing that it's always a topic of what is the access, where is the access point, and then the infrastructure that comes to that. So I was kind of excited with the 4G, the 5G options, because that is going to broaden and expand this out even further. So I have great things to say. The most negative thing, of course, is our loss rate. But we see that turn around. We have blocks in place. When a charge is added to a patron's account, we'd still give them a year to return the device when a charge is reversed. So long as they're bringing it back and it's in good condition, we just want to be able to lend it again, ultimately. So we work with our patrons directly. It's not perfect by no means, which is why I'm here today to just kind of hear everybody's questions, thoughts, and I just think overall around, you know, for all different libraries or all different types of systems that are going to be offering this as a service, it's just really good that we can find some common ground for that. So any questions, please feel free to send me any. Thank you. Yes, thank you so much, Karen, for sharing your program. If there are any questions, we do have a running list going of questions to put them in the chat room, and then we're going to ask our panelists at the end of our presentation. All right. So thank you again, Karen. Next, we're going to hear from Benjamin Heat, he's the Access Service Manager from Evanston Public Library. Okay, thank you. I'm representing Evanston Public Library. We are a two-branched library in Evanston outside of Chicago, Illinois. We serve a population of roughly 75,000 people, and we have 120 hotspots in our program right now, 30 of them circulate with laptops. Our devices are all holdable. We're generally around a 20-person wait list for our holds queue, for our devices. They all lend for a month, for four weeks. No renewals because they are so popular. And we are also asking a first-time borrower to sign a little agreement, just kind of letting them know that these are higher-cost items. Treat them well. Here's how to use them because you will be charged for loss if you don't take them back. In 2022, we actually had 200 devices. We were previously with T-Mobile directly, and all of our devices were 5G devices. The donation program with Mobile Beacon was what actually first drew our attention to start accounting for loss and buying some new ones. I love the devices that we've gotten where all of our devices are with Mobile Beacon now. They're all Franklin T10 4G devices. That transition happened throughout 2023 and has drastically reduced the cost of our hotspot program. Previously, with our 5G devices, we were running at build monthly, $30,000 a month per device, $5,000 a month. So without loss, right, our program was approaching $70,000 a year, pretty high cost. Moving to the Mobile Beacon devices was very helpful for us. Build annually that $120 payment for 4G. And so a few key findings for us that I thought valuable to share was, yes, we did move entirely from a program of 5G devices to 4G devices. We found working with our patrons that high-speed 5G home internet wasn't the goal. The goal was broadband in your home when you don't have it. And we felt, and our patrons reported back to us, that that need was met with the 4G devices. So we're all 4G. We appreciate the lower cost. It's still capable of doing a lot of things. You can take the device home. Like Tom said, one person streaming Netflix, broadcasting to their TV, somebody else is doing homework. If somebody else is on social media, those devices are still high enough broadband to support most use cases. Again, we already shared some points on loss. Karen said a bit about this as well. This is a high-loss program. Devices break. Devices are misused. You bring them home. They're plugged in 24-7. So not devices that have fans in them. So they're going to heat. They're going to get hot. They're going to age really fast. The devices that we did have, and here's one of the things that I particularly like, Franklin T10 device, 4G device, very little glass, very small screen, almost all plastic. Drop that thing. It's not going to break. The devices we had before, the whole front of the device, the whole top, large screen, all glass, constant cracks, constant scratches, constant drops. So much loss happened from that, that I think about the construction of the device. Know that it's going to be knocked around. It's going to be dropped. It's going to be broken. How many people are going to have that in their hands? So the device construction matters. One of the things that we did not do initially with the 5G devices was truly lock them down. So patrons couldn't get them in their hands and modify the device settings. One of the things we do with the 4G devices is disable the factory reset. Do you think that's important? Lock patrons out from that device so that they can't get in there and kind of make it their own. Still doesn't mean they're not going to take SIM cards or bring it back without the SIM card. But really our loss isn't theft. Our loss generally isn't loss. I lost the item. Our loss is generally that device no longer works. Something happened with that device. And then something that we found valuable for us and that this is kind of something for us to think about for the future of our program is we have a big power user population. So if we take all of the total days that all of our hotspots were checked out in a given year and we looked at 2022 data, how many days in total were all of our devices checked out? 50% of our total use, our total check out, was from 18% of our user group. So we have a core group of users who are checking out these devices four, five, six times a year. They're waiting in that hold skew for that next device to come because they need internet in their home. And so we've got this dueling competition between folks who are need a device long term. They're always in a hold skew. And that means we don't really have a program for somebody to come in and say, I need a device now. Like I have this instant need. Can I get my hands on a device? I were thinking about if we've got a dedicated group of people who need that device long term, they're constantly in the hold skew. They're constantly competing against people who have short term use cases. Should we actually start a program that is a longer checkout period, six months, 12 months, to those users who are coming back frequently, take them out of the hold skew of competing with folks who have short term use cases and kind of diversify our program. But overall, we've been very happy. The move to mobile beacon devices has been great for us, greatly reduced the cost of ownership over the program. And we've been really happy with that move to 4G devices as really our sweet for our hotspot program. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. That was awesome. All right, before we jump into our Q&A slide, I would like to just pass the baton over to our director of hardware, Dastakini. Hi, Shasta. You're muted. Thank you. That took me a minute. First of all, I just really am very grateful to Joseph Garcia, Shamira, and the TechSoup team because they have worked so hard to bring together Karen and Ben and Sarah. And I'm so proud of this program because I have been a lifelong volunteer for public schools. And for us, I remember doing research with Arlington Public Schools on a project for the summer gap in learning with the libraries and how to get students, underserved students, underprivileged students to books, right? It's essential to who we are as Americans. And digital inclusion is why we're here. It's so important. Sometimes we talk about digital inclusion in international terms, and that's critical and must have our attention and does have our attention through the UN Sustainable Development Goals. But here at home, there is such incredible need. And I feel that in terms of underserved kids and underserved families, Mobile Weekend really is game changing as Ben, Sarah, and Karen have highlighted for us today. So I just want to thank you all for being here. We're a nonprofit. And so it's wonderful that we can work with Mobile Weekend, who is also a nonprofit. And so we are really here for those who need us most. And we're looking for partnerships. We're looking to make things easier. I'm seeing in the chat lots of input and feedback. And I'm going to have our team pull some of these things together so that we can continue our conversation to make this the best possible opportunity and service to get broadband to where it's needed. And I love that you talked about use cases, right? Whether it's homework, whether it's social media, whether it's trying to get a job, whether it's we really will leave a lot of people behind if we don't get broadband in the hands of those who need us most. So thank you for all the work that you're doing, all the attendees. I know that you're here because you're trying to make lives better. So I'm just very grateful to be here with you and hope we can help. Thank you, Shasta. All right. We have about seven minutes left. We're going to go ahead and dive into the Q&A panelist. If I read out a question that you have the answer to, by all means, jump right in. So the first question comes from John. So are the 5G donations free to libraries? You want to answer that one? Sure. So the program which should be coming soon, there'll be three 5Gs that you can get through the admin fee with TechSoup and there'll be 11 that are discounted. The lowest price for us right now, if you go directly through us would be 190. So even with those discounted devices that's coming, it's still a better deal with TechSoup. And then you can always reach out if you need to order more. You can always reach out to us directly. Thank you. So the administrative fee for the donated 5G is going to be $30. And for the discounted 5G is going to be $155. So there's a little discount on the discounted. The biggest thing for your buck is going to be on the donated item. And one thing that I want to mention is you can order that annually. So you get three devices, one fiscal year, the next fiscal year, you can come back and order another three devices. So if you're looking to build a program in that sense, that also works. Thank you. Thank you, John, for the question and thank you, Tom, for the answer. Heather P. They have a question. What is the difference? Okay, we just answered that one, which was the admin fee for the 5G. And Marie, you had a question that says, does Mobile Beacon have larger hot spots that could be mounted on an outreach plan? Tom, do you want to take that one? We can take a look and see what specifically you're looking for on that. I'd say reach out to me independently. And we can have a conversation and take a look at what exactly you need. And if we're getting anything like that in the future, I know that's something we would like the cradle point that we're, we'd love to be able to offer them. I think that's something that we're working on, but no ETA or anything like that. But I would suggest reach out to me directly offline and we can take a look and see what we have if it matches up to what you're needing dimension-wise. Thank you so much, Tom. Thank you, Ann Marie. Heather P. You had a question about pricing for individuals. So I'll go ahead and take this one. So Heather, you would want to actually purchase the devices through your 501c3 non-profit library. And then ultimately that account would need to be managed by the organization. We cannot link the hot spot to an individual. So that's one way to think about it as well, is like, you know, if you do have remote workers or remote employees, this might be a good solution to keep your staff on track. Thank you, Heather. And then what is the, Tom, what's the model of the 5G donated device? It's a JEC stream. Give me a second. Let me bring it up to Zach. That's the model. I don't know if it has a number to it or anything. But it's called the JEC stream. I think Franklin makes it. Yeah, RG 2100. And you can find the specs to this device, John, on the Mobile Beacon website. Just check out their website and look under 5G devices and you'll see the specs for that particular model there. Thank you, John, for that question. Thank you, Tom, for the answer. Actually, this one we answered, Heather asked a very similar question. Can you purchase hot spots as a staff member from the library? It would have to be managed through the library through the 501c3 entity. But once again, like, we would encourage, you know, employees, like if it is a need for you to do your day to day work, definitely get a hot spot through your organization so that you can be connected. And again, Joe, you can always reach out to us as well. And we can work on that through you as well if you wanted to set up either through the organization or we could just add you onto the library's account and just buy directly through us. And I would just like to jump in, Joe, for one second. Tom, I have heard so many absolutely wonderful things about you. I am dying to work more closely with you. And Mobile Beacon, you know, last but not least, I think you're doing amazing work to close the digital divide. And we're so grateful to have you as a partner and to be able to work together to take this not only to libraries, which is our real focus for today, but friends of closing the gap. So please, one other thing that you can do on behalf of, and I know, Tom, you would agree on behalf of Mobile Beacon and TechSoup is just really spread the word about this device. We want to work together to help those who need us most. Yes. We have a few more questions. What we're going to do is I'll work with Mobile Beacon on just formulating these answers for everyone and we'll send it out with the recording of this webinar and also with the PowerPoint presentation. So thank you, everybody, for the engagement. Thank you for participating in this webinar. Go back one slide, Tamara. If you do need to contact us, please, if you have technical questions, reach out to Mobile Beacon. Tom would be more than happy to help you. His email address will be in the deck. And then also if you are looking to make a bulk order or think about different options and buying options for your library, contact the major markets development team. They'll be more than happy to help you see what types of bulk orders we can put together, whether it's hardware, software, or services, we can definitely help you to make sure all your technical needs are covered. Next slide. And then thank you. Thank you to everybody. Thank you, Mobile Beacon. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Karen. Thank you, Benjamin. And most importantly, thank you to all of the attendees today. And remember, everybody, February is Library Lovers Month, so let's celebrate. Thank you, everybody.


Hello friends, I am Sanjay Gupta. I welcome you on the channel. You can watch various programming related videos on my YouTube channel. It contains more than 800 videos. You can search these videos with the help of this keyword programming by Sanjay Gupta. In this video, I am going to demonstrate you how you can pass addresses of variables into functions in C programming. For demonstration purpose, I am going to use the example of swapping using call by address method. First of all, I am going to include a header file stdi.h. Now I am going to declare a function whose name is swap. It will be receiving two arguments and I am going to pass addresses. That's why I have used int asterisk comma int asterisk. So whenever you want to pass addresses of variables, those addresses will be processed with help of pointers. So to declare pointers, I have used these data types in this declaration. Now I am going to define main function. Inside main function, I have declared two variables a and b. This printf will be displaying the message enter two values and the entered values will be stored inside these a and b variables with the help of this scanner function. So this way printf and scanner will be reading the values from user. Now I am going to call swap and I am passing addresses of a and b variables here. So this is calling a function and you can see I am passing addresses of a and b variables here and then I am going to print values of these variables after completion of function definition process. Now after defining this main function, I am going to define swap function. So this block will be known as definition of this swap function. Inside this definition, I am going to process values of a and b with the help of these pointers. So whenever you want to pass address of variables, you have to receive those addresses into the pointers. So here p is receiving address of a and q is receiving address of b. So if you want to access value of a and b, you can use these pointers. So here I am going to write the logic for swapping. I am using temporary variable t. So this is the logic for swapping. I have used temporary variable t and asterisk p and asterisk q. So whenever I am writing asterisk p, it is dereferencing the address which is available inside this p pointer which is address of a. So it means if I am writing asterisk p, it means I am accessing the value of a and if I am writing asterisk q, it means I am accessing the value of b and whenever you modify a pointer, it means you are modifying the variable whose address is available inside the pointer. So I am changing p and q but indirectly values of a and b will be swapped and those swapped values will be displayed on output screen with the help of line number 11. So here I have not returned any particular value but still changes will reflect in main function where I have called the function. Now I am going to execute this code so that you can understand whether it is working properly or not. So I am entering two numbers 10 and 20. You can see the output a equals to 20 and b equals to 10. So I entered 10 in a and 20 in b but after swapping values are interchanged and data is correct which are available on output screen. So this way I have passed arguments addresses into the function and those addresses are processed with help of pointers in C programming. So I hope you have understood how we can pass addresses of variables into functions in C programming. I hope you have understood whatever I have explained in this video. If you want to watch more programming related videos you can follow my YouTube channel. Thank you for watching this video.


Demonstration in my opinion is the cruelest attack on the people by the present government.  But none of the four objectives that have been proclaimed by this government have been fulfilled. In fact, the Prime Minister himself said, just wait for 50 days. If my intention is proved wrong, if my objectives are proved wrong, I am prepared to undergo any punishment that people are ready to give. But now, entire thing has become a total failure. 99.3% of the currency has already been into the circulation as per the report of the Reserve Bank of India. That 10,000 crores that is left out is also there in the form of an old currency in quotes and currency from Bhutan, Nepal, etc. And also money that could not be deposited in the banks by the ordinary people after 1st January 2017, because the government suddenly changed its earlier announcement that people can deposit money in Reserve Bank of India, that announcement was changed, so money is left out. So, entire currency, 100% currency has been into the circulation and the demonetization is a total failure. Actually, the demonetization has paralyzed the banking industry for almost 5 months. From November 8th to 31st of March 2017, the banking activities came to a standstill. They could not do anything. They could not lend a fresh. They could not recover the money. Thereby, the banking industry was actually put behind its earlier position because of the demonetization. Again, during demonetization, the number of manoeuvres lost. Crores and crores of people were made to stand between 4 to 9 to 10 hours during demonetization. The manoeuvres lost will be several crores and people have lost jobs because the small industry is also finished because of demonetization, particularly in Tirupur, Nasik, Surat, so many hundreds and thousands of people have lost jobs. One study says 15 lakhs people have lost jobs and it is something more than that also and about 112 people lost their lives. A small child which went for some treatment in a hospital owned by the then minister of the central cabinet minister, central minister and that hospital did not give any treatment to the small infant because they had only demonetized currency. They did not have the currency. That was worthy at that point of time after November 8th, 2016 and one man killed his wife in Bengal just because she could not change the old notes into new notes. After standing in the queue for 6 to 8 hours, like that hundreds of people died. This government did not pay even homage to these people and bank complies died. When the currency ran after depositing money in the chest, it met with an accident and 7 people died, a cashier died on the spot in Pune and another subordinate staff died because of the work pressure and one person in Karnataka committed suicide suspecting something about him in the that was in the newspaper like that. So this government did not bother about the ordinary people at all. The Reserve Bank of India was sought its opinion only a day before and it has been revealed through RTI. Now that Reserve Bank board met only just 2 and half hours at 5.30 pm before the announcement of the demonetization and in that board meeting also it is a 5.60 first meeting of the Reserve Bank. The minutes revealed that Reserve Bank did not support any of the claims of the government of India. The Reserve Bank report minutes very clearly state that the black money cannot be curved because of the demonetization because a large portion of the black money is in the form of gold and real estate and not in the form of cash. That was the number one observation of the Reserve Bank of India. Similarly Reserve Bank said the fake currency is estimated only 400 crores compared to 15 lakh 41,000 crores 400 crores is nothing but it is a pittance for that demonetization should not be resorted to and also the Reserve Bank warned that if demonetization is resorted to people coming from abroad, people in the tourism and people seeking medical aid all these people will be put to untold hardships. And despite all these things after telling all these things Reserve Bank succumbed to the oppression of the government of India. But the actual minutes of Reserve Bank of India was signed by the then governor only on 15th December 2016 after 37 days of implementation of demonetization. There are lot of court cases going on that at that point of time several in a several high courts the move of the government was challenged and ultimately everything was brought to Supreme Court. Still Supreme Court has not taken up that agenda at all whether at all government has got a power to demonetize is a fundamental question that was raised and it has not been answered at all till today and there are the litigation is going on. And as far as the demonetization is concerned as per the report of the economies and particularly the then finance then Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh the economy of the country has been reduced by about 1.5 to 2% of the GDP has been affected. Thereby about 3 lakh crores has been lost and for printing new notes 8000 crores was spent and Reserve Bank has spent 31000 crores on account of demonetization and the money that was not that has not reached the Reserve Bank of India is hardly 10,000 crores assuming that it is actual figure the money that has been spent for demonetization activities 40 to 50,000 crores of rupees demonetization is a total failure and it is a cruelest attack on the common man of the country.


South Africa has reaffirmed that it will hold the BRICS summit in August, dispelling rumors that it might be shifted due to pressures over the attendance of Russian President Vladimir Putin. How is South Africa dealing with these pressures? In a shocking verdict, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that race-based admission policies for higher education, which are also known as affirmative action, are unconstitutional. Why is the clock being turned backwards? And a court in the UK ruled that the government's controversial plan to send refugees to Rwanda is illegal. Will this halt these kinds of inhumane policies? We will be answering these questions and more in this episode of Daily Debrief. We begin with BRICS, the grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Now there has been a lot of interest in this grouping because of its economic might and the possibility of it emerging as an alternative to the U.S.-led order. The BRICS summit is scheduled to be held in August in South Africa. But recently, there was a controversy over the participation of Russian President Vladimir Putin. There is a warrant against Putin issued by the International Criminal Court. And South Africa is bound by treaty to arrest him if he goes there. This led to speculation that the summit might be shifted. But now South Africa has come out and said very clearly that the summit will go on. We have with us Abdul Fumor. Abdul, thank you so much for joining us. So first of all, what's the latest from South Africa on the BRICS summit? Well, as you rightly pointed out, they have confirmed that the summit will go on as planned. And basically that puts rest to the rumors that the summit will be shifted to China or any other country. It also basically kind of clears it that what Ramaphosa did going to Russia meeting with Putin last month, earlier this month, sorry, basically has created a background, kind of some kind of arrangement has been made to basically continue with the preparation of the summit. This also means that South Africa has basically come out of the pressures exerted on it by the US and other Western powers to basically turn against Russia, take a clear-cut position on the war and basically do things which they have been wanting South Africa and other third world countries and the South countries in the Southern world to basically do. And so this is all what so far has been, you can say this is the latest development. But though it says that summit will go on, it is not clear yet whether Putin will physically attend the meeting or there will be some other mechanisms to basically make the summit possible. Right. Of course Abdul, could you just talk a bit more about what you are referring to that is the kind of pressures that South Africa has been facing. I understand that US congressmen, the ambassador in South Africa, all of them have made pretty controversial statements. Exactly. If you see that apart from those statements made by individual members of Congress or the diplomats here and there, US in fact formally alized South Africa for supplying weapons to Russia as they did with Iran and some other countries. They have also basically asked South Africa to formally ask South Africa that if they are not taking a clear-cut position on Russian war, sorry, Ukrainian war, there will be sanctions. Of course secondary sanctions, which sanctions because South Africa is one of those countries which has continued its economic relations with Russia. It has no other option, of course, for various reasons given the historical links, given the dependence on Russia for grains and fertilizers and so on and so forth. So it has continued its relationship with despite the fact there are strong sanctions imposed against Russia. So there has been threats of sanctions, there have been threats of other kinds of measures against South Africa and also the idea that it is supplying weapons to Russia and so on and so forth. So all these things were basically attempts to push South Africa away, not only from Russia, it seems that there is a greater pressure to basically shift South Africa's alliance with BRICS as a grouping also. These pressures are, of course, there is a short-term objective of putting South Africa away from Russia but also from the BRICS given the fact that there is a larger geostrategic game which is going on vis-à-vis China and there is also some kind of attempt to put pressure on other countries in the group to basically put them away from this particular grouping. So this is a part of the pressures of different kinds, statements or the threats of sanctions on the allegations on different fronts are basically a diplomatic way to basically use both stick and carrot to persuade South Africa to move away from BRICS. Abdul Afghur is also, I think it's interesting because it's not just South Africa, many African countries in fact refusing to take the stance that the US has wanted them to take on the question of the war, like you said, economic ties being one reason but also an interesting dynamic taking place in the continent. Exactly, most of the African countries will are not in a position to basically follow the dictates of the US or European Union because first, of course, there has been a long experience which has kind of consolidated a mobilized set of opinion which is based on experience of their colonial experience or the recent imperialist interventions in one way or another that basically has won the history is part of the position which basically decides what African countries will do. Apart from that, there is a larger realignment in the global politics which is happening both because everyone is basically clear about one thing that the US as an economic power is declining and there is an alternative which is emerging which is China or a group of countries in the global south which basically can provide an alternative economic support or economic assistance without the imperialist dictates which they were forced to follow earlier. So, given this option which most of the African countries are looking towards, they have it now and the thing that this will become much more viable in the coming years, there is no reason for them to basically follow one sided relationship which was the case all these years. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Abdul. Very interesting process will be, I think you will also be covering it in the run up to the summit in August and the August summit itself might come up with some interesting conclusions, a stock of a BRICS currency for instance. Thanks so much for talking to us. Moving on to slightly depressing but unsurprising news, the US Supreme Court has ruled that race based admission policies for higher education are illegal. Now, this is known as affirmative action. Now, the court is dominated by conservatives and said that such policies violated the right to equal protection of the law. Now, these policies didn't come in isolation, they were the result of the civil rights movement in the 60s and 70s and these policies recognized the structural discrimination that black and brown students faced. But it turns out now that these policies are now which are progressive are now being called illegal. We have with us Natalia Marquez of People's Dispatch for more. Natalia, before we get into the larger politics of the issue, could you quickly summarize the judgment for us? So on June 29th, the Supreme Court ruled that race based admissions policies for higher education, colleges and universities also known as affirmative action policies are unconstitutional for violating the 14th amendment of the US Constitution, which is the right to equal protection of the law across race. So what this means is that it's essentially now impossible for colleges and universities to factor race into admission. Doing away with the policies of affirmative action that a lot of institutions had used in particular elite institutions to ensure that there was more, there were more people of color, especially black and brown students at these colleges and universities. Colleges and universities, especially elite ones in the United States, have a long deep history of racism and not accepting black and Latino students, which has contributed to the racial wealth gap and the low amounts of generational wealth across generations of black and Latino people in the United States. Right, absolutely. And why is affirmative action important? And could you maybe take us through what is the, you know, where did it stem from and what was its significance for students? So affirmative action actually was never really codified into law in terms of university admissions in the United States. That's why the use of affirmative action varies widely by institution across the country. But the legacy of universities prioritizing black and brown students in some cases originated from the struggles of the civil rights movements in the 1960s and 70s. These included, you know, the voting rights movement, the movement to end Jim Crow segregation, you know, just really the movement to right past racial wrongs. And they, you know, although affirmative action policies were not perfectly implemented by many means, you know, elite institutions often found a way around admitting working class black and brown students from the United States, either filling racial quotas with wealthier black students from other countries or whatnot. And although that studies have shown that actually white women have principally benefited from affirmative action policies because of the imperfection of policies that prioritize black and brown people, affirmative action still did help in some ways in admitting more and more working class people of color into elite universities. Actually, in 1995, the University of California system banned affirmative action. And in 1998, which was the first year after the ban that was affected by the ban, the number of black and brown students or black and Latino students specifically nearly halved at the university system's two most competitive institutions, which are the University of Los Angeles and the University of California, Berkeley. So it's expected and predicted that because of this ruling, the admission rate of working class black and brown students will plummet. And that will only widen the racial wealth gap in a country where this wealth gap has already been widening for the past few decades. And it has actually not been getting smaller. So, you know, widening inequality, right?  Actually, the movement to fight for affirmative action policies was not a movement for diversity, for diversity's sake or solely diversity. It was part of the larger civil rights struggle. So in conjunction with, you know, the civil rights organizing that we know best, the bus boycotts, boycotts against, you know, Jim Crow segregation, whatnot. There was also a really thriving civil rights student movement. And the student movement fought for a lot of different things that would right historical wrongs in universities, like ethnic studies, you know, the idea that, you know, history taught in universities needs to teach the history of all people and teach the history of the marginalized and disenfranchised as a priority.  The policy of prioritizing the admissions of people of color would write those past historical wrongs and actually benefit, you know, benefit people of color in terms of eliminating structural racism and eliminating the racial wealth gap. And so, you know, this was part of a larger racial justice movement, not a movement for just for diversity. And I think putting that struggle in that context is really important. And also affirmative action is part of a larger movement at opening up university admissions for more people in general, right? The United States has some of the most competitive elite and expensive institutions in the entire world. Of course, we have a massive student debt crisis. The average undergraduate education costs over $145,000. And admitting more working class people of color is part of reversing that, part of opening up educational opportunities for everyone. Oftentimes, the argument against affirmative action is that it lowers the amount of educational opportunities for Asian people and white people. When this isn't necessarily the truth, and the focus should be on opening up educational opportunities for historically disenfranchised people like black and brown people and also demanding more educational opportunities for everyone. That was Natalia Marquez talking about a verdict which has been widely condemned by sections across the United States, including the establishment. And we need to see how this will impact the lives of thousands of students. But moving on from a court in one Anglo-Saxon country to another, we go to the United Kingdom, where a court of appeal ruled that the conservative governments plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is unlawful. This extremely controversial policy which was pushed by the conservative government under Rishi Sunak and earlier governments required asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed. The ruling overturns a December verdict by a lower court, which held the plan as lawful. Now this ruling is a major blow to the Tory government's anti-refugee policies, but it may not be enough to stop it. We have with us Anish to talk more about this. Anish, first of all, could you maybe take us through what this policy is in some detail and what the court said? The basic fundamentals of the policy is basically that the UK government had to deal with the Rwandan government with certain diplomatic assurances that it will act as this sort of a third country, a safe country for asylum seekers to have their refugee status processed. Now they will have to spend an indefinite amount of time there. Most of the people who might have already reached the United Kingdom by a very perilous ride, either by boat or any other way, where to be sent there, where to be deported there. And then they had to wait their turn to actually have their asylum application processed. Now this whole process was widely, not only because it actually just adds some other further steps to block any kind of actual real asylum or refuge for refugees who may have been fleeing from not just war but also extreme impoverishment and complete instability that, again, as we have always reported, an outcome of interventionist policies by European countries, which includes the United Kingdom. So in this situation, this sort of violation of aid to seek asylum. So technically they did not deny you the right to seek asylum. But what happens in Rwanda is that, more or less, there is a great deal of likelihood that people who would want to seek asylum will be denied on pretty much any kind of spurious grounds. Now this is not something that the United Kingdom is trying to do for the first time or is something novel. It was something that actually happened under the Trump administration where you had these migrant caravans, they were called migrant caravans. They were essentially asylum seekers who were being pushed to Mexico or other countries or even sent back home. So the whole point of this policy is deportation rather than actually affording asylum to people who might need them. And this is something that the court has observed because as it's, even though the letter actually doesn't deny anybody's right to asylum, it actually creates further roadblocks to actually get asylum, especially for people who might have already reached the United Kingdom. And this is very specifically being the larger part of this whole story, not just stories. It actually began much earlier, but stories kind of, you know, amplified it in recent years, which is basically to turn the boat's back campaign, where they just do not want. They have created this bogey of boat people trying to invade. Actually, Soela Brayvam and the person who authored the bill itself, she actually said that the asylum seekers were invading Britain. And she refused to apologize for that. So they actually do believe this fact that asylum seekers are somehow trying to invade the United Kingdom and take over the countries by gaining asylum, which does not give them any kind of special treatment. It gives them some basic rights and it actually prevents them from a whole host of employment in the United Kingdom. But nevertheless, it is being used as this bogey to whip up sort of nationalist and, you know, even right wing populist frenzy in the UK. Well, Anish, of course, not to mention the fact that the countries refugees were going to be sent to is Rwanda, which is notorious as an agent of the Western powers, and especially in Africa and also has a very bad record with refugees. But does it seem like this verdict is really going to change the government's position? Because this has been multiple governments, like you said, the Liz Truss government also had the same policies. Boris Johnson was no different. So do you think what is the government likely to do at this point? Well, the government might find other ways to actually because considering the statements that we've seen so far, Brave Woman actually said that they will do pretty much anything to prevent the boats from coming to the UK, which is a very dangerous sort of policy because you know very well that these people are going through a very dangerous journey across the Mediterranean and they are using most of them are traveling on makeshift boats, which are not essentially boats. Many of them are just like larger life jackets or just rubber or some kind of contraption that traffickers actually created. So in many ways, they are victims of air trafficking, but they've gone through a very perilous journey and to prevent them from actually reaching the shores of the UK, which is their primary policy shows that this government is not going to change. And they might find other ways to do what they actually aim right now, which is to prevent asylum seekers from reaching the UK. And that is going to create more sort of like so this policy essentially was an attempt to was a face saving attempt in many ways, trying to pretend that they are they are not denying anybody's asylum. They are not denying anybody's rights, but they just do not want to do it on British soil. Right now, they might we do not know how things will move on from that. We do know that Sunna definitely wants to appeal against this verdict. He wants to go to the Supreme Court on that way, but Breverman's position and considering the fact that she is definitely part of the most right wing sections within the Conservative Party has often been associated with national conservatism, which is basically a more brazen way of saying crypto fascism is in many ways kind of using the same kind of rhetoric that we often associated Johnson or any kind of parties like the BNP or UKIP for that matter, who were very notorious for their anti-refugee, anti-immigrant policies and this coming from somebody who is a doctor of migrants is clearly you know that also that's highly ironic. Yeah exactly, but definitely the fact that she's doubling down on her position shows that there might be you know bigger problems in the offering in coming days. Right, thank you so much Anish. Of course also a challenge for activists and organizations. I think the last time there was a plan when the plan was being executed to send them to Rwanda there was a vast protest by activists. I believe one of the European courts intervened and stopped it. So definitely a lot of legal battles ahead and I'm sure you'll be covering it and we'll come back to you for this. Thanks so much. So from the front lines of diplomacy to an attack on progressive policies and also the lives of migrants and refugees being at stake. We have covered all this on this episode of Daily Debrief and that's what we try to do on this show every day which is to cover some of the major developments across the world, understand the perspectives of people's movements, understand the perspectives of those who are struggling fighting for a better world. So do keep watching Daily Debrief and other videos and stories on People's Dispatch.


Good afternoon everyone, my name is Anna Kay and today I'm going to be giving a tour of Humphreys Hall. Before we get started I'd like to point out Emily behind the camera. So go ahead and say hi to Emily. Hi everyone, my name is Emily. I'm a marketing intern with the University of Housing. And tell us where you're tuning in from. Alright, so with that I just kind of want to point out a couple of key places where we're at right now. So we're on the Humphreys North patio right now. So kind of behind Emily we have Gregson Hall, 1021 Food Hall, and then to the right we have Founders. And then kind of through this little breezeway area over there is Kimple Hall. But with that we'll head inside. So as we head inside you're going to get the CRE or the Coordinator of the Residence Education. This is Sahala, her producer. This will be my third year in the building and I can't wait to meet y'all. Alright, so kind of with that this is the main general entrance area for Humphreys. Right over here we have the front desk area. So during the day that will be housed by a Hull Admin and then after hours there will always be an aria at the front desk to help you come and check out and walk out to help me call the RNG meetings like that. Really quickly we're going to walk up here and show you the South patio as well. Look at the South patio. So from here you can see Yokem right over there. These two towers are often coming up. We have some picnic tables, some benches. And then over here we're actually right across from the Walton College of Business right now. So that's super convenient location-wise. You're right in the center of campus, very close to everything. So super nice. And the parking lot is going to be used during move-in. They'll be coming up. Where will they be coming in? Sit back to the parking lot. So you'll park your car, come get your keys right on the patio here. And then we do have a dolly ramp on the side of the building. So if you have anything super heavy that you're bringing in, we do have a way for you to get in the building without going up on stairs. We do have elevators in this building too. Yes, we do have elevators in this building too. I've seen a couple of times I have a fob on this key ring. So this is kind of security measure that we have for the building. You just hold up your fob to the box and it opens. And that's just so that only residents that live in the building have access to the building. So that's super... What does it call again? Humphreys Cafe. Yes, I do want to mention about the office that both Humphreys and Founders mail comes here. So if you live in Founders too, you'll also get your mail and packages at Humphreys. So like some are said, you'll pick up packages at the front desk. But these are the Humphreys mailboxes. So if you're living in Humphreys, this is where any of you like your letter mail will be. There are cards, things like that. I don't know how many of you can take it this way. We have Summer's office. So if you ever need her during the day, she'll be right there. We have a little study room, conference room area. Each Humphreys is... We have this little room called the Camel Cafe. I don't know if you want to explain the association with camels, but feel free. So Humphreys has unofficially adopted the camel as our mascot. I don't know exactly where it started from. It could be Humphreys. It could just be that we're at the top of the hill. But we do lovingly associate a lot of our traditions with camels. So my staff has, past year, created this space, kind of transformed the study room into a very cozy and baby place to still study but just hang out. So yeah, a lot of the residents really seem to enjoy it. The RA staff really enjoyed it. And then a bunch of the artwork and stuff in here was either donated or made by residents for this space. Yeah, super cool and unique to this building. Did you mention the 60th birthday already? I have not. But this year, Humphreys will be celebrating its 60th birthday. It was opened in 1961. So yeah, we will be celebrating that this year. I'm just really enjoying the history of this building. So right now we're entering the Humphreys Great Room. This is kind of the main common area. If you want to do a 360, kind of show them everything. There's lots of seating and TVs and ping-pong table, pool table. And then there's also piano kind of over back in that corner. And then these mailboxes right here are, like Summer said, the founder's mail is also received here. So if you live in families, this is where your mailbox will be. If you live in Humphreys, don't get confused and think these are your mailboxes and your mailboxes were the first ones we showed. So yeah, this is kind of the Great Room. We can just kind of walk around, let you see everything. Is there any programming that you do particularly in this area? Yeah. We'll send information on our larger scale programs in this space just because it is such a huge space. But also like informal things like ping-pong or pool. If you want to rent out any of that equipment, we do have it at the front desk at least right now. So if that's more your jam, then we totally have that for you. I know there have been some very competitive ping-pong tournaments that have happened in the past year. So I'm excited to see if anyone is super skilled in that area. Do you compete? No, I am not. I feel like we gifted it all. So if it's against me, you will win, guaranteed. Right. And then as we come out of these other doors, we have the Great Room. Right after the Great Room, there's a kitchen area. So there's a community fridge where you can store things if they don't fit in a mini-fridge or if you don't have a mini-fridge. But it is a community fridge, so be mindful of that. There's a stove, a microwave, kind of a little seating area. So it's just a really great community space to be able to come down with your friends and make cookies and hang out and eat and cook a meal together. So that's a super, super nice luxury that the Great House has. So now I think we're right upstairs. Downstairs. Downstairs. Forgot about the downstairs. There's a big basement right down there. Downstairs will show you laundry first. So if you come by these bulletin boards, to the right is the laundry room. This is where all the washers and dryers are. This is ice fishing back there. So the University of Arkansas has this really cool app called a laundry alert where you can download it to your phone. And then if you're on the ninth floor, you can check the app to see which washers and dryers are available before you come down here. So that way you're not lugging all your clothes when there are no laundry services available at that moment. And then we also have this thing where you can scan a QR code on the washing machines and report any maintenance issues with the washers and dryers so that we can get those fixed properly. But yeah, this is the laundry room. And what year are you? I will be a senior. Senior? Yes. What did you study? I am a history and French double major. Okay. Okay, so right here we have vending machines. So there's just a couple of vending machines and then some snacks. All of the vending machines in Humphrey's take cash and then also credit cards as well. And I think they do the wireless pay as well. So yeah, that's super nice. Super nice to have if you need a midnight snack or something or if you go get food. That's there for you. And then we have kind of a recycling station here. So anytime you need to do any recycling, there are cans on the floors, I believe.  These are for you as well. And then this is kind of the, it's called the Humphrey's classroom space. So it's just like a large meeting room. If you have joined Lead Hogs, you'll have Lead Hogs meetings here. But yeah, this is just kind of another little gathering space slash study space slash area to hang out I guess. Do you have anything to add about the classroom? We do use it like you're saying for Lead Hogs as well as staff meetings. But if you are interested in reserving this space and some of our other community spaces, that is an option as well. We just have that form on Hogs Inc. So if you need to like have a hardcore study session with a group of friends or you have a group that wants to meet, you can totally reserve this space so that it'll be just for you. And what is Lead Hogs? Have we told them what Lead Hogs is? So Lead Hogs is one of our housing student leadership groups. They meet every Monday from 6 to about 7.15. We do all kinds of leadership development, different activities. They also help during move-in. They get to move in early. But it's really just this awesome program that's year round. And you really just get to bond with the community in your building. Very nice. Head upstairs. Can we go into the water bottle? Or we can do that on the floor. Say, only what did you study? I study communication and with a minor in journalism. But I started out as a biology major actually. So how did that transition happen? I realized that chemistry was not the move. We are getting into the elevator, so we made Lead's connection bear with us. But I realized chemistry was not the move. And sciences like that were just too difficult. So I decided to go with communication and journalism. And I love it, so it was a great choice. Excellent, excellent stuff. And then you had a transition as well, is that right? Or you're still sticking with your major, but... Yeah, so I'm sticking with my undergrad major because I didn't realize soon enough to be able to change it. But I've decided that I want to go into kind of student affairs and higher education. So I'm going to go to grad school for communications. Very cool. We got a comment. Someone said, I hear this hall is haunted. Can you respond to that? It's not haunted. Despite being 60 years old, I promise it's not haunted. Someone said the connection was spotty. We were in the elevator, so let us know if it's better now. We didn't say anything super important. Yeah, it wasn't important. And we will post all this on YouTube and Instagram after it's done as well. Yeah, so first up we have these cool water bottle filler stations on every floor. They're great for reusable bottles or reusable cups. Super convenient that way you don't have to, you know, keep water bottles in your room or anything like that. And these are... These are standi-upy things. Yes, the standi-upy thing. But those are on every floor. And then do you want to talk about the trash shoe? Sure. A trash shoe on every floor. We just ask that anything you throw down the trash shoe is bagged and it's only like your personal trash. So if there's anything that doesn't fit down the trash shoe, please bring it downstairs to the basement. There is a trash room down there. Or dispose of it otherwise. We just want to make sure that anything in there is bagged. So it's not a craziness and we have to take it all up. Alright. So now we're heading into more of the, like, resident part of the floor where people live and shower and things like that. But first we're going to stop in a bathroom and kind of check that out. So Humphreys is a community style dorm. Which means there are no private bathrooms. So all the bathroom spaces are shared. In Humphreys there are four on every floor. So you'll share it with maybe 10 or 12 other people. Yeah. So over here we have two kind of toilet spaces. I won't show you because I feel like you know what those should look like. And then on this side there are two showers. They can have curtains to separate them. So more sinks in every bathroom as well. And so now we'll head into the room. This one right here. Yes. That sounds perfect. We're in room 925. So if you're in room 925, this is your lucky day. This will be your room. So one of the cool things about Humphreys is it has great views. They're absolutely beautiful. This side in particular has a great view of the stadium and kind of the rest of campus. But yeah. All of the cherry colored light comes with the room. Which I guess is just the beds in these rooms. And then everything else is built in and not really movable. One thing I love in Humphreys for a while and one thing I love about Humphreys is the built-ins. There's lots of storage and drawers and it's just super nice. Feel free to ask any questions. Do you have any measurements or any specifics in the room? Why don't you give us the length and the width of that if you don't mind. I'll use my hand help. So the length of the desk is 84 inches. This is 24 inches. So from here to that wall. That's a common one and this is another common one to ask about. So length was at 70 inches. Depth was it's 25 inches. I'm going to go ahead and measure this because this would also feel important to them. And then from counter to like the top of this is 36 inches. Someone asked how deep is the closet? Yeah. Oh, do you mind? Nope, yeah. So it's about 26 inches. And Mandy asks if I want to raise my bed and fill out a fix it form, what do I specifically ask for if I have something 35 inches high under my bed or under the bed? I would say you want a request that's lifted at least say 36 inches. If not a little bit higher. So you'll want whatever you do you know the height of the thing you want to put in there. I would say requested it goes higher than that. These go every three inches so they'll find something about that. Do you want to show the detail on those? So each of these pegs is three inches. And someone asked can you give dimensions of the drawers? There are several types of drawers that we can just do all of them. The top one and the middle one. So these bigger ones are I guess like this way? I don't geometry. Sorry. Because technically that's the width, that's the length, that's the height. And then the length is 31 inches. If you get the height you can come from right here on the lip. I guess the depth of the drawer is 9 inches. So all three of these are the same. All the opposite side are the same. Those would be different. They should be around the same length. The length of these is 22 inches. The width of them is 14 inches. And then the top drawers, I can't really get a good measurement on them. But I would say no more than three or four inches deep. They're very shallow drawers on the top. Same for kind of over here. They are 20 inches long, 12 inches wide. And then once again no more than three or four inches deep.  I feel like they should be the same. 20 by 12 and then... We can make it so that it only measures from the very top. Now it's only measuring from the top. So that's about five inches deep. So a little bit less shallow than the top. Holly asks, if the bed is partially raised, how much space is available for storage? So we kind of talked about that a little bit. You are able to loft the beds as high or as low as you want them. So in theory they could go all the way to up here. Or you could even put them lower than this. I don't really want them any lower than that. They'd be very close to the ground. So it's kind of customizable if you have something you want under your bed. You can always loft it when you get here and see how high you want to make it. Lofting the beds is relatively easy if you have one other person with you. We give out mallets that move in that make it easier to loft. Let's point out that stabilizer bar. Is that something that will need to be there if you go up to the higher? So also these stabilizer bars are part of the beds. Like Christopher said, if you loft it all the way, the stabilizer bar would need to move from the top to the bottom of the bed. That's just a safety measure so that the bed doesn't fall in on itself. But those make it very safe. Especially if you want to loft it all the way up. Also with lofting it all the way up, you can ask to have basically a guard rail put up just to make sure you don't roll out of bed when it's all the way up. And then we do ask whenever you move out, hopefully all the way at the end of May, that your bed is returned to its original height. So kind of the height these are right now. It has to be exactly the same when you move out. Avari asks, do you have to request to get the bed moved up or can you do it yourself? You can do it yourself, but you can also request if you feel like on move-in day, you're not going to have the manpower to be able to move it up. But yeah, so if you do want to request it, we kind of mentioned it earlier, fixit.urf.edu, or you can just search uark fixit and Google and it'll pop up. You just put in a request, tell them like your room number, your name, they might ask for your ID, your email, and then tell them what you want, how high you want it lofted and then they'll get it fixed for you. Mandy asks, what is the measurement from the floor to the windowsill? Or you can do it from the windowsill down, yeah. So from like the top of the ledge down is 36 inches. Bella asks, what's the measurement from wall to wall? From this wall or from the window to the wall? Or from, I'll just do them all. Okay, so this way 38 inches. And then I don't know if this is close to the door, yeah. Probably the best way. From the edge of the window ledge to the door is 166. And then like the size of the window ledge. Yeah, that's the next Abby asks, how deep is the window ledge? The window ledge is 16 inches deep. Alright, well we're currently caught up on questions. Do you have anything to say to the incoming class and any advice to give them? Yeah, so my kind of biggest piece of advice for you know moving in and getting settled is I know you've probably been buying some stuff for your dorm but my biggest piece of advice and something that I wish I could follow is that to wait until you get into your room to buy all your like beautiful decorations and all of your things. Because A, it makes moving in a lot easier because you have less to carry and move in but also you never know what your space is going to look like and you never know how things are going to fit and how you're going to want to decorate it so it's always a good idea to maybe wait until you get into your space to kind of decide how you want to set it up and decorate it that way you don't have a bunch of things bought beforehand that you end up not using. A few more questions came in. Kelly asks, how deep is the top of the closet in the middle? So those two. Yeah, this middle shelf is 16 deep and then I'll let Chris write the top one with the height jeans. That is 20, 20, almost 21 inches. All right. Mandy asks, can you have the stabilizer bar move down out of sight if you are only raising the bed around 36 inches? The stabilizer bar just to make sure that your bed is stable but if you choose to remove it just for a setting or whatever then that is totally up to you. Again when you move out we just ask that it's returned to its original location. Also if you are worried about it I know lots of people hang lights from them or just kind of wrap things around them so they're not as much of an eyesore that way you stay safe and it's cutely decorated so that's a great quick solution to that. Abby asks, is there a way for you to show us a corner room? Okay, we have another question. Okay, wall there gone, I kind of noticed something. So behind each bed as well is kind of a bulletin board I forgot to mention. They're built into the wall like the shelves and the dresser so that's something that's cool behind the bed if you want to hang up some pictures and decorate it to your liking. Bella asks, how tall is the two shelves in the closet? We can do it. Like from here to here? Probably like from here to here and then from here to there. Okay, the middle shelf is 9 inches high so like here to here, 19 inches. Alright, let's go see the corner room. Which is going to be a mirror image for the most part. We're going to room 923 and it looks the exact same. There's no really big difference. Another thing that we kind of forgot to talk about there is a cable box in every room that allows you to hook up to cable. We use Cox so we have a campus contour provider. One of the cool features about that is you can kind of you download the contour app on your phone and you know tell them you're with the University of Arkansas and then you can watch Cox on your phone anywhere you go and you can also do the same thing on your laptop so just go to University Contour or UR Contour I believe and it's the first link and you just tell University of Arkansas and then you can watch Live To Me for free on your laptop which is pretty cool. I use that pretty frequently but there is a cable hook up as well to hook up with T.E. Do you have any messages for the incoming community that's coming into Humphreys? I think what's really really cool about Humphreys is that we get so many different types of students in this building especially because it is so centrally located that it's kind of a cool place to be because you can really just like walk 10 steps and reach pretty much any part of campus. Not every part but almost every part. So I mean I'm really excited for you all to be here and I think it's just an awesome opportunity being located where we are to get involved to see different things and to really find your place here in Arkansas.