Welcome to the FeeCast, your weekly dose of economic thinking from the Foundation for Economic Education. I'm your host, Richard Lawrence, and I'm joined today, as ever, by our fabulous panel, Dan Sanchez, Mary Ann March, and our very, very special guest, Jorge Gerasati, who is from Venezuela. And if anyone has not seen the video that Jorge narrates, it's his life story. We put it out a couple of months ago. It's actually in the description, so if you click on that. So powerful. There's a powerful story about Venezuela, and that's going to be the topic that we're going to be talking a lot about today. We've talked a lot about Venezuela over the past couple of FeeCasts for good reason. And that reason is because there are some very terrible things happening down there, the most recent of which was a sham election on Sunday down in Venezuela that re-elected the president, Maduro. So we're going to get into that, and we want Jorge to tell us all about his personal story. Before that, though, I wanted to cue you, Mary Ann, to talk a little bit about where Venezuela came from and how it got to where it is today, because it's a pretty interesting and sad story. Yes. Absolutely. So in 1915, you must know this, that Venezuela was the fourth richest country in the world based on per capita GDP. And today, it is one of the poorest countries in Latin America, and the economic index, excuse me, the index of economic freedom ranks it as 169 out of 170 countries. Second only to Venezuela. All right, excuse me, Venezuela only has fewer economic freedoms than North Korea, nobody else. North Korea is 170, Venezuela is 169, and it used to be four. Right, that's correct. And why generally are these policies? Well, I think the four was the GDP. Right, per capita GDP. And the other number was economic freedom. That's correct. Yes. We've seen in Venezuela the rule of the law being eviscerated by price controls and regulations. And in 2016, a million people have taken to the streets in protest because people are starving and there's shortages on basic goods and medical supplies. I know I've seen from CNN pictures of newborn babies and cardboard boxes at hospitals because they just don't have access to goods. It's a devastatingly sad story. And I think there's no better person to talk about it than someone who's actually lived it. Jorge, you talk a lot about in your video where Venezuela came from, where it is now. But tell us your perspective of why Venezuela is in such a bad place today. I will start by saying thank you for all the support to our country, to our people. Because my people are struggling, as you said. There are difficult conditions that we are living right now in my country. And the fact that we have free organization just supporting us and expressing our voices and speaking out for us because the million of people who live in my country, they don't have the opportunity to speak out. They don't have the opportunity to express themselves because the government silenced them. Yeah, I might add here in my research, I also found that Venezuela breaks 143 out of 180 for press freedom. Press freedom. Yeah. So it's totally unfree in the press area. Chavez and the government of Chavez nationalized several newspapers, nationalized several TV stations and radio stations. So there's no way you can express in your country, in my country. And of course Chavez is the preceding president to Maduro. And tell us a little bit about how he got in power. Chavez was in the military and in 1992 he tried to meet a coup d'etat who wasn't successful. So he tried to overthrow the elected government. By force. A coup d'etat in which more than 200 people were dead last year were killed because of the coup d'etat. Because they tried to overturn a democratic government with issues, with difficulties. But that's why we believe in democracy because we believe in peaceful transitions. And he didn't believe in that. And that's why then he became a dictator in my country. So fast forward six years from the coup, the attempted coup, he was elected, legitimately. Legitimately. Yeah. There were difficulties in the 1990s. But the way countries overcome these difficulties is through democracy. It's through good public policy, it's through debate, it's speaking out, not through force. So with that being said, and I want to thank you for that, for expressing the millions of people that want to express. And they can't. And the international community is very important for us because then my people who are protesting every single day not only feel that their struggles are seen in the international level, but also that their protests are supported by Americans, people in Canada, in the European Union. And that's extremely important for us because we believe that they are like in our fight as well. It's our honor for sure. And I would begin to ask you, there are so many questions that we could ask you about Venezuela, but what truly are people dealing with today? You mentioned the lack of press freedom, right? We talked about in the last feed cast that there was a Kellogg serial factory that was closed. Yes. Right? But what truly are people in Venezuela experiencing now? And as a corollary question, because I'm sure we'll get into this a little bit later too, why can't they just elect a different government? Why was there a sham election? Yes. We'll need to divide in two different difficult circumstances that people live every day. The first one is, of course, the political repression. They cannot speak out. They cannot express themselves. They cannot blame a politician, a government politician, because they will put in jail. But also you have the social difficulties that to me are the most important ones. Because the people who are suffering the most are the people who Chavez told them that everything was going to be fine, right? That people who elected them and who believe in Chavez. So now these people that believe in him and his project, now they're suffering. My people are losing weight every single day because we don't have foods. Why we don't have food? Because we have a 20,000% inflation rate in my country and we have price controls. And so Chavez just nationalized the industries and he destroyed all the private sector. So the people who used to go, for example, being agriculture and produce the food that our people need, now those people don't have those farms because the government came and grabbed the farm from them. That's not fair. So what I've heard from some people is that things were okay under Chavez and then they got bad under Maduro. Is that true? That's a complete lie. That's a lie because the one who really made the policies that are resulting in this misery is Chavez. Chavez was the one who nationalized industries. Chavez was the one who made the central bank and another basically government institution. Chavez was the one who put all these policies in place of nationalizing banking or nationalizing agriculture or nationalizing the private sector and now we are seeing the results. Chavez had two big differences that Chavez, first of all, he had oil prices booming. He had oil prices skyrocketing more than $100 per barrel. And in contrast, when he was elected in 1988, one barrel of oil was $8. So imagine the change in the revenue of the government because the oil industry is controlled by the government. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that you see the result of these policies not right away. You see them years after that. So Chavez died in 2013. But for example, he nationalized all these industries and banking in 2009. So basically it was only four years after he did that. Now we are seeing the consequence. Not only we have a barrel of oil at $100, but Chavez made so many debts with other countries at the same time. So we not only have a boom in oil prices, he also incurred this huge debt that just to give you an example, we have more than $200 billion in debt. $200 billion in debt. Exactly. And our exports are like $20 billion. So nothing is being exported. So we need to export 10 years without grabbing any money to pay only the debt. That's incredible. And we have the whole program with you. And so we're going to talk a lot about this stuff. We are going to take a break fairly soon, but I do want to hone in on a couple of terms that you've used. And I want to kind of cue Danny to kind of give us some light on this. Two terms for you, Danny, nationalization and inflation. What are those two and how are they playing into this situation here in Venezuela? Sure. So nationalization is when the government basically takes over a company, maybe a factory, or maybe a whole industry. And so oftentimes when governments will nationalize is when, so in the oil industry, when it would help them to get a huge portion of the income of the country. And when there is some sort of financial or economic crisis where they are not producing enough so they say, okay, well, we need to nationalize. So in the Kellogg plant case, for example, that the Kellogg just couldn't afford it anymore so they pulled out. And so then Maduro's government then nationalized it and then gave it to the workers and then said, okay, well, this is we, the people are going to provide food now. So in the process of socialism, which we discussed in last week's Vcast, nationalization is crucial. Yes. Yes. Nationalization is, they're stepping stones towards socialism. And then inflation. What quickly is inflation? Inflation can mean two things. There can be money inflation or price inflation. And the first leads to the second. So money inflation is when you just create additional units of the money. Just printing more money. Right. Right. And then the second lead is that the new money starts bidding up prices and so prices start to rise. Which is exactly what's happened in Venezuela. Yes. You said 20,000% inflation? Yes. It's incredible. Just to give you an example, one item. Let's get back to that as soon as we get the next break because we're going to take a quick break and then we'll get right back into the conversation. One year ago, over 700 students, scholars, philanthropists, and business leaders from five continents gathered in Atlanta for a brand new, one-of-a-kind event, FICON. But get ready. This year is going to be even bigger. At FICON, we celebrate inspiring entrepreneurs, innovators, and wealth creators while helping you set your own path to personal and professional success. And it was awesome. 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So we were talking right before we left about inflation, and I know that there's been a huge amount of inflation in Venezuela, but before we get into that, I do want to cue you, Marianne, because you did have something to say in your previous remarks. You mentioned a term that might not be familiar to all of our watchers and listeners, and that's the rule of law. It's something we kind of talk about a lot at fee, but what is the rule of law? Well, I like to think about the rule of law as being opposed to the rule of man, where there's uncertainty for the future, where we're not sure if the rules are going to apply to everyone equally. So we think about the rule of law as being things like property rights, where I know that this is my coffee mug, and if Dan tries to take my coffee mug, I can have something to say about that, and then we apply that to more important items than just coffee mugs. But the rule of law is very important for people to know where they stand and to we think about it in terms of economics, to have the right incentives. And to have some certainty as to how to plan our own economic lives, whether it's for ourselves personally, our families or our businesses that we're planning for. So maybe if I know that if I'm getting paid X wages today that tomorrow hyperinflation isn't going to make those wages worthless, I saw an interesting news story at a market in Venezuela where women were buying plantains and one woman said that to the price of one plantain was equal to the amount of money that she bought her home for, one plantain banana. A few years earlier, because in the units that had been inflated over time by the government, it was the amount of the house that she purchased. So not the same value, because the actual value of those slips of paper became less through the inflation process, but the numerical figure was the same as buying a house for buying a plantain. That's incredible. You had a story you were about to tell about inflation. It sounds like it's a pretty big problem. Inflation is the most difficult problem any people can have in the household because, for example, if you want to buy a fruit, in one year that fruit will cost you 20,000% times more. It will cost you much more than when you buy it. And the salaries don't go with inflation. The salary is stagnated. So right now if you want to provide for a family of five people, you need to have 100 minimum wages to do that in my country. 100 minimum wages. Just to provide for your family. And that's why you're seeing so many difficulties in my country in terms of health, because my people cannot eat with their salaries. Because when their government produces inflation, that money that are purchasing power of the people goes to the hands of the politicians. And they spend that money on their stuff. And my people who should have that money, those savings to the consumption, they don't have it. And that's why it's the most important issue that we have in my country right now, we need to stop that. So you mentioned that a family of five would have to rely on 100 minimum wages as prescribed by the government.  I'm curious if you could tell us something very interesting about your own family. Are you one of many children? What is your family like? I come from a very, my family is just amazing. They gave me an opportunity to study here in America. They gave me an opportunity to follow my dream, my passion, which is to make a change in my country. And even though my family has struggles as any Venezuelan family, my family doesn't have the most struggles that most Venezuelans have. And I am working for them. I am fighting for them for the 90% or 99% of Venezuelans who cannot afford a decent living. And when I say a decent living, it's just one person consuming 3,000 calories per day. And that's it. We are not asking for a country that gives you everything. We're asking for a country that gives you the opportunities to flourish, to have a job, to provide for your family, and to give it a decent living. So personally, I live in the States right now because I'm studying here. And after I finish studying, I want to come back to my country. So right now, I don't have those issues. But I'm here because of those people who have those issues. Because at the end, ideas, the ideas that we defend, change the life of those people that need it the most. So where do you go to school currently? I go to the Honor's College of the Florida Atlantic University, and I study economics. And of course, you're an intern now at Fee, which is a point of pride for us. Yes. Just as well as I think it is for you. So you were talking about ideas, right? And you're talking about different ways in which we sort of conceive of the problem in Venezuela. And something that I wanted to make sure that we hit on was the fact that certain commentators in the US, as this is a growing issue in people's minds, have been talking about Venezuela. But they don't always get it totally right. For example, last week tonight, you guys know John Oliver. It's his show that he does on Sundays. And he has a clip. You can probably find it online. We might even actually post it in the description so you can watch it yourself. There are a lot of things in there that we might actually take issue with, primarily, that he actually says that what's down in Venezuela, what's happening, is not socialism, which of course is the creed of the party that is in power. Maduro's party and Chavez before him, they had a socialist creed. And of course, last week on the FeeCast, we talked about what those terms actually mean. Actually, public or government operation and ownership of the means of production, right? And so that's what nationalization is part of. It's a part of a socialist plan. But there's something interesting that John Oliver says. He says, this is not socialism in Venezuela. This is actually mismanagement of the economy. Yeah. I have a quote from John Oliver that I'd like to read to you. He says, Samo Chavez's programs could have been sustainable if he had pursuant to sound economic policy and run a tight ship. I think it would have been harder for him to run a tidorship when they're already bossing around the industries and telling people what they can or can't do. Oh, yeah. And mismanagement as sort of a diagnosis of this whole problem is a bit suspicious, wouldn't you say? Yeah, I mean, the problem is, is that with socialism, you can't have good management. Because nobody, no government can have good management. That the economy is too complex to manage. That it's all that we as fallible human beings can do to manage our own lives and our own responsibilities. So at most, our own businesses that we're in. And then all those businesses interrelated, the decision making that goes into that is so complex that one single central planner could not possibly manage it all. I mean, that's the main lesson of our founder Leonard Reid in his classic essay, I Pencil, is that no single person even has the knowledge to make a single pencil much less centrally planned in economy. And of course, people like us who have been to our office know how seriously we take that pencil motif. When you walk into our office, we have pencils on the walls. We have pencils on the light pendants. They're everywhere to remind us of this fantastic essay that people cite all the time to kind of look at the miracle of the market process. And by the market process, I mean buying and selling, producing, and service production. All these things come together through interesting and sometimes unknown ways to produce the things that we actually want. It's an amazing story. So we'll put that in the description as well. I wanted to go into a little bit of detail about one example of what happened in Venezuela when the oil company was nationalized. And help me on the pronunciation here, if you will. Petrolos de Venezuela? Petrolos de Venezuela. Doesn't that sound nice? Well, what happened is in 1976, Venezuela first nationalized this industry, but more or less in name only. The people running the company were still calling the shots. They were still making the decisions. But then after Chavez was elected, he took power and started curtailing those freedoms. And before you knew it, investment was down. And then in 2002, there was a strike and following which 18,000 workers were fired, 2 thirds of whom were management and skilled professionals. And they were replaced with cronies and politically connected individuals who had no idea how to run an oil refinery. So the friends of the government are put in to operate an oil refinery and all the professionals and experts who actually know how to do that are kicked out. Right. And then in 2014, what oil prices tank? It just exacerbated an already dire situation. And that's the thing is that capitalism is maligned as being plutocratic, that the elites get to have access to everything. But like you said, in this case, it's the cronies that are able to take the commanding heights of the economy. That seems more plutocratic to me. Commanding heights, Danny? What are those? So the commanding heights are often the big parts of the economy that can be seized. So it's hard to seize tiny little industries like the creation of this mug. But if you can seize the oil supply, which is pretty centralized, and as long as you have enough police, you can just march them around it and then grab it. Then you have seized a big component of the economy because energy is needed for the entire economy to run. And so you get like a stranglehold over the economy. So let me ask you this, before we go to our next break, is Venezuela actually a socialist country? We know that that's actually the creed under which they operate. Of course it is. I mean, first of all, the slogan of Chavez was socialism in the 21st century. So modern. Yes, but it's not only the slogan, it's the ideology behind the policies. It's the train that Chavez got in Cuba and that is coming from the Soviet Union tradition. And we know that. For example, policies such as nationalization, as you mentioned, policies as a price caps. Policies at the end, what they are doing is that they're limiting the freedom of the people to produce and to create their own futures. And that's why this is a philosophical question. Either you believe that politicians should create prosperity for all of us, or if we believe that people working hard every single day for their dreams will create the prosperity that we need in our country. So of course there is mismanagement, but the reason that we're in these problems is because Chavez and Maduro, their administrations, they just attack private property, private entrepreneurship, and really what they're attacking is the people's life, their futures. Yeah, and it's creating such a violent situation there, too, as well, which we'll get into in a moment here. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back to the fee cast after a quick message. Are you an Atlanta student or young professional interested in building your business and exploring entrepreneurship? Come to FECON 2018 to get the jump start you need to bring your business vision to life. 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And we're back to the fee cast and we were talking before we broke about some of the violence that is happening in people's lives that are being risked in Venezuela today. And I wonder if you might sort of talk about what it is to live like in Venezuela today. I bet you have been seeing all over the news what is happening in my country when people go out and protest. I was one of them when I was living in Venezuela. But why we protest? Because we believe that we deserve a better future that our country can have a better future. So in my country when you go to the streets and protest, protest for your rights, for your freedom, the government, what is their response? They have violence against us.  Students with just a flag and a slogan and singing about the great future that we can have as a nation. On the other side, you have the police, the police and the military just against them, throwing bullets at them, killing them. Just last year, more than 100 people, more than 100 students were killed. We cannot tolerate that. We cannot tolerate a government that is against their people and they want people silenced and they want their people seeking better public policies and seeking a change. We cannot have a change in my country if you have a government who's not tolerating other views. Now, a lot of people who sympathize with socialism, they say that the police state stuff that you're talking about, that that's not part of socialism. But do you think you can actually separate the police state aspect from it, of it from the economic planning? I believe in political freedom, civil freedom and economic freedom. You need to be free to pursue your dream. You need to be free to speak out and those freedom are together because if you have a government in which their mentality is to silence the students, if their mentality is to close the businesses that they don't believe are good enough for the common good, that's a tyrannical government. That's a government that is using their country to do their business to their own thing and it's not letting the people to live their lives. So they're interconnected. That's why we believe in freedom. And relating to the violence, the tyranny of the government is not merely limited to the actual government proper. There are gangs that are supported by the government as well that are inflicting all sorts of violence on people. People are being mugged on the streets regularly. It's a terrible situation there. But I do wanna connect that, Danny, because when we circle back to socialism, we talk about the creed under which all of this is happening. This is actually textbook socialism, exactly the way that one of our favorite economists actually mapped out Ludwig von Mises, actually mapped this out what's happened in Venezuela. Yeah, well, and he thought it was the road to socialism because Ludwig von Mises actually had pretty strict definition of socialism where he thought that as long as there were any kind of prices in any kind of market at all, that it wasn't socialism, that socialism was complete central planning, but he talked about, he had this essay called the middle of the road policy leads to socialism, and what he describes is how interventions spiral, that one creates a mess that justifies another intervention, which creates a mess which justifies another one. And it really seems like that's what happens in Venezuela. So Jorge, tell me if any of this sequence is incorrect because what it seems to me that the sequence of interventions has been is that they nationalized the oil, that gave the government a lot of money that it could spend on generous social spending, generous in a sense, but then the price of oil dropped, and so then that made it harder, there was a budgetary shortfall, they tried to make up for that by printing extra money, monetary inflation, but then that drove up prices and it created price inflation, but then they tried to clamp down on that with price controls, but then that price controls as economics teaches us creates shortages, especially of food, and then businesses start to close and then the government uses that as an excuse to nationalize factories, especially food factories. I mean socialism is violence and socialism where they want to create is a dependency on the state for everything. It's not only ideological because if you go to Marx, to Oscar Langue, if you come back to these guys, they believe that they should change the preferences of the people, that they should change the way that they think that the people are their issue and not them, and that's why you have people like Che Guevara just killing people in Cuba, in Bolivia, in Africa, just everywhere he went. This is an ideological issue as well that when you go to the technical issues, they just go and let's say they nationalize agriculture, so you nationalize that, that in fact not even the Soviet Union did, but Venezuela did it, they nationalize most agriculture, so when they start managing these farms and things like that, they don't produce enough, they don't produce well because what, they're a bunch of crooks. So then, when they're not producing enough, they need to control prices because as things become more scarce, then they will rise the prices, so they need to control that as well. So you end up in a system which they control everything. You turn one policy knob, something else changes, you gotta pull another lever and figure out what wheel to turn next. It's amazingly complex when you think that you can actually foresee every different dimension of an economy that you have to control and that gets us back to what just happened in Venezuela this past weekend. I'm wondering Jorge, if you can say a little bit about the experience of people in Venezuela who are politically connected and the experience of people in Venezuela who are not politically corrected. That's a great question. And I ask because transparency international is called Venezuela the most corrupt country in Latin America. Yeah, I heard about the certain policy where there was special kinds of bags with food, with like actual, like a range of food, but that only like high standing members of the socialist party were able to access them. It is horrible because in Venezuela, and as a fascist type of like mentality of this government as well, they divide people. If you are with the government, if you are a politician, you have for example, one price for the dollar, not like the rest of the people. You have one price for this and X item. So it's like it's completely different experience. The people who are connected with the government, they have to, they have from their tables. They have properties in other countries. They are extremely rich because the oil industry produced $1 trillion in the last 20 years. $1 trillion in a country like mine with only 25 million people, it's a bunch of money. So they are connected, they are well, they are good. We call it the enchufalos, which is like connected in Spanish. What is the word again? Enchufalos. Enchufalos. It's like you're connected to a plug. Oh, okay, got it. So that's the difference. But the vast majority of the country is having many, many issues. And so these connected people, I'm assuming, were most of those who actually came out this past weekend and voted, right? I mean, in the past weekend, only, and we're gonna go into that, of course, less than 20% people voted. But the people who voted are either those enchufalos who are not more than 1,000 or 2,000. But you know what is horrible about the government is that he went to the poor neighborhood in my country, in which you have people who are suffering, who had two or three days without eating, and they say, go out and vote, I'm gonna give you a box with food just for a day. So I cannot blame whoever did that. But you know what is the beautiful thing? That the vast majority of my country reject that. Reject the corruption of the government. They reject that the government was using their necessities to find votes and legitimacy. And so they boycotted the vote. They boycotted the vote. Yes, more than 80% of my people didn't go out and vote because it is not an election what we had. I also read that the political opponents were being suppressed as well. Where is there even another option? No, there was another option, but it was not a real option. They said, the government said that it was an option, but it was real not. So that's why people didn't go out and vote because we have political prisoners or political parties are illegal, according to the government. Your political parties are illegal? Yeah, the government just illegalized all the political parties. We don't have media outlet to express ourselves. We cannot go and ask for votes, for example, because you will have the government just repressing the people and scaring the people. So those are not real elections in which the government just make a fraud. Just try to make an election that is not real in action. And the international community mostly is regarding it as a fraud. And in fact, the United States government has taken some steps to maybe try to solve some of this. I read that Trump has announced that he wants to increase sanctions on Venezuela. Now what concerns me about that is that seems to play into Maduro's story, that a lot of why he, it seems how he gets away with this is that he has this foreign boogeyman.  And then it causes people to rally around the flag as they call it. I mean, but right now we need to understand that Maduro only has 7% popularity in my country. 7% in all the polls. So my people do not believe Maduro- Reelected as president at 7%. That's quite a trick.  People hate the tyrant, the dictatorship. So people do not believe that the sanctions will produce economic issues. They are living their economic issues for more than a year.  They know that the government is doing that. So that's why people understand that the sanctions are against the regime and not against the people. With that being said, I know that sanctions is a very polemic topic. Not only Venezuela, but international diplomacy. Because for example, the United States have had sanctions against North Korea, Iran, Cuba, the Cuban embargo, right? Sanctions are not enough, but these sanctions are good because they are against the regime. Target officials, not against the people who actually have any issues. Also sanctions are not enough because we need to do more at the national community. Interesting, we're gonna have to actually break right now because there's so much to talk about with Venezuela. We might have to do another episode with you or while you're here. But this has been an absolutely fascinating discussion and we'll post a lot of the different items we referred to in the description. So for now, we'll see you next week at the FEECAST.


Welcome to Sister Power. I'm your host Sharon Thomas Yarbrough. Today's topic to grow we must create. This afternoon, we have two special guests, Dr. Manulani Allui Meyer and her sister, Ms. Meliana Allui Meyer. Dr. Manulani Meyer obtained her doctorate from Harvard by studying Hawaiian and via language history and the clear insights of Hawaiian mentors. She is an international keynote speaker who has published on the topic of native intelligence to quantum sciences, transformational and whole thinking. Manulani has been an associate professor of education at the University of Hawaii in Hilo and hosts to many creative community transformational education projects within and outside the university. She is an international evaluator of indigenous PhDs and finds much connection within the healing insight of other indigenous scholar practitioners. She is currently the director of indigenous education at UH West O'ahu and inspired with many community initiatives in educational reform, food security, and prison transformation. Her sister, Ms. Meliana Meyer, artist, educator, and filmmaker, received her BA in design, photography, winning the Borelli Arts Prize from Stanford University. When not making films, she continues teaching in the community as her commitment to the arts, Keke and their families, are a driving force in her life. She considers the work that she does around the state part of her mission to bring the arts to empower the people. Meliana's work can also be found in important collections in Hawaii, in the city and county collection of Honolulu, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the East West Center, as well as the Hawaii State Art Museum, with works in private collections both here and abroad. She is also a published author and illustrator. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what Sister in Love looks like. Yeah, I'm waiting right here. This is it. This is Sister in Love right here. Hey, you know. Yeah, welcome. Thank you. I'm Elana Emeliana. I'm so happy to have you here. I'm so happy to be here. This is just so I'm so excited about having both of you here at one place. The first thing I wanted to start with, congratulations on being on the cover of the Honolulu magazine, Power of Ohana, tell our ladies and gentlemen out there, first of all, what does Ohana mean in case people do not know? And then, not only that, I want to know about the Louis Meyer family. Give us your history. OK, in a nutshell, take it away, sister. We love to put each other on the spot. So our family is dedicated to transformation of Hawaii to understanding and the practice of cultural Hawaiian values. And this article expresses that idea in the concept of Ohana. Ohana is our Hawaiian word for family. But as we know, and as we practice, our family is an idea of strength, continuity, and not a nuclear sense. It's an extensive idea. In Hawaii, we are family. And this is what I'm understanding about being home in Honolulu after being 30 years away in Hilo and Aotearoa. But that's why being with my sisters is actually life-changing and affirming to the concept of Ohana. Also to understand that there's a lot of metaphor in our language. So Oha is also a part of a plant. And that notion of Na Ohana, it has to do with all the little rootlets that are around Kalo. And it's a beautiful way to understand a deeper message for belonging or of belonging, that we are all a part of something larger. So it's actually very poetic for me in terms of that. And family is, as Manu said, not just nuclear, but is extended. So yes, we are indeed family. And it's really humanity we're talking about. When I was reading about the power of Ohana, what struck me in the article, and I said, how could they get all of you together? And something that you mentioned, you said, we always try to get along. Oh my god, that's a practice.  And I was thinking, well, maybe she's going to tell us to go to church. That's an easy one, right? Because it's only something that's very routine. But no, she said, take care of one another and be kind to each other. It's like, oh no, that's really a practice. So when she said that to us, it was like, OK, we can do that. But it is a practice. So let's not kid ourselves. It's good, hard work. It's so much easier to be kind to one another. It is a practice. Beautiful, actually. So how did this happen? Well, just give me a quick story. There's so many amazing families in this magazine. There are. But you ladies, the elite Meyer family is on the cover. That says a lot. I know. Well, I haven't read the article yet. So you've got the first copy. I know, you've got the first copy. We don't even have the first console. Yeah, we never even looked at it. We have been dedicated our whole lives through the work of our grandfather, Noah Webster O'Gooley, that the commitment that O'Hana has to the love of land and the love of our people has been infused in us through our commitment and through our mother and through just all the efforts of our cousins. There's Emmett O'Gooley on the cover. And he has helped stop the bombing of Kaho'olavi. There's Mihanna, our cousin, who has kept Puerhmana, the music of her mother alive. Her mother was a living treasure for our people. There were 500 songs, beloved to Hawaii. There's Elena, our cousin, who's another musician, who has been keeping the Kani Kapila spirit alive forever. Miley, of course, our sister, native books in Namea, Hawaii, she is an unbelievably beloved publisher. Sort of inspiration and very much connected to every community. And Moana, our younger sister, she's an educator at Punahou, and she's been beloved there for over 15 years, I believe. And we have two more. Malia, our eldest, who's passed, and actually three more. And beloved Moana, Manu's twin sister, who lives in Portland, and then our brother, Maui, who's also up in Oregon, who's an entrepreneur. Yeah, it's a lot of energy. This is a- It is. Well, before we move on, this is another thing I love, and I'll read this to you. And it says something about Dr. Emmett, your, Dr. Emmett, Louie, said, and I had the pleasure of speaking with him, after the six women cousins finished a rousing wake up of Aie, for emphasis, they repeat a verse. Preserve the beauty that surrounds you now. Protect the land in spirit of aloha, then with a fist bump. You already get a fist bump. So just tell me about that phrase. Well, it's our incredible aunt, and all of the energy and the kuleana of people, all of us collectively who love the land, who love this place we all get to call home. And it's a very special thing.  The land is that which feeds us. So when we talk about taking care of her, it's because we believe she's adamant and alive, and it's something culturally that is the deepest essence of who we are. Right. Yeah. Well, we're gonna move on and talk about ho-oh-ulu. Tell me, ho-oh-ulu, ho-oh-ulu. I love that ho-oh-ulu, our time of becoming. And we do have a picture of the cover of your book, and Ray's gonna put that up, and while he's putting the cover of that book, and what I loved about it, you did speak about your sister in the book. And one thing I love is dedicated to your eldest sister, Malia. And you said that Malia taught us the following five truths. During her time of transformation, do only what you are led to do. Don't judge others. Love people for who they are. Forgive, play more. And what I wanna know about, there's the cover of the book, it's absolutely beautiful. Not only are you the writer, so we have an opera here, and we have an artist. You did the illustrations for the book. Now, how did you collaborate on that? Wow. Easily. Oh, oh, sure, okay. No, no, no, seriously. Absolutely, Mani will tell you about this. Tell us about the cover, Malia, because blue is the ancient color of love, and when she showed me that cover, I cried. So, Malia, tell us what that means about it. Well, actually, it's important for you all to know that this was a place where fresh water flowed, the Mulivai in Mauna Wili at Ulu Po. So it's where, it was a fresh water stream, actually, or, you know. Punawai. Punawai, excuse me, I don't mean Mulivai, but Punawai. And it was high noon. So I'm getting the reflection of the sun, and then there's a double image of also the kupu-kupu fern, because I just enjoy doing kalah, so it's this notion of growth, da, ho'ulu, which is what ulu means is to grow. And ho'ulu ho'ulu is a gerund that really means to cause things to grow. So that's this incredible thing that has to do with land, water, light, and spirit. But I want to also say that ho'ulu is one of the three types of spirit possession in Hawaiian culture.  Yes, it's not a negative. It's a positive way. So I believe we need to be possessed in a positive way in order to get to our next phase of transformation in Hawaii. And I think our time of becoming is now. Yeah, and you know, artists would call that being in flow. I mean, you know, and dervishes do it. So that notion of possession carries a negative connotation in other cultures, but not for you and not for me. So it's important that we're actually having a discussion about culture as well, so that's important. I love that. Now, in my opinion, when I was reading through the book, I think that whomever is coming to visit Hawaii or visiting here, this should be a must read book because it has a Hawaiian land glossary.  I mean, so you can feel a part of it as soon as you land here. And we call Hawaii, I call Honolulu the bus stop to heaven. Yeah. I don't want to borrow that. But you know, glossaries are really important because they are not shortcuts, and they're not even cheat sheets, but they're opportunities to go, oh, this is a basic. This is a baseline of things that you should know. So you know, I think a glossary for many of us would be a really good thing about a lot of things. In Hawaii, though, we really want people to understand the depth of ideas and the passion of our thinking is found in multiple interpretations and multiple levels, literal, multiple, and even the secret. So this book, hopefully, is meant to engage you to stimulate your secret understanding of what loving really means, because Aloha is our true intelligence here in Hawaii. We know like Brad. Okay, but hey, it's okay. I'm not supposed to tut your home, but beep, beep, beep. No, but think about it. But think about it, it's really important. We're gonna take a quick short break, but when we come back, there's a statement here that you said, Manu, get rid of the belief. I mean, really get rid of it. That we are somehow inferior. So when we come back, not only do we wanna talk about the other books that you both have touched and written and you put your illustrations on, we wanna come back and talk about that. All right, stay with us right here. We'll be right back, this is Sister Power. Right, we're back. Welcome back to Sister Power and our topic for today, To Grow We Must Create. And we were talking about your book and we left off with this question that I love. Get rid of the belief, I mean, really get rid of it, that we are somehow inferior. And the reason why that touched me, because the African-American culture, we have that word attached to us being inferior. And if we know our history, meaning the African-Americans, we have invented the cell phone, disposable diapers, the soles and your shoe, traffic signals. It can go on and on and on and on. So tell me about that word inferior with this book. Yeah, in the letter to us. James Baldwin was the one that said, I will never let anyone describe my experience again. And that was inspiring to me because when you stop having or listening to other people's interpretation of your own life, then you begin to grow and ask yourself the question, who am I really? And therefore, who can we be collectively? And he was inspiring to me. He did it against all odds. He said, I'm gonna define my own reality. And once you start doing that, it's over. The change is already here. And when you have indigenous people. Or just begun, yeah, exactly. And when you have native people saying, hey, you guys, we can do this better. You know what I mean? We really can. We can do this better. And that's what I mean. It's our clarity that's up to bear it. Not anyone else's. We have to stop feeling inferior. I have to stop feeling inferior. Oh, you're one.  And so the capacity for us to love is where we shine. And this notion of inferior, it's like, by whose standards? And I think that's an important question because inferior to what? And by what gauge? So this book is transformational for so many of us because it really defines and it goes more deeply into issues and things that we all want more clarity about. Another one here, you have several, but I love this word, understand that words have mana. Break it down. Break it down. Break it down. Talk to them about the ole-lo-no-ya because that's where that comes from. Ika-ole-lo-ola, ika-ole-lo-maki. There is life in our language and our words. There is death in our language and our words. So our ike kupuna, the knowledge of our elders is still with us through that proverb. And it basically means watch your thinking and be a person of integrity in how you articulate that because that articulation is actually linked to history and to the future thousands of years beyond us. So be very careful of your words. We're flipping with our words nowadays. We use words poorly. We use, I use words and I can improve my speech by improving my mind. And I think that's that idea we first said. And your intentionality in terms of, in those words, they are so potent. So it actually is an opportunity in our ole-lo-no-ya. To be cognizant of how we carry ourselves. Because for us, as there is mana, there is energy in the words, especially as you ole or pray or sing. And there's a communion that goes on. So it's really an important thing for us to always be aware of. And I think the millennials need to hear that. I mean, they're saying anything and everything on social media. Oh my God. They will definitely come back to haunt you. Write it on a piece of paper. Get it out and throw it away. I'm with you on that. I do that myself. I know. Did you hear that? That's good advice. Good advice. That's very good advice. Let's move on. And I want to talk about your father's book. What Would You Leave? Tell me about that book. What Would You Leave by Harry K. Meyer. Yes. And illustrations by you.  Seriously? This actually is a book that was written. And I should read what this says. It's beautiful. It says, our father wrote this book in 1959 following the birth of his fourth and fifth children and Moana, of a number that eventually grew to seven throughout Thoughtful About the Future. Our father set out his legacy on paper. He took the time to challenge us creatively and lovingly in his writings, hoping that we would in turn come to appreciate the mysteries he spoke of in this book in our world. This gift is to be shared, and its universal appeal is what every father gives his child or hopes to, life and the hope of a better and more meaningful tomorrow. So this is like really a little Bible for us. We kind of love it that way. Yeah. So our father is, for lack of a better word, he's opinionated. Oh, opinionated. Yeah, yeah. So it's a very full, complete work that takes us through ideas that he has for all of us and actually for our children and their children's children. So wonderful people. He'd have slogans written over our doorways as we walk through them, for instance, through these doors past the most beautiful girls in the world. Oh, my. How could you be inferior with that? Exactly. True to your teeth or they will be false to you. Yeah, I mean, really, we had these things all over the place. My favorite is always be curious. That was in the kitchen. Kissing don't last, but cook redo. And you're an excellent cook, too. That's another thing. Well, you know, that's part of the art. That's part of the growth and growing every day to create, to make meaning in our lives. So yeah. That's why to grow we must create is the name of our show here with you. Because we have to grow. And in order to grow as both community members and as individuals in this very, very chaotic world we must create, create with our minds, create with our hands, but create with our languaging. So creation, destruction, creation, destruction. Let us create together. This is why I admire authors and artists, because you start with a blank sheet of paper. Correct.  Where does that come from? It comes from a need. It comes from a need to be heard and to find voice to interior ideas and things that really come from other places, as in from our kupuna, from our mentors, from our kumu. Because I can brag about all of the kumus I've had in my life, whether at university or in Ikehawaii. And they are so numerous. So money went right between the two of us. We could have a whole show and just talking about our beloved teachers. We will. Yeah, because I'll tell you something. Without our teachers, there's very little that we can do on our own. Because the work that we do creatively is all about not only growing ideas, but growing courage and growing insight. So it's not just growth. It's actually how those ideas connect and then actually create other things. You know? I mean, that's what I see it. There's a process called kohu iya in Hawaiian. Kohu is the choose. Iya is the no choice. So it means choice, no choice. Mellie thinks she's being asked to illustrate this book. But actually, it's been asked from her for long ago because of her creative spirit. She was the only one that could do it in this kind of quality. So that type of responsibility, the kuliana, is not an obligation negative. It's an obligation positive. You know, that's what I love about it. I know an obligation positive. That's a good one. Yeah, I'm going to write that down later. And let's just move forward with another book, Hawaiian Charter School Book. OK. Where do we start? All these beautiful, gorgeous, colorful books. We'll have to brag about all of our colleagues, OK? OK, I don't care about it. OK, so here's the deal. I get to work with extraordinary teachers, kumul, and their beloved children, who are motivated and compelled to do incredibly good work. So this is a recent publication from Waial this year. But it was a project. And I told kumulahela Ighartar Sajinakumul, this is a great idea. And it's going to take time, because excellence just doesn't happen. So this just came out this year. And it's spectacular. And for all sorts of reasons, I wish we had more time about it to speak. This book actually came out of a charter school at Kamakau. So this is Samuel Manaya Kalani Kamakau. And I love to work in charters because there's such need to do art everywhere. But there's such incredibly compelling need in our community. And this was a book that was written because there's no literature for children. So they wrote the story. And they did the illustrations. The children? Yes. But I get to coach and help them do their work. And Kamehameha Schools helped us with that, my beloved colleague, Nikki Mashiro. And this book is a series of things that came from Kanooka Aina. And this is one of three or four that got published this year. This girl was so talented, but they didn't recognize her talent. They didn't know she had talent. So when I saw her drawings, I went, oh my god. Do you realize how extraordinary our children are in so many ways? And then this is a piece of dear Sam Noya Warner. He did a whole series of these things. And this, again, was another student that I supported. This is his work. So this is everyone else's work. And as a teacher, as we both are, you have to be a coach in what you love so that others can do what you inspire. Money was a fantastic coach. And so I just get to teach art, but I love to do what I like to do. And these are all, by the way, these are all bilingual readers. I did see this, a bilingual tale, a pronounced beautiful set by. So these are all in Hawaiian. Gorgeous. I mean, look at these. I mean, they're just beautiful. Beautiful. And each of these children and groups of children have stories, and they have great stories more later. But this is what we get to do. So we're also trying to practice our language in whatever capacity we can. It has to be lifted out beyond our universities. It must be practiced in the small and large ways in our communities, in our singing, in our bookmaking. So Ika'ole'ole'ola, let us nourish each other with our ideas and our mother tongue, that we are only one generation away from speaking. That man like that. And one generation of loss and forced assimilation. So we're really interested in also speaking truth to the powers that be because it's important to let folks know what the history of this place is and how we intend as educators and believers of porno, of righteousness, to help our community to heal and to really learn how to thrive. It's not just enough to survive anymore. We want everyone to. Because we've had such opportunity. So we intend and always want to model that, all of those good things. So truth for us is the ability to actually share with you the idea that we are in a transformational phase right now. And the collaboration that you offer us in so many levels, Sharon, is really, really vital. Because diversity is a strength for us. This is why Hawaii will change the planet. Because we really believe that we are the same differently. See, we don't stop when we're the same, we're not. We are the same differently. That kind of holistic thinking comes from our Ike Kupuna. And that is, we pay different rent because we want to learn from it. OK, I like that. Come on. Well, time is almost over. And I just wanted to thank you both. And in 10 seconds or less, tell us exactly what, when people come to visit Hawaii, what do you want them to leave with? Nice. Mellie, you first. Jump in the board. Aloha is our true intelligence. That's what I want people to feel, to experience, through our people, through the geography of Hawaii, and through the love that they can then take home and amplify around the world. Aloha is what we have to offer the planet. Oh, I love this. I know, and how can we beat that? We're not beating anything. We're just supporting each other. And I can tell you something, not only Aloha, but Aloha Aina as well. So the extension of that is to care for not only the land, but to understand the reciprocity that we need to hold for each other. That's wonderful. Thank you so much for joining Sister Power. We must do this again. Oceans of Aloha, peace and love. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.


Hello, hello. Hi, everyone. It's our great pleasure to spend some time with you all this morning to give you some insight into who we are and what we do at the Université numérique, the French National Digital University. My name is Caroline Stéphane, I'm based in Strasbourg in Alsace, Eastern France, and my disciplinary focus is foreign languages and humanities. I'm joined by my colleague Jacques Dong from Paris, who is involved with business and economics, and together we lead Université numérique's outreach initiative to the global open education community. Jacques, can you explain the rationale behind our support from the Open Education Global Conference as well as for our membership in the organization? In short, why are we here today? Thank you, Carol. First of all, I would like to say how glad we are to be participating in this great event. I remember expressing my regrets last year that I could not meet our colleagues from Taiwan nor visit the National Palace Museum and its magnificent collections of Chinese art. Today, I regret that we are not actually welcoming our colleagues from around the world in not just yet, but it seems that we probably will do it doing so next May, thanks to Colin Leidera and his team. So we've been members since 2017, representing at first business and economic departments at French universities, and I had the pleasure of meeting several presidents, past presidents, Larry Cooperman, William von Walkenberg, with a special mention for Sophie Tuzet, whose enthusiasm and vision were key to involving us in this community. Since I met Sophie and Igor in Cape Town in March 2017, and even more so since December 2018 when we met Paul at the Open Education Leadership Summit in Paris, we've been fortunate to improve our understanding of the global open education community, its strengths and its great achievements. In addition to our meetings in Cape Town, Delft, North Sea, Paris and Milano, as well as online, we've been given the opportunity to better understand what worlds of knowledge and experience, each of these great personalities brings to the global community. And we'd like to thank you so much for the insight you have provided with us with since that time. At the same time, we are also fortunate to benefit from an increasingly confident support from the French Ministry of Higher Education, with Anne-Sophie Barthes, its Director General for Higher Education, her senior advisors, Luc Messou and Mehdi Garzala, as well as from the conference or university presence. Finally, we're also very glad that we have a better understanding from our member universities, as well as a partner from Africa, from UNESCO and ICBE, or what we can bring and share with our colleagues outside France. So I believe the past four and nearly five years have allowed us to build a solid foundation grounded in institutional and human understanding. And we are ready to move forward as a sustaining member for open education global to explore how we can cooperate further, both on overarching approaches, as well as on more specific operational collaborations. I think now, Carol, it would be a good time to explain who we are and what we do in order to give more ideas to our viewers about possible areas for cooperation. Yeah, thank you, Jack. Université numérique is first and foremost a meeting place where French universities and elites, they call share their expertise and experience in the field of open education, and receive advice and support when implementing the pedagogical and organizational transformations that digital technology is bringing about. Université numérique federates several discipline areas, business and economics, healthcare and sports, science, engineering, the humanities, sustainable development and technology. While they were organized initially as separate entities, there are no working in close cooperation as Université numérique. The joint operator for the French Ministry for Higher Education Research and Innovation, with the mandate to represent French higher education in international bodies involved in open education. As taken together, we represent over 29,000 open educational resources and a staff close to 40 full time equivalents. I would like to stress the importance of scientific experts expertise. All of our open educational resources are validated by thematic committees, who played a vital role in our organization and operations operations. As Jack mentioned earlier we have extended and strengthened our international partnerships. He has described how our involvement with open education global is evolving. We also have a very strong strategy partnership working with the ICDE and UNESCO and OER in Francophone countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. We are working closely with the OER Foundation on a course dealing with corporate intellectual property rights and licensing. We also have a strong presence as some international conferences online in Berlin and e-learning in Africa, for example. And together with European universities or networks, we have been partnering in European Union funded projects with the most recently a focus on competencies and skills, microcredentials and mutual recognition agreements. Moving on specific projects we are currently involved with. In the past two years, actually starting before the onset of the pandemic, but also as a result of the pandemic, we have been working in four different projects funded by the government that have one thing in common. They are willing and our capacity to enrich our catalogs with OER that can be used by universities in the curriculum of national degrees. They are granular in design, focused on one concept, and no longer that's 30 minutes in student reading time. They are reusable in different contexts, bachelor level or continuing education. And they are based on H5P technology. As mentioned earlier, we have a strong focus on cooperation with Francophone countries in Africa. We are involved in several initiatives. The most important one being the joy of working group on the implementation of the UNESCO OER convention with ministries, universities, sorry, virtual universities, UNESCO, UNESCO national conferences, NGUS and companies. We are adapting to the Francophone context a course offered by the OER foundation to the global community and corporate intellectual property rights and open licensing. And we also contribute to the UNESCO Dakar side initiative, and we have implemented several bilateral projects in Congo, Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal. Jacques will now distribute a number of distinctive characteristics of French higher education on OER contexts that can give a better understanding of our goals and the constraints. Over to you, Alex. Thank you very much, Carol. So just a few words about the French higher education system. It's a dual drug system with both state universities that represent the larger part of the student population, and public or semi public elite grand cycle that are focused more on employment in the corporate world and recruitment for the decision making tears of the civil service. The public university system is more centralized than other countries. We do have a ministry in charge of higher education and the autonomy of university is a fairly recent trend. It started in 2007. At that time salaries and academic and staff will still manage some fully. And today in many universities, it is still the case for buildings and infrastructure. We have mostly national degrees with a curriculum that is approved by the ministry. And we have also a centralized approach to the table track system and the management of careers of academics. On the other hand, academics enjoy a fairly high degree of freedom inside the university. In the given field, we can have a great diversity of academic content between different universities within highly regulated administrative framework. And final characteristic of the French system is that we put as much emphasis on teaching, which is traditional, as well as on learning. This is a very specific state regarding OER landscape in France. She is the second most taught language after English, but it lacks very much behind English Mandarin in the number of open educational resources that are available. Furthermore, the legal context about civil law versus common law. I have a contradiction between the non revocable credit common licenses and also non revocable moral right of authors to withdraw of intellectual work. So there are need there is a need for mutual trust for us in continuing relationship with authors so that they so that we ensure that their content is up to date. The underlying technology that to date, and that he also does not feel the need to restore his work from what is public publicly accessible. We also have no open university because the ministry feels that an open university would compete with existing traditional university in delivering degrees. We have a coexistence of various types of education, and also the focus of the portfolios in state universities is sometimes more about self reflection than about exhibiting competencies and skills to potential employers. Finally, we have probably a blind spot in open textbooks because there is no financial incentive nor nor is there a great need felt by the students to use open textbooks. So this is definitely an area where we can learn from our colleagues across the world. So how does this impact how we can partner with colleagues around the world in the field of all we are that importance of trust as I mentioned earlier in our relationship with open education global, which builds over a period of time, and he's as important at least as at meeting specific objectives. Doing something that can be used by the general public in the general interest, rather than for specifically targeted audiences is also important. The timeline for deployment can be also longer, because they need to achieve a balance or compromise in several areas, political administrative cultural financial. So we have a tendency in France to favor absolute thinking versus operational deployment when I first worked on an EU funded project. My colleagues told me that we in France tended to not work on operational deployment before solving the abstract theoretical problem. That is true. And they also told us that we appeared to like it when the abstract solution is as beautiful as a quick tempo. So this is, these are one of the few things we need to keep in mind the constraints we face when dealing with OERs with French partners. Having said that, I think we share common belief, especially the western east and also the North Atlantic between not which is not so far from the Bay of Viscay and the Chesapeake. We share a strong belief that acting together as individuals and networks of individuals as organizations and networks of organizations and nations as a whole. We can, especially in the field of open education, make the world a better place for learners. Thank you very much and we are open to all the questions you may have. Thank you very much, Paul, Jacques and Cahol. It's really impressive set of activities that you have just articulated during your presentation. And also from our side from open education global side, we are really pleased about these collaborations with you, and we are looking forward to continued collaborations into the future. So I would like to encourage anyone who has some questions to please post them into the chat window or you can just unmute yourself and ask directly. And I would like to actually ask a couple of questions from my side and coming back to the digital thematic universities. I was wondering, I think many participants here might be wondering what kinds of resources have these universities been producing like how many educational resources exist under the auspices of these universities. And if you are perhaps able to share any information about impact metrics of these resources, where are they, where are they being used by whom that will be quite insightful and helpful. And the second question is related to the support that you mentioned of the Jacques of the French Ministry of Higher Education, Innovation and Research. And I think I'd like to hear a bit more about what you mean by support. You mentioned that this, this initiative was launched by the ministry, and it has been supporting this initiative for a number of years. And as we know, part of the one area of the recommendation of the US call your recommendation speaks about creating supportive policies. Now, the way that governments can tackle support for your varies. Some have put in place regulations or legislations, some have opted for more economic instruments providing funding for different initiatives. So that different approaches from different governments, but the fact that the ministry has been sustaining this kind of support for a number of years now. What is the rationale why does the ministry continue supporting this initiative or the number of years. Thank you. Okay, on the first question we have about 29,000 open educational resources at this time. With a very, very in degree of granularity, it can be very short video clips, or they can be full pledge 30 hour courses. In the past years, we have been moving towards more core content that can be aggregated into full 30 hour courses that are aligned with the curriculum of national degrees. And this will make it easier for to speed adoption by universities. And this also is something that African universities ask of us that we have full courses that can, they can then aggregate into a curriculum. Full courses are interesting for in terms of development for teachers, but we have, we now have a requirement for authors that they can be reused by other teachers and aggregated into full courses. Oscar has more insight into how they are used. And I will address the second question. The ministry support has been has varied in intensity over the past 15 years and, and it's only since just before the pandemic that we convinced the ministry that it will be useful to have a global usable repository of indexed content, which is also from a scientific perspective. So, at that time also the universities were engaging into their pedagogical transformation relying on digital technology. So there was a convergence between universities, the ministry and ourselves. And to give you an idea of the level of funding we have, I mentioned that we have 40 full time equivalents they fund about eight to 10 full time equivalents. And we found the additional to membership fees but mostly through projects specific calls that we answer at the European or the national level. Carol, perhaps something about usage. You are more keen on statistics than I am. It depends on the sources. A part are used directly by the students. And the most part is reused by teacher to prescript the resources on the student or the use of the contents for the teaching. I would like to acknowledge the presence of one of our colleagues, Deborah Arnold is involved in many the several European EU European funded project I mentioned and she can perhaps she can also say a few words about addressing the questions that are raised. Deborah. Thank you very much Shaq and very pleased to be here with that with everybody. Just perhaps a few words about the European level projects that that we're involved in we've just completed the one that Carol mentioned thank you very much, called a length for life which was about soft skills and active learning for employability. We recently published a list of 10 key takeaways which are open educational resources in their own right with recommendations and findings from the from the project. I can, in a moment because I'm not very good at multitasking share the link to that in the in the chat with you. And also, we know that the question of micro credentials is a is a hot topic at the moment there are several sessions at a global on that and that this is a plug for Friday. I'll be joining forces with that Lena Patterson and Tannis Morgan for a session, which in Central European summertime will be eight o'clock on Friday. So that's my Friday evening sorted. But obviously, we're flexible in order to connect with our colleagues around the around the world. And with Lena and Tannis we're going to be looking at open futures for micro credentialing. So not so much focusing on the technical aspects of micro credentials is a lot of work being done on that. But really bridging the narrative between open and micro credentialing as a process. So if you're interested in that topic then then do come along and that's related to our work in the echo project at European level, which as Carol said we're focusing on recognition on the the really technical and organizational aspects of what does it take to actually issue a micro credential and what are the benefits to learners organizations and employers. So that's just a brief summary of those activities. And then of course the other projects on open virtual mobility which we continue to build on. So I don't know if it questions about those activities or others but I think the presentation already given by Jack and Carol gives a very, very good picture of the situation in France the specificities and the links with the rest of the activities on a global scale. And in the chat about result reconciling common and civil law in relation to intellectual property. Well, the solution for other is quite simple is to incentivize both financially and also in terms of cooperation the author in order to convince him not to withdraw his work from the public domain. Because he would be, he would need to reimburse us the exploitation rights we have paid for. So, I would say in a more positive way we focus for the goal of updating the content of and keeping the work available to the public. We also want to have a good long lasting relationship with the author, and we also want him to be involved in the community that we try to build around his course. I'm not sure. Oh, open textbooks. Colin Laguerra for not explaining to me that when he sends students from France to the US. Well, they go to the library and pick up a textbook for two weeks. And but that is not what the teacher in the US expects, expects the students to buy the textbook and have it available at all times. Because there is not that strong a pressure from the teachers to the students to ensure that they purchase the textbook so they bought the textbook in the best case, and the teachers also focus very much on the PowerPoint presentations and and the cases, the give out to the students. So, in my opinion, it's a blind spot because we need to ensure that students have available textbook, and we need that for their learning. And we also need it for the teachers to be interested in providing it so it's a blind spot it's something that we have not addressed, and that we should address to improve the student learning. And there is also a question from I la here where she asked so many students specifically in Africa, have challenges with digital access, what provisions are made to assist with these other courses downloadable. So here I think I like referring to the digital to the content of the digital thematic universities. I mean, it's, it's great that it's all digitally and accessible to just leave but that's not the reality for many people and for many reasons. So, you know, accessibility is an equitable issue as well so yeah just wanted to. Yeah, thank you. I can understand the issue originally there were the content was distributed amongst the variety of service in France, and in some cases not downloadable so this was an issue for us, as well as for learners elsewhere. We have entered into partnerships with various entities. If we take the Republic of Congo in Brazil, we have set up with partners fully accessible freely accessible platform base in Brazil, so that all the content that is available on French service is replicated there. We are in for the university check on that job, which is the main university. We have copied the content of our service to their own to the local service. And we also have in parallel partnership with the University virtual to Senegal for them to host the content. I believe they hosted in cooperation with Orange Middle East Africa. So that is not one solution that is fit for all the situations. But the goal for us is to make the content more locally accessible. Without undue interference and undue pressure from telecom operators, we do not. We are not there to provide another reason to purchase for G connection from commercial providers, we have here to extend the educational opportunities for learners in Africa. But we also welcome any additional solutions in to go. We've seen solutions that download to micro servers, which have which are battery operated in case there is a problem with electricity. So, we are open to a variety to a range of solutions, and we are there to offer the support and to offer it freely so that the goal of access to students in Africa can be achieved. Thank you. Okay, do we have any additional questions from the audience. Because if not, then I think that we can conclude. I'm also just putting the link again into a chat window for more information about university numeric. Thank you very much again to you, Jack and Cahol and the boy for your, for your participation today and also for your support of the conference as a platinum sponsor, it's highly appreciated. And if you have any additional questions for Jack, Cahol, or there were I think you can reach them directly on the original connect space or otherwise feel free to to share your contact details. Thank you very much for the window. And Deborah, thank you very much also for the pitch for your session and thank you for your commitment for the 8pm session on your side on Friday. You will, well actually will be doing it with our president of the board because Lena Patterson is now the new president of the board of open education global so that's also great. Thank you very much. If you have any closing remarks. Thank you very much everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.


It has been estimated that 90 million Americans or approximately 30% of the U.S. population currently suffers from bad breath on a regular basis.  Maybe this is because they're used to it, or it's because when you sniff your breathing air from below, rather than in front where you're exhaling, either way, the mouth air of chronic malodour suffers, is tainted with compounds such as hydrogen sulfide, which produce a stream of foul air that can be gravely offensive to the people in their vicinity.  But the major compounds that contribute to oral malodour are the VSCs, the volatile sulfur compounds such as hydrogen sulfide. Bacteria in our mouth, predominantly on our tongue, have the capacity to produce these odorous sulfur compounds through putrefaction of sulfur-containing proteins. Okay, so what can we do about it? Many have concentrated on trying to reduce the bacterial load in the mouth with like antiseptic mouth washes, or finding ways to trap the VSCs. Mechanically, you can disrupt the biofilm of bacteria on the tongue, like with various tongue scraping techniques, though tongue cleaning seems to work more through reducing the substrates for putrefaction rather than the bacteria themselves. Okay, but if the substrates for VSC production are the sulfur-containing amino acids, and the sulfur-containing amino acids are derived mainly from animal protein, meat and dairy, what about using a dietary approach? The VSCs from animal protein may actually explain why carnivore poop smells so much different than herbivore poop. And indeed, eliminating the amount of consumed proteins may significantly reduce phetorex ore from the Latin-meaning stench mouth. The reason they add fats and alcohol is that they can both cause relaxation of the lower esophageal sphincter. Normally, the only time you exhale odors from your stomach is when you burp, because the sphincter at the top of the stomach prevents stuff from backing up, but alcohol or a fat-rich diet increases the relaxation of that sphincter, which further increases the risk and severity of bad breath. But most cases of halitosis occur due to the decay of food residues in the mouth by the bacteria that decompose proteins and amino acids and produces the volatile sulfur compounds. So the treatment of oral halitosis should involve not just professional advice on oral hygiene, but also diet. Dairy proteins, for example, are known to break down in the mouth, leading to the release of the amino acids that are rich in sulfur. Dairy products are rich sources of the milk protein casein, and casein is rich in the sulfur-containing amino acid cysteine, which is a precursor to the formation of the rotten egg gas hydrogen sulfide in the oral cavity. In fact, that's how you can test people for bad breath. Sistine Challenge Testing I just have people swish their mouth with it. When cysteine is degraded, not only do you get the hydrogen sulfide, which comprises a large part of the bad breath bouquet, but you get sulfhydral anions that fever the growth of the very bacteria within the mouth responsible for the protein putrefaction that's central to the production of oral malodour in the first place and to the development of gum disease. So it's not just a one-two punch, but a triple threat. Bad breath isn't just some aesthetic issue. These volatile sulfur compounds can be toxic to the gums, even at extremely low concentrations. Hydrogen sulfide reacts with collagen and can alter the protein structure, thereby rending your gums and jaw more susceptible to destruction. Then you can develop these pockets of putrid pus that can lead to more halitosis. The periodontal pockets are the second main source of the volatile sulfur compounds. Even people with mild periodontitis may have twice the risk of reporting bad breath. Finally, let me touch on the role diet has in so-called extraoral halitosis, bad breath that doesn't originate in the mouth. There are lots of drugs that can do it, including dietary supplements like fish oil, but there's another way people can smell fishy, trimethylamine. Trimethylamine urea is one of the largest causes for undiagnosed body odor. It's when you can't sufficiently metabolize a malodorous compound called trimethylamine, which is formed in your gut when you eat lots of choline. The textbook presentation is urine, breath, sweat, and reproductive fluid smelling, like rotten or decaying fish. But what many doctors don't realize is that the fish odor presentation may only occur in like 10% of individuals who have this predisposition. Yes, at high concentrations, trimethylamine has a foul, rotten fish odor, but at low concentrations it can just give you kind of an unpleasant, garbage-like breath. And because there are so many foods that are rich in choline, like the fact that there are eggs found in so many foods, you may not make the connection between your diet and your body odor. But you can always try cutting out foods like egg yolks for a few weeks and see if you smell any better.


Here we are at eleven degrees north in southern India. This is an ideal weather for coffee and there are areas of south India which are mountains of coffee. I mean they grow coffee here. During my youth I spent a lot of time in cool and these mountains are covered with coffee. This is coffee country. In another couple of months, sometime in February, January and February, the coffee goes into blossom. When the coffee plants go into full blossom, the whole mountain will turn partially white because of white flowers, jasmine like flowers and though the beans are invigorating, the fragrance of the coffee blossom is absolutely intoxicating and enthralling. It's very difficult to explain or articulate this experience. Many times I felt it in a few years ago, I took a few people who I wanted to know this and experience this. And being there in a coffee mountain or a coffee estate as they are known, it was inevitable I had to pen something about coffee. Being in Tamil Nadu now, though not much coffee is grown here in Tamil Nadu except in Air Card which is close to Salem. The Tamil people are coffee drinkers. They wake up to the day not because of the sun, mostly because of the coffee and they kind of mastered the concoction. Probably the Tamil Nadu's filtered coffee stands out compared to anything in the world. They evolved the system of getting the best out of the coffee beans. Even if you give them very low grade coffee, they will produce great coffee. Here is an ode to coffee, an ode to coffee. As the seed does not reveal the shape of the tree, the innocence of the infant face does not reveal the sage or the sorcerer to come, the white beauty of a blossom with the fragrance to rival the majestic jasmine does not reveal the enslaving insane concoction of your beans.  Of all of man's ingenuity, in extracting pleasure and nourishment from the mother's breast, you stand out to be the one to inspire a fierce faith of unquenchable sort. You have overshadowed the lord of light. You have overshadowed the lord of light. As for the faithful, daybreak means you, not the sun.