So, now we have the next talk by Daniel Rausch in collaboration with HALFKüsters and Céline Chevalier on embedding the UC model in the IITM model. Thank you very much for the introduction. So as probably all of you know, universal composability is a widely used concept for defining and analyzing protocol security. Not only offers us with very strong security guarantees that hold true with an arbitrary polynomial time context, but also offers composability via so-called composition theorems that enable a modular security analysis and also allow for reusing security results later on in a different context. Just to make sure everyone here is on the same page, let me preview how you see security is defined. So you start by modeling the protocol that you want to analyze, the so-called real protocol, say some key exchange, and then also define an ideal protocol or ideal functionality that specifies the task attend in a perfectly secure way. So F is secure by definition. The real protocol P is then set to realize the ideal protocol F or is as secure as the ideal protocol. If for all possible attackers attacking the network of P, we can construct an ideal attacker or simulator attacking the network of F such that no environment can distinguish both cases where the environment essentially subsumes arbitrary concurrent protocols. Over the past two decades, since its initial inception, a large number of different models for universal composability have been proposed. All of them use the same basic idea, so also in terms of the security definition, but then they differ sometimes very drastically in how they implement this idea on a technical level and also in terms of features that they offer, say, in terms of supported protocols and composition types. The relationship between these models so far is mostly unexplored. So how do they relate in terms of expressiveness if we can analyze the protocol in one model? Can we also analyze the protocol in every other UC model or universal composability model? If one model supports a specific feature, can we implement the same feature also in a different model? What about the strengths of security results? Do we perhaps accidentally miss some attacks since we, due to a lack of better knowledge, chose some model that only provides strictly weaker security guarantees than a different one? And given the fractured state of the literature, what about the original goal of reusability? If we have several protocols, each of them having been analyzed in different models, can we still combine, still compose those results? Say by first mapping a protocol, including all security results to a different model. So our goal is to initiate a line of research that fills this gap in the literature by formally relating models for universal composability. This not only allows for an educated choice of a model, say in terms of the strengths of the security results that one can obtain, but this also should allow us as far as possible to map and then reuse protocols, security results, and also features from one model to other ones. In our work, we start this line of research by relating the UC and IATM models. The UC model, we chose because it's the predominant model in the literature. So there's an extensive array of existing protocols and security results that have been analyzed in a wide variety of settings. The IATM model, on the other hand, offers many interesting features such as seamless support for protocols and composition with joint global arbitrarily shared state. It can express the globally shared session IDs that are commonly used in the UC model, but can also express locally managed session IDs, and it can combine all of the above. Furthermore, there are protocols that have already been analyzed in the IATM model, but have not yet been analyzed or captured in the UC model, thereby making a comparison and ideally also mapping from one model to another one particularly interesting. So as the title of our paper already reels, our main result is that the UC model can be fully embedded into the IATM model. A bit more specifically, we first relate both models in terms of the concepts that they use, which often try to achieve a similar overarching goal, but drastically differ in their technical details. We then propose a mapping taking arbitrary UC protocols to corresponding IATM ones and show that our mapping preserves security results and composability results. So as an immediate practical benefit, this means by using this mapping we can combine existing UC results with the four mentioned IATM features. We also took a look at the other direction and identified that a full embedding of the entire IATM model into the UC model is impossible in general. Along the way, we found and fixed several issues in the UC model that formally invalidate the UC composition theorem and also present a modeling technique that enables a new type of composition based on existing composition theorems. So in the rest of my talk, I will give you an overview of our main results and I want to start by giving you some examples of the concepts used in the UC and the IATM model to illustrate why a comparison of both of them is non-trivial to begin with. So let me start by briefly recapping the computational frameworks. The UC model considers an environment and an adversary running with some protocol pi. The protocol pi consists of several instances where only highest level instances can actually interact with the environment and each of these instances is identified uniquely via a global extended ID which consists of the code of the instance, a party or process identifier and a session identifier. Instances can then send messages to each other by issuing an external write command of the following form which consists of a forced write flag that distinguishes different types of external writes, a real sender flag, a target receiver tape which can be the input output or backdoor tape, the extended identities of both the sender and receiver including their codes, a number of import or runtime tokens that the sender forwards to the receiver and of course the message body itself. So given such an external write command that UC model then interprets this and delivers the message which might for example lead to the creation of a new instance with the intended receiver ID. There's one special case though namely a send highest level instance provides some output then this might get rewritten and redirected to the environment instead allowing other protocols essentially higher level protocols to connect to this protocol. So let's compare this to the IRTM setting which also considers an environment and an adversary running with a protocol. However there we already have one difference namely a protocol in the IRTM setting considers a statically fixed number of machines each of them specifying some machine code that is used in the protocol. These machines can then be connected with each other the environment and the adversary using tapes which allows for sending messages. One detail here is that the IRTM model also allows for connecting sub-routines to the the environment which is used for example to capture clover state in the IRTM model and then during a run of the protocol each of these machines can spawn an unbounded number of instances. So basically machines are like classes and can be used to derive several objects or instances during a run. A machine instance can then also send messages to other machine instances by writing it directly on a connected tape so this message gets then delivered to MC3 in this case specifically the existing instances of this machine now run a user specified check address algorithm that is part of the machine code to determine whether they are the intended receiver of this message. The first instance that accepts gets to process the message and if none of them accepts then a new instance is created that processes the message. This flexible addressing mechanism is used for example to model different types of joint and shared state. So as we can see already the computational models are very different. Let me give you another example namely runtime notions. Both models want to achieve that overall system is essentially simulatable by a polynomial time machine which is necessary for composition. In the UC model this works by letting the environment start with a polynomial number of runtime tokens which the environment is then allowed to distribute to the attacker and the protocol throughout the protocol run. So one possible distribution at some point in a run might look as follows. All instances including the adversary and environment are then required to run in polynomial time in the number of their currently held runtime tokens. Meaning that since the environment can determine how many tokens the adversary and the environment protocol receive the environment can also determine how much runtime the protocol and the simulator have possibly forcing them to stop at some point which then also has to be taken into account in our security proof. To somewhat alleviate this issue the UC model also requires environments to be balanced so the adversary and in particular the simulator must receive at least as many runtime tokens as the protocol. The IITM model takes a more abstract approach that is based on results by Hofheins et al. Basically it says environments are required to be PPT and protocols must be such that if they are combined with some arbitrary environment the combined system runs in overall polynomial time. So this doesn't fix a specific mechanism but this abstract notion is rather naturally met by protocols from the literature. For example if you can see your protocol to run in polynomial time in all of its inputs or the length of all of its inputs then it meets this notion. This is then extended in essentially the same way to adversaries. If we add an adversary to the system then this must still for arbitrary environments run in overall polynomial time. Let me give one final example namely composition. So the UC theorem considers the setting that we have already shown that some protocol pi realizes some protocol phi. The analysis is for a single protocol session and a restricted class of environments that adhere to some ready-catch sheet. We also consider a protocol row that uses potentially several subroutine sessions of phi and the theorem then implies that if we consider the composed protocol that rather uses pi as a subroutine then this composed protocol realizes the original protocol row. To express this composed protocol the UC model introduces some shell code that internally redirects messages to a different subroutine and also has a few conditions that need to be met. In particular the subroutines have to be shown to be subroutine respecting and subroutine exposing and the combined protocol row must be shown to be compliant. In comparison the ITM model considers two different types of composition. Firstly the main theorem essentially states if we have some protocol pi realizing some protocol phi and we build a higher level protocol on top of phi that connects to some but not necessarily all of its external tapes then the composed protocol where we replace the subroutine realizes this original protocol. In the ITM setting composed protocol is expressed by reconnecting tape and this statement holds true as long as the higher level machines connect only to external tapes of the subroutines. Observe that this directly considers a multi-session setting and that subroutines can still share some tapes with the environment which is why this theorem captures special cases also protocols with joint stage heart state and global state who also support single-session security analysis. The ITM model provides a second composition theorem which states that if a single session of pi realizes a single session of phi then an unbounded number of sessions of pi realize an unbounded number of sessions of phi. This statement holds true as long as pi and phi are sigma session versions so essentially have this joint state and can then also be combined with the previous composition theorem to yield more complex compositional statements. So let me briefly summarize as we have seen the UC and ITM models are quite different not only in their computational frameworks but also in their compositional statements and they even use different classes of environments adversaries simulators and protocols so it's not at all easy to see how they relate and given that they use different classes of environments and simulators whether there's a general relationship in the first place. Our work answers these questions more specifically we first propose generic mapping take an arbitrary UC protocol and constructing a corresponding IRTM protocol. I won't go into the details of this mapping here but let me give you some key insights. So first of all all aspects of the UC protocol can be translated naturally into the IRTM setting. This even includes subroutines that might have dynamically generated machine code in the IRTM setting we can capture this by including a specific universal Turing machine where one instance of this universal Turing machine directly corresponds to a UC instance whose code was dynamically generated and behaves in exactly the same way. Furthermore the IRTM protocol has to reveal an upper bound of all runtime tokens received so far to the adversary. This is necessary because in the UC setting the same information is guaranteed to be provided by UC environments as side channel information to adversary and also simulator whereas IRTM environments need not provide this information to the simulator. So we instead implement the same side channel on the level of the protocol and we finally propose a variation of this protocol which enforces the SHE identity bound on arbitrary environments on the protocol level so we can then use the existing IRTM theorems that don't reason about restricted classes of environments. So our main result then states that if we have some protocol pi and the protocol pi that or that realizes a protocol pi in the UC setting then our map protocol pi realizes the map protocol pi in the IRTM setting. We show this result we have several intermediate hybrid steps among others we show that UC security implies single session IRTM security for the class of adversaries that adhere to the UC runtime notion and then show again with several steps that this implies general IRTM security also for adversaries that might not meet the UC runtime notion. We are further able to show that the intermediate step also implies the UC security thereby showing that our mapping is non-trivial it doesn't just preserve security results but also distinguishing attacks however more generally full IRTM security in an arbitrary setting does not actually imply UC security namely we are also able to show that if time lock puzzles exist then there are UC protocols such that no simulator exists but for the mapped protocols we can construct an IRTM simulator and prove security. That's not a specific of our mapping but rather applies to pretty much any mapping that preserves the behavior of the UC protocols. The underlying reason is intuitively that the runtime of the IRTM simulator is allowed to depend on the runtime of the environment so our simulation can accommodate for particularly powerful environments that try to overwhelm the simulator. The same is not possible for the UC simulator which must essentially work independently of how much runtime the environment uses. Our theorem then also implies as a direct corollary that also composition results carry over namely if we start in the UC setting with UC protocols apply the UC theorem to obtain composed UC protocols then we can use our mapping to obtain composed IRTM protocols. Of course that doesn't tell us much how the composition theorems of the UC and IRTM model actually relate to each other which is why we additionally show that the same result can also be directly obtained in the IRTM model. Namely we can first map the original UC protocols into the IRTM model and then the IRTM theorem also implies security for the composed protocols. So in other words the suicide shows that the IRTM theorem captures the UC theorem as a special case by which I mean that it also applies if some of the input protocols aren't actually mapped from the UC model but are custom IRTM ones. So for example instead of considering the map protocol row we can build or use an existing IRTM protocol Q that uses the map subroutine phi and then the IRTM theorem also implies security for this case. So as for the other direction let me briefly give a summary. So as I mentioned the other direction of a full embedding of the IRTM model into the UC model is impossible in general since there are several gaps. One of them has already been shown in prior work namely has been shown that there are natural protocols that meet the IRTM runtime notion but not the UC runtime notion. Hence they cannot be expressed in the UC model. To this we add the aforementioned impossibility result due to different simulator classes so security might not necessarily carry over and we also identify another gap namely unlike IRTM protocols a UC protocol is required to provide an additional oracle to the adversary that reveals whether certain instances already exist. This is not just the cosmetic or technical difference but actually changes security properties whenever the existence of an instance depends on some secret information so we can or there exist protocols that can be shown secure but once we add such an oracle there is no simulator anymore. So let me summarize and conclude my talk. Our work is the first that clarifies the relationship of the UC and the IRTM models. On one hand we show that all UC protocols and security results carry over to the IRTM model meaning as an immediate benefit that existing UC results can now also be combined with all of the aforementioned IRTM features such as joint global and arbitrarily shared state, locally managed session IDs, larger classes of protocols and simulators and combinations of the above. On the other hand we also established that there are several gaps that make a full embedding of the IRTM model into the UC model impossible in general and leave it as interesting future work to identify and then also map a subset of the IRTM model and a subset of security results that still carry over to the UC setting. With that I conclude my talk and want to thank you very much for your attention. Do we have questions from the audience? Yes please come to the microphone so the people online can hear you. Hi thanks for the talk. How easy do you think it is to you know continue this line of work and maybe use some of the same techniques to continue to map out this universe you had in the beginning? So I think there are a few models that intuitively already share a few similarities with the IRTM models so for example the static structures of protocols that is used in the IRTM model doesn't seem so far away from the constructive constructive cryptography model which on the other hand for example doesn't fix a specific runtime notion but considers an arbitrary class of environments that the protocol designer can then customize so I wouldn't be surprised if there would be some interesting and not too hard to obtain results there in particular also in terms of identifying how exactly these classes of protocols and environments then fit into each other. Another interesting candidate might be the GNUC model which already structurally is on the one hand tries to keep the spirit of the UC model but then also has a few components such as a code library if I remember correctly which fixes the codes that the protocol uses which again seems more similar to what the IRTM model starts with so I can also imagine that there are some interesting results that one can obtain over there but of course the literature is very wide and varied there are probably also a few models that are so far at least at the first clients from the models I've personally worked with that it might be quite difficult to relate them or maybe they are even incomparable since I mean as I mentioned for the UC and the ITM case since we had different classes of environments and simulators it wasn't very clear whether there's a general relationship in the first place maybe one can do something for subsets in this case and at least identify maybe some sufficient conditions for a mapping. Thank you very much. So we have another question? Yeah one quick one maybe. Thank you very much for your nice presentation so I mean by now we usually have seen that for example more efficient protocols like as the snugs they are not UC so because of succene you don't have black box extraction so once we move them to the UC we lose efficiency usually so my question is about this mapping from UC to this IITM setting so do you have an again overhead to the protocol so we will lose again efficiency to achieve this properties? Excuse me what exactly was the final question? I didn't yeah I mean about the mapping you said that for example we show that it so for example UC protocols can achieve the same security or we have a map to do this I mean so my question is about this map how efficiently this map happens usually so how efficiently this mapping actually? Yeah for example is there any overhead how much this is? Well basically what it boils down to is that we implement on the IITM level those features and operations that are essentially provided directly by the computational model in the UC world so for example we add some code that simulates the external write command since this overhead in the UC case isn't directly counted as runtime of the protocol but rather somehow essentially happens externally there is a bit of technical overhead but as we already also show in our work this overhead that is added still remains polynomial in what the original UC protocol does otherwise in particular the mapping wouldn't work if we had some exponential close up somewhere then it wouldn't meet the IITM notion anyway. Okay so I'm going to use this one. Okay thank you. Do we have more questions from the audience? Yes please. Just like a general question if it were the case that you were trying to connect some of the other frameworks and that you described at the beginning together and you found that two of them are not compatible together would that may that imply that there's something wrong in one of these frameworks hypothetically? I think that strongly depends on the gap that you identify so in any case you would have to look very closely what goes wrong so for example if the gap is due to different simulator classes we would have to identify whether the simulator class of one of these models might be unreasonably large so permit simulation in cases where no simulation should be possible so maybe we miss a text by this or alternatively it might turn out that in one case the simulator class is just needlessly small that's actually something we also did as part of our work since we had such a gap with the simulator classes and in our case we argue that well the UC class is just more restricted than it need be while the IITM class provides reasonable security guarantees of course the gap can also be for entirely different reasons so for example you also have models that specifically include quantum operations in the Turing machines or don't consider Turing machines in the first place a better set so then you already consider an entirely different setting so the incompatibility might simply be because you consider more powerful adversaries and protocols with operations that cannot be expressed in the original setting anymore in which case the statement would just be well okay it's just for different purposes and different contexts that they model but both of them might still be reasonable okay thank you and we have the last question after which we're going to have to take the rest of the questions offline due to the approaching IACR membership meeting um yeah thanks for your presentation I was just wondering how come you guys don't consider GUC and JUC to be part of UC um so as for GUC there was some recent paper that on the one hand argued that the GUC proof itself isn't really complete but showed that there are modeling techniques that one can use to express global state in the basic UC model uh these would of course then also be captured by our mapping since it's for arbitrary UC protocols including those that use this modeling technique to capture global state uh but uh in this case uh I guess it's probably easier to uh if one wants to model global state to perhaps directly express this in the IATM model since our mapping then introduces some UC structures of this global state mapping for UC that aren't necessarily needed uh if one works directly in the IATM model as for JUC uh well this extension was for the original UC model which has already been overhauled depending on how you count there are at least three major updates that change a lot of things on a technical level uh so it's not clear whether the original JUC result even applies to UC anymore and uh also there has been work that has argued that the JUC model itself has been flawed in terms of the proof of the composition theorem so uh at least as far as I'm aware there are currently is no work that uh supports uh joint state either in the UC model directly or by extending the current version of the UC model in some way thank you let's thank the speaker again and that's the end of our session see you at the end of the session


Go please hit Yes, all right, you're about to see why they call this man the flaming swordsman Look at how cool this animation is. Oh Hit him with the pose and everything. How's it going everybody? Dato do it here back with a brand new arc system works fighting game grand blue fantasy verses You might remember a little while ago on the channel We played the beta matches, but now the game has been fully released in Hong Kong and that's the version we're playing today It's not actually out in the States yet, but this version features full Englishmen using titles So I figured I might as well jump in and make some videos right away speaking of that in today's video We are going to be checking out one of the newer characters that wasn't in the beta Percival the flaming swordsman of grand blue and this guy is really a lot of fun I think he might end up being my main basically my game plan with this character is to slowly work my opponent into the Corner using this dash up move that allows me to be plus so I can just keep throwing out buttons making them back up Ever so slowly and then once I have them in the corner I really want to take advantage of Percival's command grab which you can see here if I hit this I can do a ton of damage and if they're afraid of the grab and end up pushing buttons I can also make a read on that and go for an overhead and if that counter hits I can get even more damage So really that's just kind of the general vibe of what I think you want to do with this character It is still day one for me So don't take that to heart fully so yeah If you guys want to see more videos on grand blue fantasy verses Definitely make sure to let me know down below in the comments or just by leaving a like if you end up enjoying the Video so now without further ado, let's go ahead and hop into some ranked matches Okay, I have never once played against this character in the full release of the game and I I hear she's pretty wild just like that Okay, back it up. I did not ante her there mostly because I was afraid. Let's go ahead and get some stacks up. Oh No, oh Come on it. Oh never mind. I tried a DP. I thought you would roll no grabs Okay, let me get that sweep. Let me get another sweep. No did not hit that medium. Fortunately Overhead yes do another one. Yes. Do another one. Yeah. Oh never mind. Never mind. Never mind block the third overhead. It was too good All right, let's let's back up throw some fireballs Just guard Back it up No, I dp'd must because my I accidentally try to do a fireball. Oh Teched it Teched it again.  Never mind doesn't look like never mind three stacks Decent damage there still got two stacks I'm really going for that overhead because that's the that's the combo. I know the best That's plus That's still plus That's still plus. Oh, she parried it with that was sick. She has a parry move. I forgot about that Wow, she jumped out. Okay, we'll remember that for next time will dp. Oh You want to jump I will definitely meet you in the air It was close jump again Jump again. All right. We have full stacks. Please hit Yes All right, you're about to see why they call this man the flaming swordsman Look at how cool this animation is. Oh hit him with the pose and everything. Hey, let's go. Oh God I've never seen that before Hit me with a huge surprise. Nope. I'm not gonna jump. All right. All right. Thanks that fireball. Don't exactly know why I Try to get a back throw. I'm really trying to get this corner. Oh Teched it. Oh, that's not how you do it. You got to go into a medium Okay, I can work with this I can work with this get a mid-screen Okay, I should have one with the plus No, I got back in the corner myself Okay Overhead low.  Let's go. That definitely hit that definitely hit we win We win. Let me get this cool cutscene. I think we get a music track. It's so bad Yeah, that's what happens when you mash baby you run into the flaming knight Percival they really could have given him a cooler name, but whatever Percival is pretty cool too. Let's see who wins this It's gonna be me Grab just take the throw take the throw. Oh, that was a nice dodge. That was a beautiful back dodge I'll take all that Not gotta be careful though. I'm gonna wake up DP fireball missed Block that block that you want to go for a grab No, grab that spin is gonna be kind of nuts.  Oh help.  Ah This is definitely the GT Goku of GBBS this guy can't get her off of me She's attacking my ankles Percival's like six feet tall sick. That's a little that might be underselling inside Let me get five stacks Damn I Just can't get a good hitting She tried to grab I had the right read No, not DP. Oh, that's fine. We didn't we didn't actually take the hit there get off me Jump jump you love jumping except for when I need you to oh Damn, I thought that would hit. Okay. Nice Beautiful. She's gonna jump She's got a jump eventually right. Oh, that is such a good jumping.  Oh, I could have won right there, too That's it. That's it. We win. Oh, no, that was the first round win for us I forgot we got beat up that last time. All right. She's definitely gonna spin in right Do we do we try to read it and jump? That was a good start get those stacks up Let's go Take the throw bro. Take the throw. Oh, that was nice Perry's a little slower than I thought it would be Okay Oh, no, if I could just get the one grab in the corner, it would be over didn't go for the grab there Ah DP it's not gonna be enough full screen fireball stack them up. Oh No Please hit please hit. I don't know why I did that. Wow. She didn't do anything Let's go dude. This character is he has such a big top tier energy. He's not I don't think he's going to be top tier I think he's good, but he has really bad match ups But he definitely has that top tier energy. All right. This is very very bad I was just talking about how I don't think this guy has good matchup sometimes and this character Metara meter I don't know how to pronounce it. I'm sorry for that But she is definitely the zoner of the game and you have to be You have to be playing some real heads up grand blue that I am not capable of quite yet to Fully avoid getting destroyed here. Oh like that the dash into avoid the projectile. That's the kind of stuff You need to see All right. She blocked it Dp. I like it take the throw. All right. She didn't want to take the throw You're gonna have to get counter hit then and we don't want to see that happen. All right I'm gonna use this time to build up some stacks That's plus Dodge through it. Oh nice. I'm actually kind of I have the lead. Oh, no Okay, we can't we can't just stand around and block those butterflies are coming at me. Oh, no Damn it. I didn't I didn't think she'd fire another big arrow. I went for the fireball. Yeah We played a little too Afraid at the end there. Let's try to dodge this first arrow Okay, we got the we got a good corner here. Oh, come on if we could we could have just hit that counter Oh, we are really losing out on space. Oh, no That's a combo that's a good that hurts that hurts. Oh damn All right good for that. Just take the throw man No That we definitely want. Oh Dash no, we did a false dash. Oh, why did I just click light? We dashed through the projectile I got so quiet there. We got a rematch. Oh, hello. Hey. Hey, there's kids watching this Had a cut away from that real quick. Sorry about that. Oh, that sucked.  Yeah, this is kind of what I was worried about Butterflies, how do you get in on this? Do I love this I do but it's I do but I'm definitely dying It's so hard This is definitely not it's not always gonna be this bad. I'm just inexperienced against this character I don't know how many times I think this actually is my first time playing against her I think I've only watched the footage Good start. Let me see if I can't get some I will say it's nice that ah There we go. Just I mean if you're gonna make it that Let's go Let's go Let's go That's us. I thought I blocked. Oh great. We just got to eat this now. Oh My goodness.  Is that not enough? Let's go the sweep didn't expect the fire sweep. Look at that pose All right, I'm gonna try to talk through what I'm thinking a little bit more But basically no way too early on the dodge there grabbed that sucked back it up Okay, let's go You got arrows in the air. Oh, no, I was gonna try to do it again.  I definitely jumped in it. You did I didn't expect you to actually do it I got I just got risky there cuz I needed something to help make me make this comeback She might super right away though, so let's be safe. Oh, that was really good Thought I wouldn't have enough time to recognize that knee xdp. Let's go. All right. We ax it We stole that round by the way, we should not have won We were not playing good enough to win, but she definitely got a little cocky I think I think she just thought it would work for sure which I can't even blame That was not supposed to be a dp. That's gonna get me punished. That's fine. We could just back it up That sucked. Damn. Okay. I need some stacks. That's the hardest part though. Okay. It's off cooldown now It's off cooldown. Let's get it It's fine block that who jumped in Damn if I could just get one combo Not this I need it in the corner. Let's go Yes, all right We got the command grab in the corner and we were gonna chain that into some big big damage So don't even worry about that. Okay. That's a good dodge.  All right, gotta back up get the stacks. No, it's gonna take all right now All right, we got some stacks That means we can throw some full-screen medium fireballs if we so want to Which we do We got to throw at least one to make it in Damn the stack takes so long to get up. Yeah, what's the move? What's the move? Oh, that was right That was it right there. That was eight if I could have landed one good meaty grab on them Maybe that would have been enough to take it, but doesn't look like it was this time Damn not close enough. There we go. Nice dodge Very good dodge. I'm really just trying to cheap it out with some overheads There you go. Nice sweep Take that all the way to the corner. I really got to learn that grab range a little better, man Like right here. Oh, that could have been it It's I have to land a counter hit for that's like that common to be really good DP that that's enough time to get some fire Stacks up five of them actually damn Let's go that should be it that should be it. Yep, that's gonna do it We actually do take the set here It wasn't really that great of a game for me But we just had to like hope to get in so I was really mostly focused on getting in that whole time There wasn't much to talk about. All right. Well, I guess this is how it ends Percival versus Percival with the mirror match. I think we both know how we want to start it Go ahead get our stacks up. Oh, wow, you're all right. Well, I'm not gonna let you do it then. Oh How much damage never mind? Really? Just a sweep fast Damn, I try to go in with the this good stuff. Damn. I'm taking too much damage.   I dropped my combo and got hit with this The white hair Percival doesn't be looking kind of hot though.  It's a good-looking skin Oh, no Let's go. EXDP is that gonna be enough. It's not Let's go. All right. The jump in overhead was enough The anteers in this game can lead to some pretty insane damage, by the way Percivals are a little harder to get off than most Let's go grab them. I'm just gonna get my stacks up real quick fire an orb so he knows he can't do his Ah, it wasn't supposed to be DP there I'm still in those early phases of the game where I get like the the buttons confused like I try to do that stance move Really he blocked that Let's go then we're going all the way up if you're gonna block the first one I blocked that I blocked that for sure it's here Well, you remember how you hit me with your wake up. Okay, you do remember clearly. That's why I got a DP though Get anti. Oh, that wasn't enough. He did jump, but he didn't do it when I wanted jumped in got a boom I Throw baby. Let's go. He was jumping like a maniac up there. All right, that's game one Good start good start. Let's get this last win. I don't know if this is a rank up win, but early damage.  Oh Nice ex DP I didn't expect it from Block the cross-up That's plus We'll respect it. Oh, he's not he's just not blow. Oh, he tried to hit me with it I don't even know why I went for a midscreen. I don't know many good uses for it.  Yeah, he charged up. That's going to be the set We're going to go ahead and take it with another forward throw. That's personal for you I didn't really get to show off too much, but you can kind of see why you want to get him in the corner with this character It's pretty easy But once you're there, you have to force him to either take the command throw or just you know eat it up Is that a rank up victory? Hey Promoted We're out here raking up So like I said before if you guys want to see more grand blue fantasy verses on the channel Definitely let me know down below in the comments both by letting me know directly and hitting the like button and make sure to subscribe and stick around Because I definitely think I'll be playing more of this game and I'd love to keep you guys up to date on it So once again, thank you for making it all the way to the final video if you want to watch some more There should be some up on your screen. I've been Dr. Doya and I will see you in the next one


Hello and welcome to the Jason Tawney show. I'm Joe Wombo, joined now with Jason Tawney, head coach of the baseball team. And coach, we're going to talk about some victories over a nationally ranked team, your 20th and 21st career victories over a nationally ranked team. And couldn't have come at a better time against Alvernia. Yeah, we absolutely needed those Ws. I would like to have gotten a third one against them, but that's being a little greedy. But yeah, being able to beat them twice, we slept them in a double header on senior day, on Sunday, tremendous victories, tremendous play by the team. And yeah, 20th and 21st win over a nationally ranked team. We really need them to make ourselves viable to make a run for that last conference spot. So we still need some help this weekend. And we need to take care of business. But we definitely like the two wins we got. Yeah, if you want to talk about some post season possibilities, you guys need to sweep and need a little bit of help from other teams. But first, as you mentioned, you've got to take care of business. Yeah, we've got to take care of our side. We've got to take it to Messiah. We're capable of sweeping them. We're capable of sweeping anybody we play. So we're capable of it. But then, yeah, we're going to need some help. So if anybody from Albright's listening, we could definitely use a sweep from Albright as well. That's the one path to the MAC tournament we have right now. As of going into yesterday's game, it was kind of crazy. As of yesterday, it could have finished anywhere from second to sixth. That's a broad spectrum. Yeah, it's very broad. And it was about us sweeping and winning out. And some other teams doing some work. We could have finished second. And of course, if we don't play, well, obviously, then we'd be down the sixth area. But it's a crazy year this year in this conference. You guys have definitely proved yourselves a little bit with those victories against Alvernia. How do you continue that play? Look past the speed bump and the buzz saw they ran into with the Alvernia picture on Monday. But how do you continue that play to keep getting those opportunities to get them postseason? Yeah, that's a great question. Because we've shown throughout the year at times we can play at that level. We lost to Cortland, who was number two in the country, five-four in the bottom of the ninth. So we're capable of playing at that level consistently. It's always about a play here or a play there, something we try to emphasize to the guys. It may be a pitch here or a pitch there. Hopefully, we can keep that up. I know one of my players said to me after the game. He's like, I don't understand our team. Why we can play like this against these guys? And then there's other teams we just don't play as well. And a lot of it comes down to some young mistakes that we make. And I think I said it last week or the week before. We're in a little bit of a rebuilding year. So we have a lot of freshmen we're depending on. Yesterday was an example. We were playing, ran to the buzz saw of a pitcher through a terrific game for Alvernia. But I had two freshmen on the mound through all nine innings and through the ball well. So we're hoping that's a building point going forward, a building spot. And actually, going into the ninth inning, we only had two hits, both by freshmen. So I think that that's the good side of it. The bad side is it make a lot of freshman mistakes. Sometimes it comes down to throwing the right pitch into the right spot. You may throw the pitch and get the break on it that you want, but it needs to hit where it needs for the defense to be able to make a play as well. And that's learning. That's what, as a freshman, that's the reason why it's tough to depend on freshmen in our sport is there's some nuances to the game that you need to understand, and that's one of them. We've struggled with that at times this year. It's not that the stuff's not good enough. It's sometimes it's location or if we're making a purpose pitch and trying to set up another pitch and we get too much of the plate or it's not as high as we want or whatever. Those are some of the growing pains you have to live through. But I can tell you, for those guys specifically, as sophomores, it's going to be a whole another level for them. I hope that's the goal. They learn from that and take themselves to a whole another level. You guys have a lot of optimism in the youth of your team. It could be a growing pain season, but you're growing is the point. We are. We are. And we're still sitting in a spot where after this weekend, we hope to be at 20 wins. Still got a chance to get to the conference tournament once you're in. You know what can happen, which means if we can get to that point, we still have a chance at NCAAs and at a lesser level, EACs. There are all possibilities out there, so a lot of our team goals are still there, even though we have such a young team right now. Yeah, it's a lot of optimism heading into this weekend, and we wish you the best of luck this week, and safe travels everywhere you're going. Thank you. He's Jason Tawny. I'm Joe Wamba, and this has been the Jason Tawny Show.


And we're back with an interval, DRL, which is all like a full session DRL, but let me get to the point here, full session includes low rates for an entire day. We're saying interval. So think about breaking your day up into sections. So instead of having that extreme demand of only being allowed to ask three things for the entire day for a whole day, you can go, you're only allowed to ask for three things for the next 15 minutes or until it recess. You're going to break it up into intervals. So it's easier for the kid to achieve that goal, making behaviors more likely to happen because they're reinforced versus having your demands so high that they'll never, ever achieve it. And people will wonder why reinforcement doesn't work. Because he's not saying the reinforcement doesn't work, folks. Just to make sure. Quite the opposite.


And then I think those are the last three things they all have to do with kind of termination and dismissal. So one thing is how to terminate the contract early and the penalties for doing so. So if you don't want to stay for the whole year, if you have problems or you like you need to, you just don't want to finish the contract, how can you terminate? And if you terminate early, what penalties happen to you? The offenses, which may lead to your dismissal and contract termination. And also then also how to extend the contract and any benefits for doing so. So I'm going to show you some examples of how it might be written in a contract. Again, this is the EPIC program contract. So it has Article 9, a clear section about resignation. So the employee shall perform the duties set forth under Article 3 hereof during the... Oh, this contract is binding unless the employee gives 60 days written notice of termination. And this will obviously vary from contract to contract, right? Sometimes it's 60 days, sometimes it could be less 30 days, it could be more. Also depends on the law of the country that you're going to. Usually they have this in labor law written down. So, yeah. And then also what happens? So failure of the employee to give 60 days written notice of termination to the main school leads to... Then you will be reported to the Korean Immigration Service and shall affect the employee's ability to freely enter the Republic of Korea in the future. So as you can see, this is a very serious thing. If you don't do this properly, you might end up getting deported. Your visa might be canceled. You might not be able to return to Korea in the future. So this is something very serious for yourself to know how to properly give notice and terminate your contract early so that you don't get into trouble. Because that's annoying, right?  Then I guess it doesn't matter. So yeah, another example here about renewal. So how to go about to renew your contract. And also the benefits of doing so very important. Usually there's a benefit, right?  And here it also states in this epic contract that the renewal shall not exceed one year. So you can only renew for another year, another year, another year. It can't be longer than that. Obviously this depends on the school, varies from school to school. This is what it's like in the Epic program. And then there is a contract renewal allowance of 2 million Korean won. So that's actually really nice. 1.3 Korean won will be paid within one month of the beginning of the new term. And the remaining 700,000 Korean won to be dispersed after the successful completion of the contract. That's really nice. I didn't know that. So if you and 2 million won is about just under 2000 US dollars. So that's really nice. If you sign up for another year in case of the termination of the renewal contract within the first six months. The paid leave specified in the foregoing clause shall be unpaid. All right. So just some things about renewal and termination. Here another contract about termination. Oh, why the employer might terminate you. This is that part. So obviously if you violate any laws of the country here, it's Republic of Korea. For example, if you don't have a visa, if obviously they would kind of know before, but maybe if your visa got canceled or something, if you don't have a visa, if you don't have the correct kind of visa for an English teacher, you need to have E2 visa. So if you have another kind of visa might be a reason.  For more than five working days without receiving prior consent. So and also any of the information provided in the employees application is false or inaccurate. So this also depends obviously from school to school country to country, but it's usually pretty much similar stuff.  So yeah, just something for yourself to know, right?


Okay, good evening, everyone. Well, thank you all for celebrating with us tonight, the many good things that community financial literacy is doing in our community. It really is a celebration. Actually, one of my first jobs or decisions as chairman of the board was to change the name of this event. It was the annual event, the annual meeting, and I said, you know what, let's make this the annual celebration. And it really tonight, to me, seemed like a nice celebration. Do you agree with the food? And all right. Well, my name is Gene Ardido, and I am the chair of the board of the directors of CFL. And my other job is to be CEO of Seaport Credit Union. So why are we all here tonight? And I think we all know how important immigrants are to our country and our community. You know, America was founded by immigrants, my mother is an Italian immigrant, and I'm sure you all have a similar story and heritage. Our diversity of cultures is what makes America great. But we have an obligation to support our newest immigrants and have them succeed in their new country. So that is why I personally am so deeply involved with CFL. So we are here to celebrate CFL's fifth anniversary. Isn't that great? Five years. It really is a terrific accomplishment. You know, at last year's CFL celebration, main economist, Dr. Charles Colgan, told us how important immigrants are to our economy. I mean, as aging as we all know, I certainly am, we are indeed actually the oldest state in the country. And that retirement of Maine's baby boomers will cause a labor shortage which is going to be a detriment to our economy. This is true, these are facts. So the immigrant and refugee community is needed to fill these open positions. However, they must have the education and skills necessary to fill those jobs. That is where community financial literacy is providing real value in our community. You'll hear more of the terrific things CFL is doing during the next few months. Minutes, I'm sorry, not months. Well, in the months too. But before we move into the agenda, I just want to thank our many sponsors of tonight's celebration. If you could, please refer to your wonderful program, and perhaps we can save our applause until I've recognized all of them. So I'll do this quickly. Our gold sponsors are Seaport Credit Union and the Maine Credit Union League. Our silver sponsors are Avesta Housing, University Credit Union, Berry Dunn, CEI, Casco Federal Credit Union, Clark Insurance, Idex Laboratories, People's United Bank, and Town and Country Federal Credit Union. Our bronze sponsors are Andrew Scoggin Bank, Cartridge World, Evergreen Credit Union, TrueChoice Federal Credit Union, Pretty Flaherty, Five County Credit Union, Wellin and Company, RM Davis, Inc., Norway Savings Bank, Representative Chelly Pingree, and Donald Sussman, and the Portland Public Library. So let's give the sponsors a round of applause. So I'd like to also take this opportunity to thank all you who have individually donated to CFL this past year. CFL is a non-profit organization and exists only by the donations from individuals like you and from businesses and foundations. So should you want to make a donation tonight, there is an envelope strategically included in your program. Feel free to include a check or go to our website to make a donation. So thank you so much for your support of CFL. We have a full agenda, so without further ado, we are going to play a short video produced and donated to CFL by Community Television Network, who are also filming tonight's celebration to be broadcast on Channel 5 locally on Time Warner. So thank you, CTN, we appreciate that. Okay, so now we'll do the video. Community Financial Literacy is a non-profit organization established since 2009. We are educated to empower refugees and immigrants by providing them with financial education, one-on-one financial counseling, financial coaching, and individual matching savings program in partnership with the coastal enterprises. We are dedicated to support our new menors who have come and met men their home state. You're going to hear some of the people that have benefited from our services in this short video and also some of the community members who support our organization and wish the organization can do more to support the many needs of the community. I hope you enjoy this video. Thank you very much. Community Financial Literacy, how have they helped you? You've been there for a while. Wow, they have really done a great job. They have helped me in focusing on knowing especially how to save money, which I don't have any at the moment, but I know as I grow and do get the money, I'll know how to manage it, I'll know how to save it, and I'll know how to build my wealth. There are people that I really thank for meeting because they have taught me how to keep my head high and I've known how to face other people in terms of interviews that I've been doing and going from the career that I want to go for. And there are people who advise me daily that I can count on every day, I can call anytime I have a problem. Yes, they are a great deal that I really appreciate for meeting. I mean, I do need some help in terms of the business and I do get help. And what can you talk about what that help has been and what it's meant for you? Yes, when I start doing this, I mean, I didn't know where to go, where to start and what to do. I've been going to place to place asking people for help. Like, you know, I'm starting this, but I don't know how to establish or how to start this business, but I went to a place called Women, Work and Community and they sent me to Community Financial Literacy and when I get there to Claude, I get help that I needed and he's still helping me. So you had the education when you came to this country? Yes, I did. In marketing and business? Yes. And were you seeking a job in Maine to try, hopefully? Yes, when I came in Maine, I had all these big expectations that I found a job in Maine. So I tried to find a job when I first got here. And what was the problem, so trying to find a job? What were the barriers to getting a job? The first barrier, I spoke a little bit of English. I think I spoke good English then. You know, comparing myself to many people that we came together. So I thought I'll find a job easily. So I tried to apply in different places. For the first time, the problem that I was facing was that I didn't have any reference over here. All my references were international references and they were reliable references, but nobody was willing to check them. So you need somebody to guide you. You need somebody to teach you to tell you this is what life is here and if you have this background, this is how you can work. Most people actually, when they get in this country, they do a lot of trials with mistakes. Some of them, they end up really messing up, but if we had somebody to lead us and say, okay, this is what we can help you. We can show you. We can tell you what can benefit you. I think that's something that will help. Well, actually, when I came, my dream was to continue working in not-for-profit. So I was definitely, you know, desiring to get a job that I was doing actually either at the same level or even much better. And how did that work out for you? Were you able to get that job that was at least at the same level or better? Unfortunately not. For me, the barriers which was a surprise was not having the American work experience. That, for me, was a surprise in that even when I had the qualifications on paper, but also the qualifications, the work experience, because I did not have work experience in the country, I couldn't get the same job at the same level that I was qualified and the same level that my previous job was in Zambia. So my first job was as an administrative assistant at University of Southern Maine, which was, you know, like a foot in the door. I've been in the US for 13 years now and I came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And what were you doing for work when you were in the Congo? Eight months before we left, I just finished law school and I was doing my internship. That's when everything started. What were you doing for work in your country? In my country, I was working like a judge. I went for a school of law and when I graduated, I appointed like a judge and I worked for two years. For the community, for at least this coming four years that I have seen it grow. I mean, this is the only organization that is giving people from the community we come from good practical information on the finance and how to understand the myriad of the complicated financial life that the United States have and then the rest of the world to a certain extent has. In order for people to come, immigrants to be able to fully engage in the American life and what we like to think is the American dream. What do they need? What's gonna make a difference in transitioning into fully into the American life? We need to leave this concept of assisting people only for emergency purposes. We need to look forward. We need to think about economic empowerment. We need to think about people getting good jobs. People improve their skills. People be part of the workforce that men has. And I would say that CFL has been working on financial literacy, which is a big step, which is a big gap in terms of knowledge and skills that people come with in a new country. But I would see CFL move on a bit. Having those skills in financial literacy is not enough if you can get a job, which when I go to manage it can get a job. And ultimately, I would like to see immigrants not forever in the category of assisted people, having them more social mobility, having them get better jobs in the workforce because I know they are scared and they can change a lot. And most of them are here to stay. So I think I would advise that people move on and really try to bring ideas and new projects, new orientation towards beyond the emergency, beyond the assistance, how can you become a part of the success in many communities? That's what we all aim and I hope that CFL and other organizations will be able to work on that and really focus on that. Again, thank you very much. You heard the stories and the testimonies of those people who spoke on the video. They reflect exactly what community financial literacy does. When Sahara came to my office, she was desperate. I could read her face with desperation, but when she went home, after giving her guidance, orientation on where she can go and how she can do things, she was smiling. And now today she has built her own clients and now she can run her own business. This is exactly the type of organization and the business that we want to continue to do with our community members. Our vision is to see many immigrants in the refugee community build a financial stability. In order for them to build a financial stability, they will need to get a job, to get a better job so they can reach the American dream. We will continue to rely on supports of individuals, corporation and foundation to be able to accomplish these needs. There is no way we could reach a milestone of 1,000 individuals who have participated in our program without your support. As we expand, we will need more support, we will need more resources and more capacity and we hope that you can join us in supporting services and a mission. I wanna thank our donors, individuals, foundation, corporation for supporting our mission and we look forward to continue building a better partnership to continue to serve those community members who are in needs and who have chosen men to be their home state. Thank you very much. It's my pleasure to introduce Claude Ruanje, the most connected man in Portland. Do you agree? As far as I know, Claude has met every politician, every business leader and every college president in Maine and probably every person in the state. Mayor Brennan, look out. He may want your job. Where's Mayor Brennan? He's here somewhere, areas right there. Well, we know Claude is famous for his charm. It is more than that. These leaders recognize the importance of Claude's work at CFL. Claude is a graduate of USM and last year received his MBA. He's a member of the Portland Chamber Board of Directors. I brought him to a chamber meeting. He went to the first Eggs and Issues, just a side story. And if any of you have been to Eggs and Issues, it is, I mean, I don't know if this is politically correct, but it is all one color, you know? It's, there's no diversity whatsoever in these meetings. So I brought Claude to a chamber Eggs and Issues and he started meeting people and within six months he's on the Board of Directors. That's Claude, all right? He's also a member of the Financial Advisory Council led by the Finance Authority of Maine, a member of Vesta Housing Home Ownership Center Advisory Committee, and he's probably involved with many other committees. He continues to be recognized with awards, most recently as a recipient of the 2013 Harvard Center Community Partner Award of Outstanding New Initiatives given by Bates College. He also received the 2012 Spirit of Service Award from Bowdoin College. So please join me in welcoming our Executive Director, Claude Ruanje. I thought he spoke more than I can afford to do myself, but that was great. Thank you for your introduction, Jean. As we always do every year, besides what you heard in the video, I wanna introduce the students who can share live more than just a video what they learned in our class and how the class and material they learned has helped them moving forward. So then I can come back and share a little bit the accomplishments. Let me welcome Jerome, who is one of the graduate from CFL classes, if it can come on stage and share his brief remarks in a few minutes. Please. Thank you, Claude, for your introduction.  And this is CFL's fifth annual anniversary, as everybody knows. As you know, that most of immigrants speak more than one language. English is my fifth language. After Quirondi, Quinyarwanda, Swahili, and French. So imagine speaking in a fifth language on a fifth annual celebration. What a coincidence. Isn't it? Now it is almost three years since I graduated from community financial literacy classes. Claude was my teacher of two important classes and these classes are basic money management and the savings to build wealth. Yes, I'm an old student of CFL and this is the right moment for me to come back and give an account to my teacher of what I learned. As everybody can tell, my name tag wasn't ready when I walked in and I made it myself. So now I can tell that Claude almost forgot about me but this is the right moment because I may not still remembering everything you talked about in class. But I remember the world you liked to talk about in the basic money management class at the beginning of every session and that world was a budget. And I know that you talked about balancing or just checking my income against my expenses. Now, there's one point you talked about and I remember nothing about it.  I don't regret that I forgot about it because I did not need to learn how to spend. I knew already. Instead, I needed someone to teach me how to save money and you did. Now it is two years and seven months since I started working in the United States I am happy that I started working after taking community financial literacy classes. With the financial skills, I acquired through CFL classes. I opened a bank account and an emergency savings account. I started saving as soon as I started working. Here is one simple principle I used to save. Pay yourself first. Claude, I remember, you said that every time we pay a bill, we are giving money away and making someone else rich. I think this is a simple principle of paying myself first from my every paycheck I transferred $200 from my checking to my savings account. Because I am paid by weekly, every month I saved around $400. After the two years and the seven months I have been working, I saved $15,000. Even though I said that, don't come to me, ask for money. Saving is hard, not only to immigrant communities but to American citizens as well. It demands discipline and the knowledge in how to save. Through CFL's classes, I learned how to build my credit score by using wisely credit cards. I have bought my iPad, which I have here today, my iPhone, which is charging in my car, using a credit card, just a credit card. How easy and exciting it is to swap a credit card and walk out of a store without paying a single penny. It is tempting to think that the money you have on your credit card is yours until 30 days later when you see a bill coming to your mailbox. In CFL's classes, Claude always reminded me that a credit card is only good to help me build my credit score. But it will ruin my financial record if I don't pay my bills on time to avoid late fees charges. Now that I have understood my lesson, I have five credit cards in my wallet. I checked last Friday, my credit score was 697, this is a name. Now I'm enrolled in an FDA family development account to reach my financial short term goal of purchasing my first vehicle. I learned how to do this through CFL as well. As an immigrant, my resources are still limited. However, I'm thankful to funders who support community financial literacy to open doors of financial success to immigrant communities. To me, community financial literacy, classes of course, as this is what I know about, are important to immigrant communities like a flashlight is important when you enter a dark room and you are looking for something. Most of us immigrants come from countries in which there is no economic system that uses credit card, credit score, or social security number. And still we want to be economically successful in this new country. Every CFL class I took helped me to find out how to build my credit score by using credit cards wisely, build up my savings by paying myself first and succeed to set my goals and achieve them. This is why I encourage immigrants who have not taken the CFL classes to take them. I even recommend the CFL classes to American citizens who wanted to learn important financial skills. Why not? Thank you. Thank you, Jerome. Every year, board members ask me if really I have to coach my students before they can come here and speak. I said, no, and I'm sincere. I tried to let them use their own words rather than me telling them all to say. So I do randomly, someone who can come on stage and speak, but they never share with me what they have saved and the kind of knowledge they have gained. But I think if we can even live now and say the event is over, I'll be happy. But the mayor who just came from Japan will say, wait a minute, how about my turn? Thank you, Jerome, for sharing your personal stories. The board member told me that I always speak in the long speeches and I have one of my mentor who always asks me, how are you doing with your speeches today? And that's Eric Boucher, our treasurer. He said, are you trimming them down to five minutes? I said, I'm trying, that's why you see today I'm just using simple papers rather than just typed the papers. And I don't want to repeat what Gene said. Honestly, I'm very grateful to all our donors and the funders. Many, it's unbelievable to see a small organization like a CFL having 22 financial institutions and corporations sponsoring an event like this one. Sometimes I don't understand that. But I'm very pleased that all of you, businesses, individuals, corporations are really looking forward to continue to support immigrants and refugees so that we can succeed in this country. I also want to thank our partners. When I first started this organization personally, people were asking me if I have a track record. I didn't have any. But there were organizations that really supported our organization and were willing to risk to partner with CFL even though I didn't have any track record. So those continue to be on our side as we continue to work and expand. That's Coastal Enterprises Inc, Avesta Housing, Men's State Housing, Poland Housing Authority, Men's Immigrant Rights Coalition, United Way Cush Coalition. Poland under that education, I saw my friend Rob here from his retirement. He said, I want to be here with Claude. Catholic Charities and the Women Working Community.  We really work hard. I also want to thank our volunteers. I didn't even come here at this event until 2005. But it's not the room, beautiful? Oh my God. So, someone in a room reminded me that our second annual celebration was at the Avesta boardroom which is only can feed probably 20 people. But we have over 100 people in this room. Every year, our volunteers really do a good job and better and better. That's why we're so happy and pleased. So, I also want to recognize our board members. Please, if any board member of CFL is in the room, if you can stand up, they want to see who you are and the wonderful job you have. You know, my brother Mutima taught me this. When he first started his own organization, he surrounded himself with the people who had knowledge and who could help him get an extra mile. That's what I did. For CFL to have a CEO on your organization broke us, CFL, lawyers, and others. It's unbelievable. One of the person from McKibben asked me, how did you make that happen? You heard what Gene said. I've met everybody. I even met the mayor, my friend. So, thank you for our volunteers. I also want to acknowledge my staff. CFL, I used to be a one person organization. But in the last four years, we have had additional staff. So please, those of the other three staff besides me, can you stand up? They can see you where you are. That's Clément. We have had a good ride in the last three years with the Vista, but it's going to be a shocking that we're going to lose one. But I have all your support. We can hire someone full-time who can support us. So, by the way, that's a request. Again, thank you for all your sponsorship and thank you for your donations and thank you for being with us. We also have volunteers who come every week, once a week. They put about 700 hours in our work. So, that helps really organization to expand and to do the services. And our donors will fund the annual report and all the information. We are transparent. We even had an audit as a small agents. That's how CFL is transparent and we want to continue to do that way. Let me now talk a little bit about the program. CFL last year provided similar services to what you heard Jerome talking about to over 300 students. We provide money management and seven to build wealth. And also, we are financial counselor to provide coaching and financial counseling. We even started doing some tax workshops so our people can be equipped before they go to the workforce development. 80% of our students showed an improvement on the financial knowledge. That's a big improvement from nowhere to 80%. I will admit that personally, I didn't have any idea of what is credit when I came to this country. But now, I can coach someone even on the phone because that's what I do every day. But this is what makes me happy. When I was in Louisston, actually I tried to bring this lady so she can really say what she taught me so that you can hear that. She's a woman who has grandchildren. She came to my class, she's a farmer because I have a partnership with the cultivating community as well. She came to my class and said, I refuse to sit down and be fed only. I know what I can do is to do to work in a farm. But I don't know how to count money. I don't know how to do a budget. But one thing I know to do after learning this class, I'm going to open my business account so that I can be efficient and understand that I have revenue and expenses so that I will know whether my business is growing. I almost felt with tears. She said, Claude, thank you for doing this for us. I know the language is hard, she told me, but we appreciate every effort they do in helping us. We have many stories. Those people, immigrants, refugees, really are not only here to let hands and receive, they are willing to make a milestone, to be taught and be on their own feet without necessarily asking for help. Where do we go from here? That's the question. You heard what the video, people in a video. CFL, we're the wonderful board that you saw. We have, we did a wonderful trip, a retreat, and we decided that we can expand beyond financial literacy services, and that's what we're going to do. We know that in the last five years, we have been taking some surveys. We gave a survey to 400 students and we realized that 70 people of those were now working. 70% of those people who surveyed were now working. There is a wonderful organization providing workforce development, but it's not enough. We want to join those organizations and they provide more services. Because our dream and our goal for the organization is the financial stability, how can we have people reach the financial stability without having a real job? So we want to expand. And the second, we want to have small businesses from the immigrants community. Like what you heard Saharo said, expand and manage their businesses wisely. This is the shocking news that's came to me actually on Monday. Somebody we have to start a small business called me and say, I have someone who is here who's trying to sell me a vending machine and I share this with one of my staff. Over the phone, I was at the city hall buying my little food for the lunch. I said, I can't hear you because I was in investment. I said, can you come to my office with yourselves person so we can talk? Seriously they came. He said, he's selling me a machine for no cost. Just $1.39 and that's it. So every transaction will cost him $1.39. And it's not wonderful to have. I said, you gotta watch out, what are you going to sign up? I said, what is involved in that? What is the monthly cost for leasing this equipment? He told me it's $189, $100.89. However, this customer didn't even know that and he was willing, I'll tell you frankly, he had given him already his license for the business, his information and everything in the iPad. I said, would you please delete those informations? He deleted them on my eye. I said, we will call you when we need you. When I asked him, what is your business card? He didn't even have any. We have many scam and fraud that can affect our small businesses individuals. They need to be part of the growing economy of Maine but they need some support to be able to run efficiently their businesses and expand. And I'm glad that's my friend Paul from NSCAR getting bankers here. We were working together in Lewiston to do similar programs so we can expand to the community. And the last piece is there is no way we can do financial stability without addressing the higher education. I know most of you understand that the cost of education today is $1.3 trillion, the loan for the student, $1.3 trillion. I was happy when I heard yesterday Elizabeth introducing a bill to try to reduce this kind of loans. She said, why can student loan be also financed, refinanced like a mortgage? It is really overwhelming when you add the burden that you have to these other issues. So I hope that we have a wonderful partner. And some of my board don't even know this. I received a call yesterday. We've been working with FAM, financial authority of Maine. They give me a call yesterday said, I think we need to move forward with the plan. And together with FAM, we're going to hire one counselor who's going to work with the student refugee immigrants to see how they can facilitate their integration and also be able to orient them. As you heard some of the people said in a video for higher education and especially funding for the higher education. And again, we need your support. And that's why we always rely on you. That's why we always call upon you. We cannot do all these stuff without you. That's why again, we need to build a capacity. Those three people you saw there, I don't think we can be able to manage all these programs as we're explaining too. Having said that, I think I didn't want to run entire speech without, because we know we still have a keynote speaker. Honey, can you give me the binder now? So, thank you. In the middle of all these things, I met a friend, even though I make kind of like a joke, I met with a Michael Brennan. Maybe two years after we started, or maybe three years, and shared him my story and what we do. He was very pleased and said, you need to get CFL out of the box. If we explain it, don't have money, so you need to see Michael. When I called Michael to be our keynote speaker, he really didn't even take me to say no. This is our mayor. This is the mayor of all new residents. This is the mayor of all people in Cedar, Poland. Michael Brennan is the first popular elected mayor for the city of Poland in nearly nine decades. At the city's top elected official, Brennan has initiated several initiative design to encourage economic development and a job creation as well as support and strengthen the city's diverse neighborhood. He represents the city interests in Augusta and Washington, DC, where he advocates for the city, its residents and the businesses. Prior to his election as a mayor, Brennan worked as a policy associate with the Cutler Institute for Child and Family Policy at the Masque School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine, specializing in education and health. Before joining the Cutler Institute, Brennan worked as the director of community initiative at the United Way of Greater Poland, as well as for the Coastal Economic Development Corporation and as the executive director of the Campbell and County Affordable Housing Venture. Brennan has also worked as a director and Brennan has also been an agent, an agent faculty member at the University of New England. In addition to working at the Masque School, Microsoft as the state senate in the main legislature representing Portland, the farm up and the Westbrook. Brennan was first elected to the senate in 2002 and was elected senate majority leader in 2004. Prior to being a state senator, he was elected to the house of representatives for four terms between 1992 and 2000, representing Portland. During his tenure, Brennan was involved with several groundbreaking pieces of legislation, including the laptop program to provide every main student with computer efforts to reduce the negative impact of no child left behind and the programs to expand healthcare access to all men, a model used by other states in the nation in adopting universal healthcare. Brennan has been a proud and active resident of the seat of Poland for more than three decades. He lives in the Bakov neighborhood with his wife. Please welcome Michael on stage. Claude, thank you very much, Gene, Jerome, terrific. I was reflecting on what people said about the length of your speech and I just want you to know that research shows that after 29 seconds you lose people's interest. So just for future reference. And I know that poses a real challenge for me that in 29 seconds to maintain the interest of people here. I also, I just have to say very quickly, I've spoken here several times and I keep waiting for these books to fall over and so far they haven't, so that's a good thing. But this is a terrific turnout here tonight and the food was great. I also want to recognize the fact that the Portland Police Chief is here and the Portland Fire Police, Fire Chief is here. So, and they're not here for any reason, preventative reasons or anything like that, they're just, they follow me around a lot for a number of different reasons. I want to tell a story that several of you have heard before, but I want to tell it again. And my grandmother came to Portland in 1909. She's 14 years old and she had a sixth grade education. When she was 28 years old, she was a widow and pregnant with my father and she already had three other children. And so with the sixth grade education, the only work that she could find in Portland was at Maine Medical Center and the Food Preparation Department and she cleaned houses for wealthier people in the West End of Portland. But all four of her children went to college and I had two aunts in the 1930s when women didn't go to college and in the middle of the Depression, they both went to college and graduated. My father grew up on Kellogg Street, my mother grew up on Smith Street, they were childhood sweethearts and they got married in Cathedral Church here in Portland. In 1958, my father lost his job and he worked for Maine Central Railroad down at Union Station and they closed the passenger section of the railroad and he was out of work and he had three children and my mother was pregnant with the fourth child. We're a good Irish Catholics so we believed in big families. My father spent six months looking for a job in Portland and couldn't find one. So when I was five years old, he moved the whole family to Miami, Florida and took a job with Seaboard Coastline Railroad and he proceeded to then spend 37 years working for the railroad. Two months after I graduated from college, I went to Florida State University. Two months after I graduated, I came back to Portland and I had everything that I owned, everything that I owned was in the trunk of my car and I had $65 of traveler's checks. That was at $65 of traveler's checks and everything in the trunk of my car. What I did have was an aunt who never married, owned a house here in Portland and said that I could live with her rent-free and she'd feed me. Not a bad deal. And she also, in 1968, was the main teacher of the year and I had a teaching certificate and she thought she'd get me a job teacher. So having a place to live, having food and prospects of a job, Portland looked pretty good to me. And all these years later, I didn't have the opportunity to be the mayor of the city of Portland. But the reason that Portland was good for me, the reason why Portland worked for me is because I did have family, I did have a support, I did have a network of people that I could work with to find a job. And research has shown that oftentimes having that family network is more important in finding employment than your degree or necessarily your skills. So it's very, very important that we pay attention to the fact of having those social networks and the role that they play in finding employment for people. But equally important, I had language. I could speak English. And I wanna tell you two quick stories, one that you've heard before and a new one, just to keep your interest. Cause I'm past my 29 seconds. But in 2011, my wife and I went to Spain to visit our son who was working in Spain. We landed in the airport in Madrid and he was teaching so he couldn't meet us. So we got in a taxi, went to our airport, I mean to the hotel. We got out and said we need to get a cell phone. We went to three different stores, nobody spoke English, we couldn't get a cell phone. We then said, okay, we need to get some money and convert to euros. We went to a bank, we couldn't find anybody to speak English, we couldn't get any euros. Finally, we were hungry and we walked down the street in Madrid and I found a restaurant that had pictures on the menu that we could point to. So we didn't need to order. We then pointed to, we got lunch, we ate and I gave the waitress our credit card and she brought it back and I said, where do I put the tip? And she said, she was arguing with me back and forth and I said, I want to give a tip. And somebody leaned over who's sitting next to me who spoke English said we don't give tips in Spain, which I didn't know. So fortunately, two hours later, our son met us. He's fluent in Spanish and all of a sudden our ability to get a cell phone, our ability to get euros and our ability to eat got a whole heck of a lot better because we had access to language. And repeatedly, I am humbled when I traveled at my only understanding English and how many other people around the world have language acquisition. But I can't or I can only begin to appreciate the difficulties of coming to a city like Portland or to Maine and not having the language and having to figure out a way to live, to have a job and have a home. But I wanna give you another example and this goes to the very point, one of the points that Claude wanted me to talk about in terms of financial literacy. My wife and I just returned from Japan a week and a half ago and I tell this joke but I just told it again and Tim Honey's here and you already heard it so I won't do it again. But I am just recovering from jet lag. I had a couple times I've gotten up to speak and I've kind of fallen asleep but I'm not doing that tonight so that's a good thing. But when we're leaving Japan, we're in the airport in Tokyo and all during the time we had been in Japan we had an interpreter and she was brilliant. She lived here in Portland and she had grown up in Japan and every place I went she was there next to me. So I didn't create any international faux pas because she was there to interpret for me and to make sure I didn't do anything to offend anybody. But at the airport she left my wife and myself and my wife loves to shop and she decided that she needed to get a kimono for my daughter-in-law and for my new granddaughter. So I went and sat down someplace and after about 15 minutes I went to look for her and she was standing at a counter in one of the stores in the airport. And she was haggling talking back and forth with the staff. Now in Tokyo, Japan you don't haggle over price. You do that in Peru and Spain and other places but not in Japan. So she called me over and she said I want to buy this. She said but I think it only cost $60. And really converting the yen is not that difficult to American money. But somehow the way they were explaining it, she was having a hard time understanding it. I was getting confused.  And then we were sitting there, we were trying to talk to the clerk and say is it $600 or is it $60? And they're saying well it's this amount of yens and we're trying to do the conversion and not getting it right. And finally we just walked away because we couldn't figure it out. So right after that we ran into a person who was interpreting for us and we said Yaiko, this is how much it cost, what do we do? And she said it was $600 you would have spent, not 60. And that was another example where having limited access to language as well as understanding the financial literacy of a particular culture can have you end up doing things that you don't intend to do but you don't know any better. And so having community financial literacy provide that service to us in this community is an enormous asset that we have and an enormous service to the community. So thank you very much and thanks to all of you for the work you do supporting this. The other item that has already been talked about, Jean mentioned this, about the older population that we have in Maine. No secret where the median income we're the oldest in the country. And percentage of older people were actually second to Florida by a couple of percentage points. But the Department of Labor in 2010 issued a report that said that in 2017, only three years from now Maine would have a labor shortage because we would not have enough people entering the workforce that would equal those leading the workforce. So that's a real challenge for us as a state is attracting people to be here in the state. And in fact, recent census data shows us that we are only one of two states in the country, West Virginia being the other one that has actually lost population over the last 10 years. So we have a real challenge in that respect. But the other thing I wanna point out in Portland, we don't have as big a challenge in terms of attracting younger people. In fact, the state average 16% of people are between the age of 25 and 35. In Portland, it's 28%. So we're almost double the state average in terms of young people who are here. But think about this for a second. Just think about this for a second. In 1951, even before I was born, in 1951, Portland had 77,000 residents that lived in the city of Portland. In 1959, a year after I left Portland, Portland had 70,000 people that lived in the city of Portland. And in 2000, the 2000 census, we're down to 62,000 people that lived in the city of Portland. We're now around 66,000. And probably if we updated for the last two years, we might be closer to 67,000, 68,000. So as a city, we are smaller than we were in 1950 and in 1959. And we are only marginally bigger than we were our smallest point as 62,000. And I have people coming to me all the time that say we have all this development in the city. We have all these people that are moving to the city. And is it Portland getting too big too quickly? And I say to them, we're not as big as we were 50 years ago. And we still have another 10,000 people to go to equal where we were in 1951. So we need and want people to come to the city of Portland and we want people to be here. And one of the biggest challenges that we face is providing enough housing and providing enough job opportunities at the same time. And in fact, yesterday I went to a news conference and we had a groundbreaking in the West End. And it was for 39 units of market rate housing apartments. It's the first time in over 30 years that we have built in Portland market rate apartment units. And that's because the demand is so great now and we have a vacancy rate somewhere between one and 3% for housing in the city that there's a market demand that we can do market rate housing. But we have a huge challenge in making sure that as we attract people to the city we continue to create affordable housing opportunities. But the other item, the other issue that I think is important to discuss and again, Claude's touched on it and Gina's touched on it is the importance of education. 6%, and I'm gonna say this again, 6% of black and African American students in the Portland school system are proficient in 11th grade in math, 6%. We have a huge task in front of us to improve that metric. And that's a very difficult metric at 11th grade to have only 6% proficient math. And this is not where I'm allowing you to write a grant to the city. And say that you're gonna deal with that problem. I know you're gonna be there. But let me just add a couple, two other metrics to that. 37% of the students in Portland school system are students of color. And we live in the least racially diverse state in the country, but 37% of our students are students of color. But the other metric that is of more concern is that 55% of the students in the Portland school system are qualified for free and reduced lunch, meaning they come from economically disadvantaged families. That number in 2009 was 47%. And there's a projection by the Portland school system that we might be at 60 to 65% within the next 10 years. What that means to me is that we have a significant population of families and of children that are living in economically adverse, difficult circumstances. And we need to do more to create jobs and create employment opportunities that are just gonna boost the income of those families. Because still, regardless of all the things that you end up looking at, one of the single biggest markers that indicate student achievement is poverty. And if we don't deal with that issue, we won't be able to close oftentimes the achievement gap that we see in the Portland school system. And I'm gonna just give you three other numbers. I know from more at you, but three other numbers. If by 2017, we have 120 more students in our school system that are reading at grade level, that will give us 80% of students in the Portland school system that are reading grade level. If we have 60 more students that graduate from the Portland school system, we will have a 90% graduation rate. And if we have 40 more students that graduate from college within six years, that will move us from a 43% graduation rate to a 50% graduation rate. And for me, those three metrics are three of the most important metrics that we need to focus on in the city of Portland in coming years. Because that will address our educational achievement level in a way that will lead not only to language acquisition, but to financial literacy and to economic opportunity. One of the other things that we're, two of the other things that we're looking to do in the city, I've just started discussion. We have a meeting tomorrow to increase the minimum wage and it's been shown fairly clearly that increasing the minimum wage moves people out of poverty and provides more economic opportunity. And I hope the city of Portland can lead the state and increasing our minimum wage and providing more economic security for people living in the city of Portland. Two years ago, the city of Portland set aside $400,000 in our community development black grant money, specifically for workforce development for persons who may be homeless, persons who are new residents to the city and persons who are single parents in the city. And that's the first time in the history of the city that we have dedicated those funds for workforce development. And the newly revised economic development plan that we have for the city of Portland for the first time again, we have made a goal of workforce development, part of the economic development plan so that we are focused on making sure that as the economy improves in Portland that everybody has the opportunity to move forward, not just those people who are economically well off at this particular point. We also have an initiative called Growing Portland and it's a joint effort of USM, UNE, Maine College of Art, Maine Community College, the Chamber of Commerce, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Maine Medical Center and the Blood Research Foundation. And what we're doing is looking for the jobs that we need to create in the city in the next five years that will allow people to buy homes, to raise a family and to live in the city. And we're really focused right now on health informatics and believe me, I just learned what that was within the last year. And we're also focused on marine science and lastly we're focused on workforce development for those people that face multiple barriers to employment. So we have a laser-like focus in the city of Portland and creating jobs in economic development and in making sure that we have a school system that is closing the achievement gap that we're graduating students that are prepared to go to college and that when students go to college, they're graduating. And just because I can't get away from the statistic. But 85% of all the, we have about 20% of students now in Portland that don't complete high school. But 85% of those that do graduate go to college within two years. That's pretty good. But six years later, only 43% have graduated from college.  Lastly, and I know I'm 29 seconds times, whatever at this point. But I'm a licensed clinical social worker. And one of the things that social workers tend to do is look at human development, look at human motivation. Why do people do what they do or don't do what they do? And I think to some degree, social workers also try to look for the commonality and people as opposed to the differences in people. Social workers also tend to try to look at assets that people have and strengths that they have as opposed to deficits. And I say this in all sincerity. There are a lot of reasons why the city of Portland and the state of Maine should welcome people who come here from other countries. And we've talked a little bit about where we're an older population. We've talked about the fact that we're gonna have a labor shortage and we need more people to move to the city and move to the state. But I really believe the reason that we should welcome people who come here from other countries and other parts of the world is because it's the right thing to do. And we as human beings have a responsibility when somebody is in a country torn by violence, where there's a threat that they would be killed, where there are human rights violations, we have an obligation as a city of Portland to accept people into our community that are facing those circumstances. Not only because of all the economic reasons we talked about, but because it's the right thing to do of one human being helping another human being. And one of the things I'm proudest of the city of Portland and being mayor of the city of Portland is that people in the city of Portland understand that and have reached out and have tried as best we possibly can to be welcoming to other people that choose to come here. And I've said this over and over again, I'm not that interested in why people choose to come to Portland. What I'm more interested in is what people do when they're here. And I think the work that Claude has done, community financial literacy, helps people and positions people to be able to be part of the community, to be able to contribute to the community, and at some future point extend a helping hand to other people they'll choose to be here. So thank you very much for inviting me tonight. And I will work, Claude and I can mentor each other in trying to reduce our speeches and make them a little bit more pithy and see if we can work with that 29 second time frame. So thank you.