Good day everyone. It's nice to see people coming in and as we've reached 50 participants. I think it's a good moment to start this session. Welcome. My name is Bart, Bart Weiss. I work for CARE and I'm pleased to introduce you to our session on our adaptation finance tracking methodology. In the past two years or so we've piloted this methodology in six countries. We worked with partners in all of these countries and we've been tracking over 6 billion of adaptation finance over the period 2013 to 2017 to these countries. As far as we know, it is a unique research in its sort. I'm happy to hear if you have other thoughts on that after this session. Let me give you a few remarks or guidelines for engagement in the session. I see people saying hello in the chat. Very good, because that's what we were hoping you would do. If you have any technical difficulties, we have a Zoom volunteer standing by. So then please put a request in the chat to the volunteer. I hope you can share any questions that you may have and stay on mute for the time being until I open the floor for questions. If you have any technical difficulties, we have a Zoom volunteer standing by. So please put a request in the chat to the volunteer. I hope at least you'll be able to access the chat. A quick overview of what you'll want to expect for this session. We will start with a short poll to get a bit of an idea of what your background is, and also your expectations for the session. Then I will give you an overall introduction to our methodology. And then we'll go into our questions and then we'll go into our cases for Uganda and the Philippines. And then we'll have some breakout groups with the researchers from these countries where you can ask them basically any questions that you have about the research methodology. And finally, we'll come back in the plenary. We'll have a sneak preview of the overall outcomes of our research. And then I will then close and then it should be one and a half hours more or less from now. I would like to ask our volunteer Chandler to share his screen with the Mentimeter poll. Let me stop sharing. Can we go back to the first slide. This is the second one I see. So you can see the instructions at the top. Please go to menti.com and then you can use the code 705774 for to log in and answer the questions that we share here. Yes, I see the first person found the link. So you go to menti.com and use the code, please. 705774 for by the way we are recording this session so that we can share. Yeah, so that people can listen back afterwards. Just so you're aware. So we have 30 people, more or less answering the question and you can see an overwhelming majority of NGO colleagues here, some research institutions to government and one business, one student and one other. So that's it's quite clear that we are among peers, which I suppose is nice but also happy to have some other people around so that you can offer some fresh and different perspectives. Can we go to the second question, Chandler, and have a look at the word cloud. Great. It's nice to see this developing it's nice to see also that I think we're that you are in the right session, because we'll be talking about adaptation finance and will indeed be hopefully sharing new things. And helping you to broaden your knowledge to get a better understanding of adaptation finance and how to track that. Good. Well, feel free to keep on adding expectations will be saving this cloud afterwards. So it will become part of the package of materials for this session.  So, the basic purpose of our adaptation finance tracking research was to assess whether donors reporting adaptation finance is reliable and accurate, and whether the full amount genuinely genuinely target adaptation. We also investigated if the adaptation finance benefits the poorest and most climate vulnerable parts of the population, and we sought to develop a methodology that civil society could use widely. We initially piloted this in six countries. Overview, the in Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia, Nepal, Philippines and Vietnam. The scope of the research so far that we've investigated 112 adaptation projects in these countries. We focused on international international adaptation finance from bilateral donors and multilateral, the multilateral donors for the development banks. We included in each country, the 10 largest adaptation relevant projects in our sample. In the total, we covered almost half of the total climate finance received across these countries throughout the period. Why, why is this study needed. Well, for one, I think most of you will probably be aware of the agreement and the agreement or the intention declared in the agreement to have a balanced approach to climate finance balanced over adaptation and mitigation. And by most people, his balance is interpreted as that 100 billion or 100, yeah, 100 billion climate finance should be 50% adaptation finance and 50% climate finance mitigation finance. So, in order to track that. There's basically two methods that are used to report on adaptation finance, and both of these methods have their issues. One is the real marker, which is be used by developed country donors and reporting to the OECD. And it's a very rough estimate because it's just a marker one or zero one or two. And based on that, the calculation is made of how much of a project budget can be reported as adaptation finance. Most donors say that if real marker zero is 0% obviously real marker one is 40% so it's a bit less than half, and real marker two is 100% adaptation finance. So on the slide, you can see that if for a real marker for a project to get a real marker to on adaptation, the climate change adaptation objective should be explicitly integrated into the documents for the activity, but and it should be a fundamental reason for design so basically the project should not be there if if not if if there will not be no need for climate change adaptation. Then for the real marker value one. The objective of the project should be related to adaptation, but it is not the primary reason for undertaking this activity. And finally, of course, if there is a real marker zero then it's not related to adaptation at all. And then next to this there is the method that's employed by the multilateral development banks, which is called the three step method, which we are going to use over which we used in our methodology actually, actually. The disadvantage of this one is that it's totally non transparent and the banks do not disclose how they exactly assess their projects and and the evidence of that assessment so as civil society for example we cannot dive into that and investigate whether they are indeed assessing their projects correctly and whether that adaptation finance is indeed can be judged to be adaptation contributing to adaptation. In our methodology. We started with OECD dark data for the six countries that we meant that I mentioned for the period 2013 to 2017. It was reported by the donors. So it is all based on project documentation and the real markers, and then the three step approach for the MDB's. We used then our, our own variation on the three step assessment based on these development banks, because in our view, the questions that these these three steps ask are, you know, our relevant questions to indeed assess whether finance is relevant to adaptation. And because it's, it's an, it's a method that's also being used by the donors themselves. In our research we combined document and observational analysis, which is one of the, the contribute. Yeah, one of the things that we I think this research contributes to the evidence on adaptation finance. We used a rating skill as I show on the right hand side in this slide to come to a granular, granular calculation of the adaptation relevance of the project. I'll show a picture of that in the next slide. But basically, and with the skill we, we gave scores to each of the questions for the three steps, and then with these scores, we calculated the adaptation relevance of the finance. And we also included in our methodology and assessment of the poverty and gender orientation of the project. So in a way, the first part of the research focused on the quantity of adaptation finance, and then second part, more on the quality, in which we seem to do, and we, we did a rapid assessment to what extent the project includes poor communities, a gender assessment based on a cash gender marker, and an assessment using the joint principles for adaptation, which will probably be familiar to some of you because it's been developed. It was they these joint principles were developed by the southern voices as principles for, yeah, adaptation could practice basically. These are the three steps in assessment. The, the first step or the first question, basically, yeah, the steps basically translate into three questions. One, focus on the climate vulnerability context. And, and questions, how well the project sets out the context of risks vulnerabilities and impact related to climate variability and climate change. And second, focus on the statements of statement of purpose or intent in the project document or in the project. So is the intent of the project explicitly to address the identified risks vulnerabilities and impact related to climate variability and climate change. Now finally, is there a demonstrated direct link between the risks and vulnerabilities and impacts, and the finance activities. And for each of these steps, we basically we, our, our assessment format took the form of a table in which for each step, we, we assessed on one hand, what, what, when looking at the project documentation, what, what score we would give. On the other hand, we combine that with observations, observations from sources from the areas where the, the projects were implemented, or other relevant additional sources that we could find. And we did this because we, because, on one hand, the donors themselves score the, or, or judge the adaptation relevance of project purely based on project documentation. So we wanted to replicate that process and, and see whether we would come to the same conclusion. But on the other hand, we also wanted to see whether in practice, and reality would actually confirm, then the, the assessment of the project documents. And what I'm showing here in this table is basically an example calculation, where you could come where, well in this case, we come to the conclusion based on our assessment. That's, let me see for based on so that there is a difference you see a clear difference between project, our assessment based on project documents and project observations, where in actual observations we come to a lower estimation of adaptation finance, but also that link to that. If you, if, if our according to our estimation adaptation finance is only around 65% or 50, 56% then it would not be correct to give a real market one or sorry a real market to. This led to is basically. Sorry, now I'm going too fast. So the next slide and I'm going to show this very briefly because I cannot share all of this with you but. So we also had these assessments for poverty, gender and the joint principles for adaptation. And basically these were separate elements in our methodology where we had teams in the country's assessed poverty and gender and the joint principles, according to a number of key questions. And then again, coming to an assessment rating. In the end, this led to maximum of 20 reports per country on 20 projects. And then these 20 projects reports were synthesized into country reports, and we are currently finalizing the overall synthesis report. It's almost done so we can share some first findings later in the session, but we're still looking for the, yeah, the best order. Yeah, the best moment to publish it because of course all, yeah, the whole agenda of the UNF triple C is shifting. And so we're a bit puzzled. Yeah, puzzling to see what's the best moment to reach the right people. Any suggestions on this welcome or some first lessons and there will be more concrete lessons shared by my colleagues later. The first lesson is that the access to data. And that's obvious, of course, that is crucial and it's not always easy for national civil society so for example, for our colleagues in Uganda or Ethiopia to access these In our study this was facilitated by a consultant in Denmark. And what we saw is that the collaboration between NGOs and the expert consultants was crucial for the result. So I think in developing this methodology and taking the with the ambition that it could be widely applied by civil society. We underestimated the importance and of having this access to data and also having this expert insight in. To calculate, for example, or to have to crunch the numbers. And it's, we also found that our methodology is still quite complex. I think that's probably also what you, what you, what you conclude based on my presentation so far, because it has a number of different elements. And these elements need to be better integrated. So we had a dating skill where we had 10 different grades should be simplified to five points actually because it's difficult to distinguish between 10 different grades. And then finally, our conclusion is that the combination of document and observational analysis does have a great added value, because we found that from our observational analysis we come to different conclusions than from the documents. However, to get that observational evidence was more costly than we expected. Because what we expected initially was that through contacts through networks. CSO counterparts, we will be able to reach out to people by phone, for example, to investigate to ask them about their knowledge on the implementation of a certain project in an area. It turned out to be more complicated than we thought. It turned out that in many cases we did need to go visit areas ourselves or our call or my, or our CSO colleagues it did so, and organize focus groups for example. So, it turned out that this observational evidence was different was more difficult to gather than we had expected. So here are some of my, the first lessons and a brief description of our methodology. I imagine that you have questions based on this. And we have some time for that. I would like to focus on really on the clarifying questions and save any discussion for later. Let me just see if there's any questions in the chat. And meanwhile, I'll stop sharing for a minute. Let me see. So I'm going through the chat now I see one question on poverty orientation and poverty cut off points. Let me see. I must admit I don't have to direct answer to that. So one of my fellow researchers has an answer, because we follow we use basically for simple questions to look at to assess the poverty orientation. Christine, please. Thank you so much. Thank you so much but for the presentation in regard to the poverty. We have four questions and we also use the existing poverty maps, we use the World Bank map for Uganda. Then we also use the the household survey reports. So those formed the yardstick for determining which projects were actually responding to poverty. And then by the four questions on whether the project did the poverty analysis, whether it is taking into issues of inclusion. So that is what we basically did. Thanks Christine. We'd be happy to provide a more detailed answer afterwards if you can. If you want to have that. Then please just reach out. I will share my email later on also in the chat. Another question on what basis this research considers the finance as climate finance. And that's actually not so difficult because we basically use the OECD DAC report climate finance. So the basis in this case is what the donors themselves reported as climate finance to the countries. And then what we did of course is check whether we indeed agree that this is adaptation finance. It'd be also good to add here that we focus on adaptation finance because this is. It's, it's easier to measure mitigation finance generally. And it's also, so there's an it's easily in it's no it's easier to measure the impact of mitigation generally. And what we've seen in past that there has been a tendency to focus more on mitigation also because mitigation is is easy. There's an easier return on investment. So we focus our study on adaptation finance because we could because we also saw the necessity to draw extra attention to adaptation finance and and because we had the assumption or the hypothesis that adaptation finance is actually being overreported so that what we mean is that what I mean then is that a lot of the current reported adaptation finance doesn't really count as adaptation finance. Okay, let me have a look at last look at questions. The countries involved where Uganda, and Ethiopia and Ghana, and then Nepal, Vietnam and the Philippines, knowing how much adaptation finance. This is a good question, which I would would also be good to bring out in the break breakout groups is knowing how much adaptation finance is reaching communities really more important than knowing the adaptation or resilience impact of that finance. And we try to address this question by also integrating the poverty and gender components into our assessment. But of course, that still is an assessment based on how the project is set up and not so much on really the real changes in resilience that we see at community level. That was also a step too far for this research. This was focusing on public funds. I see already answered my question on the question on the countries. Okay. Let me see. I think a number of these questions I see here are very good questions to also ask the researchers in the breakout groups. So what I would like to do is go to the presentation of my colleague from Uganda. Jalia was doing the research in Uganda for Emily together with Christine and probably some other people. And you will tell us more about the research in Uganda, your findings there and also what are some of the lessons you learned on the methodology. Jalia, can you share your screen and unmute yourself. So let me see. Jalia, can you hear me. Otherwise, Athena, would you be okay to go first. I see Jalia starting to share her screen. Okay, Jalia, can you. Hi, everyone. Hi, everyone. Hello. Hello, good afternoon from Kampala Uganda. Hello, can you hear me. Yes, we can hear you. Good afternoon. It is a good afternoon from Kampala Uganda. My name is Jalia Nambiru. I work with Emily, Emily's environmental management for library hood improvement by Safe Facility. We are based in Kampala. I work as the program's officer. I'm glad to be sharing with you the findings we got from our study. Let me start my video. Let me present as you see me. Yeah, this is a snapshot of our findings by way of overview. For some of you who might not know, Uganda is a least developed country and categorized with low human development index. That is according to UNDP 2018. According to the ND gain metrics, Uganda is ranked as the 15th most vulnerable country with that ranking of 0.58. We note that Uganda submitted our national adaptation plan roadmap to the UNFCCC in 2015. By doing this assessment, we assessed a total number of 701 projects. Which we are totaling to 1 billion USD. That is between 2013 to 2017. For the projects that we assessed, we are 21 in number to a tune of 495.1 million USD. But we looked at German as being the largest climate finance provider during that period we assessed. In our findings, we observed that 55% of the 495.1 million USD of the total that was committed was adaptation related. That is what we found out. And we went ahead to find out that 43% of the adaptation finance did not address gender equality. Still, we saw that 16% of the total received was remarked as principle for both mitigation and adaptation. As Bert has already alluded to it, the donors themselves do report their commitments. That is on climate change adaptation to the OECD real marker. So we focused on the database by the OECD. That is the information. That is where we got the information. We also found out that 55, 57.1 million USD of adaptation finance was found to be under-reported. Here we note that some donors do report and the recipients of that money from the donors do report again on those projects. So we found a mismatch in reporting, which we identified as under-reporting from the two entities. We go ahead to share with you some of the issues that we found out as very key. Bert has already alluded to some of them. For example, the limited transparency on project information. We found out that most of the donors do not expose the information related to their commitment of projects. So it was a very big challenge for us to find information related to projects that were reported in the OECD real marker database. The inaccurate donor real marker allocation across projects. That one has already been noted. We also looked at the limited focus on adaptation projects. That is in relation to gender equality. Gender was not a very good focus in relation to project development. In some of the projects that we managed to go and visit the sites, we found out that some projects have been delayed. The implementation has been delayed due to some bureaucracy, maybe from the implementers. That is from the government and other CSOs that were involved in the implementation. In line with the lessons and key outcomes, we note that capacity development on the tracking tools is very crucial. Of course, Bert has already mentioned that the tool seems to be complex. Yeah, we all agree to that. So we need some continuous capacity development in line with those tools. We also note that transparency on project information is important. This point speaks so well with the pointers I have already alluded to, in line with the limited exposure of project information. We also note that there is need for a fair understanding of the country policies, plans and strategies on adaptation. So here we observed that some of the projects that were assessed were not readily linked to the Ugandan policies, plans and strategies related to adaptation. So this has to be a very key thing that should be taken into consideration when developing projects. We see the mult-stakeholder engagement as a very key thing. This takes into consideration the state and non-state actors because for some of the projects that we managed it to go to, some did engage the communities, which was not the case for other projects. But still we note that this is a very key thing which has to be taken into consideration. The next lesson here is in line with the gender action plans which should be integrated in projects documents. We note that gender is very key. And of course, as care, we know very well that our themes are very well aligned with the gender action plans. So here we note that gender action plans should be integrated in project documents for it to be taken very good care of. We found out that some of the projects did not do gender analysis. We found out that in some of the projects that we visited, some gender groups were not considered. For example, we visited a project in Cavali, that is the Eureka project, and we found out that women were assigned roles that were too heavy for them. They could not manage. So we think that gender has to be split and considered very well in the project documents. That is from inception, implementation, rather, and evaluation. Yeah, in terms of outcomes, we saw that we built state and non-state actors capacity in fracking adaptation financing. And we also developed a database of 21 adaptation projects. So to speak, and for your information colleagues, our government was very much appreciative to the study. So when we developed this database, it was taken in on by the government, and they will be using it whenever they will be qualifying adaptation projects. We are building capacity. If I can report to this congregation as Emily, we've gone ahead to continue with the tracking of adaptation finance. This year, 2020, we are continuing with tracking adaptation and mitigation. From last year's assessment, we got a number of questions as to why we are not involving or including mitigation. In the end, we managed to widen our scope to include mitigation in our assessment. But this builds from the experiences we got from this assessment. I submit. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Telia, for sharing your lessons and findings from the work in Uganda. It's really good to hear that you are continuing the work and updating the findings for the years after 2017, and also that the government is also so engaged in this. I don't want to lose much time. So let's go to the next presentation. Athena, are you ready? Hang on. Telia, can you stop sharing your screen? Thank you. And can you enter full screen mode? Yes, perfect. Sorry. Hello, guys. Wait, hang on. Hello. Can anyone, everyone can hear me? Yes, we can hear you. All right. So I'm Athena. I'm the researcher for this adaptation finance tracking for the Philippines. I work with assistance in cooperation for community resilience and development together with ICSC and CARE Philippines, of course, to undertake the research. My partner from ICSC is also here. So later, we can just, if you have more questions, we can answer them for you. So basically, of course, as you would probably know from this typhoon and earthquake profile from the Philippines that we are definitely at risk to hazards. We are at the fifth in the climate risk index as of 2019. And then we are definitely prone to extreme weather events. And we have felt the slow onset effects of climate change specifically for like the second largest island in the Philippines, Mindanao. El Nino was really bad last year and it has led to a lot of food insecurity in the region. We have, we have climate policies, but we currently do not have a national adaptation plan. It's supposed to be developed this 2020. When we were doing the research, we were, we had CCC, the Climate Change Commission, together with other government agencies and a CSO representation, discuss about a database. Commission in the Philippines said they will be establishing a climate finance system and services, which will hold all relevant climate financing in the Philippines and hopefully track climate finance. So that's still to do something to do for the government. So far, there has been, there is 223 climate related projects from within 2013 to 2017. But then specifically for this project, we only reviewed 18. So the criteria we used were, well, we looked at the largest projects in terms of financial value. Of course, projects that also scored one and two for adaptation. And we also tried to include some of the projects, even if they weren't, even if the financial contribution wasn't a lot. We tried to include some, some projects with gender markers. So yeah, the largest donor, at least for the Philippines so far is Japan and the World Bank. So what we found out during the research is that a lot of climate finance in the Philippines to leans towards mitigation. And apparently a lot of the climate finances also primarily through loans, only 7% are grants to the Philippines. And then that there is also a lot of overreporting if, if you, if we go back later we can just discuss it also in the breakout groups, the methodology, the, the tool that we use in the three step approach we found out that a lot of donors are overreporting. And because Japan is the highest donor or the largest donor in the country, we found out that 54% is overreported. 54% is just, 54% is estimated to be generally adaptation relevant only. And of course, one one key issue was that gender was not a key objective across all projects only six projects at six out of the 18 projects scored in in gender. So there was a key issue across all projects. The key lessons we found out and the use of methodology the methodology was that again similar to Uganda we had very, it was very difficult for us to access project documents and to access the projects themselves. We had to do different strategies across partners across ICSD and Accord, in order for us to get just get, you know, documents from from agencies or, or local government. It was evident also that whoever was thinking, whoever was doing the study for reviewing the project, there are inter-rater biases and how we scored. So I think similar to Uganda we think that building the capacities researchers are very, very important to ensure that there's a minimize inter-rater biases. And then, again, similar to what, what do you call it. As Bart said earlier, the tools are very still very, very complex, and it's a lot of work. So it requires a significant amount of time and resources to finish it. And then, as a suggestion, of course we discuss it also with the team. I think it's better also to use participatory approaches to make sure that the researchers are not just like academics or people, you know, CSOs, that also local communities are also the capacities of local communities are also built for them to be able to participate in the actual data production. And also track the projects themselves because these projects are supposed to be the ones that, you know, will impact heavily on their lives or would reduce their risk to climate. So climate change. So, yeah. So there. Sorry, am I speaking too fast. Sorry guys. No, it's perfect Athena. Thank you. It's good to hear your experience as well. And I'm looking forward to going into depth on these projects further in the breakout sessions. I have set up a number of breakout rooms. Each will be led by one of the researchers involved. And I invite the participants to basically share all their burning questions and with them then and discuss those. Let me show you quickly a Google document with the questions that I set up for this, where we aim to capture the outcomes of the breakout groups. On my screen now. And basically, I've created a number of tables with the questions. I'm totally fine if you only discuss question one, the first question and go into the burning questions, but please take notes in the group of the questions that you ask and also the answers in bullets. It's not necessary to be very comprehensive. This will be the ones will be our fellow researchers. And I'm going to ask you to at the start of your breakout group, do a quick round and also see who is willing to take notes. I will share the link to the Google document in the chat right now. So you can all access this. And I just need to find my chat of course. Where did it go sharing the link. I'm sharing it to everyone here. So I'll send you to the breakout groups now you'll have 15 minutes, you come back because we'll be sharing a sneak preview of the overall findings afterwards. And of course we'll have some time in a plenary to close together. Hello, welcome back. Thank you, but we are not finished. I understand if you haven't finished. Yeah, there's probably a lot to discuss. And I think there's also a limitation of this format that we have a methodology that's complex and a lot of experience that's simply not possible to share all of that in the time that we have. But we do hope that this is, it works as a teaser, and we'd be happy to share more afterwards, if you get in touch with us. I would like to ask a different breakout leads to briefly update me update the group on what you discussed in your in your breakout. Shall we go through the groups just one by one. Yes, please be seen. Yes. In our group, there was a question on what is how are you able to to differentiate over reporting and under reporting. So in our group we've been able to touch the over reporting and under reporting, whereby if the budget that is reported to the OECD is higher than what is being reported by the assessment team, then that is, that is over reporting. And we also tackled an issue of, we tackled an issue that was a question on how this study is going to is relevant for future, for future work. And we noted that the study is relevant tracking adaptation is relevant because by then we shall be able to try to hold governments and providers of climate. Accountable by looking at the impact of climate finance at the ground level and also be able to trace how much has been committed by the development by the developed parties. And then on the issue of the recommendation, members suggested that the methodologies should be made easier to be worked with. And then for the lessons learned, it was learned from members that gender aspects should be integrated in project designs from the work to be able to track and to be able to to ensure that the projects are gender responsive and climate finance is considering gender aspects. Thank you so much. Thank you, Christine. Can we go to the group by with Jalea. Yeah. Please just briefly in a minute. I mean, yeah, thank you, but and thank you colleagues. Unfortunately, in our group we just managed it to cover question one. The time was very limited. Moving forward, we discussed about the issue and transparency in line with projecting from information. And here we were wondering, all members were wondering how we manage how we can manage to trace money that comes from an agency to an intermediary up to communities and back maybe the reporting back to the donors. So how do we like put a distinction between all those entities or among the entities. We also discussed about the methodologies being used in tracking finances. Here we indicated the real markers, the JPAs and poverty maps in terms of poverty and the gender care marker in terms of gender. But still here we also focused on gender as something that should be explicitly included in project development. One member inquired about how we can differentiate between mitigation and adaptation finance. Noting that I don't know can give money whole sum Lee, but actions, some of them can be contributing to mitigation and adaptation. How do we differentiate. And maybe, yeah, we didn't go. We didn't go further because time was not on our side. Thank you. Thank you, I understand. Let's see Andrew, maybe you can update me shortly on your group. Yeah, so we had some good questions on how the research can be used as an advocacy tool in budget tracking. And I think that the main point there is that currently climate finance towards the Paris Agreement targets is very dominated by the donors who mark their own projects and report their own finance. So some kind of mechanism using this method or a version of this method to be able to fact check these donor numbers is the main way that this can be used as an advocacy tool. And the global findings that we'll come to in a bit kind of support that. And then we had a question on the differences in the amount that gender equality was targeted. And here we found that a lot of projects didn't really have any gender focus. And there was very few projects that stated that they were focusing on transformative gender action. Yeah, I'll keep it short and leave it there. Andrew, Athena can I ask you to go next? Sure. Ours was, we didn't finish quite well there. But then the first question was that, was it possible to compare data between countries because the processes might be different. We delve into a bit of poverty, whether we can compare poverty indicators across countries. So we tried to simplify poverty and even gender by just asking the four key questions that we did, and we had a workshop to discuss their findings together and try to come up with general patterns and trends. There was also a question on whether there's a linkage between the gender scores. If you score high on gender, would you score high on adaptation to or or poverty. What we felt across is that there is no, no clear pattern yet. So far, even those that scored high on gender, sometimes they don't score high in adaptation as well. So, there's also question on, was it difficult to access documents. And yes, we've said this earlier, it was very difficult and, and we, I think across countries we did different strategies just for us to get the documents, and have, to look over them. So we, we had advisory groups, we tried reaching out to national government agencies, local governments, communities everywhere. And then, so yeah, those are the burning questions so far. That's all we finished. Thank you Athena. Kyros, you are last. Hi again. I finished mid sentence when you called us back to the, to the main plenary. But where we, we talked about some interesting issues in the group issues that are sort of lying in the, in the borders of the methodology of what we talked about, you know, looking into localities. I mean we, we sort of, I mean the research looked into the international flows and how it's implemented in the local levels. And from, from ECAD asked, you know, did the research try to look into, you know, the difficulties and what it actually takes for localities to access financing, climate financing. And I think that's, that's interesting. But it's not explicit in the methodology of the research. Shelton asked about the research come across any corruption issues, which I think is important, especially in some of the, in a lot of countries. We also talked about whether there is an experience where in a fund is not necessarily tagged as adaptation, but then we looked into it and decided that, you know, it's actually good. It's actually an adaptation measure on the ground. I just shared one of our experiences in the Philippine research where in, you know, a, a fund flow, what is, is intact as an adaptation measure, but it's actually used as an adaptation in the local implementation. So that's, I think that's, that's an interesting question. And last is, you know, similar to most of the groups except for the main reasons for having difficulty in getting information. And I think that's been answered several times, especially on the, on the grounds that you know it really varies from from country from one country to another. These are all important. I think supporting studies or lens on climate finance, this research would also benefit from in the future. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks. It's interesting that you point out that the need in some cases we also found underreporting so the example that you mentioned of a study or a project that wasn't tagged as adaptation finance but which you in practice found to be contributing to adaptation is an example of supporting. Andrew, I think we're coming to the point that we will would like to have a sneak preview on what are some of the global findings from our study. Let me put up your PowerPoint. And then can you walk us through. Yeah, it's just a slide. Right. Yeah, let me just take any of our epic numbers pre pre publication. Okay, just a minute. I'm trying to. Yes, here it is. I'm starting to appreciate people helping out with all the technicalities around these kind of things. Once you do it and yourself. Okay, it's online. It's on the screen. You should be able to see it now. Yeah, we can. Yeah, so we've been involved in pulling together these six country reports and looking at the figures and more global perspective. And there's a few things that we can pull out in terms of global findings. And that's in general, adaptation finance is being far more likely to be over reported than under reported. And it's really substantial across the six studies we're looking at over reporting figures that run into billions of US dollars across these four reporting years, five reporting years. And so when you take into account this over reporting, then these donor numbers that have been reported officially to the OECD and the UN and their biennial reports. They can be considered unreliable. And we say this because we've looked at 112 projects across just six countries, and we're finding figures that are this large. So if this method was to be repeated elsewhere, then we think that these figures could change quite substantially. And that can be linked to things like the UN adaptation gap report, which looked to try to estimate adaptation finance needs by 2030, they put them at about about 140 to 300 billion per year. And then if you look at what the OECD is saying at the moment, in terms of how much donors are providing in 2017, the OECD recorded 13 billion of adaptation finance which donors reported themselves. So if you take this low amount that's already being reported and then factor in over reporting, and then look forward towards adaptation needs, then this adaptation gap is widening and might be being underestimated. And then if we look at the issues on transparency, then we're seeing that bilateral donors, the developed country donors are particularly bad at providing access to documentation. And the multilateral development banks, although they do provide documentation which is an important distinction that came out from across the six studies with the banks have public public registries of their documents. But they don't provide information on how they make their figures. So this transparency issue is across all six countries. And then as we've just heard from the breakout sessions, gender is not being integrated consistently. And that was a finding across all six studies. And from the rapid assessments on poverty we're seeing patchy integration into these adaptation projects. So it's not, you know, the, the, the gender and the poverty analyses they were more rapid and we were looking at how the donors are integrating into their documentation and also some observations. But there is, there's, for those to be considered as integrated consistently into adaptation projects. There's a lot further to go. I would say that this role of this civil society organizations to act as watchdogs and adaptation finance. We think it's been proven as necessary and should definitely continue to keep going. Yeah, I'll leave it there. Thank you, Andrew. I'm really tempted to open the floor for questions still and final remarks, but looking at the time. We simply don't have time for that. I'm, I'm, I was really happy to be able to share this this methodology with you and the first findings of our research. We're excited to be able to share the findings in the foreseeable future. And we need to still figure out what's the best moment. If you have any thoughts on that, please share with us or any intelligence on who to to reach out to one of the target groups for this research, especially the overall report we thought would be the developing country negotiators, so that they have a very clear picture of the potential of reporting that's actually in adaptation finance. Again, as Andrew shared, we think that this report, though we, we, we, we on one hand, encounter challenges in doing the research and doing accessing information. Also, it's really challenging to, to investigate these very large infrastructure projects for example in the Philippines. But it also for us really highlighted the role of civil society and the need for civil society to be somehow watching investigating these projects to indeed assess whether they are adaptation relevant whether. So the whether the reporting makes sense. And also whether they are addressing gender and poverty. Because we see that there's gaps and we see so we, it really underscores the necessity of transparency and civil society involvement in assessing these projects and I think there's a long way to go there. And a lot of, of our lobby and advocacy efforts will go into, into that as well. The good thing also and maybe that's on the side. It's very easy of course to call to talk about overreporting and and point fingers, but there's also a number of donors that are doing quite well. So we see that a lot of the overreporting comes from few donors, which is is good news for some, I suppose. And, and in some cases there's case of underreporting so there's also adaptation finance that's not being reported as such. However, the overall tendency, or the overall conclusion in our research is needed there is much more overreporting than underreporting. We will be sharing the recordings we will be sharing the presentations of the session afterwards through the CBA. I think that's it from my side. Thanks again a lot. Maybe a final suggestion is that we turn on our cameras so that we can actually see each other and wave each other goodbye. Please stay in touch if you want to. I'm now putting my, my. It's good to see you all putting my email address in the chat so you can reach out to me. So goodbye. Enjoy CBA. I hope you'll learn a lot and share a lot. And I hope we'll be in touch. Thanks all for joining. Thank you. Bye. Thank you.


to the show policy for the people. Our show focuses on effective policy solutions, evaluating effectiveness of Hawaii's, the policy on Hawaii's pressing issues with seasoned and emerging policymakers. I'm your host, Minara Mordecai. I'm a senior policy analyst for the Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs. But for my inaugural episode, I'm very excited to be joined by two brilliant and emerging policymakers, Rina Nagashima and Cameron De Puba. Born and raised in Honolulu, Cameron is a rising senior at the University of California, Berkeley. He's studying history and public policy. He has interned in DC for US Congressman Ed Case. He is currently volunteering for the city and county of Honolulu on issues of housing and homelessness. Rina was born in Japan and raised in Hawaii. She's a rising sophomore at Scripps College in Claremont, California, with a double major in public policy and math. During the pandemic, she took a gap year and returned home from college to get more involved locally. She interned for the US Congressman Kaika Helit in the Pacific and Asian Affairs Council. He's currently interning with the US Department of Agriculture. Welcome Cameron and Rina. You both came back to Hawaii during the pandemic to become more involved with local policymaking and to contribute to recovery efforts. So my first question for you is, how did you get started and motivated to begin a career in politics? Let's start with you, Rina. Hi, thanks for having us here, Manara. I guess I got started in politics and policymaking first as like a side hobby in high school. As Manara said, I was raised in like a household with parents from Japan. So we didn't talk about politics. And so I wasn't really exposed to it until high school through my friends and from the debate team in high school. And thinking about how civic engagement is a very important thing. I think that most people should have like politics as like something that's impacting to the degree. And I thought I was just one of those people until during college and like recently during COVID I started to see how that could develop into more of a career. Mostly because I had opportunities to participate in politics through political campaigning or through internships, mostly based in Hawaii that made me realize that I really like the fast-paced environment and the balance between having to think academically but also having to think about community and real people and interacting with other people. That's great. Karen, what about you? How did you get motivated? Yeah, thanks for having me on. I'd say a little bit different from Reena. My family is a fairly political family. My family is not necessarily very active in politics but certainly we do pay attention to politics. And there's always spirited debates around the dinner table at night between my family members and myself.  But really in high school that's where I sort of first started to actually get more hands-on experience in politics and policy, I was really interested in history and I still study that. But being able to have experience volunteering on campaigns, my first campaign was when I was in high school that really opened a lot of doors to me and really showed me a lot that's out there and how important community engagement is. So really the way I look at it now it's not just a hobby like it was in high school but having been able to come back during the pandemic and having been able to really connect with my community, again, reconnect. After being in California for a year and a half almost it was really meaningful. Despite it sort of having me return on such a negative event there was hope, it was really, really great. So being able to connect and give back to the community through my political experience has been a great, great opportunity. Awesome. So Cameron, while I have you, I was wondering, I wanna talk to a little bit about your campaign with Mayor Blanjardiskin. What did you, I know you were quite engaged with that and what did you think of the civic engagement among young voters when you were working on the campaign? Did you witness apathy, enthusiasm? What's your opinion on this issue of young engaging young voters? Yeah, so this past year was actually really great for youth engagement and politics. The much higher number of youth voters and I think a lot of individuals like myself and my peers are really understanding that this is a really critical time for not just our state, for the nation as a whole and having to be able to share their voice and be able to participate at least in voting. That's been a huge growth at least locally in youth participation. But specifically on the campaign, actually, we had a lot of young volunteers. Actually, most of the campaign, our campaign was staffed by college students and our peers and both Rena and myself were on the campaign. That's how we got our start at least during the pandemic getting back into politics locally. So I really think the key is getting young people involved and just having them take the first step into being engaged and being informed in politics and policy, I think that's a critical step to take and voting is the perfect opportunity for that. So it's been really heartening to see so many more young people like myself and Rena getting involved through the campaigns and voting this past election. So do you feel like it was a little more energized than the past? Yeah, definitely. I think just the feeling in the air of the issues of the day and how important this past election would be for the future of our state, I think that really reverberated among young people, but also there's a lot of excitement. I think there is optimism in the state for the direction that our leaders can take it in the future. It's not just in the elite, which this past year, year and a half or so has been. So I think there's a lot of forward-looking momentum here. That's great. Rena, switching to you, I know that you didn't get involved with your family and you found your path to this career kind of on your own and through maybe school. What advice would you give to young people who want to do more public service in serving engagement in Hawaii? Do you have a path that's been successful for you and for your friends that you want to share? I would say the most difficult thing for young people hoping to get into public service would be knowing about the opportunities that are available to them, but also about having the confidence and self-advocacy skills to get positions or to excel in these positions. And so for me, the thing that helped me get my foot in the door the most and build my confidence in this arena was through volunteering, which was pretty low stakes and accepting to anybody. And so political campaigning again, I did some volunteering for a candidate in high school and then during the pandemic in 2020, I also volunteered for Mayor Blanjari. And these two experiences were really formative and building my confidence and feeling like I had a little more experience to then apply for other positions, especially since I think that for a lot of young people, especially from underserved communities, it can be intimidating to see different positions that might be competitive or require application processes and have the confidence to believe that the likelihood of getting that position and doing well in it is worth the process of having to apply for it. So I would say volunteering to build skills and confidence. Interesting. So you said you got involved in high schools. Is there something that your high school did that encouraged or built up that confidence that you think can be spread to schools across the state? I think for me, there are multiple things that built confidence in high school. The one that I was, one would be just political campaigning and volunteering in local campaigns. The other was high school debate that helped me with a lot of my public speaking skills. In middle school, I was a lot more shy and I had no awareness of a lot of political issues. I didn't know what Democrats versus Republicans were and that's just a product of the house that I grew up in because we all spoke Japanese. But through debate, I learned a lot about different issues or different talking points that people have on various sides of issues and that helped expand my awareness and also my confidence in my public speaking ability. Wonderful. So I actually, now I wanna transition to your recent work with the Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs. Both of you were hired as fellows during the pandemic to work on Hawaii 2.0 initiative. Could you talk more about what is Hawaii 2.0 and your experience with it? Rainie, if you wanna take this one. Yeah. I got involved in Hawaii 2.0 through the Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs side and through the volunteer side. Cameron originally reached out to Ben, the president of HIPAA, the Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs. And through that I got involved as well because I knew Cameron. And so both of us are fellows and we've been involved in helping Ben with more of the planning side of Hawaii 2.0 and Hawaii 2.0 itself as background is an economic policy plan that was pioneered by the governor's office to create a plan for economic recovery from COVID-19 by gathering a bunch of different stakeholders and industry leaders to look at what has happened during COVID-19, what has changed and how we can adapt our strategy moving forward to get out of this economic downturn. Okay, great. Cameron, do you have anything to add about your experience with it? Both of you worked on stakeholder engagement. So tell me more about that. What does that look like stakeholder engagement? What did you learn from that? Yeah, sort of thing. So the way we approached this and the way that the state approached this as well was going after a diverse group of experts in different fields and trying to get their perspective on how we can get ourselves and the state back on sound economic footing. And it's been really, really interesting to see so many different personalities and so many different fields, basically in a Zoom room discussing these same issues with each other. And I think it was extremely interesting to see that, but also it's important because we were really trying to get broad general public participation into it as well and get multiple different perspectives. I think the critical thing with Hawaii 2.0 is realizing that coming in with the belief that everyone plays their part in the economy so everyone really should be having a say in what the future of that looks like. And I really believe that getting the public participation and getting that broad feedback from different sectors was really critical to making sure that we had sound ideas and policies that could be generated out of this. And we're still working on that. I mean, still trying to solicit feedback and trying to get community engagement. But that was a real draw to me and I think that was why both Rina and I wanted to get involved with this and volunteer and spend time between classes helping this project out in this initiative. So the community engagement was a critical part of Hawaii. It still is. From your perspective in your generation and in college students, how do you think you can create similar engagement that can incorporate the voices of young people in policy making? But I know with the work that you did specifically work with experts. So shifting gears and looking more to younger generation, how would you engage and incorporate those voices? For Hawaii 2.0? Yeah, so we're actually, well, for Hawaii 2.0 specifically, we're working with this internship program that's run by some UH Business School alumni. And the idea is that they will be helping to look at some of the ideas that the Hawaii 2.0 experts would have produced and trying to give some concrete feedback and also use those ideas to potentially generate some longer term projects of their own and sort of facilitate those ideas and then eventually pitch those ideas, work on it themselves and sort of get more feedback and involvement in the process. But I really do think that is critical, like that is a key part of it. But just speaking generally, I think a critical way to incorporate young people is just to simply ask their opinion on a lot of issues. And I think that's what this show is doing right now. A lot of times people discuss things like brain drain or the discuss, well, what do youth need and what do young people want? But it's funny that a lot of times young people are not invited to actually participate in those same discussions. So I think really just reaching out to young people and giving opportunities, providing opportunities for them to participate and give back to their communities, that's just a great first step. And like Rena and I both said, a lot of times it really is just taking the first step to be more comfortable, to get more confidence and to say, you know what, I do have a voice. I do have a stake in what's going on around me and I should be able to participate and I share my thoughts and my ideas. That's great. I love that you mentioned that your voice, you are part of the generation that needs to be heard. So that's why I have you on the show. So I'm excited that we get to talk to you. We're gonna take a quick break and we will be back in one minute. Back, I'm your host, Minara Mordecai and you're watching Policy for the People. We just got back from a break and got a question from a viewer. The question is, young people have been disillusioned from the recent election. Do you have any advice how to bring back faith for the government to the young people? Cameron, if you wanna start with that. Yeah, sure thing. You know, I think it definitely depends on your perspective. I think there's a lot of winners and losers. I think that's a lot of, you know, depending on the outcome of the election and what you've politically aligned with, you might feel happy or more sad depending on it. But I think speaking specifically to your point about bringing back faith into government, a lot of local residents do not have faith in government. And that's really a sad and really, really a shame for us all, but I really think a key to this is actually holding our leadership accountable, our state leadership and our county leadership and making sure that they are prioritizing the needs of our local residents and making sure that as residents, if we see something we do not like, we're able to reach out to them and try and address those concerns. Really, leaders in our state, I believe, should be making decisions for the betterment of our people and making hard and tough decisions that they might not feel comfortable with for their political career, perhaps, but really it benefits the people themselves. So I think really it's incumbent on our leaders to take up the challenge of being able to be strong, tough leaders during difficult times. This is a hard crossroads and making those tough decisions are needed right now. But really it's incumbent on the public to make sure we're choosing leaders who are able to do that as well. Thank you. Irina, do you want to add anything about that? The question is, how do you bring back faith to government for the youth? Yeah, I definitely agree that voting for the people that you believe in or becoming engaged with candidates that you're inspired by can be a good way to see how the government can turn into the sort of makeup that you would like to see it in the future. And another thing is that an important thing for the government in order to gain public trust would be to continue trying to increase community input opportunities and reaching out into communities, whether it be like neighborhood board meetings or posting like signs in like public property, like advertising, like an upcoming vote, like showing that the government cares through community that is really important in regaining the trust in the government. Thank you. And thank you for this question, viewers. Please keep on coming if you have more questions for our guests. Right now, I want to transition also to the main topic of our show, which is the brain drain. And from your personal experience as college students, as younger generation and residents of Hawaii, what's been your experience with young people leaving Hawaii among your friends and your peers? Do you think many of them will be back after college and why and where not? Let's start with you, Irina. In my experience, a lot of my friends have gone to college on the mainland and it seems to me that they're not coming back not because they don't like Hawaii for the most part but because it seems unrealistic to come back straight after college. And so some of them, they plan on coming back after a couple of years. Others don't see themselves coming back for the foreseeable future. And some reasons include like the high cost of living or the lack of opportunities and whatever they're studying. And so once they're on the mainland, there are all these different opportunities that are a lot closer to them. And so my thought is that even if somebody from Hawaii is going to the mainland and has intentions of coming back after a couple of years, it's quite easy to get there and then realize that there are other opportunities or cheaper places to live and end up staying there instead. And so for me, I have been in a similar boat. I go to college on the mainland and I thought that coming back home to live in Hawaii and work in Hawaii was not possible but recently through experiences during my gap year where I've been able to get involved locally through like nonprofits and internships, I've been able to see how creating a network of people I know in Hawaii and having this experience in Hawaii can help increase my chances of being able to find further opportunities after college. So we'll just say some of that is there's an appearance or a belief that would be impossible to make it in Hawaii where in reality that there are opportunities and there are possibilities for young people to engage. I think it varies greatly depending on what people are studying and what people are hoping to do. Like if people are trying to be in government be like a member or work for a member then obviously those opportunities exist in every state and every county. But if somebody's trying to make it in an industry that doesn't really exist in Hawaii or it's a lot bigger somewhere else then that would definitely be a difference between working in Hawaii and working on the mainland. But at the same time I do think that Hawaii it's really unique in the sense that if you have personal connections with other people or once you get your foot in the door in certain industries it's a lot easier to unpack a lot more opportunities. And so that's something that I believe we should be focusing on in trying to get young people to come back is showing them that they can get their foot in the door and later get more opportunities from Hawaii. So going off of that that actually brings me to my next question. And if you Rena we're in a position of leadership and we're sitting at the decision makers table what are some of the policies you put into place to address this and to create a sense of support young people to either stay in Hawaii or come back? Yeah, this is related to like I guess my point about networking the importance of that this legislative session there are a lot of things coming up for like workforce development programs to help youth or other people get industry experience and this is mostly in response to COVID-19 and realizing that we needed to diversify economically. And I think programs like these are really good but we also need institutionally backed systems get through like different training programs or through different experiential opportunities and then onto the workforce. And so if I were in a position of leadership one thing I would focus on would be first to get people in the University of Hawaii systems to have experiential opportunities directly funneling people from their classroom knowledge to being able to work with real people in Hawaii. And then for people who go off to college on the mainland I think a great opportunity to show them that they can come back to Hawaii and work here is to have different summer opportunities. And so for example my brother goes to college on the mainland but this summer he is working with a University of Hawaii astronomy professors in a lab and this was funded by the National Science Foundation. And so this is like an example of a government backed research project that supports college students who are from Hawaii but may not be in Hawaii for college. I'm encourages them to see that they can make it in the field that they're interested in. Thank you, these are great examples. I hope we do put them into place. Cameron, I have the same set of questions for you. What's been your experience with your friends and peers leaving Hawaii and whether you have something to add with your perception is on why this is happening? And also give me some examples of what you would do as a leader. Yeah, sure thing. So I think Rena really hit all the points adequately and that's the same thing I hear from a lot of the other peers that I have. And I think I grouped the three most common responses in order would be the first one is that there's a lack of opportunity locally. People feel like there will be not enough pay or their ideal job in their field of interest as I exist. So like an example is one of my friends is interested in the banking industry from a compliance standpoint. It feels like you won't have the same opportunities for growth locally that he would in a somewhere like LA or Wall Street. So he's planning to move away from that. And the second one would be high cost of living. I have another friend and he says that he wants to live alone. He would want to live in Hawaii except that it's not feasible for him at an entry level salary to live on his own or with his friends as roommates. That's just not possible. So because of that, he wants to move somewhere cheaper. And I have another one where I'd group it as like Island Beaver or they just want to explore somewhere else. And you can't really change much about this. But I see that the first two high cost of living and lack of opportunities locally can really be addressed a lot. So some of the things that I would look at if I were in a position of leadership, I look at first the current makeup of Hawaii's economy. And I think this is where a root of a lot of the issues are especially with things like a lack of opportunities. We rely heavily on tourism. And because of that, tourism has given us a lot of jobs, but unfortunately a lot of them are, they don't pay very much. On average, the hospitality industries, the lowest paying industry across the nation and particularly in the United States or in Hawaii. So when we think about that, we really have to think about moving to alternative industries that are higher paying. I think a lot of the efforts that we've done to try and diversify has been focused on looking at things like agriculture, looking at things like finding alternatives to tourism. But really, I think we need to make sure while we're doing that, we're hitting jobs and expanding jobs at all income levels, especially for those in the professional level. So that way we retain a lot of the people who have high educations who are our most skilled local residents. And we wanna make sure we keep those individuals locally. For example, we have a lot of workforce development programs currently underway with the idea of transitioning people out of the hospitality industry. Unfortunately, if there's no jobs at the end of that training, we could risk those people even going away. Right now as it is, we're losing a lot of our most talented people. So looking at areas, not just in agriculture, agriculture I think can play a part in our resiliency, but really looking at more industries and putting grants like we do with agriculture locally or industries like the technology industry or more professional industries, I think that'll be really critical because we are losing a lot of those people. Yeah, that's a good point. The workforce training has to go with the job creation. So thank you for bringing it up. And this has been a great conversation. I'm so happy that I got to have you as my first guest for the first show. I learned a lot from you as always. Thank you for being on the show. We once again, we talked with Rina Nagashima and Cameron de Pula. My name is Benara Mordecai. I am the host for the show, Policy for the People and please join me next time. Thank you and aloha.


Hi you guys! Lindsay here. Welcome back to my channel, Inside to Him. So another year of Me Made May is in the books and as I have for the past couple of years, I like to reflect on Me Made May.  And it's always a very honest time. It's kind of bittersweet because inevitably, as you'll see, not everything makes the cut. And but in the end, I think that it makes me a better sewer. It makes me a smarter sewer and I am usually better for it. So today I have a few things that I learned during Me Made May. The first of which is that inevitably, and I think this works whether you're sewing your own clothes or not, but you grab the things that you love first. The things that you know are comfortable. The things that you know fit. The things that you just really, really love. So because I have been sewing for so long and I sew so much, I have a lot that fit in that cream of the crop category. And I'm only now starting to struggle in finding something to wear in the morning. So for the past call it 28 days, it's been very easy. I have been able to put together 28 outfits relatively easily to fit all different parts of my lifestyle. And now that I've already worn all those things that I know and I love, it's getting a little bit more difficult. So I'll circle back to this in the end. But I just wanted to make a point of saying that to truly understand yourself, you have to kind of go through all of those things that you know and love and get to the nitty gritty part. And then that's whenever you're going to start really discovering, really analyzing, really trying to really understanding what you've got in your closet and what you don't.  I am just shocked that I even get it done. I will say I do not necessarily always wash clothes after wearing them one time. And I know that that's usually a good thing. But when I do go to wash them, I barely take any care at all. I don't typically sew with clothes that can't be washed cool and dried on like a low temperature. Mostly all the fabrics I sew with will be just fine with that. But what I don't take into consideration is for example, if you have a cotton dress and then a polyester lining, what do you think is going to happen in the wash? The cotton is going to shrink and the polyester is not. So I need to treat the dress better. Well, first of all, maybe I should use cotton linings. Second of all, if I don't do that, then I need to consider a different drying method so that the cotton isn't shrinking so much. So I have a couple of dresses that I know and I love and they're just not surviving well. They are not thriving. And inevitably, eventually I am going to have to toss them, which is sad. So what I want to do is pay more attention to what I'm laundering, how I'm laundering it. If I need to send it off to dry cleaning, send it off to dry cleaning. It's worth the investment than to have to throw away something you spent hours and hours working on. So that's been kind of a hard lesson to learn because they've been sewn well, they fit well, and then just gotten ruined in the wash. The certain seam lines are, it's not good. So that's the second thing that I learned. The third thing is that I have some things in my closet that don't fit. There are things that I pass by day after day after day, because I know that they don't fit. They're not comfortable or, you know, just I don't like wearing them. So I started analyzing, okay, well, why am I skipping past them? Is it, do they not fit because of me? Because my body's changed? Or do they not fit because the garment wasn't sewn well and sewn properly? And no matter what happens to my body, bigger, smaller, whatever, they'll never fit. And when I did that, I found several garments that I immediately put in a pile to donate to Goodwill. Now, one of them you saw already in my plans video, it's this guy here, super cute, but not only does it not fit, but it is, let's see, how do I say this? It's not that it doesn't fit because it's too small or because it's too big. It doesn't fit because it's either poorly drafted or I did something wrong when I was sewing it. There's something going on in the bust area. I think that that was whenever I was like gung-ho about grating, and I was overly aggressive about grating the bodice. Like I would do the shoulders at a different size than the side seams. I was a little nuts about it. So because of that, it's just, it kind of like billows here and is really tight across the chest and it's just not cute. So, but it's a durable dress, a super adorable dress and I wish it would have worked, but it didn't. Secondly, I don't know what I was thinking.  So that's another reason. Like, I don't know, I must have been like feeling sick or something and got a wild hair to make a one-shoulder dress. I don't like them no matter what size I am. So this is an example of one that's going to Goodwill. Another one is this top here. This top, I'm pretty sure, made it to the channel, but what you can't see in the video is that it is so overly pinned, nipped, tucked and held into place that it's ridiculous. This is a very poorly drafted wrap top. It crosses over like this. I think in the video, I might have worn a top underneath it, which would save it a little bit, but I don't, that's just not my style. I want to wear a cotton top by itself. I don't want to layer it. It's already hot enough as it is. I don't need multiple layers of clothes. So I don't know what it is about this top that makes it so poorly drafted. I'm not a draft expert. I just know that whenever you tie the inside string thing to its counterpart on the other side, whatever happens in the chest area is very, very large and gaping. The neckline, I think, needs some nipping and tucking. I'm not exactly sure. So unfortunately, this one is going to Goodwill as well. Super cute fabric, though, and if you're fuller chested, I think this would work for you, but I'm not well endowed, so it doesn't. There's also something wrong with the sleeve, so you'd have to be, you'd have to be big chested with little arms. That probably exists somewhere. So let me know and I'll tell you the pattern number. That sounds interesting to you. Thirdly is, and this is really sad because I just sewed this last year, but it is my camo skirt that I made with the Stylemaker fabrics camo twill. And I'm going to show you what's wrong with this. Look at that. Can you not see that little like weird thing that's happening here? I don't know why, but this is way too aggressive. And if I, if I, you know, grade it down again, then it won't fit. It also is pointed in the back, pointed down. You can see it comes down to a point here. That's not correct. I really don't know what happened other than I was in a very, very, very, very, very big rush to finish this before I left for New Orleans for a trip that I wanted to wear these to and it just never happened. So because of this little oddity, it's much more prominent in person. I wish I could figure out a way to show it to you, but it like literally sticks out like a little penis. I didn't want to say it, but that's what it is. It looks like men's boxer briefs. You know how they have that actual pooch there? That's what it looks like. So and then I don't, what was I thinking here? I don't even know, but I folded that back. I folded the tab back rather than I guess I put the button on and didn't realize there was a tab. I don't know what I did. I really don't know what I did, but this is just a disaster. So this was sewn poorly. The pattern I'm sure is fine. The fabric is great. It's not my body. This was just sewn terribly. So this is going. I also have this one. I went through some patterns too that were unseasonal, which I was proud of. This one just fits terribly. It worked for a while. It might have some funny things might have happened in the laundry, but here it is. It's really cute with the bow. I got a lot of compliments, but the neck line is like so tight I can barely get it over my head. So something, something's amiss there with my sewing and then whenever you wear it, it like doesn't lay flat. So and I know a lot of you're me like cut the band off and just fold it under, which I could do I guess, but I don't know. I'm kind of tired of it anyways. And someone will, someone at Goodwill will really love it with a small head. What else? We have this one here. And this was, you know what? I don't feel so bad about this one because this was always just going to be an experiment.  I don't care if I have the pattern. I'm going to find a way. And so it, it really didn't work. So this is a really cute sweatshirt fleece again from Stalmaker fabrics. The band matches perfectly. The problem is is I picked a pattern that has gathers and this fleece or I guess it's terry. This terry is like way, way too thick for that. I also picked a pattern where the arm cutout thing is like very large. It's a very big one. And it really needs to be smaller, something like that would be more appropriate. I think for this heavy sweater knit. So like I said, it's unfortunate, but this is a hard no.  I mean, what is that? I'm better than this. I am better than this, which is why I am doing away with it. I do have more of this fabric. It will make its way into my life somehow. I don't know how, but I have more of it. So there's that. And then lastly, this is the blank slate patterns tool up top that I extended into like a tunic length, which was really cute on someone else, but not cute on me. And I also didn't have enough fabrics. I made it a short sleeve, which is just odd to have a tunic sweater with short sleeves. Again, I don't really know what I was thinking. But it is super cute. And someone who's like more of a straight frame will look really adorable in it. So that'll be going to Goodwill as well. So like I said, not everything is going to make it through. And that's okay. If I kept everything that I ever made, A, most of it would just sit there and B, I wouldn't have room for the new awesome things that I'm making now, the things that I am better at making and things that projects that are just more successful. You know what I mean? So I'm trying not to be super hard on myself about it and just accept it. Thank it. Like Marie Kondo would say, thank you for your service in my life and pass it on to somebody else. There are a couple of things that I pulled out though that are worth an alteration. So the bubblegum pink linen pants. We talked about these in March when I was planning on making them. We talked about them a ton in May when I showed you what they actually look like on me. And I think we all decided that they're not flattering. They're either too long or too short. So I can't make them longer. So I'm going to make them shorter. I'm going to turn these into shorts, maybe like a five inch inseam or something like that, not super short, but not nailing. It's going to be somewhere in the middle. And it'll be my Hail Mary, my last ditch effort to make these work. It's not super hard to hem something. I'm really sorry about the sun. And we're just going to give it one last go and see what we can do and see if these are salvageable. The next time that I want to make the pants, I am going to increase the rise.  And I agree they need to be up higher so that it's more flattering. So I am going to increase the rise by maybe an inch. So they sit at my true waist and then make the pant version. I only made these cropped because I didn't have enough fabric. So I guess another thing that I've learned is stop forcing things. Sometimes there are happy accidents. Sometimes you have a make it work moment and it works out. But a lot of times it doesn't.  So patience is another thing that's coming up a lot. But that's comes up a lot in my life in general. So I can't just say as me made me. But anyway, so these are going to get altered. We will see how they look after that. And then there's this dress here that I made a few years ago. And honestly, it's a great dress. It's really beautiful. I am really proud of it. I feel like it was a Vogue dress pattern. However, there are some problems on the inside. So although the dress on the outside is a pleated flared skirt, the lining is actually drafted as more of a straight skirt. Was that a thing? I don't know why. So that's very uncomfortable. And I want this to be loose and free. And this fabric is fairly it's a midweight cotton already. So that plus the lining, I'm thinking scrap the lining skirt altogether. So I'm just going to pick apart the lining bodice from the lining skirt and just do away with the skirt. I don't need the skirt to be lined. It's not see through at all. And then sew down hand sew down the bodice lining to the seam allowances at the skirt. And voila, I will have a pattern that or a dress that I really enjoy wearing again. The only reason I don't wear this is because of that skirt lining. So I'm just going to fix that. And I'm going to undo a little bit of work and it'll be good as new again, or better than new, honestly. I did realize that when I was sewing this, but I was like, Oh, that'd be kind of cool. No, it's like so uncomfortable. Like maybe if I sewed it in a lining that was stretchy, but I sewed it with bamboo rayon. Like every time I sit down, I'm like, it's going to rip this time. It's definitely going to rip this time. It hasn't ripped yet, but it's just not comfortable for like a fun summer dress. You know what I mean? Okay, so those are the things that I will be altering that I discovered in Me Made May. Anyways, I'd love to know kind of your assessment of your own experience with Me Made May. If it was your first time, was it a struggle? You know, I know that everyone's been sewing as long as I have. So if you're a newer sewer, was it difficult to find something Me Made to wear every day? If you've been sewing for a while, did you find holes in your wardrobe like I did? Did you find things in your wardrobe that were just taking up space like I did? Let me know in the comments just kind of how it went for you guys. And until next time, that's going to do it for me today. I will see you all very soon. Bye.