Well thank all of you who graciously set aside the time to watch our state of the city address this evening. As we all know it's been made repeatedly clear throughout the past year that we can enjoy the benefit of assembling in the body and in presence at this time. I ask that we all at fairly least embrace the value and purpose of assembling in spirit and in cause. At this time each year during our preceding state of the city ceremonies I would look out into the audience and recognize all those who have been important to our city, members of my family, and those who continue to be the guiding lights for us as we conduct our professional duties and responsibilities. I dropped some corny jokes and maybe get an eye roll and a smirk from our daughters. Two weeks ago I stood in this beautiful and historic chamber and formally announced I will not seek reelection as mayor of Colombia. As such this will be my final state of the city address. It's important this address serves the purpose of letting our citizens know how our city is faring at this moment in history. This address will also afford me the opportunity of the chance to reflect some of my time as your mayor and provide a few insights on the road ahead. Though many of you are probably much more comfortable than I am at home hopefully not suited up but relaxed and in your living room I still promise to not keep you long this evening. I still quite vividly remember my very first day in Colombia August 17th 1987 checking into the old and outdated dormitory at the University of South Carolina seeing the plaque commemorating that it was a project from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's work projects administration after the Great Depression. I was wearing a red sweatsuit that I purchased after working entire summer as a porter for a chef at the racetrack. I remember climbing the stairs to my third floor room at the dormitory. I remember my dad helping me to carry up the stairs a brand new black of footlocker that seemed at that time be full of bricks. It was filled with new things and also some hand me downs from my big brother. That same footlocker sits still much older now and worn in my garage today and because of Colombia is now filled with memories of amazing life that I could never have anticipated. I remember stepping into my dormitory meeting my roommate Christopher Coakley and after the hugs and kisses and my parents sipping me a couple of more dollars my dad my mom and my brother left me thinking as a first-generation college student that a kid you now on your own you've been given an opportunity that your parents and their parents and their parents before them could never have dreamed of but they all strived and struggled and worked and toiled for a young Steven to have I remember that day my first day in Colombia beginning what I thought would become a scary tale was foreign to me but that day my Columbia story began my parents taught me to be thankful to be humble and to thank God for many blessings in my life my parents also taught me as I'm sure your parents taught you to go to school to get a good education stay out of trouble I tried hard at that to work hard and treat people with dignity and respect and if you do those things Steve you'll be successful in life it's because of their lessons and because of each one of you that I've been able to live my American life right here my American dream right here in Columbia South Carolina spent the last decade traveling this country indeed the world telling people about my Columbia about the University of South Carolina the great Carnegie Research One University world-class business school top honors college and top flight programs I were blessed with two historically black colleges universities and Benedict College and Allen University both celebrating a century and a half of amazing accomplishment in building America we have one of the very best technical colleges in America Midlands Technical College and even tell them about my time as an adjunct professor for the fight in koalas at Columbia College I tell them that victory starts here at Fort Jackson the Army's largest and most dynamic training base in the world where the finest soldiers the greatest fighting force the world has ever seen is trained right here in our city I tell them that we're a cosmopolitan microcosm of the world boasting city citizens from nearly every single sovereign nation of the world speaking 90 different languages but I really love telling people about what happens when you leave the halls of our state house or leave campus or leave post you find the people of Columbia that you still find men who open doors for ladies you still find people who pull over for funerals we find people who aren't reticent about thanking God for the many blessings in our lives I tell them you can still find sweet tea in restaurants and you still find people who know the power of the two most important words in the English language and those words are very simply thank you thank you I came here tonight to say thank you Columbia thank you to my amazing colleagues mr. Davis thank you for being here although I asked you not to come thank you for being here I want to thank all of my colleagues for their amazing support and leadership over the last several months all of our council members I want to thank my colleagues who I'm honored to serve with for making the difficult rapid and momentous decisions that made allowed us to confront the unforeseen onset of the COVID-19 pandemic health crisis our council was one of the first if not the first to suspend normal operating procedures to transition to virtual meetings it might be fun to go back and watch some of those initial zoom meetings to see who had the most problems getting their cameras turned on or the mics turned on and sometimes we all still struggle with that a bit but I'll kill you kidding aside I really want to thank you all of our colleagues for the rapid role of our resilient Columbia economic sustainability relief packages which are essential to support our struggling small businesses these rapid economic measures could only have taken place because of the solid financial decisions and results of our prudent fiscal policies because we because we incurred budget surpluses in eight of the ten years preceding the crisis and fully restored our city's reserve fund which had been hard hit during the financial crisis we had the fiscal ability to keep valuable and essential city staff members on our payroll we'd have to furlough any of our staff as so many cities had and we did all that even as we reduced tax millage aggressively over the same period I want to thank you because of our stewardship your stewardship we could also suspend payments of utilities to our citizens who suddenly found themselves and their lives upended by the severe economic downturn and we made sure to keep the central services of water sewer and sanitation and operation we distributed free PPE to small businesses became one of the first cities in the country to offer broad testing a covert testing regime to our first responders and our employees on the thank you because of your leadership we had the means to fund our resilient Columbia economic sustainability plan which provided $1.4 million of emergency funds along with valuable information and resources to small businesses and individuals and watched office of business opportunities and our office of economic development shine and delivering these resources in record time I want to thank you for making this the difficult civic impact decisions to declare a state of emergency in March when the scope of the pandemic was still largely unknown when the move was maybe even unpopular followed by the subsequent curfew and stay home stay safe social distancing and isolation measures and then the summer the bold decision to impose a mask mandate I will always and forever maintain these measures were the right things to do to try and arrest and halt the spread of the virus to courage and leadership and as the virus continues to spread at alarming rates across the state I want to again thank the members of city council for making the difficult night times unpopular decisions others refused to make I will always maintain we did the right thing in the interest of public health everything we were able to do was because of the amazing ability of the very best public administrators and civil servants that America has to offer Teresa Wilson and her team have led and have always led with distinction and humility and I remain thankful for their incredible leadership I mentioned how Columbia is one of the very first cities major cities to quickly transition to virtual operations not just for city council but for a large portion of our staff and employees also we managed to rapidly adjust our financial capacity and operations to ensure that we did not furlough any of our staff even as the city revenues were decimated this swift administrative pivot would not have been possible without the incredible skill and guidance from our city manager our assistant city managers Clint Missy Jeff Henry Pam and our amazing 2300 team members here at the city I know you're watching virtually I want you to know that you have my deep respect and affection thankful to you for your leadership of the city during these very difficult times your inch instrumental in coordinating the swift adjustment that so many of our city personnel had to adapt to new virtual working conditions away from our designated city office buildings also want to thank our first responders who more who now more than ever put themselves at risk and in harm's way for the greater purpose of protecting the safety and health of our citizens the Columbia police department the Columbia fire department as well as our frontline public works staff that never missed a beat work diligently and safely to continue operations for our residents despite the enormous public health challenges that we face to help our city of Columbia first responders last law last summer we saw an inspiring partnership with the city our police department and local businesses through the peace of mind program by partnering a locally owned businesses and with privately raised funds local hotels designated safe and comfortable rooms provide first responders medical professionals in frontline city staff who work long shifts and challenging environments that might expose them to the coronavirus with these temporary resting places away from their homes had short-term quarantine spaces away from their families want to thank our police chief skip whole book for helping coordinate this and also my friend Sam Johnson for serving as a program chair also want to congratulate Columbia fire chief Aubrey Jenkins being sworn in as a new president of the South Carolina State Association of fire chiefs in December chief Jenkins who has served our city with distinction for decades as a first African-American recognized in that role and thank you Aubrey for a job well done in the first of in the face of adversity you are firefighters our fire marshals have stood in the gap for all Colombians indeed you have since the day that I walked into this office in 2010 I want to thank by name Jeff Palin and his amazing finance team for the continued commitment to prudent financial stewardship has resulted in being awarded the certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting by the government finance officers Association of the U.S. and Canada for six year in a row six years in a row to our friend Harry Tinsley a direct of emergency services I'm just gonna say two words simply amazing and suburb thank you Harry for the amazing leadership that you provide us in times of crisis my greatest appreciation goes to the citizens of Columbia and the Midlands our neighborhood and community leaders our business leaders I have to express my enormous thanks for showing such willingness to make quick changes to every aspect of your daily lives the way we gather work worship shop go to school or find the means for entertainment it is astounding and moving the ways our community came together if not in close proximity then in purpose and commitment when asked to look to the well-being and safety of others our resilient Columbia neighbors accepted the difficult measures of isolation and found purpose in working together towards the long-term health and wellness of each other and my brother's keeper when called upon our citizens are quick to respond to say we first and not me first to any of you who know me you know that I am proudly Sam and Maggie Benjamin's child my brother Sam and I have led the most fortunate lives wrapped in their arms still of our mom and dad thank you mommy thank you daddy I love you when God sent me the Andre nearly 20 years ago she brought with her Donald and Adrian gist with their love and support this chapter of our lives has been amazing they have been amazing supportive in-laws and I'm thankful for them to the Andre Bethany and Jordan Grace my son my moon and my stars I want to say thank you thank you for allowing me to serve the people of the city of Columbia oftentimes a great sacrifice to our family we have served together as team Benjamin and I could not have picked a better team I love you I'm so thankful for you I deeply regret that I can't look at these seats this front rows and especially see my kids and gauge their faces and in reactions I'm sure they have a whole lot to say and I'll get a report when I get home later tonight like many of you I miss I miss a simple joy in human interaction the look of person in the eye and see their joy and their pain a brohawk holding a friend's hand in complete silence over the loss of a loved one I think we all understand and appreciate now the power and intimacy that can only come from close proximity and nearness and I'm sure many of you like me my family our friends and business associates we feel a loss of that personal intimacy and long for its return together and only by working together will we get that back and I want to urge us to continue to do the things that we need to do to get it back when I presented this address one year ago I said we faced many challenges in 2019 which gave us aspirations for better days in 2020 let me repeat a better days in 2020 I think it's safe to say that 2020 did a complete mic drop in 2019 2020 has become something of a new reference point almost a pejorative for unprecedented historic levels of badness or disaster occurring unexpectedly and in the short period of time to truly appreciate what we all had to overcome last year you have to look through it look at it through the lens of historic reference when looking at the challenges impacting the nation the state and our city of Columbia of the last year we don't see just one or even two urgent crises but a confluence of three the greatest public health emergency since 1918 the greatest economic disruption certainly during an election year since 1932 and the greatest social unrest around societal and structural racism and systemic inequality since 1968 each of those crises and upheavals proved to be enormous disruptions that overcome by themselves but they occurred several decades apart 2020 forced us to experience all three of them all those challenges compressed into the overlapping span of one single year heard someone speak recently and suggested that it's like someone walks up to you and said your house is on fire they say oh and by the way there's a sinkhole in front of your house and hey there's a tornado coming down the street 2020 was that year for us but even in the face of these incredible challenges I stand here boldly to proclaim and say this with conviction the state of our city is strong our city and its people have prevailed in the face of incredible historic unprecedented adversity and challenges the city of Columbia and the remarkable people who make it their home display courage adaptability resilience and enormous resolve to do what was needed to be done in a larger interest of the greater public good over the last year I have witnessed and been repeatedly awed and humbled to see just how great our city is and our people are no mayor could be more thankful or proud a new flag adopted in 2020 speaks to the spirit of when our city was first charted more than 200 years ago senator John Lewis Jervais advocated for the city of Benin Columbia the personification of this new land so that the press of all nations might find refuge under the wings of Columbia after a citywide call for design ideas and after truly citizen driven process city council approved our new flag last year designed by local graphics firm half and half it's bold colors represent the history the future the spirit the hopes and dreams of our great city of the wing based design speaks not only to inclusion but also to the bounty of the mighty salute abroad and Congruy rivers that serve as the primary reason for our selection in South Carolina's capital in 1786 that met a blue of our state flag serves as our base and the six pointed star acknowledges the resilience of a capital city that rebuilt after burning to the ground in 1865 the design was embraced immediately by citizens of Columbia and all the less than the year old and now flies before homes and businesses and can be seen proudly embraced all across our city want to thank the Columbia design league in one Columbia and amazing citizens to help lead that process the spirit of inclusion could not be more important than now last year we continued to witness again and again and what seemingly inescapable regularity throughout this country the intersection of police and members of African-American community that equal unnecessary and inexcusable brutality and death by the time George Floyd was murdered in May his name became one on the long and tragic list of African-American citizens whose life had been cut short short through systemic racism exacted by law enforcement across this country here in the city of Columbia citizens were compelled to raise their voices in concert link arms in March in solidarity for racial justice and change but even during the enormous passion of marches and protests we saw how foundational municipal leadership work taken in the past is essential to helping prepare for and perhaps even minimize civic upheaval beginning in 2014 we began investing on the skip Holbrooke's leadership in 21st century policing by establishing a justice law initiative for greater community engagement diversity training and accountability and law enforcement over the last 10 years we've made the largest investment in compassion and data-driven public safety in the history of our city and the leadership of chief Holbrooke deputy chief Kelly we've improved the morale reputation efficiency and effectiveness of our police department as well as established needed inroads to building if not complete trust and at least growing towards cooperation true cooperation between law enforcement and all of our communities across this city 2020 may be over but a great many of the issues and challenges it delivered like the COVID pandemic like furthering our political divisions and national discord and the need to fully address racial inequality and injustice are still pervasive it will still take enormous focus and commitment to overcome we must constantly improve to become a just and equitable city our commission on the future of Columbia will help guide that work and we will commit ourselves to making a reality here in this city free speech and the right to nonviolent protests will always be protected in the city of Columbia the sacrosanct to who we are and who we hope to be as a nation violence will never be tolerated not in this city in 10 years together we have revitalized our main street we've begun an ambitious project to support the development of the largest downtown revitalization project east of the Mississippi on bull street which now hosts a Starbucks and REI Segra Park that stadium of the decade according to baseball digest even as flames attempted to destroy the Babcock building we forge ahead as it will be rebuilt cupola and all in the 55 million dollar project underway as we speak you set the city back together on a strong and sound fiscal platform we've created a more equitable city the challenge before us remains real and defining and I believe that just as a Spanish flu brought the world to its knees 100 years ago the roaring twenties that followed that followed a period of cult we came into a period of cultural awakening and social movements and I believe that with thoughtful equitable economic policies we can change the course of history together and not repeat the challenges of the 20th century if the city is to serve as a true platform for human potential then we must do more if a wayward child with the footlock of the love of his parents and the dreams of his ancestors can make it in this city then every child should be able to do the same Columbia is up to the task I know who we are I saw it in 2015 alone in the wake of the Emanuel massacre we came together and we brought down the Confederate battle flag and the wake of the greatest floods the city has ever seen us like everyday citizens lead with compassion and empathy we need to take that spirit that spirit of collectivism of togetherness and lead our way through the rest of this pandemic we're in the eye of the storm we're seeing cases go down but we are seeing the rise of B 117 the variant that could potentially be the dominant covid strain in America by this spring we must be vigilant we must continue to fight and to sacrifice together the old normal before the pandemic and our new normal that we're all beginning to adjust to has we can't become the begun to put that dream that make Columbia made real for me out of touch for too many of our citizens we've watched data from Harvard economist Raj Shetty that shows that since 1940 generations of Americans year after year are struggling to do as well as their parents did this great pandemic has served as an x-ray of American society has shown us that we have many many broken bones all across this great country access to affordable health care is a predicate for making it in America affordable housing the need for real minimum wage and more work studying a guaranteed income as we launch our pilot the mayor's were guaranteed income in the Midlands Faraday initiative later this month will give us a path to show her how we can build a more equitable and just society we must think big and act big and recognize that none of us has all of the answers there are many possible futures for Columbia South Carolina the future is indeed subjective it depends on what we're willing to do to make a hope of the most talented educated entrepreneurial city in America real for all of our citizens we need as much participatory engagement as possible in order to move forward together together we need our leaders in Congress to step up and pass the president's plan to move America forward we must put partisanship aside and join Republicans and Democrats on the ground who support the president's plan to help small businesses to help parents who want their children receiving the quality in person education that they deserve to help hardworking teachers who need vaccinations to help us prioritize the health care of every single American so they too can survive and thrive if Columbia is to be a true platform for human potential we must commit to moving forward together my fellow citizens please know that has been truly my life's blessing to serve you and may the Lord bless you and keep you and the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you Lord lift up his countess upon you and give you peace thank you


My name is Sasha Gaspard and I have been involved in art since I was old enough to hold a pencil. This is actually my first attempt at making a lantern and the theme is same as a Taiwan strong. So I chose to create my lantern as a flower because flowers are universally known as a gift of reverence, love and affection.


So in this module we're going to talk about some of the most important properties of particles. The first one that we're going to talk about is something called spin. Spin's kind of a funny quantity. It's kind of like angular momentum except it's intrinsic to a particle. So that means you can't change it. Spin is given by a spin quantum number times h-bar, where h-bar is Planck's constant over 2 pi. Now what's important about spin is that the spin quantum number is quantized. So what that means is it can either be half integer or integer. It can only come in discrete quantities. There's discrete steps. This is as opposed to continuous quantities where you could have any value for us. So this spin quantum number is a quantum property of a particle. I've noted that spin can either be half integer or integer. We have special names for the particles that fall into each of these categories. So the half integer particles we call fermions, and the integer particles we call bosons. One of the common fermions that you can think of are electrons. One of the common bosons that you would be familiar with is a photon. We'll learn about lots of different types of fermions and bosons later on, but for now we'll leave it there. Fermions are half integer spin, bosons are integer spin. The reason spin is important is that there is a particular principle that applies only to fermions and not to bosons, and that principle is the polyexclusion principle. Now what this principle says is that only one particle can sit in a particular quantum state at a time. Fermions have to obey this rule, bosons don't have to, and what that means is that basically if you have lots of bosons that can all sit in the same quantum state, they'll probably choose the lowest energy quantum state. Fermions, they have to kind of keep stacking up to all the quantum states available. They can't all live in that same state. So that has some consequences about how those particles act within certain systems.


At 10,000, I already owned almost like five properties, which were over like over two million at the time, yes. That's why I want to share information so that everyone can have a piece of land that they can benefit from. Good evening, as you know, my name is Esti Klaas and I'm the host of the First Time Homebuyer Show. This week Wednesday, we're chatting to an absolutely amazing woman, Lebu Khan, also known as Lebu Grass. She's been in the property industry for 14 years and it's a story that we do not want to miss as we listen to the mistakes, the ups, the downs, the trials, everything that Lebu's gone through, so we too do not make those same mistakes. But as you know, we bring you amazing content every weekday this night. We've got some on Tungua Kumalo, what the private property podcast, that's Monday to Friday at 7 p.m. live on Facebook and YouTube and Instagram. And of course, if you're interested in farming and agriculture, Mbali, another empowered woman talks about farming and how you too can get involved in that. That's every Tuesday and Thursday at 8 p.m. And Chad Vavyrus is every Monday and Friday night at 8 p.m. on your screens, that's on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Without further ado, I'm on your screens every Wednesday at 8 p.m. As you've seen this evening, I have an absolutely amazing guest with me, Lebu Grass. She goes as Lebu Grass on Facebook and all the social media platforms. And also, we chatting about the ups and the downs, the trials, the mistakes Lebu's made in the property industry and even regrets that Lebu has because she's invested in property for 14 years. So who better to learn from than Lebu Grass, another woman who has driven, optimistic and motivated and continues to grow her property portfolio. Good evening, Lebu, how are you? I'm okay and you? Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule, you know, investing in property. Lebu's very busy. And you know, spending that, taking that drive and joining us here today I absolutely appreciate it, Lebu. I wanna jump straight into it, right? And you've been in the property game for almost 14 years, started at a very young age, younger than what I am right now. But just before we even get to that, we celebrating women on the show, especially for the month of August and we're talking to empowered women in the property industry. And so many people recommended you to me to have on the show, which is absolutely amazing. So I feel privileged to be sitting with you in this space this evening. So Lebu, do you think, right, with regards to women being in property, do you think that there is a lack of women in the property industry? What I can say is that I think for the last three years, I've been following the stats on the news and on the news articles easily. We've having more women joining in in the property industry for the past three years. So women are the ones who are the top buyers of properties, secondly, it's married couples and thirdly, it's males. So I think we are currently having many women. So women are being empowered to join in the industry of the property market. Which is a good thing because now we're growing as women to join the property market. So Lebu, what got you at such a young age, 25, when you first started your property journey, what got you interested in property to begin with? Okay, I think the main reason I became interested in property when I was like 14, okay, my grandmother, I started the history by saying that my grandmother grew up in Limpopo at a small village in Khamuchaji areas. So she came to Jobeq, I think in the 50s. When she came to Jobeq in the 50s, she was staying in Sophia town. So when they created South Resident Township, which is Soweto, then she was awarded a house there. So we grew up in that house in Midorland. So growing up in Midorlands, we've seen a lot of people who were involved in property business, but through back rooms. So I learned from that young age as it is 14 years that people were making money in the property industry, in the townships, by opening up, by building back rooms in the townships. So that's when I started becoming interested in this property journey. Then obviously I did research with my grandmother, then I found out how she was awarded the house. And then at a later stage, from 14 years old, then I was so much interested in having my own property. So I knew from 14 years that I wanted to have my own property. So when I was permanently employed at age 24, then I started going through private property and other pages to check for the properties that I'd be interested in buying. Then I came across one property that was going to be on auction. I think it was in Midorlands because at the time I was interested in staying in the same hood where my grandmother was awarded a house. So I went through and attended my first auction when I was 24. So unfortunately I couldn't be able to purchase that house because of my pre-approval I think was for 350 and the house was sold for 450. So the people that I was bidding against, most of them were already at the time in the property industry and most of them they were business people. So from that day, I started engaging with some of them wanting to find out how are they doing it. And then from that time, the advice means that the most property business I can do in a township that's good, it can be multilate. So they advised me to start with multilate. Then at age 25, that's when I went and bought a new development house that I bought off plan. So at age 25. So for that house I was approved. So that was my first property. It was in Soweto as well. And you're still growing your property portfolio. Are you still based in Soweto? Or have you gone, have you branched out now? Okay, I bought that house in 2008. And the main reason for me buying that house, at first it was for residential. And then we were staying in that house and what I did in that house, I built multilators. I was advised by these other property developers. So that's multilate now. I'm using it as a multilate for Airbnb. So it is like, I was able to like move around from using it for residential and do a business on it, which is going to be multilates. And then in 2017, when I paid off that house, I paid off that house. So after paying off that house, I went and bought another house in the same area in Prochette Lane. So that house I bought it with the main papers of saying, now this is going to be my retirement house in the form of cash flow. I'm not gonna stay in the house. I'm just going to buy a house to rent it out. And since it's got a big yard, I am going to build multilates, which is the project that I'm currently doing in that house. So I'm going to build multilates in that house. So I'm busy with that project currently. So in the house, I'm buying it currently now for cash flow. And in future it's going to be one of the house for my retirement. That's going to at least finance my retirement lifestyle in future. So in that same year, I think same year I bought three houses because I bought that house and then I bought two houses in Pretoria. What I normally do in the property industries that I usually wash the sauna. So the sauna always give me guidance of where to invest. What I normally even share with my mentees is that I normally invest where the private companies invest and where the government invest. So that's my main goal. So the reason I started in Soweto with Prochette Lane, I knew that there were so many projects that were upcoming there. It's going to be one of the industrial hub in Soweto Township. So I concentrated my investment in that area so that it can prolong me for a longer term. I can start making money now while they're busy developing the area. And in future as the area is already developed, then I can be able to make money from that area. So the second area that I invested in, it was in Pretoria, Wonder Park, Current Park, closer to Wonder Park Mall, Current Park. The reason I invested there, as I always tell you that, I usually follow the sauna. I realized that there were going to be so many projects in Pretoria, whereby they were going to start building the motor vehicles hubs there in Pretoria, like your Ford, BMW, then I started investing there based on that. And it is closer to the university as well and it is closer to the shopping mall. And most people who can't afford to stay in the Pretoria CBD, they always prefer staying there. So I invested there, I think I bought two apartments there. So what I normally do, my strategy is that when I buy in an urban area, I go for sanctioned titles. When I buy in a township, I go for freehold titles so that I can be able to build my multilets because multilets are the same thing in the townships. And like I said to the viewers before, that this will be a show where we get all your tricks and tips. And I've never heard that before, to watch the sonar to prepare for your future investment. So already that's an amazing tip that I think, even if you're a first time investor, that's so important to just take and research is very important. I mean, you started researching already at the age of 14, right? When you saw your grandmother doing these things and now till today, would you say that when you started researching at the age of 14, up until now, things have changed through the property industry? Yes, I think especially in the townships, things have changed that because previously, while I know that we grew up like in Midlands, people rent out their rooms for 300, 500, but now the rooms, they're the normal but a bachelor rooms because they don't have a end suits bathrooms and kitchenette. So they usually rent them out for 1.2. So now the industry has changed in such a way that we are bringing in the urban and CBD lifestyle to the wood. So now when you build in the townships, you are trying to build something that's got your kitchenette, your bachelor rooms must have kitchenette and they must have bathrooms inside or showers so that people can be able to say, I do love staying in the wood, but I don't want to stay in the CBD. So you still give them the same lifestyle in the wood, where they're comfortable in staying is. And the nice thing about township investment is that it's a market that's between the urban area and the less upper area. So in a case whereby somebody has to, maybe they lose their job when they're staying in an urban area, they're able to move to say, I can go and stay in a township. In somebody that was staying in a, maybe a poor area in the township, they want to upgrade and they can say, I want to go and stay in this kind of martillette. So that was my strategy to say that I'm able to juggle in, to be in the middle of both markets. That's why I think that's what has been, there's been transformed in the township, a multilating rental income. And I think what's so important is that you now, and we hear this a lot on the show is, as a property investor, you need to create opportunities for, if you were in your tenant's shoes, would you love there? Yes.  You've created that lifestyle of loving for people in the township. Yes. So I will be able to do that. Like for instance, the cottage house that I'm telling you, at first we're using it as a multilate, but with transformation, we're now using it for Airbnb. The cottage now host even international tourists and travelers and they become so impressed in the way that we have tried to do the decorations in their house. Yeah. So they are very impressed because we've got nice fittings in their house. They are suitable for their lifestyles. Exactly, because they're also coming from overseas. So in future, my plan is that with that house, I'm going to change it into a guest house. The full house is going to be changed into a guest house and I don't need to start buying furniture and start renovating because it's already into that standard. Yes. That's amazing because you always need to have goals for the future, right? Your property doesn't always need to just stay what it is. You can expand, you can do better, you can get more cash flow from this one property. Even if you invested in it 14 years ago, that property can still elevate and give you more as a passive income. I want to find out from you, Lebu. Would you say, let's say there are young women watching the show this evening and they want to start investing in property. What would you say there's opportunity for them to actually start and how can they start? Okay, there's so many opportunities for them to start. In the moment, I'm busy mentoring some of them. Very young, I think they are, most of them, they are between 21 and 30 that I'm busy mentoring. I can say some of them became home buyers, I think early this year or late last year when I started with them. Some of them have bought almost maybe two to three properties already. So there is a market for everyone to buy. What I can advise them is that because when I'm entering the market, remember I'm an employee, right? I'm an employee and being an employee for me to enter the market, I had to use my payslips, I had to use my credit record to be able to qualify so that I can be able to venture into the market. So what I normally advise them to do if they are employed, I normally advise them to work around their credit, their credit history and credit scoring so that they can be able to venture into the market. Another thing I advise them to work around their affordability as well. So those are the main key things that I advise them on. And I also advise them to start saving for transfer costs in case where they already want to buy already existing property. And then for those that want to buy off-plan, then I take them through to say, this is how you go about it. So what I normally do is to coach them around their affordability and according to their credit history. Because that's very important in order to achieve the property goals. And like you said, a lot of the women are young, right? So a lot of us coming into this don't even know how to start making our credit score look better. Don't even know how to start saving because it's so difficult. Once you first start working, the first thing we think about is spending all the money because you didn't work last month. So I have things to do and things to look out for. And both to pay that I haven't been paying because I have been maybe unemployed. But what, and I think it's so difficult to start saving. And I always love asking my guest this, what, how do you advise your mentees who are women in the property industry as well to just start saving because it can be so difficult with minimal wage? Like a saving strategy, how do we just start? Okay, with a saving strategy, I also take them through because of, I love saving because that's the skill that my mom taught me when she was very young. I think when she started, she was a street hawker. So in most of the time when she was busy selling every weekend, like every Friday, then she would go with me. I think she was banking with Standard Bank at the time. Like she would take me to the bank with him and she would show me how to save. From that young age, I started knowing how to save. Hence I was able to pay off my first property, I think, in eight years. Then I've paid off another one in three years. So I take them through all the strategies I use of teaching them how to save because it's very important in the property industry because you also need to have cash flow that you are busy saving so that, let's say you come up across a big property deal or it's just a small property deal, then you want to invest in it and then at the time, maybe you don't qualify with the banks. Or you need a deposit or you would need money for transfer fees and everything. Then you at least need to have money. So I always encourage them. I've taken them through saving. The best way to save is to have lesser debts. If you have lesser debts, then you are able to save because of what you have extra you are going to save. I can tell you that in my space I represent, I normally tell them that I represent the lower income ending people entering the property market. When I started buying my first property, I think my take home was 5,000 rand. And then when I bought my other three properties, which were going to be four properties, then I was aiming about 10,000 rand at the time. So my advantage was that I was having a mentor for the three properties that I bought. I was having a mentor that took me through before to say, this is how you can do it. So all these ideas, I think the most important thing is to also invest in your education around the property space. You don't just go and buy. You start investing. As an answer to that, I started for the first property. I started when I was 14 up until when I was 25. And then for the other properties, I started researching about the property market investment when I was 25 up until when I was 34, when that's when I bought at least three properties in a year, then the following year I bought a property. And again, the other property, the fifth property that I bought, I didn't even have money. It was a deal between me and the seller. It was a piece of land. It was a deal between me and the seller where we used an installment buying kind of deal. I didn't even have to go to the bank. Then we made a deal with the seller. No, I don't have money. I've learned something about the installment buying. Are you willing to sell me through the installment buying? Because it was a piece of land and you wanted to make money out of that, we agreed on the installment buying that I will pay that property for over five years. Then in the 50th, then I can go for the balance. Like this, for the five years that I'll be paying, it will be a deposit. And for the fifth year, for the sixth year, then the money that I will go and apply for a bond. That's how we agreed with the seller. So there are so many strategies that you can use. You can either use the banks money, you can also use the installment buying for you to venture into property as well. And I have two things to say about this, which is so important, you're right. Research is so important, but what you've just taught me and showed me is that negotiation is everything. You negotiated with someone to, like, however you plan to pay for this thing, it's a piece of land, but it's still now after six years, it's yours. Not he's anymore, but you negotiated and you made sure that that is now yours. And then the second thing I wanna talk about is, you, Lebu, you're literally loving proof that you can invest in property if you earn less than 10,000 a month. Yes, because at 10,000, I already owned almost like five properties. Do you see? Yes, which were over like, over two million at the time, yes. Wow, and that is the burning question. I think that a lot of people when we watched the first time home buyer show is how can I do it if I've just started working? How can I do it if I only earn 8,000 a month? And yeah. And I think when you started working, that's, I think that's the best time. That's, I think that's what I always advise people that when you start working, that's the best time because you are not over committed with so many debts and there's not so many people offering you debts at the time. So that's the best time for you to start investing in property because you'll be having, remember when you apply for a property, let's say you apply through a bank, they will want to know how much disposal income you're having. So if you are not over committed, that 8,000 rent, it can be enough. And another thing that I always advise people is buy what you can afford.  You cannot want to buy a one million property earning 8,000 rent. So in my case, my mentor taught me that Lebu Khan always make sure that you buy below the property market. So if a property, in a property market, a property is 500,000 rent, that's when he told me how to negotiate. He used to take me through his property deals. Sometimes I'll take him through my property deals. I can say, like what I can say that, in all of the properties that I bought, I bought all of them below property value. I never bought them at the market value. I bought them below and it was very less. Sometimes it was even double. Let's say a property is 500,000. We'll even negotiate to 250,000 because he is so scared in such a way that he'll go with me and then he will look at so many defects that we are going to decrease the property. And before I even go there, I'll give him the, he'll ask for the address and then he'll go through the internet and check through how much were the market, how much did the owner buy it for. So already when we engage the owner, already know that the owner bought this property for 150. So if we say we're giving him 350. So obviously 200,000, it's so much profit for him. So that's how we try to negotiate. So I think my negotiation skills have worked for me. It didn't also work for me only with the owners, the sellers. It has also worked for me with a bank consultant. I've created a relationship with a bank consultant in such a way that immediately when you start assessing my applications, it doesn't just end there after you approve me for the bond. I still keep your contact, I still keep and I also refer people to you as well. So I keep a relationship with them so that I can be able to also negotiate for interest rate. So you're finally getting a 500,000 property for 350 and then still I'll be paying less through the interest rate. So already I've bought low and obviously that's what, that's positive cash flow for me as well. The two ends, negotiating and networking. To always stay in contact with these people because they can teach you something, right? And to always keep their contacts because you're gonna need them again. And building that network is not just your mentor. It's not just your financial advisor or banker. It is the contractor. It is the person who's building. It is all the, it's from the people on the top all the way to someone who is just sweeping and cleaning one of your properties on a daily basis, whatever the case. This is your network and this is your team that you need to obviously build this relationship with and continue going. So Lebu, we've spoken depth about solutions, tricks and how you've actually achieved your property goals. But were there any mistakes that you've made along this journey? I can say there are, I don't, on the journey of me being a property investor, I don't think I've made any mistakes. But the mistake that I think I've made was when I was the first time home buyer, which I want to, at least I let the people out there so that they can be, they can also take note of this. The only thing I made is that I didn't have enough research. I don't think, remember when I bought my first property? I only did research. I didn't have any mentor. So I didn't know most of the things. The person that I was relying on was the estate agent who was guiding me through. So I went and applied for this house of plan. One thing I missed is that to, is to apply for a government subsidy called FliPS. So I didn't apply for it. And because I was a low income and at the time I qualified for FliPS. So I didn't, I was not able to apply for it. So I missed an opportunity for applying for it. So that's what I want to tell most low income home buyers, first-time home buyers to say, when you want to buy your first property, you also need to speak with your consultant and your estate agent that will be helping with your property deal to say that I need to apply for FliPS because you have a right as a South African citizen to be provided subsidy with government for your first time, for your first time house, apartment, seas. So would you say that for one of your biggest mistakes is not doing enough research on how you can actually qualify to buy your first home? Yes. And then after obviously, you know, finding out all of that and then buying your first home, could you apply for FliPS after? No, because you had already bought. You can apply if it's between, it's still within 12 months. Even if you bought it still within 12 months of your purchase, then you can still apply. So in my case I started learning about FliPS, I think. I think almost like five years later, that's when I started learning about FliPS. Yes. So you couldn't rectify your mistake in the moment? No. You seem so sad. I think that's one of the mistakes and it's one of the regrets. Yes, a regret. But besides the regrets, just before we wrap up and close off the show, what are some of the rewarding moments through your 14 years of property? My rewarding moments is that, hence I told you that I always network with the consultant. The relationship I have with them, it's so very nice. The relationship I've had with the estate agent, in such a way some of the estate agent that I dealt with were part of my mentor. Like in a case whereby I would not be having any purchases with them at the moment, you find that I'm not buying anything. I'll contact them to say, when you go for a property deal, please take me with. Are you having any property deals this weekend because I'm not working weekends? Can I come with you on Saturday or on a Sunday? They'll say, no, you can come and accompany me. So that has made me to learn so much about the market and to learn so much because that time I was still in Johannesburg. So it has made me to learn so much about the market in the south, the market in the north, the market in the west end and the east end. So I learned a lot when I was busy traveling with them and learning all the tricks in the market. So I created, so my networking has worked for me in such a way that I'm so happy. It also worked for me, even with my tenants. And I told you that right now I work far away from boys and I've got properties in Pretoria. So I find most people who are mentoring asking me that, Lebohang, since you are far away from home, okay, the ones in the townships, my mom, my family are my power team. There are the ones who are assisting me with the Airbnb's and assisting me with the other long-term rentals. So my reliance on the ones in Pretoria, my network are my tenants in such a way that some of my tenants who are no longer even staying in my apartment, they are now part of my family. They are part of my network in such a way that when the tenants move out, she is the one who sources me the next tenant. The next tenant, wow. And you find that they're not sourcing people who are not going to be problematic or unreliable, yes. So they are sourcing me. The very same people who are going to treat me, they're the same way that they are treating me. Sometimes I'll even advertise on the net and then they'll be the one who will be assisting with the viewing and staff. So I've created a network with them. So that's one thing that I love. And in a new way, they're ready also to buy their own properties. I'm the go-to person. Like I'm always the go-to person to mention that you need to create a network with the contractors and everyone, the interrogator. So everywhere where I'm at, I'm the go-to person, whether it's property, whether it's interrogator, whether it's construction. So I'm the go-to person because of, I always choose reliable people and I always create a good relationship with them. So I can say that's one of the most highlights that I'm having. And currently I'm so happy that with that networking, it has worked for me even on social media to such an extent that I've even created the mentoring group. That's, I call it my labor tribe. I've even created my own tribe where I'm mentoring young people. Even some people are older than me, couples. I'm mentoring them on becoming first time home. By some of them, they already have homes. Then I'm mentoring them to have their own, a property portfolio. Maybe buying their second property for investment, for retirement and all those things. So I'm busy mentoring them. So I'm creating a relationship with them as well. In such a way that I become happy when South Africans buy properties, especially women. I become happy when women buy properties because some of them they're not only buying for investment, they are buying to shelter their children. So for me, shelter is a very important thing that I feel each and every human being must have. So if it was according to me, I would say everyone should have their own property. According to me, that's how I wish for them that everyone should have their own property. So even when you are renting, you are my tenant, you don't end up being my tenant only. I make sure if there are property deals, I even encourage you that no, there is this property deal. Then most of the tenant will explain to me their financial challenges. I would also try to help those who want help and then try to help them so that they can be able to even qualify. So I can say even the first property deal that I assisted, I think that was the close friends. The first one, I think it was in 2013. Yeah, in 2013, that's the first deal. So previously I used to assist only people who were within my circle, which were my friends, my family, my colleagues. So right now I'm so happy that I'm assisting strangers. Exactly. Yes, I'm so happy that I'm assisting many South Africans from all over the country. I'm even assisting people from the Saudi region of Botswana and Namibia. I'm their go-to person when they need assistance around the property market. That's amazing, because now you also still, you're continuing to grow your own network. And I think you answered my final, almost final question is, I wanted to ask you, what do you, for you, for label, what is the hope for women in the future in the property industry? And something you said that is absolutely amazing is that you hope that each and every South African has their own shelter, their own home, their own, you know, and for everyone to just have their own home. What else would you say is your hope for women in the property industry in the future? Okay, in the future, my hope for women is to venture into commercial and industrial property. At the moment, I've noticed women enter into residential because of the issue that, as women, we are the naturalists. We are the ones who should make sure that children have a home. That is why property is so close to a woman because it's them saying that I'm buying a shelter for my children.  So I don't want women to only look at that. Because of the industry that I'm working on, except for property, the industry that I'm working on professionally, I've seen how other people are making money through commercial and industrial properties. So I want more women to venture, even if they come together and venture into property, into commercial property and industrial property. The commercial and industrial property, I want them to enter into its women having to own storage and manufacturing warehouses. And then, number two, I want them to own theme parks. Because remember, if we own theme parks, children, mostly, we take them to all these theme parks. So we need to own them as women. Number two, another thing, I want them to own something like container depots because that's what I do. That's part of the work that I do on a daily basis. So I want them to say they are the future owners of the container depots. And then they can own farms as well, for us to be able to have agriculture and their food and all those things, livestock and everything. So I want them to own farms. And then I think the fifth one I can say, we can start owning our own schools as well. Because some of my grandmothers from my paternal side, they were the first women to build a school in a village. So they are amongst the first women to build a school in a village with their own bare hands. So I want women to also in future to own schools. So something that's related to say, our children are gonna benefit from. Not benefit by terms of saying they're gonna inherit.  If we own farms, they're gonna eat from those ones. If we own container depots, we can have storages and all those things. All these things that people are bringing into the country, they're gonna store them there and they're gonna be able to benefit from that. And I think that's so important and that's a lovely way to close the show is that us as women need to play a part in what our future and our generation and our children are gonna start partaking in and start being involved in. And that is so powerful. And I told the viewers at home, I hope that we can take this advice and figure out a way on how we can just start, right? Lebo, you've given us a lot of information on how we can actually just start investing in property. But now you've given us even more information. Let's look at commercial. Let's look at theme parks. Let's look at schools. How do we start that journey of investing in property? Because property is not just residential. There is more to this. It's massive. There's so much. So that's what I want them to look at. I don't want people to look at properties just by toolets. We can own cartoon farms whereby people we know that they're gonna benefit from clothing and stuff. So that's how I want people to look at land. So then when coming to land, I'm so passionate about it. I always tell people that out of all the businesses in the world, most businesses are done on land.  Yes, we can have digital businesses, but the people will be doing those digital businesses. They'll be doing sitting way on land. So then it becomes the most important part in my life, and I think it's the most important part in everyone's life. That's why I want to share information so that everyone can have a piece of land that they can benefit from. We can do a whole lot of things with that piece of land. There are different as women as well. Thank you so much, Revu, for taking out the time. And that's so important because everything is done on land.  And that can be your start and then eventually continue your property journey. Just to close off, and our final question for you this evening, Revu, is how do we join Revu Hang's tribe? Okay, currently I run my tribe on my tribe in mentoring sessions on a WhatsApp group and in Zoom sessions as well. I'm trying to expand my tribe into other platforms, which I'm still researching. I don't wanna just jump in, so I'm still researching that very soon maybe I'll be having my YouTube channels, I'll be having some conference, some conference centers where we can invite women so that we can be able to teach them this thing. So I'm still learning from those who have already done those things. So they're busy mentoring me on the things that they've done. So that I can be able to also, when I start, I want people to be able to know that I've got experience in this, I've done research on this one. So at the moment I'm doing it on my WhatsApp group in Zoom sessions. Yes, that's how I mentor my tribe. Okay, and I think, so we find you on Facebook obviously, and the Labo Grass. Yes, and I've got a Facebook page called Labo Grass Crips as well. They can find me there. Maybe quickly tell the viewers why are we calling you Labo Grass. Okay. Okay, my real name is Labo Han Ratlacha. Okay, the name I was given in high school. Okay, in high school we used to translate because we used to like R&B music. So we used to imitate some of the artists. So we used to translate our same name into the English language. So since my same name is Ratlacha, then my schoolmates translated my same name to Grass. So since high school I think I was 14 years old. So since 14 years old I was known as Labo Grass. So it's a trademark for me. Nice, look at that, because at 14 you started doing research on property and now it's like your property industry named Labo Grass. Yes, yes. Thank you so much, Labo, for joining us. And I hope that we can continue this conversation to the viewers at home. Continue this conversation in your own spaces with your friends, with your family members. Let's, as women, grow in the property industry and continue to make those big investments. Again, thank you so much, Labo. Thank you for the invite. Thank you. Everyone at home, stay safe. Keep warm and take care.


And let's do an unbox therapy right here of the Xiaomi Watch S3. This is only a hundred euros. A hundred dollar smartwatch with 4G. A hundred and twenty euros something like that. You get 4G version of a 100. You get without 4G. Let's check out how it looks like. It's got a great AMOLED. It's got HyperOS which I don't know if it's Android based. Running a Foodle Android. There we have it. This is the watch. I'm gonna take this off. Oh, that's the sound. Let's boot it up. I'm trying to boot it up. Maybe it doesn't come with any charge. Okay. No charge. Oh, there it is. And some kind of way you can change those covers. You see? There. I can remove this. And I can change the color of this watch. Let's choose. Then you can scan. Okay. Go in there. Let's put this back carefully. I just need to find a place to put it back. I'll leave it off for now. So there you have it.  Let's go through behind this one. Download the Mifitness app. You can try to load it up. All right. You can put this on. Okay. So there we're gonna scan. Luxon paired. And the S3 is loaded now. Okay. You can show. Show the UI. So there we have some functions. So somehow it's HyperOS. Can do APP. Wechin, all this. And then it syncs with your phone somehow. And maybe it doesn't run a full Android. It might be low power, right? Yes. So there it is. Okay. Nice. It needs a charge. Need to connect. It's ready for demonstration. Here at the store is the watch S3. Next to this Xiaomi 14 Pro. Launch of a new product. Looks cool. It's a demonstration mode. Okay. So I tried to figure out what CPU it runs and stuff. On the Internet. I wonder what it is. Try to figure it out later. How long the better life is supposed to be.


Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us for the spring institute session for return to campus and accessibility perspectives of disabled instructors. We will start shortly in about a minute as we get more participants coming in. And please note that this meeting is being recorded, and we do have closed captioning available. You can turn it on by clicking on the CC button at the bottom of your zoom screen. And we also have an ASL interpreting today. All right, so we go ahead and get started. Yes, please. Fantastic. So my name is corn Parsons previously defrayed us if you came to the last workshop that our group organized. And I'm one of the two graduate students involved with the project that I will talk more about. Just a moment. I'm a PhD candidate in geography at UBC and also instructor geography at Langara College.  We're coming to you today from the traditional unceded territories of the Musqueam Squamish and slave with tooth nations.  We cannot do accessibility and disability justice work without also doing anti colonial work because colonization relies on ableism and ableism grows out of colonial relations. We're here talking about higher education. So we need to be clear about what the role of higher education has been in these oppressions. Institutions of higher education have not only been complicit in these processes, but have been central to devising and legitimating the oppression of indigenous people and disabled people, as well as the disabling of indigenous people. Furthermore, universities continue to be spaces in which disabled people and indigenous people are more often treated as objects of inquiry than we are as colleagues and contributors, and that needs to change. So if you signed up for this workshop in the spirit of accessibility and disability justice, please also be here in the spirit of anti colonization and decolonization. And if you're participating from a further way, please reflect on your relationship to the specific indigenous communities on whose land you live, work and learn. Or for international participants, please take a moment to think about the additional forms that ongoing colonial relations take wherever you are and what you can do to dismantle them. During our time together today, we want to invite you to do whatever lets you attend to your body, mind's needs and be as present as possible. That may include eating and drinking, lying down, stretching, moving around the room, stimming, doodling, etc. We've tried to build accessibility into this workshop, as best we know how, but access is a process. So if there are ways that we can make this or future events work better for you, please let us know. You'd also like to note that the session is being recorded and closed captioning is enabled. And we are also joined by an ASL interpreter who should be spotlighted. So with that, I'm going to hand things over to Ayaka. Thank you so much, Corinne. My name is Ayaka Yoshimizu. Today I'm speaking from the unceded lands of the muslims, kohame, shinsewatu, first nations. I am a non-disabled Japanese cisgender woman and speak Japanese as my first language. I have short black straight hair. And today I'm wearing a black short sleeve shirt with embroidered flowers, which are also black, so a bit hard to see. I am assistant professor of teaching in the department of Asian studies, and I am also one of the facilitators of this workshop. The main part of this workshop is a panel discussion on the return to in-person teaching that took place last spring. But before I introduce the panel, I'd like to note a few things and explain the context. I believe that most of you received an email a few days ago from us with slides and other materials. If you have read the email, this will be a little bit repetitive, but let me just make a few notes very briefly. In this workshop, we take a multi-temporal and multimodal approach. And this practice itself is not very unique. And recently we see this commonly practiced, particularly in the Zoom setting. But we do this with accessibility in mind. So by multi-temporal, we mean that not all the communication takes place within one hour timeframe of this workshop in an immediate and spontaneous way. This is why part of the material was sent out beforehand, so you have additional time to review them and send us questions if you like. During the workshop, you're welcome to post your questions and comments in the chat, but you're also welcome to send them to us later if you want to revisit the material or have additional time to reflect. I'm going to post my email address in the chat. We also take a multimodal approach to facilitate communication between us. So after the panel, we will invite you to share your thoughts, comments and questions. You're welcome to speak by muting your mic or write your comments in the chat or on the public platform that we will share with you later. Also, please note that we intentionally use the term disabled instructors instead of instructors with disabilities. We employ identity-first language, so which would be disabled person, over person-first language, so that would be person with disability. We have explained this choice in the email sent out beforehand, but we believe that identity-first language observes the importance of disability as a social, cultural and political identity. However, we also understand that not every disabled person uses identity-first language and we fully respect that choice as well. So before I introduce our panel, I have a few slides to show, which was also attached to the email you received a few days ago. So let me share my slides. So I hope you see the slides. In the email we sent out earlier, we introduced links to, sorry, we included links to some resources that we produced from a project that focused on looking at accessibility and disabled instructors teaching practices at UBC. And this project was carried out by Shota Iwasaki, Sheldin Oba, Coring Parsons, and myself between 2020 and 2021. And today's panel follows up on this project, so let me provide you with some context. So here you see a list of things we produced through the project. We conducted a UBC-wide survey in March 2021. We saw input from disabled instructors about the university's accessibility and support. And we created a video presenting key findings from the survey. And we also consulted with six disabled instructors about challenges, sorry, challenges they experienced in the everyday context of teaching and working, as well as suggestions for best practices. And we produced a document summarizing what they shared with us. We also produced an annotated bibliography that includes a list of literature that discuss teaching and learning with disabilities and illnesses in higher education. And lastly, we facilitated a workshop called What Would an Accessible University Look Like? Perspectives of Disabled Instructors at UBC as part of CTLT Winter Institute in December 2021. Again, the links to these documents and outcomes have been sent to you. But if you registered for the workshop in the last minute and did not receive that email, please contact me so I can share all of these with you. And now I'd like to quickly draw your attention to one of the questions included in the UBC-wide survey and the response we got from the respondents because it directly pertains to today's topic. So one of the survey questions asked, how is the transition to online teaching impacting your teaching in the context of disability? And the survey was conducted right during that remote teaching period. And this was an open-ended question. So regarding online teaching, about 36% of respondents made positive comments only. 33% made negative comments only. 17% made both positive and negative comments. 5% answered not applicable due to not teaching at the moment. There were two people who did not respond to this question. But taken together, more than 50% of respondents made at least some positive comments about online teaching, and almost 50% made at least some negative comments. And if we look at positive comments, these are what made online teaching more accessible to many respondents, including no commuting, no traveling across campus, no moving around in the classroom, no contending with inaccessible classroom design, presence of tech support for remote teaching, less anxiety and stress caused by being in front of students, flexibility of time management and pain management, especially in recording lectures, which results in better quality lectures, smoother communication with students with mic and text chatting, availability of diverse format of teaching style. And in contrast, these are what made online teaching challenging and not accessible. Longer working hours for course prep, student support and meetings. More fatigue, headaches, I strain you to increase screen time. Hard to manage anxiety, depression, mental illness while working and teaching in isolation and less than clear boundaries between workspace and home space. Sensory overload and greater difficulty reading the room, particularly for an autistic instructor and instructors with cognitive disabilities and lack of mental support. So I'm going to stop sharing and finally introduce our panel. Last February, a university transition back to in person teaching or hybrid teaching in some faculty and students welcome this transition, but others not so much. But what are implications of this return to campus to disabled instructors, what support is needed to make that transition and future teaching more accessible. So in the rest of the workshop, our three panelists will address these questions, and each panelist will present for about 10 minutes. I'm going to introduce our first panelist going portions and he actually introduced himself earlier, but he's a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography, and also social instructor at Langara College, or in the floor is yours. Thank you so much. Okay, so there's so much to talk about. And I think I'm just going to start off by saying, focusing on two groups specifically, when I say that the return to campus misses the point entirely, and the return to normal, even more so. I want to talk about the two groups of people who've been harmed by this framing. First, those of us who have benefited from remote teaching options and who have asked for remote teaching and learning options since long before the coven 19 pandemic. These are especially but not uniquely disabled instructors and students. And second, the instructors and students who are adjusting to a new normal. In many cases, permanently due to long COVID. Some of whom it has to be said were made ill because of institutions of higher education, being willing to sacrifice their health in order to return to business as usual. So, with respect to the first group, I need to start off by stating an unspoken truth, which is that what often passes for intellectual rigor in the Academy is usually just thinly veiled ableism. If rigor mattered, if that was what the university was truly committed to upholding, we would have already taken steps to ensure that all students and instructors have barrier free access to required supports, and that would include remote and hybrid teaching options. We would ask what enables students to learn what enables instructors to do their job, the absolute best of their abilities, and that would include options a range of options for course delivery because the most accessible option is options. What I need people to understand is how much better remote teaching and learning has worked for many of us. We think back to the beginning of the pandemic and all of the stress and uncertainty that everyone is experiencing. And then multiply that many times over for chronic legal and disabled people who were experiencing that same stress and uncertainty on top of being told that we were not only at higher risk of death from COVID. But that care in care rationing scenarios, we would be the ones denied life saving treatment.  And what I want to stress is that even in that environment of pervasive fear and chaos, many disabled people were able to teach and learn more effectively than in a traditional in person format. Over the last two years, non disabled people have looked at students and instructors trying to build this proverbial airplane while flying it. And I said, wow, what a mess. I shouldn't be doing this, let's get back to what we were doing before. And meanwhile, a lot of disabled people saw the same thing and said, wow, what a mess. And it's still somehow even better than what we were subjected to. How can we improve this, how can we build on this, how can we make it work better for people. And it's been disappointing to see that that second approach hasn't been taken up more broadly by many institutions. I started teaching my first solo course in fall of 2020. It was a bit of a gamble. I was struggling at the time to even keep up with basic TA commitments. But one of the instructors at Langara strongly encouraged me to apply. So I did. And I was pleasantly surprised teaching an online course has allowed me to be more energetic and intended attentive as an instructor, and has allowed me to be more productive in literally every other part of my work as well. While teaching online, I've been able to be a part of this project. I've been able to publish two book chapters, I've been able to submit and win grants. I've been able to produce an anti ableism resource for my department. I've been able to speak on several panels to participate in professional development workshops to engage in public scholarship, all while being a better instructor for my students than I had been and a more rigorous scholar in my own work. And again, this this started a time when I couldn't reliably get groceries, but I was still getting more of my needs met as a scholar and as an instructor than it was pre COVID. I don't think that even I had appreciated how taxing in person teaching and learning can be for so many of us. I have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which is among other things an energy limiting, limiting condition. So I have less energy overall than most people and the same tasks have a higher energetic cost for me. I also have more demands on my energy as a disabled person. This includes, you know, sunk costs like doctors appointments. And also includes ableist impositions like accommodations process and navigating ableism and interpersonal interactions and navigating a built environment that doesn't anticipate bodies like mine. So leaving home as a disabled person just take that much more work and it comes with a much, much higher mental load than non disabled people understand or appreciate. So I'm always in the position of needing to do more with less and suddenly remote options. I have had just much more to work with. So it's been heartbreaking to see these options being rolled back. And it's been offensive to disabled people, frankly, that the rationale being given is that remote teaching and learning is inherently inferior across the board. When, for so many of us, the stubborn adherence to in-person instruction has been a way to ensure that disabled scholars remain inferior, that we can't teach and learn to produce knowledge at the level that we could otherwise. I also want to address long COVID newly disabled instructors and students because it's far too rarely acknowledged that COVID has been not just a mass death event, but a mass disabling event that it continues to be a mass disabling event. It's not over. And only in the disability community do we have a sense of how extensive the impact of long COVID is. That's because many of us who were already disabled have been doing the work of Crip Duelas, which is a term for, you know, when you help to orient and support folks who are newly disabled. So we've been helping folks with long COVID understand how to care for a disabled body mind, how to navigate the medical system, how to navigate institutions that are hostile to disability despite illegal responsibility to accommodate, etc. So different numbers have been cited for long COVID, but right now it's like anywhere from one third to two thirds of people who have had COVID will have symptoms that continue well past the acute phase of infection. It's not necessary to have had a severe case of COVID to develop long COVID and vaccination has only been shown to reduce the incidence of long COVID by 15%. This is also a risk that a person runs with each new infection. You don't become more resistant to long COVID infection. And we don't know the full impacts of infection until years from now. We won't until years from now. So it's bewildering under these circumstances to talk about a return to normal. And it's unconscionable that institutions of higher education are exposing students and instructors to a disabling illness with seemingly no other plan than to discard anyone who's disabled by this choice. That should infuriate folks, but we barely heard a keep about it. So I would say with the return to normal scene, a return to the batter old days, a squandered opportunity, just a lot left wanting. And I would hope that the institution will begin to consult with and work to meet the needs of disabled students and instructors in ways that it has not yet up to this point. Thank you so much, Corinne. Our second panelist is Shota Iwasaki. He's a PhD candidate and session instructor in the Department of Asian Studies. Shota is actually currently out of country and out of our time zone, and he's participating in the workshop asynchronously. So he pre-recorded his presentation and I will be playing it. So if you have any questions for him, he wants them to be directly sent to his UBC address. So I'm going to post his address in the chat, and I'm going to play the video he sent me. Hello everyone. My name is Shota Iwasaki. I am a session lecturer and a PhD candidate in the Department of Asian Studies for GBC. I have a speech disability. So let me use a computer generated voice instead of my physical one for my presentation. I am an East Asian man with short black hair. I am wearing brown frame glasses and an Oxford gray short sleeve shirt. My pronoun is he, him. I am sitting in my room at home with a background blurred. I'm out of town today and cannot synchronously attend the workshop. So I am participating asynchronously through a pre-recorded video. I am a settler and I cannot speak fluently. I have lived with this discluent speech since childhood, but I've not had a chance to learn alternative communication to speaking, such as sign language. I normally use my physical voice in daily life. However, in a teaching setting where I am expected to verbally convey a certain amount of information in a limited time and in a specific manner, I use a computer generated voice and animated PowerPoint slides that coordinate perfectly with the voice. As you can see in here right now, this teaching method takes much time and energy for preparation. However, this is currently the only way to meet my teaching duties. I would like to first emphasize that I have struggled with normalcy in teaching and little appropriate instructional support for disabled instructors at UBC, or generally in academia, since I started to teach as a session lecturer in 2019. Not after the pandemic occurred in 2020. On the top of that, the transition to online teaching due to the pandemic and the following return to campus have further impacted my teaching with disabled speech in various ways. Today, I would like to share some of my experiences as a disabled instructor at UBC surrounding those issues. When I started teaching in term one of the 2019 winter session, I first had to develop my own method to teach in person that would be feasible with my disabled speech or without speech itself. I looked for instructional support at UBC, but there was almost nothing helpful for me. For example, there was no teaching workshop at UBC that was useful for teaching with disabled speech. Because the normal ability to speak was an implicit premise for all the teaching workshops, more generally for the scholarship of teaching and learning. In fact, I asked the CTLT for help, but unfortunately they told me that they did not have any teaching method or instructional support for my teaching with disabled speech. Literally, I had to develop my own way of teaching, expending extra time and energy while making efforts to seek personal institutional support. The pandemic occurred soon after I developed a prototype of the current teaching method and taught a course in person for the first time. In mid-March 2020, UBC moved all classes online and continued remote teaching until the end of the 2021 summer session. I was supposed to teach a course in the fall of 2020, so this time I had to newly develop a method to teach online feasible for me, which took much extra time, energy and effort from me in the same way as I developed a method for in-person teaching. However, in the transition to remote and online teaching, various teaching tools and options became widely accepted and available, some of which were helpful to my teaching with disabled speech. For example, asynchronous learning activities as an alternative to traditional lectures reduced the extra work for teaching preparation. In synchronous sessions via Zoom, I could use the text chatting function to communicate with students by typing. My teaching assistant was also able to effectively communicate with students through the chat during my lecture. This made up for the non-flexibility of my teaching due to my disfluent speech and the computer generated voice, which increased the overall quality of teaching. In summer 2021, the university planned to return to campus for in-person teaching and learning from the fall. I was supposed to teach a course with a mixture of in-person and online activities per term 2 of the 2021 winter session. The course had 48 enrollments. It is counted as a literature course being an arts degree requirement, and many of the students were from various arts departments. But due to the rapidly evolving challenges associated with the Omicron variant at the end of 2021, the university decided to deliver the majority of classes online until the 24th of January. Subsequently, they decided to continue with online teaching and learning until the 7th of February. To prepare for the return to campus in a synchronous Zoom session in January, I conducted an anonymous survey asking the 40 attending students which delivery mode they preferred for the rest of the term in person or online. The result was that 15 students, 38% preferred in person and 25 students, 62% preferred online. In addition, when I told the students about the possibility of recording in-person classes for those unable to attend, some students expressed their privacy concerns and rejection regarding the recording of in-class discussion. So, I was required to follow the university's decision while dealing with these students' requests and concerns. Theoretically, streaming in-person lectures via Zoom would be one solution for my course. However, I soon realized that it was difficult for my current teaching method to flexibly manage both Zoom and the classroom simultaneously. I could not adjust my teaching with disabled speech to such a hybrid flexible delivery mode in limited time and support. Consequently, I decided to provide a Zoom session and an in-person session in a week. Both sessions have the same content, meaning my students were able to choose their preferred one for the week. I had to teach the same content twice and accordingly my workload increased. But this was what I could arrange to achieve equity and accessibility for students realistically. Finally, I would like to mention future accessible teaching. First, the transition to online teaching due to the pandemic brought about various teaching tools and delivery modes that make teaching more accessible to me. It would be great if those teaching tools and delivery modes would be normalized. And if I could choose more accessible ones at my discretion, even after the full return to campus. Second, there are still many things difficult for me to do without further institutional support at various levels and directions. It would be great if there would be a more accessible place to discuss and work together about possible solutions. Thank you for listening. Thank you so much. Okay, so again, if you have any questions or show that or comments, please send them to his email address. I just posted in the chat. Okay, so our last panelist is Dr. Donna Solomon. I'm a new list translation specialist and he's a judge in the meat, why free program of the department of family practice in the faculty of medicine. Donna, the door is yours. Thank you. Thank you for the introduction. I'm Donna Solomon. And my pronouns are she or her. I am a white woman with long brown curly hair. I have blue eyes and I wear glasses. I'm wearing a gray shirt with black stars on it. And in the background, there's a few bookshelves and an army of Autobots and Decepticons and a sword hanging on the wall. So, when we were asked to talk about, you know, what does the return mean to disabled instructors. My first thought was that, you know, we're a pretty diverse bunch. It's going to mean something very different to each of us. But that said, what I've heard and what I have felt is that it was a tremendous loss. And during the pandemic, a lot of disabled people at UBC for the very first time in our careers felt genuinely included. We were able to access so many more activities. We were able to manage our environments which meant we could minimize the harm that we experienced by doing all these things. And for the very first time, our colleagues actually understood a tiny bit more about what our lives were like. I remember a conversation with my colleagues when they were describing how they were feeling so trapped in their homes during lockdown. And I responded, welcome to my life. UBC's return to campus then felt like such a huge loss of that inclusivity. And given that many of us had been advocating with UBC long before the return to actually avoid that situation. It felt like our concerns were being dismissed and it felt like a betrayal. And at the same time, UBC's return was just a symptom in a very much larger problem. Throughout the pandemic, disabled people were not prioritized or centered at any point. In BC, some disabled advocacy groups were able to fight to get priority access to vaccines. But many of us didn't have that, despite other provinces prioritizing people with our same conditions or disabilities. The financial support that the Canadian UBC government offered to disabled people bordered on non-existent. And when disability-related payments are compared to what the government deemed to be a necessary amount to subsidize able-bodied people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic, it became very clear just how little importance is placed on the needs of disabled people. So likewise, during the return to normal, the fact that disabled people are often still at higher risk of severe disease and death has been largely ignored. Leaving many of us faced with a decision to risk our lives or those of our immune-compromised relatives, or stay in lockdown. So at UBC, when we talk about this return and the concerns that many of us have, it's in a much broader context of not having our needs and voices heard and being constantly underrepresented. And at the same time, at UBC, a lot of us, particularly staff, are being, staff and faculty actually, but we're faced with a mandate to return to offices that are frankly dangerous to us. My office, for example, is in a hospital. To get there, I have to use public transit. It's a shared office space and when we're all there, it's extremely crowded. My ability to maintain distance from my colleagues, many of whom have children who are not able to be vaccinated but are still attending daycares where COVID is spreading like crazy. My ability to protect myself is extremely limited. So while I have not yet been forced back because of extraordinary circumstances, some of my colleagues have and are facing these fears. In order to avoid such a mandate, we try to go through the accommodations process, which I think it's been discussed before in other contexts is a degrading and patronizing obstacle course at the end of which many people are told that UBC does not offer a remote work accommodation. Even when accommodations are granted, and this is well beyond the return to campus, some of us have found that our departments are supervisors and following that example, our colleagues treat those accommodations like a burden or as an excuse to single us out for exclusion and bullying. In insecure employment conditions such as grant funded contracts, it becomes extremely easy for those jobs to suddenly disappear. The rules and the pressures that are presented by this return add a significant burden to an environment that already presents a lot of obstacles to inclusion. So when we talk about what should be happening, it should be individualized approaches. This isn't a one size fits all situation. Like any other group, there's a lot of diversity and each of us is going to respond to a situation very differently. And that's the key principle that should frankly underlie all our work in making the university as a whole and the return specifically flexible and responsive to individual needs. That's a challenge. A university in its current world thrives on structures and policies, and we'd have to change at a very fundamental level to focus on the individual rather than the group. But that's also a fantastic opportunity. We know that diversity creates excellence. We know that more diverse teams and approaches results in better outcomes. There's data on this embracing that diversity in our approaches to teaching research learning will only benefit all of us, including UBC. So when we're asked, you know, how should the university be consulting with disabled instructors about delivery modes? Honestly, my first response was, well, consulting at all would be a really great start to be very blunt with you. At the moment, the standard approach to consultation at UBC usually goes something like this. A policy is developed. It's then approved by the board or whatever senior leadership needs to approve it. And if they choose to consult, they then contact so-called stakeholder groups and ask for feedback. In other words, by the time we're consulted, if we're consulted at all, the policy has already been created and approved. At best, any feedback we give could result in cosmetic changes. Anything more substantive is likely to be ignored and typically has been. This is not consultation. The entire approach to engagement with all equity-denied groups needs to change. We need to be at the table for the creation of any policy that's relevant to us and not for one or two meetings so they can give us a presentation and tell us what they're doing. At every meeting, in every discussion, on every email. The same should be true for discussions about delivery modes and teaching. Work with us from the beginning to figure out the best and most inclusive delivery options. Some courses have to be offered in person. I did a degree in acting at UBC. It would be really difficult to learn that without being in the same room. But for others, an online approach may even be preferable and for most probably a combination of the above could work. In a class offering multiple sessions, why do all of them have to be offered through the same delivery mode? And there's no reason for this to be a binary choice. An in-person class can be live streamed and an instructor can teach remotely to a lecture hall full of students on campus. And it shouldn't only be disabled instructors and staff who contribute to these discussions. Disabled students are also struggling to get the accommodations they need during this return. And I would like to speak very briefly to the survey results that were talked about earlier. Because I noticed something when I was looking at the negative comments. They're valid. They're true. There is a lot of burden to it. But so many of those negative comments could be mitigated or even eliminated with better supports, more experience and more practice with online teaching modalities. For example, whenever any of us teach something for the first time, the workload is dramatically higher than it is the second or third time around. The same is going to be true for at least some of the remote teaching experience. Likewise, when many of us start teaching, there's a bit of a learning curve to the process. How do you handle meetings and student support and facilitating discussions? These are skills that need to be learned and honed. The same is true to adapting these skills to a different setting. With more practice, we would all get better at it. Looking at the positive comments, on the other hand, the vast majority of those can't be replicated in an in-person setting. And I just have to reiterate, this is such an opportunity for UBC to revolutionize how we teach and how we engage with students in research. I recently spent some time visiting family who I haven't seen in many years. And I realized just how unbelievably creative I have been to develop an environment for myself that accommodates my disabilities without making me feel broken all the time. It was a pretty gradual process, so I didn't realize just how extensively I've modified my worlds to make it work for me. Disabled people are, often by necessity, extremely innovative and creative about how we approach our world, how we interact with others, how we learn, teach, play, how we live.  It's exactly what UBC needs right now to take advantage of the pretty crappy situation that the world has thrown at us with COVID. We can turn this into a better, more powerful, more inclusive way to learn and teach. I want to thank everybody for attending, for your thoughts, for your encouragement, those of you who said thank you. If you want to continue the conversation, please go to the padlet that's in the chat and continue the conversation there. If you have thoughts or questions for Shota, please email Shota. He would love to be able to engage a bit there. So is there anything else that I've missed? I think there's also in the chat a survey. A feedback survey. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything else? I don't think there's anything else, but yeah, at least I just posted a link for the feedback survey. So if you could fill that out and share your feedback on the workshop with us, that'd be wonderful. Thank you so much.