Hello and welcome, Canva fans. I am pleased to be offering you this presentation on streamlining the PR process with Canva. My name is Jean Bianchin. I am the PR specialist at the Voriceville Public Library. Voriceville is located just outside Albany, the New York State Capitol. Now, when you think of New York, you may think that is one big city, but we're actually located upstate New York and very near this beautiful part of the Hudson River. Our library covers about 8,000 residents of which 3,500 are registered patrons. We have a staff of about 25 full and part-time employees. And after being in this building for more than 35 years, we just started a renovation project. Our program planning runs in a two-month cycle. This chart shows the programs in the two-month cycles with the summer reading program as its own special entity. So the events roughly total 398 for a year, which is about 7.65 a week. But then you need to start including two story times, every Tuesday and Thursday, the Pilters Group on Tuesdays and the Movies Groups on Thursdays. So that total moves more towards a total of 12 programs a week. So here's a list of all the typical promotions and channels that we use for programming. I'm not gonna read them all to you, but basically there's about 12 right here. If we take each event that we promote and multiply it by around 12 different ways, that ends up being 476 promotions in a year. Okay, you're thinking, how am I going to do all of this? Well, you need to have a plan to help you streamline the PR workload so you can best promote all these great events. So you're gonna start paring down, what can you group together? What has a similar feel to it? Maybe something can kind of repeat. Maybe your book discussion groups look the same. Maybe your cooking classes have the same feel to them.  After several years on the job, I took a look at everything and I paired and scaled down the sizes of the promo in images into these three, maybe four basic sizes. The biggest hint is that it starts with the square. I'm gonna go be going over the entire contents of the slide bit by bit. So you don't have to write it all down now and then I'll be repeating the contents of this slide at the end of the presentation. So let's keep going. Are you thinking, yikes, how am I going to do this? Okay, we're gonna start with small steps. The first small step we're gonna start is by doing and creating an Instagram square. All right, to do that, you're gonna go into Canva. You're gonna go up to the right. You're going to choose Instagram post. Then you're going, and when you select that, the square shape opens up a new window and we're going to go. Yeah, yeah. All right, you're gonna start here. So let's start with a topic that you most likely will need to do. Let's start promoting a book program. We're gonna use the book cover as the basis for the look of the program. Now I'm gonna speed up this presentation, but basically in the Insta square phase, this is where all your creation is gonna happen. You're going to choose your type style.  You're going to really kind of get a feel for it. Is it trendy? Is it classic? However you wanna do it, the creative process is in this step and you're gonna take a while to do it. Okay, so here we are adding some more elements for social media. We're going to add the brand. Here it is. I have another branding folder. These are all logos I use all the time. I use them a lot, so they're there. Here's the logo for the library and there's the alternate logo that I'm not gonna use this time. Okay, so let's go. Now it's time for the magic of Canva. I think that's sure. We're gonna use magic switch and this really makes it easier for you. We're gonna do the magic switch. We have our insta square. We're going to go up to magic switch, select it, pull it down and we're going to choose the presentation size, 16 by nine. We're gonna continue and there are six pages available there and we don't need all six, so we're gonna go and select the page that we want. We're gonna delete all the other ones, not delete, de-select and I think it's page three. There we go, page three is what we need and then we're gonna select that and continue. Here we go, copy and resize. I like that thumbnail. All right, let's choose the copy and resize. Select that and open presentation and voila, here we are. It's now resized, let's do this. It's now resized into your slide format. So we wanna make some adjustments. Let's move the logo over a little bit. We can scale it, we can move the book over a little bit. Let's see and resize it and now I think I want the date and day of the week and time on one line. I'm gonna make it bigger so people really know that it's Sunday, that's an important day, that's not a regular meeting day so we wanna make sure that that's nice and big, make sure that people can register, they know they need to register, move that up and let's make it a little more interesting. How about books will be available? Yeah, let's bill it right people. That's me. Okay, for sale. That sounds pretty good. Now we're gonna scale it up a little bit, resize it and instead of just regular books, let's make it a cookbook. Makes it more interesting for the foodies out there and we're gonna keep going with that. That looks pretty good. Okay, now that we have the slot, here we go, now that we have the slide created, we wanna make it to a poster. Go back up to magic switch, choose your eight and a half by 11 at our library, we call that poster size, you could also make it 11 by 17, the Talbot size if you really wanted to. You choose that size, you copy and resize and there we go and you're gonna open it on your eight and a half by 11 new tab and that's the new slide. Here we go. So when things rescale, it's not perfect, but it's pretty good. So now we're gonna work on adding and readjusting everything. You don't have to redesign, you're just readjusting what you've set up. You have the look, you don't have to worry about any of that, you just need to make sure that all the elements look nice on the page. Make sure you have the registration information, always important. And we're changing the way we want the wording for the cookbook and that down and over. And let's see again with the time. Sometimes on weekend programs, I don't add the ending time. If someone is there, they can stay to the end of the day. During a weekday, if things are really busy with kids, I usually put the end time so that parents know when to pick up their kids. Okay, again, we're rescaling the day of the week and the time and we're moving things around to make everything balance. Now a lot of times on a poster, quick and easy, just center everything. It's kind of a nice way to balance it. Okay, so now through the wonder of the internet, I can show you three different versions of the poster. There's one, there's two, and there's three. So sometimes I go back and I rearrange things and I still keep it going. Now that we've created our images, let's go over again what the sizes are and then we're also gonna talk about where we're gonna use them. Again, we started with an Instagram image. It's a square, 1080 by 1080. And then we took that square and we changed it into a landscape rectangle, if you will, with the 16 by nine ratio. And then we took that and we resized it to eight and a half by 11 for promo posters inside the library and outside. And then that promo poster for eight and a half by 11 can become a display poster. If you don't wanna do the magic switch, you can just go to your copier, take your letter size file, choose tabloid, which is 11 by 17 and fit to page. That's also a way of doing it. All right, so how and where can we use this square image that we've created? We have a bookworm print newsletter that we can use the image for. Mailchimp, when there's an event, I put an image with that so we can put that inside the Mailchimp, the picture of the image and then the text to go along with it. In social media, the square, we can use it for an Instagram post, a Facebook post. We don't really use Twitter too much anymore so let's not even bother. All right, I use the square images an awful lot on the online calendar that we have, we use EventKeeper. You could also use the square image if you were writing a newspaper article and you wanted to submit some images for the newspaper to use. We have an SNN school newsletter that may or may not use your images. You can use the square for post event recap. You can also use the square for your, inside the school promotion. So we work a lot with the public librarian and we'll send, we've worked back and forth so we can take an event that's for the library and if we're working with the public school library then we can share, just send the Canva image over to them. All right, so you might be wondering why I'm not talking about making a Facebook image because you don't have to. I want you to look real carefully here. Facebook will take your square and it will take your background. Again, we selected that careful background, they choose it and if you see there's that extra little space on the side. This is a square, Facebook is more, the width is a little bit larger but they take the color and it works and so here's an image, the square image scaled for Facebook and I didn't have to do anything. I just used the square and I let Facebook do the work for me. All right, so where can we use the slide or the presentation size? Again, you can use it in MailChimp if you want to have something that covers both columns. I use it all the time for a Facebook event. That's just, it's the same size. It's done, the text that I use for Facebook event is often the same text that I use for my Facebook post with a little more information if we need to. I make a slideshow with the slide and that's right at the Cirque desk so if the line ever gets too long, they can look at the slide on the screen. You could also use it for a newspaper article, maybe or not, the school newsletter and also if you want to do for a post event recap. Where do we use the posters? Again, that's eight and a half by 11. We use it a lot in-house. We have, like on the stacks, we have this plastic thing that you can slide in and you have the poster that can go in there so we have that kind of stacked on the side, maybe the children's section has children's posters. The adult book discussions have the book discussion group posters, the movies have it in a different at the end of the column. We have a separate large bulletin board where we put the posters in the hallway and also in the community room so if people are at a meeting, they can look up and they can see the different posters and promotions of the events that are coming up. The community bulletin boards, the post office, the grocery store, the various different restaurants, we can put that up. We can get permission from a variety of places. That's also where we use the posters. If the posters go to the school, we use the school disclaimer that this poster is not, you know, whatever. But so the poster, if you just have to add the disclaimer for the school, that's fine. Everything is safe, everything is good. All right, so thank you for listening. You can take a look at our library's website, it's fourpole.org because Voriceville Public Library is an awful lot to spill. All right, and then let's see if I can leave you with this.


Hi, welcome to the latest edition of Junction City News. I am Regina Mahoney, the city manager for the city of Essex Junction. And I have with me this afternoon Ashley Snellenberger, who is the city's communications and strategic initiatives director. Welcome Ashley. Thank you. So we are going to be talking about the strategic plan, strategic action plan that the city is working on. We have talked about this a few times already, but really looking to this process to help us guide our future steps in the city. So really want to get the word out and let folks know where we are at with the process. So can you give us a bit of a reminder of what this project is about? Sure. So our city council wanted us to begin looking at a vision and strategic action plan now that we are officially a city. And so we hired a consultant to help us out with this process and we started working on this process back in September. It really has two steps to it. The first is creating a community vision that reflects some of our core values and some of the trends happening in the city and in the community and the country is large. And then it kind of imagines what we would like our future to look like. The second part of it is the strategic action plan, which is setting our priorities for the next five years. And so this project will run until February 2024. So we're right about in the middle of the process and we've already started working on some of it with our community survey that we put out to everybody and the think tank workshops that we held as well. Awesome. Great. Okay. So the community survey. What was some of the feedback we received from the residents? So we launched the survey in October and had about 450 people respond to our survey, which was great. So part of the main questions that we were asking people was their satisfaction living and working in the city of Essex Junction. So we asked them how satisfied they were about living and working in Essex Junction and then if they thought that the city offered future opportunities for them to grow and thrive in the city. And so from this graph you can see that the majority of people are satisfied with living and working in the city and they feel that the city offered those future opportunities for them. Awesome. So those are, that's why the circles are larger in the top right corner. That's correct. The second really big second questions that we asked was about our current direction and ability to adapt within the city. So we asked the respondents how satisfied they were with the way that the city was changing and the current overall direction that we were headed. And then we asked them if they were satisfied or concerned about the ability for the city to adapt to changes. And so from this graph you can see that mainly a good number of their responses were satisfied with the direction that they were headed and the ability to adapt. But we do have some circles in the large, in the middle of the graph that kind of indicates that there might be some concern and a lot of that we found was with change. And so that was one of our big drive impactors is the, you know, change in the direction that it's headed and how quickly it's changing. And so that's our valid concerns within any community I feel like. But it was good for us to have those responses. Yeah. And I think that's good insight that, you know, as extension and the county as a whole are changing. We are growing. We have a big housing need. And so that change can be inevitable whether you want it to happen or not. So I think it's going to be great for this process to help us as a community guide what that change looks like. So that was the big main changes. The next thing that we had was our think tank workshops. So our think tank workshop was divided into two days. We did that on November 2nd and 4th. And they lasted for about two hours each time that we had that. And then so we broke day one. Basically we started out talking about what are some global trends that are affecting the city of S-Extension, whether that's the climate change that we can see taking place today or other things like population growth and people moving into different parts of Vermont or moving from the south to the north. So there was lots of different trends that are affecting globally, nationally, that we talked about. And then we talked about how that might affect the city of S-Extension in the future. We then asked the participants to identify some key drivers. And these are the things that are most likely to shape the city within the future. And so our residents that participated in this identified 20 key drivers. And they rated these key drivers then on a scale of the size and impact on the economic approach and the community approach. And so these are the 20 drivers that the residents came up with who participated in the think tank. And as you can see, it's a varied group from housing to traffic congestion and transportation to the ability to adapt and the fear of change. So some of those things that we already had seen in the survey also came up within the think tank as well. And so we're definitely seeing some trends within this survey and think tank workshop that we did. Awesome. Okay. So that was a lot of content to get through day one on the think tank. What took place on the second day? So day two, we started by looking at the rankings that they did of those key drivers. So where did everybody feel that were the most important economically and in the community wise and what were the bigger key drivers? And then we asked them to based off of those drivers and some scenarios to develop some scenarios for it. And we'll get back into that a little bit later. But first off, let me show you guys what they came up with with their rankings. So the first one is our economic approach. And the top four things that came out of that was the lack of economic opportunity, escalating cost of living, housing constraints and development and then transportation. And so those were the key big things that they thought economically would be the most impact within the city. The other one was our community evolution. And they had three that were the top for that and that was the housing constraints and development, the lack of interpersonal engagement and then the escalating cost of living. So a little bit of those overlapped on both of those different sections. And then some of them were a little different. So those are our big key drivers that were shaping what we felt were community and the economy. And then we asked them to, they were presented with this scenario metrics. So this matrix basically breaks it down from our community evolution, which starts off with a strong feeling of protecting and preserving what we currently have and moves on into adapting and growing. And that's really big changes. And then on the vertical act us, we have a community led approach, which is really the community is taking on the approach to economic development. And then we have a market led approach where developers are driving the initiatives of investment within the city when it comes to economic development. So based off these different quadrants of this matrix, we divided everybody up into four groups and we asked them to describe what the characteristics of the city would look like in those scenarios. So if it was scenario A, it was their protecting, preserving and community led. If it was scenario B, community led, and then adapt and grow, scenario C, adapt and grow and market led, and then scenario D, preserve and protect, market led. And so we divided them up. We asked them to come up with what these characteristics of the city would look like. We then asked them to talk about some headlines or events that might be taking place in the city, whether that was in 2025, 2030, 2035, and then finally give their different scenarios a name. So they all had the opportunity to name their scenarios. Awesome. Okay. So let's take a look at each of those scenarios and what the groups came up with. Can you tell us about each of them? Sure. So the first scenario was scenario A. They named their group, our village, our voice. And this was our community led and protected and preserved quadrant. And so really the group of respondents really felt that this would be a less diverse population. They felt that a lot of the people that would be remoting or commuting to work instead of working in the city. A lot of this was, since it's that preserve and protect, it was really on emphasis of that what we have currently in the village and protecting and those traditional feel. They wanted to slow down growth with this, because again, this is not the change population. And they also wanted to limit the density. So we're not growing or expanding within this one. And then finally they felt that there would be some engagement with the community, but it wouldn't be as robust as it could be. Okay. Interesting. All right. And then what did group B think? So group B is our community representation model. It was the community led and adapt and grow model. So this is the one with the most change and the most community responsive and both being involved, community involvement, I should say. So they thought that this group would be very diverse within the community. We'd have lots more diversity in our community. We'd have lots of different amenities and activities that people could participate in. It would be a community led economic approach instead of the market led. So it would allow us to grow very quickly and would encourage growth within the city. And then the communication engagement would be very strong with this. This would be something that the community would take on lots of projects. They would be really doing a lot of the work moving forward, whether that's economically or community wise. And so it would be a very appealing place for people to live in. So that was their representation of scenario being. Okay. Great. All right. So moving halfway around the quadrant there. So now down to the bottom, group C. Group C was our Zillow Junction Leads Economic Growth Group. This was our adapt and grow, which lots of change, and then our market led development. And so they felt that this would be very developer or investor driven within any of our economic priorities. They didn't feel that there would be a social cohesion amongst the group, that there would be not that community connectivity that really was there in some of the other groups. They really felt that because of this, housing would become no longer affordable for the majority of people living in our community. And because of that would then lead to less diversity within our community as well, because they wouldn't be able to afford those properties. And then they really felt that those who live in the city would have to work elsewhere or would be remote working. So that would be not people working in our community. Okay. All right. And group D, the final group. And the final group is Essex Junction, the new Shelburne. And so this is our protect and preserve and market led group. They felt that obviously this would be very market traditionally led by the market approach to economic development. They felt that a lot of the people who would be moving into the city would be people who were newcomers, who were very fluent, or people who were having second vacation homes. And then the people who were still there, written being really able to afford to live within the community and probably would be looking for elsewhere to live. So we wouldn't have a lot of the same people living in the community. We would have no ethnic diversity within this quadrant. And then while the city would be, you know, very attractive, we're not going to have that growth that we expect with some of the other groups. And then again, loss of our community. So we'll have kind of a tension between the newcomers who are moving in from different locations and the people who are still trying to stay and live in the city. And those ideas probably might not mesh as well with what, how they want to move within the community. So we feel there might be some friction within that quadrant if that was to come. Okay. Okay. So one thing just to remind folks of this, the strategic planning process is not, or I should say the scenario planning process is not in any way shape or form an actual representation of what our future will hold. It's an exercise to help the community understand what are the positive aspects and which direction that you might want to go in. So just to be clear, that summary was the result of that exercise. And so what happened next with that result? So after all of these, the different groups presented to us, and then they were able to, at the end of the day, to decide what would be their preferred future, their expected future, and their least desired future. So we asked everybody to take this quadrant and then mark each of their, like, square where they said would be their least, their expected, or their preferred future. So we have some heat maps to show you. The first one is our least desired future. So the majority of the participants did not like scenario D. They thought that was the most undesirable option for the city moving forward. And so this was the one that they really did not, and it was a strong majority of people who did not like this scenario. The expected future, which is this next slide, is where we think that we are most likely to happen if no change is made. So if we stay on the same course that we are right now, this is where people expect us to be. And as you can see, some of the people thought scenario D would be where we are, and then it starts to move into scenario C a little bit. So there was kind of a split between scenario D and scenario C. If we make no changes whatsoever, this is their expected future for our community. Okay, and I think that would mean, like we talked about earlier, change will happen. It's a matter of whether we influence, right? So that is sort of like a, if we don't influence, that's the change that will come. That's the expected change that will come, exactly. And then the final heat map is our preferred future. The future that we, as the representatives that were there at the think tank, would like to see our community moving forward. And they overwhelmingly preferred the community representative model, which was scenario B. And so you can see from that heat map that they really were moving forward towards that preferred future. And so now, as we move forward this process, it's how do we move from that expected future into this preferred future. And so that's what we'll be looking at when we start talking about our strategic action plan. And those actions will move us forward to that preferred future. Right. And that quadrant, just in a quick summary again, is some acknowledgement that we will adapt to grow, not dig deep in our heels and stay just as it is. But really community led. So we're really influencing policy wise how we get to the future that we want. That's exactly right. And so we really want our community to be involved. That was one of their big things. And that's from the government perspective, from leading things within our community, whether that's initiatives or whatever their expectation and outcomes are wanting to be. That's what that community driven is instead of our traditional method, which is our market. So, yeah, great. Okay. So where can people find out about what we just summarize for folks and get some more information about that? Yes. So as always, we keep telling everybody to go back to the project portal. We will be publishing the think tank report, which has all of this information that we talked about tonight on our project portal. We're doing some last minute tweaks on it and that's supposed to be published this week. So look for that. We'll be sending out some emails about that and publishing it obviously on all of our media channels, our website, our Facebook and front porch forum. But we'll also obviously be posting everything to our project portal and that's where we want to encourage everybody to go. The project portal also has our survey right now, so you can go on and actually see every response that we received from the survey and what people were saying within the survey. We also have open answer questions and so you can see exactly what everybody was telling us in that survey. And then this information that we have from our think tank report will then be used to develop our pillars. And so those are our core values, the key priorities that we're going to be focusing on moving forward within our strategic action plan. Awesome. Okay. So the project keeps going until February 2024. Can you tell our viewers what the next steps in the process will be? So we have a big month of January plan for everyone. We've got basically two projects going on the month of January. So we do have our strategic planning process that's going on, but we're also in the middle of budget planning and getting ready for annual meeting. And so we have decided to combine two of these events so that we're not asking people to come out for a bunch of different events the month of January. So January 27th, which is a Saturday, we have a community open house and budget discussion. And so the day will start out with a community open house where you can come and give feedback on the strategic plan. The idea is to come spend five to 15 minutes giving us some feedback and then turn around and go about the rest of your day. If you're interested in more information on our budget, you can obviously stay. We're planning on having a community meal that day and putting out information about our budget. And then we'll end the day with more opportunity for strategic planning. And so you can come in obviously during the afternoon as well and give feedback. So again, it's a come and go event. It's not something where you come in and you're going to have to spend an hour or two unless you want to hear more about the budget. But this is an opportunity, like we said, for us to get feedback from multiple projects. Great. And then after that, we have some focus group sessions. That's going to be January 29th and 30th. That's Monday and Tuesday. Those will be throughout the day on both of those days. And we'll be going over to the different pillars and asking people to give us feedback on those pillars for our action items. So what can we do to accomplish these different pillars? And then finally, we'll be putting out a community survey number two in February. And this will allow us to get some feedback on some of those action items and those pillars to see if this is the direction that we're all going in the right direction and to make sure that we're hitting all the areas that we need to within those pillars. After the consultants have combined all of that information, they will then be writing our strategic action plan report. And that report will then be given to our city council and presented to our city council and presented to our community. And then we'll start moving forward on that action plan. Awesome. So it's thank you for combining those two big things that we're working on right now into one. And so the interesting thing I think for us right now is that the strategic planning process and this action plan that comes out of this work will really help us build budgets going forward. And right now we're actively working on the FY25 budget and that will probably move a little faster than getting the final product from this action plan. But it'll be helpful to see how this action plan helps us really establish annual work programs for the city and move forward with that input. So it's great that we've had an opportunity to get feedback from our community and really ask what are the priorities that we want to be moving forward. We've had a lot of ask. And so I know that that's something that our city councilors have, our staff has. And so in our community is asking for. And so we hope that with the strategic plan we can accomplish some of those priorities and start moving along in that process in a reasonable way. We can't do everything in year one. So this is a five year. We just want to make sure that we really say that this is a five year plan. And so we hope that we can accomplish all of those activities in the next five years. Awesome. Great. Is there anything else you would like to add? I will say be checking out your mail for an invitation on the community open house and budget discussions. We will be sending that out in the beginning of the new year. We'll also be posting a lot of information about all of our upcoming events after the new year. So be sure to check out the project portal and our, of course, our website, social media and front porch forum for all of this information. We hope that everyone who has already participated in the strategic plan will continue to participate. And for those who haven't had an opportunity to participate, please take the opportunity to participate in these upcoming events and give our feedback, especially within the priorities and action items. Because those are, I think, the funner of the project portion. So we hope that everybody will participate in those projects coming up. Awesome. That is great. OK. So thanks so much for joining me. That is most of our time today. Hopefully, folks will continue to tune in for our monthly Junction City News and hope everybody gets home safely today. Depending on when you watch this, you may not know, but we're back in a significant rain and flooding event today here in Vermont. So hope everybody gets home safe and happy holidays to everybody. Thank you.


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And also for us to take a moment to realize what's emerging right now, what's coming into existence in the MCC space, because this is very new for the Masajid space, and when Allah SWT wants something to happen, He brings asbab, He brings causes together. So we've had a number of people over the years come to MCC and we've started a series of these panels and a few months ago when I saw the first flyer of Dr. Ariana doing a lecture on addiction, I was excited. I said, Alhamdulillah, now we have another person because we had other people who were working on this. Dr. Ahmed was an addiction specialist from Stanford and he's done a few panels. So MCC is really now a pioneer. If we as a community and the board and the board of trustees allow this to emerge and not nip it in the bud, because there's a lot of things that are coming together that could really like a lot could happen out of this and MCC can be a pioneer in this discussion and establishing a model for how does the Masajid act as that, how does the Masjid act as that space, how do we bring together the like-minded people to address this issue of addiction in our community. I want to begin by just mentioning a few things that we have to remember in our dean as Muslims, as the way we walk in life and the way we look at things, we cannot address complex issues with simple solutions. I want to say that again. We cannot address complex issues with simple solutions. And I'll give you an example. Years ago when I was studying, not years ago, now it's been decades ago, when I was studying in West Africa in Mauritania, a friend of mine from the UK, he mentioned an improper application of the Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and it's a Hadith that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, a man came to him and complained about poverty. He was poor. He was looking for a handout. So what did the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam do? He could have easily pointed somebody to give him money, but he asked and he said, do you have anything at home? Because he was basically saying, I have nothing. He says, no, do you have something? He said, I have a clay pot. He said, bring the clay pot. He brought the clay pot. He auctioned it at the masjid. Who will give me something for this? One dirham? No, two dirham. He's teaching him, you do have some resources. He auctioned it off and he said, who has an axe head? Somebody said, I have it. He said, I purchased it now with this two dirham. So he's showing them how you can take your resources and now transfer it into an axe head. Now get me a piece of wood. The Prophet Muhammad himself affixed the axe head to the piece of wood, gave it to the man, said now go into the mountains and chop wood. Now that's a very, very profound deep hadith. We can use it as a model of how to create self-sufficiency in people, work ethic, recognizing the resources that you have. Unfortunately, when people see that, and this is where the UK story comes in, my friend from the UK said that sometimes when people come to the masjid and ask for financial assistance, they'll say go chop some firewood. Now is that what the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam did? He didn't. He didn't oversimplify this complex issue. He walked the person through a few steps. Later on when the man came back and he said, how are you doing? He said, oh I'm financially stable. Like he was doing very, very, very well. So in the same way when we look at addiction, we cannot draw certain things from our tradition and then address it in that simple way, like the people who said, oh just go chop some firewood. So if somebody comes to you, a friend, a family member, a community member, says I'm dealing with addiction, we cannot oversimplify the response and say, oh it's haram, just stop it. Or if you were really practicing your Islam, it would be able to stop it. Just make toba, just have a spiritual experience. Tasawwuf is enough, or ihsan is enough, you know, spiritual, just focus on that. That's an oversimplification of how our deen actually is. And you know, for many of us we may have this book at home called, tib bin nabawi, just a show of hands. Who has the prophetic medicine as a book at home? Prophetic medicine, tib nabawi. How much of that book is actually literal lessons from the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam? Very little. It's a few hadith. The rest of it is what the Muslims gathered when they were exposed to Greek medicine, when they were exposed to Indian medicine, in India, when they were exposed to the medicine of the Persians. And they said, you know what, I think this is congruent with our faith. Let's take this in. Umar radiallahu anhu actually sent two people, when he was the Khalifa, to the Byzantines, he said, learn everything about medicine from the Byzantines, the Romans, the Rumi. And when they came back, he said, now place everything you've learned on the scales of the Quran and the Sunnah. We keep what is congruent and we leave what is not. So he wasn't saying, oh, the Quran and Sunnah is enough for us for medicine. He was saying, no, look at what's available, what our other humans in their human experience have collected. And then we'll put it on our scales. So this is what we're doing. That's what tib nabawi was doing. It was saying we have some indications that the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam would say, use honey in this situation.  Have this balancing of the diet. So then the Muslims just went and they ran with it, so to speak. So this is what when we see examples in the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam's life of him addressing addiction, we have to say, these are indications. He's showing us, go in this direction, have this response, but then fill it in. Take it and run with it. There was a young man who came to the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in the Masjid context. And he complained. He said the thing that was most beloved to him was zina, illegal intercourse. He loved it. He said, I love it more than anything in the world. When he said that, now he's coming to the Prophet, not to boast about it, but to say, I have an issue, can you help me with it? The Sahaba that were around him, the companions that were around him, they said, Matt, like quiet, quiet, don't talk about this. So what are they doing? That was basically the board of the committee. We're saying, no, no, no, no, no, not in the Masjid space, not around the Prophet. No, no, no, come on. This is not the place for it. Keep it, keep it, keep it silent, stigmatize it, silence it, keep it in the shadows. We don't need to know about it. What did the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam do? He walked him through a process. He said, do you, would you like this for your mother? No. He said, and people are like that. In other words, that person is somebody's mother that you're interacting in that way with. Would you like this for your sister? No, of course not. And people are like that as well. They don't want this for their sisters. And he went through all of his female relatives, you know, step by step. We could say this is almost a type of talk therapy or CBT or that he was walking him through, indicating like, don't, he didn't just say, it's haram, don't do it.  But he didn't tell him that he walked him through a process. Then he made dua for him, the spiritual side. Sometimes people might say, oh, just make dua and it'll stop.  He said, he walked him through a cognitive process thinking about it. And then he made dua. So he had both the cognitive side and the spiritual side, which we need that in our approach to recovery. So now if we look at that hadith and other hadith or say the famous Sahaba, Abdullah and Noaiman, who was addicted to alcohol, he was addicted to alcohol and he was a Sahabi. And he was punished for it because there is an Islamic punishment for alcohol use. But after he was punished, some of the Sahaba started calling him names. And the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam stopped him. He said, he loves Allah and his messenger. He loves Allah and his messenger. You don't know who this person is. And Dr. Rayana mentioned a few times about the spirituality of addiction and the spirituality, the level of people who have addiction. And the mountains that they are and that they could even be bigger mountains and we can't, you know, make a person just the sum of their actions, which is why the move is away from referring to addict, because you're not an addict. You are a human being with thoughts and love and fears and hopes and emotions and struggles, one of them happens to be addiction. So you are not an addict. So how did the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam respond to him? And how did he, how was he incorporated in the community? So I know these stories, but you know, for me, and now I'll just a little bit of how my path to learning about addiction, because as Dr. Rayana mentioned that we have to have compassion. We have to approach this with compassion and with understanding. And part of that understanding come, or part of that compassion comes through understanding. I've had friends and family who have struggled with addiction, both narcotics as well as alcohol. On my mother's side of the family, they had, you know, I've had an uncle who passed away due to complications of alcoholism. So when Dr. Rayana was mentioning about the end result being death, and this was the uncle who was closest to me on my mother's side. My father's from Jordan. My mother's from Mississippi. And we spent a lot of time with him. And so to watch him go through this process of alcoholism and not get treatment and eventually pass away of complications related to that, it was very, very overwhelming for me. And Subhanallah, I mean, I got the news that he had passed away right as I was going into a final for a course of one of my master's programs, and I should not have read the test at that time, but I had to, I just, I read it, and then I just had to push through it and then process the grief afterwards. But it is, it's very, I'm still grieving. And so I know the effect of what it could do to a human being. There might be, this might be relevant or not, but there's a song called Tennessee Whiskey. And there's a lyric in there. It's about a man who fell in love, the love of a woman helped him get over his alcohol addiction. And it goes on like this, but you rescued me from drowning in the bottle. And it goes on. It's a very famous song, you know, it resonates with a lot of people. And I think it's because of the deep meaning that it captures. And every time I hear it, I tear up because I think of my uncle who did drown in the bottle because he did not find the love. Whatever that would have been in spirituality, in a path, in treatment, in a woman, in family and friends that rescued him from drowning in the bottle. More recently, I had a student of mine through Tlava Foundation where we worked with the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated. And to give you an idea of incarceration in America, the majority of people who are incarcerated are imprisoned for nonviolent drug offenses, nonviolent drug offenses. And they're being treated for their addiction by prison, which is the criminalization of addiction or the criminalization of also as well of mental illness because they're overrepresented in the prison population. And so, you know, about 20 years ago or so, I started teaching Muslims who were in prison and then we founded an organization, Tlava Foundation, to teach Muslims in prison about our faith through a correspondence and a distance education program. And over time, we just focused just on the Islamic element. And this was a tipping point or a turning point for me. Brother Justin, Abdul Salam, and he's given me full permission to share his story. He said it could benefit other people. He was a person who, as Dr. Arianna was saying, you know, some of these people are deeply spiritual. He's one of the most deeply spiritual people I know.  And he's memorizing classical texts in Arabic. He's teaching, he's leading the prayer in the prison chapel. He's, for all intents and purposes, he is an Imam.  Now he's translating texts and he's, you know, from Arabic into English. When he went home, because he spent 10 years of his incarceration working on his Islam, just the Islamic, the element of his Islam was his knowledge of the theology and practice and the soul as well, Tezquia, purification of the heart. But he didn't address his addiction. So when he went home, he got paroled to a place where there was drug paraphernalia all over the place. We actually tried to have him paroled to California, but because the way the parole system is, you have to go back to the county where you committed your crime, which goes against, you know, logic. So anyway, he goes back to the only place that he had there. There was drug paraphernalia all over the place. A renter had five dogs living in the house. You can just imagine the chaos. And as Dr. Arianna was mentioning, once a person goes back from a situation in prison, it wasn't a rehab center, but he did not have the access to the, there is narcotics and alcohol in prison, but he didn't have as easy access so he was able to stay away from it. Plus there's a tight knit Muslim community that will check you at every, you know, at every point. So he had that support system. He goes home. He doesn't have that. He starts his downward spiral. The coping mechanism that he falls back on is his addiction. And later I asked him, I said, why didn't you reach out to us at the time? He said, because I was afraid of letting you down. And I said, never have that, you know, feeling.  Needless to say, he kept spiraling down. He mixed two drugs. It was a bad mixture, caused a psychotic break. And at that point he actually wanted to take his own life. So he doused himself with gasoline with lighter fluid, but could not get himself to light the match.  So he did commit a crime in the process of the crime. And mind you, he's in a psychotic break now due to the drugs that comes out of his addiction that was untreated by the prison and then put him back into society with no support system. So he goes, he commits the crime. Eventually when they catch him, they stack everything up and then he's now facing 37 years in prison, which is stemming from his addiction. So what it caused for us, me as an individual and as an organization at Tayba is saying, okay, we're offering the Islamic education, but now we also have to recognize this other element of their life as part of their Islamic education. So when he reached back out to us and said, could you send me the books, because I've lost all my Islamic education books, I said, no problem, Abdullah, we're going to send you the books, but at the same time, just as you feel that studying that Islamic knowledge is part of your individual obligation, your Fard Al Ain, I want you to go on a deep inward journey to find out what happened and why, introspection. And so with my encouragement, he did, he went on that. He started looking into a lot of unaddressed issues. Unfortunately, the prison doesn't give him enough resources, so he stayed on a waiting list for six months to see a professional. Once he got to see a professional, it was somebody with an undergraduate degree in psychology, not even clinical training or addictions specialty. So then I started asking other therapists, you know, for their advice, and there's issues with offering therapy to a currently incarcerated individual across state boundaries, the person in prison, all of this. So I said, okay, let's do some maybe psychoeducation. So I reached out to a Muslim mental health professional who has a lot of experience in addiction, and she said, ask him about childhood trauma and abuse. And it was a conversation I never had. And as soon as I asked that question, the floodgates opened. And so then I said, have you ever addressed that? He said, never. Nobody's ever asked me. I said, all the addiction treatments that you have done in prison, has anybody ever touched on that? No. So one of the books that was recommended to me, actually by my mother, was Gabor Mate's book In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts, and I sent that to him, and he said that was the best book on addiction that he's ever had. And Gabor Mate, if you're not familiar with him, he's got a lot of things online. He runs, I believe it's a methadone clinic in Vancouver. And in that book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, there's also some Muslims who share their stories. So then I also, at that time, I met Dr. Amir, and I started asking him to correspond with Justin. And that helped me learn more about addiction and understanding it and having more of that compassion. And then he suggested Kraft. He's the Kraft program, the smart recovery program. I actually got certified in it to facilitate a group for friends and family. So that helped me learn more about addiction. Since I had not gone through that experience myself, but I could understand what, you know, I could understand more of what another person is, and also to help out families who have gone through that. And then, you know, I could speak a lot more, but this is the book, Getting Your Love When Sober Without Nagging. It's called Gilos. It's part of the Kraft recovery. And if you have a friend or family, you know, this is a good book to read. Another book that I read to understand the 12 Steps was Russell Brand's book, which is called Recovery. Cover is off of it. But he was, Russell Brand is a comedian from the UK, deeply addicted to heroin, which is one of the most difficult drugs to get over. And he was also extremely addicted. He had an extreme sex addiction as well. And he said the 12 Steps actually got him out of those two addictions. And now if you see his podcast and you see what he's talking about, you can see, going back to what Dr. Arianna was saying, that deep spirituality that's actually there that was hidden. And I'm just going to run through some of this, because this is just kind of like my history of understanding it. We were talking in a group, an MSA group, and it actually, a person stood up and he, he shared in front of almost 200 people some of the struggles that he's going with. And then responding to him in a way that I've learned through some of these programs, also motivational interviewing, which is part of that, bringing out that internal motivation and intrinsic desire to change. Using some of that, it started this whole conversation where it was very, you could hear a pin drop in the room. And I talk about it in some of the writing. I'm kind of going very quickly. But Ostad, Obedullah Evans, opened up about his father being a heroin addict and how he had distanced himself from his father. And then he mentioned that one time to Sheikh Hamza Yusuf and Sheikh Hamza said, well, you know, in another realm might have been a saint. And he said, what are you, he never thought about that. He said, well, because those people who are seeking, they're not satisfied with this dunya that's right in front of them. They want something ethereal, something beyond this dunya, but they're going about it the wrong way through substance. And so he mentioned, this book, Blessed Are the Attics, The Spiritual Side of Alcoholism, Addiction and Recovery, which I bought right there in the hallway on Amazon. And then, and I'm just rushing through this because of time, another brother who facilitates an intensive therapeutic community within one of the prisons where we work with Ahmad Adisa, and has been facilitating 12 steps groups for many, many years, I started talking to him about it. And because of his also deep study and practice of Tosov, Tezquia, Ehsan, you know, whatever name we're going to call it, Ehsan by any other name is still Ehsan. I said, could you do, you know, and he was talking about a lot of the 12 steps from the spiritual aspect. I said, could you do a 12 steps explanation of the 12 steps with your understanding of our tradition of spirituality as Muslims? And so he went on the road to do that. As he was looking for some references in the chapel library in the prison, he came across this one, Recovery, the 12 Steps as a Spiritual Practice, wrote by Rami Shapiro. It's a Jewish name as well. I'm not Jewish, although sometimes when I wear a kufi and you know, people will tell me shalom. I guess it's, anyway, I'm not going to go off into that. But anyway, so these are just some of my experience. It culminated in about three years of Abdul Salam, just in the one I told you his story, and Ahmed Adisa, who runs 12 Steps for Intensive Therapeutic Community, he's one of the facilitators in the prison, they both wrote this book together. And we published it through Taba, Overcoming Addiction and Islamic Approach to Recovery. And I encourage you all to read it. Whether or not you're dealing with addiction or if you have family, or as Dr. Ariana was mentioning in there, you know, it could have been addiction, it could have been substance, it could have been a personality, it could have been a behavior, it could have been a person. You know, it has a lot of crossover. And that's what Russell Brand as well talks about, that the 12 Steps has applications for everybody and understanding it, you know, to that. So I brought some of these books, they're available and I can talk more about that. But it's been a deeply transformative journey for me to understand more about addiction. I now approach it more with compassion. And when you have that, when you have that as a spirit inside of you, that you approach it as compassion, people will notice it right away, right away.  In the same way adults, any human being is very attuned at a very deep level to that acceptance.  If you just say, I'm here with you and I'm not, you know, stigmatized or judged or shun or anything, people will open up to you. And I've had people text me, students of mine, Shaykh, I can't go on like this forever. And then I have to go through it, so what are you talking about? You know, go through the suicide response that we should all be trained in to say, what are you talking about? But he was talking about his alcohol addiction, 3 a.m. at Texan. And so we should have those relationships where people can open up and in our massage it. And that's why I'm so excited about, you know, this opportunity to look, to go forward and say, can we use this as the message as a space? In the Bay Area we have about 80 massages and musallas. There's not one that holds the AA meeting. There is actually one. There's one. Does anybody know which message it is? What's that? Do they do that now? I don't know. They may. That might be recent. But before Lighthouse, does anybody know? It's the San Francisco Muslim Community Center led by Imam Abu Qadir, who is part of the community of Imam Murad Din Muhammad, Rahimullah.  And so they realize the importance of having this, you know, this treatment. And this is not something just in the inner cities. Wallah al-Azim. When I was doing religious counseling here on the weekends for, and Muneer knows this because they're coming to his office too. People are coming to the message all the time saying, I have this issue with myself, with my child, you know, it's here. It's here in our message.  It's over there. Oh, you're here for addiction treatment. It's right over there. You're here for tarawih. It's right over there. Like, what's the difference? You're here for the food pantry. It's right over there. You have financial struggles. It's right over there. Oh, you have Zakat application. What's the difference? You know, it should be just like, Marhaban, welcome. You're here to get sober. 12 steps meeting in the back. That's what we, I had one young man who was a teenager, his mother brought him in. He told me that his introduction to marijuana was at the masjid. Another Muslim at the masjid introduced him how to vape with the marijuana cards that don't smell.  And I, I counseled him right here in that office over there. And then in this hallways during the boys groups that we used to have on Friday nights, one of the fathers came up to me in front of everybody. I mean, in fact, I was like, are you, you're, you're disclosing this about your addiction in the hallway. Somebody could over here, but he was just, he just wanted somebody to talk to and knew that we were doing this friends and family recovery group in the masjid here. And so he opened up about his addiction and was crying in the hallways right over here. So it's here in the masjid. The Muslims who will go to Doherty Valley, so many high schoolers at Doherty Valley are, are using, are using substances to cope with the stress of their parents wanting them to get 4.2 and 4.3 GPAs. Still don't understand how that happens, but there's so much stress. And so they, that's what they're coping with, they're going to. So it's here in our masjid. It's here. People are coming to tell me, he said, one young man said, I come to the masjid high sometimes. And his parents don't even know about it. So we have to do something. What does that look like? I don't know. But I hope, and I pray, and I'll look at the camera, to the board of directors, to the board of trustees, I hope, and I pray, and this is my solemn request, that this is not nipped in the bud, and that you don't take the position of the Sahaba who we understandable say ma, ma, like literally it means shut up. We don't want that. We want you to take the prophetic approach of the Prophet Muhammad SAW, which is to have that welcoming and the addressment and the treatment. How that looks, Allahu A'lam. But its place is in the masjid. And to the supporters of the masjid community all over the the US and the world. If you're giving your donations to a masjid, that board of directors and that board of trustees is beholden to you as a congregation and as a community. And if you are not seeing this being treated in the masjid, whether it's an auxiliary space connected close to the masjid or facilitated within the masjid, but if it's not masjid led and owned and facilitated, then you have a right to ask that board of directors and that board of trustees, where is my money going?


Saturday Channel 602. Welcome back into the show. Let's talk other developments in the bond space globally in the overnight session. Jonathan Sheridan from Fig. Jonathan, welcome to you. It's sort of the case that normalization is likely to start soon in the US. We know this much. We've seen, if anything, moving at the longer end of the curve. I'm going to know perhaps tonight though, might there be something on the radar that we're not quite paying due attention to. For instance, you've got producer prices, retail sales and consumer settlement. What about that retail sales number? Is there a chance that that could prove the fly on the ointment and royal the bond market? Good afternoon, Carson. Yeah, look, I mean, retail sales obviously points to consumer demand. And as we know, the US market is about a 70 percent, sorry, US economy is about 70 percent based on consumption. So, you know, a weaker retail sales print could delay the Fed in their rate hike. But retail sales numbers tend to be relatively volatile. And what central bankers tend to look at is the trend. And they'll be seeing that trend, you know, being on the improvement over the last 12 to 18 months or so. The way that this all played into the domestic bond, yeah, very little movement. But in terms of the eye tracks and the levels there that, you know, we've been coming to expect for most of the year, we've seen a bit of a breakout above 100. So, the significance of that now to have had occurred. Yeah, so what what the eye tracks measures is a sort of generic five year credit spread. So basically for investment grade issue is what they have to pay over the swap rate to issue a five year bond. And as you said, we've seen that for most of the year under 100 points. And in the last sort of three weeks or so, it's pushed out to as high as one, one 30 actually, after rallying back in the last week or so to 116. So what that really means is that borrowing costs for investment grade issues the majority of the Australian bond market have increased by about 15% or so over the last month or so. And do you kind of get a sense that that has been it's dissuading a number of corporates from actually putting down these on the table, that they would rather hold things over maybe till January, maybe just to see how things are.  But maybe that's the price worth paying. Yeah, look, it's interesting. I think it depends on the individual issuer. So, you know, our bond market is dominated by financials and resources companies, much like the ASX. So banks are always issuing. So, you know, they they have rolling funding programs and it's their treasurer's job to maintain a broad base across their funding sources. So it's all about that interest margin for the banks. And as regular issuers, they don't necessarily get exposed to the market at one particular time.  QBU, for example, issued some sub debt a while ago, about a month ago, which was initially priced at 350 over, they waited a week, and then they actually issued a 400 over. So, you know, those those moves can be quite marked for the less frequent issuers. And as you say, you know, if there's a particular investor set that's waiting and ready with cash at one particular time, then you can get a better deal than if you try to issue when they're not ready and waiting with the cash. Your perspective on the ANZ struggled to persuade its investors on the as opposed to sustainability of the dividend in light of franking credit. They've been of the view to say, look, these credits are only a value. If you're a shareholder who receives them, they say no value in keeping surplus credits just in the system. Is that to your mind, you know, enough of an explanation at this point in time? I think I think every company that, you know, unless they have a significant surface of franking, and they're not necessarily driven by their dividends that they pay, are going to manage their franking balance as best they can to their to their own to their own benefits.  And as you say, if you can utilize that franking, which particularly self managed super funds in pension phase can, then that's that's clearly a significant factor in decision making as to whether to invest in those stocks for yield or whether to go into another asset class, for example, bonds. It's a it's a conundrum that we see all the time when when looking, you know, to allocate funds into bonds is that investors are effectively addicted to the free revenue they get from franking. So, you know, my view is that, you know, you should look at risk as the first measure when you invest. And if you're after capital and income stability, then equities probably is not the best place to go for that in the first instance. All right, Jonathan, as always, thank you. You have a great afternoon and we thanks. Thanks for asking me to Jonathan Sheridan from