Hello, everyone. Welcome. As you guys are coming in, please feel free to use the chat and introduce yourself, your name, your organization, and where you're joining us from. And we'll get started in just a second as everyone's just getting situated in. Oh, great. As you guys are joining in, as I mentioned, please feel free to use the chat to introduce yourself. I'm going to go ahead and get started. My name is Lisa and I am the Senior Community Engagement Manager here at Mighty Cause. I am so excited to talk with you guys about peer-to-peer fundraising today. We have a lot to discuss, so I'm just going to go ahead and jump in. So for today's webinar, we're going to be talking about what exactly is peer-to-peer fundraising. Some of you have done peer-to-peer fundraising before and for others, it may be a completely brand new topic. So we'll be talking about what exactly it means and also what it means on Mighty Cause in particular. We'll also talk about how to recruit participants and build and manage your peer-to-peer campaign. And then we'll also go through just some examples of different peer-to-peer campaigns that we've seen on the platform. All right, so before I jump in to the webinar, I should also note that there is a chat box, but there's also a Q&A box. If for any questions that you have, please feel free to add them in the Q&A box. It's easier just for me to see if any question pops up. We'll have a section for questions at the end, but I may check in and see if there are any questions there throughout the webinar. The slides will be provided after the webinar as well as the recording. All right, so before we jump into peer-to-peer fundraising, I just wanted to also highlight our GivingTuesday event. Every year, Mighty Cause hosts a GivingTuesday event on our platform. It's a 27-hour fundraising event, so it starts midnight of GivingTuesday, and it ends Pacific Standard Time on GivingTuesday and so through AM on the 29th. You can feel free to register on GivingTuesday.mightycause.com. It is completely free to register. There are no fees or anything to register. Registration ends at the end of this month, so I encourage you if you haven't registered yet to register. If you are joining us and are participating in one of the awesome fundraising events that utilize Mighty Cause, such as Georgia Gives, for example, on Mighty Cause, you want to make sure that you're registered for the correct event that you're participating in. For our GivingTuesday event on Mighty Cause, our early giving starts November 14th, and then, of course, it all culminates to the 28th, which is GivingTuesday. So a couple of things about Mighty Cause. If you are interested in joining our GivingTuesday event, we have a lot of awesome tools that you can utilize for your GivingTuesday campaign. Some of them peer-to-peer related that we'll talk through. We also have templates, graphics, tips, trainings, webinars, and other stuff that you can utilize to help build your campaign on For GivingTuesday. As well, we'll also have prizes. We'll be announcing prizes a little bit later in the month, but there will be prizes for participating organizations. Alright, so now that we've talked about Mighty Cause, let's jump into what exactly is peer-to-peer fundraising. As I mentioned, for some of you, peer-to-peer fundraising is a brand new topic, and others are familiar with it. Either you've participated in a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign, or you've managed one before. The idea of peer-to-peer fundraising is that it's a strategy tool, a fundraising strategy tool, and a technique where you leverage the existing support network that you have, which we'll talk about. And that includes your board members, your volunteers, your staff, major donors, etc. So you're utilizing your existing support network, and they're helping you bring in new supporters by them asking their network of people to donate to your organization. So it is a way to reach new donors that you've never been able to really reach before because of that connection that you're bridging through peer-to-peer fundraising. So just a small graphic that kind of helps break down peer-to-peer fundraising. The idea behind it is that you have your organization, you have your participants, people that are fundraising actively for your nonprofit. They are sending out their own page, their fundraising efforts to their friends and family, and that is that connection that you're creating and resulting in donations, new donors, and also new people finding out about your organization, what it does, your impact and your mission. So a common question that we get is, well, why would someone be interested in participating in peer-to-peer? That's a great idea of having people fundraise actively for your nonprofit, but why would someone actively want to go out of their way and fundraise? So one, it deepens your relationship with your donors or your supporters. It's a different relationship and a different ask that you are asking. So instead of a called action of donate, the ask is non-monetary. It's help us fundraise, you know, share your story of why this mission and cause is important to you, to your family and friends.  And so those are all different reasons why someone would be interested in helping fundraise for your organization and sharing that mission to their friends and family and coworkers. So a couple of different examples of peer-to-peer campaigns just so that we can kind of get the ball rolling and we'll talk about a couple of other examples a little later. But most commonly, when a lot of people think about peer-to-peer fundraising, they think about a charity walk or run where someone is running or walking for a thaw, a walk-a-thaw and marathon. And then they have their own fundraising page and they're asking their social network to support their, you know, pledge to run or walk and receiving donations that way. Birthday fundraisers are also a peer-to-peer campaign that sometimes people don't assume as peer-to-peer, but it is because it is someone in your network that has a birthday. They have a personal, you know, want to give back a further birthday by asking their friends and family to, you know, support a cause that's dear to them. And again, that's still applying that peer-to-peer idea, which is having someone in your network fundraise on behalf of your organization. Campaign add-ons. So if your nonprofit is running a fundraising campaign and you also want to ask for peer-to-peer, that's also, I think, a common way that a lot of nonprofits also utilize peer-to-peer fundraising is they may have an overarching campaign and invite board members or volunteers to fundraise for the organization associated with their campaign. Again, we'll show kind of some examples of that a little later on. So giving events are also a large form of peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns where nonprofits will kind of have a specific day where they're recruiting supporters to raise funds like Giving Tuesday as an example. And a board challenge. So this is something that we also see really commonly for actually giving events like Giving Tuesday where board members will come together and commit to fundraise for their nonprofit. All right, so as we kind of go through peer-to-peer fundraising, there's a couple of terminology that I wanted to go through to help define when we talk about team and event. What does that mean on the platform? Because those terms are in itself, they're a bit broad, but when we on Mighty Cause talk about team event and some other terms, what does that mean? So when we talk about a team on Mighty Cause, what we're talking about is a group fundraising page where participants fundraise individually towards a collective goal. So it's a group page where everyone has their own individual page within their group page. And we'll get into that a little bit later. An event fundraising page is when you combine teams and individuals together where you may have people that are in groups, such as, you know, maybe it's a grade or a class within a school. And then you have the overall event that comprises all of those teams and individuals. When you hear the term campaign, that can refer to basically any fundraising page that is not your organization profile page on Mighty Cause. So that can be a fundraiser or team or event page. We refer to all of those as a campaign page because you could run a fundraising campaign on any one of those pages. A fundraiser is an individual fundraising page. It's also going to refer to a specific person that's hosting or creating the fundraising page. So for example, a board member that has created, you know, a birthday fundraising page for your organization. A team member or an event member would be a participant in either a team or event. And a supporter is anyone in your community that supports your organization. So donor, fundraiser, volunteer, et cetera, it's your support network. Okay, now that we've talked about what exactly is peer to peer fundraising, we're going to dive a little bit into recruiting participants and how do you get people to actually participate and create a fundraiser for your organization. So before we jump into exactly the ask towards your support network, I always make sure to kind of reinforce that you want to think about what's your overall goal for your campaign. So if you've decided on doing a peer to peer fundraising campaign, what is your overall mission out of it? Is it a certain dollar is raised? Is it to have participants or your support network more engaged? Is it a unique donor amount? So think about what are your high level goals and also your short term goals for Giving Tuesday because when you have an idea of what your goals are, it makes it easier to then clarify and make that ask towards participants. Because if our goal is we want to raise $10,000 or we want, we want to raise $10,000 so that we can, you know, purchase 200 backpacks for students in need. And that's a really clear and defined goal that you can go to perspective participants and say, Hey, here's our goal. We need, you know, 13 people to raise $100 for us to raise that goal and I'm just making these numbers up. But having that overall goal can help clarify to participants exactly what you're asking and why you're needing help. So when we think about what are potential participants for a peer to peer campaign, there isn't, I should say first, there isn't a specific set standard, it doesn't have to be a certain type of person. So just commonly what you're going to see for participants is it's going to be your board members, like we talked about a little bit, a board challenge is a really common peer to peer fundraising campaign volunteers, or I should say your, you know, people in your support network that are closely tied your staff. So people at your nonprofit program alumni if you do have an alumni program and I see that that's duplicated, but also any, you know, major donors or donors that, you know, are heavily involved in your organization that again as I mentioned it's a different thing that you're asking. So when an individual is asked to participate in a peer to peer fundraising campaign the first thing they're going to ask is what do I have to do. And so the first thing is to make sure that the process is as easy as possible. One of the things that you can do on the platform, which we'll talk about a little later is create a fundraiser template. You can fill in the blank with a lot of the details on a fundraising page such as the description, the image, the like goal amount, you know, something that may take someone an extra extra time to think through. You can fill all of that out for the individual so that all they have to do is really click on a button and, you know, publish their page and then they have it done. So, as I talked about also in terms of making the ask is creating what is the goal like what are the expectations of this individual, and that's going to be different for every event for some, you may have a high goal because maybe it is a board challenge or maybe it's a smaller goal where you're looking just for, you know, $100 for a participant to raise. That's really for you to decide but it's helpful to kind of clear set those expectations up to participants. And also as I mentioned, although there is a template that you can provide that they can easily use. It is also an opportunity for them to tell their own story so although you can fill in the blank for a lot of that information, you can also leave them in the space to kind of share that story for them. So something that also is, I think, a helpful motivator in terms of having people participate and not only having people to participate but once they've kind of signed on keeping them in the space, the next step is to provide incentives to get people excited and motivated for your event. Prizes are a great way to kind of encourage participation.  Or maybe there are donated prizes that you can receive at your local business, you know, at your local Starbucks, if, you know, donated gift cards, coffee, etc. These little incentives are a great kind of motivator for your participants to not only feel excited for the event, but to, you know, continuously participate in it as well.  So involve your board if possible in the event and if you don't have, you know, an active board, whoever is on your team or whoever that you can kind of use as a support, as a support system. So in terms of your board, you know, see if there are any yearly commitments that your board is required to have, review their progress to see if that's, you know, a way that they can help participate in a peer-to-peer campaign. And also share your plans and assign specific roles. So maybe for a board member, it's try to find a match or providing a match for your peer-to-peer campaign. Maybe it's fundraising in itself. Or maybe it's handling the details of a physical location if you are looking to have a physical location. There's a lot that you can do with peer-to-peer fundraising. And so use your network at your disposal to help kind of delegate tasks. All right. Now that we've talked a little bit about recruiting participants and making that ask, we're going to talk about building a peer-to-peer campaign. So when we talk about building a peer-to-peer campaign on mightycause.com or mightycause, you know, in general, the easiest way of building a peer-to-peer campaign is by going to your organization page and clicking fundraise. And then you will be provided a pop-up that says create a fundraiser, and you would just select other solutions. And then this will take you to a page where you can decide if you want to create an event, a team or a fundraiser. So the different types of peer-to-peer pages. We talked a little bit about this, but as an example. So a fundraiser page like you see here, it's just an individual fundraising page. So it is specific to, it only has one donate button, and it represents kind of one entity. So it could technically be maybe a family. As an example, a family doesn't need, you know, each person in the family doesn't need their own fundraising page. They just need one page that represents themselves. And that also could be a company as well, right? A company they may not need a lot of different fundraising page. They just need one page that represents themselves. So that is what a fundraiser page looks like and does. A team is going to add up those individual fundraising pages and be a group setting for those individuals to work together and raise money together. So it's a central page for all of those individuals to come together to raise money. So as you see in this example here, there's a leaderboard, and you see that there are individuals in that leaderboard, and that all kind of culminates to this team page. And then an event page would allow you to have multiples of those teams and individuals on the page. So you could have, as I showed you, a lot of those different group pages all in one team that all go towards a collective funding goal. So as an example here, just to kind of show you again the hierarchy and how it all works, we have on the left hand side a readathon. And so the readathon is composed of different teams that represent grades within the school. And then within the school, you have, I'm sorry, within each grade, within each team, you have the individual students page that they would share with their friends and family. So this is just an example of kind of the hierarchy of event team and fundraiser. You don't have to use each one of these, right? You could use just one of them. Don't have to use all three, but it's helpful to understand kind of how it's all broken down in our platform so that depending on what you want, you can decide how you want to utilize the pages that we have available. I'm going to take a pause here and kind of look at the different questions that we have. What if you already have a count through Mighty Cause? Do you need to register or just log into your account? So depending on, if you're on mightycause.com, depending on your subscription or your account, you may be able to create peer-to-peer fundraising pages. But if you're registered for Giving Tuesday, you will be able to. All right, so just some other questions. Will it be possible to have a copy of the presentation? Yes, you'll be able to have a copy of the presentation that will be provided and that will also be added to the webinar section of our Giving Tuesday toolkit. How do you create a peer-to-peer instead of a fundraiser? Yeah, so we'll talk a little bit about each different one and then the actual creation process of it. We talked a little bit about it, but it's going to be depending on what exactly you need. So just a couple, just a breakdown of team and event versus fundraising pages. So for team and events, what you're going to have is the ability for people to actually join your event. So I'm just going to go back for a second. So as you see on the left-hand side, you see this join this event button on the left-hand side. That's where individuals can go and join the event as in, you know, join and be a participant. There's leaderboards so that if you want that competition aspect and you want people to see how others are performing or raising money, you can, it will have that leaderboard portion. You will also have the fundraiser templates specific to that team or event and also ability to kind of manage all your participants related to that. A fundraiser is really just a standalone page and is perfect for a crowdfunding campaign like a birthday fundraiser. So it's really not pulling together that like team-oriented kind of group-oriented system like a team or event would. So managing your campaign. So when you're utilizing the platform in terms of peer-to-peer fundraising, when you create your team or event on the platform through the process that I showed you of like clicking fundraise and selecting the type of page that you want, you're going to have a dashboard on your left-hand side and that's going to be how you can manage and edit your page on the platform. So I talked about a little bit earlier about fundraiser templates and how that's a really great way to make it easy for participants to get involved to easily fundraise for your organization. So on each team and event fundraising page that you create, you can add a template. So this kind of takes the fear out of fundraising for a lot of individuals. Like I said, for example, just adding a description can be something that can hold off on someone creating a fundraising page. So filling in that information allows participants the ease of just getting quickly on and starting to share with friends and family. You can customize your template. You don't have to fill out every single aspect. So you can pick and choose if you do want to add a goal or if you do want to add a set image that's totally up to you to determine, you know, what you want to set up for each one. And then when an individual goes and creates their fundraiser through your team or event, as you saw with the join this event button or join this team button, that template's going to be auto added in. So as I just mentioned the join this event button or join this team button is going to be right on the front of your page. So this is where you will want to direct people to start fundraising or start participating in your campaign. This will really be the start of it and when people go through by clicking the join this event or join this team, they're going to be automatically synced with your team or event and that template that you've added will automatically be synced with the page that they're creating. Their new page once it's published will be added to the leaderboard and those funds that are made on their individual page will all accrue to your overall leaderboard to your overall goal. So for some peer to peer campaigns, you may not want it to be a public event so you may not want to have a join this event button, you know, right on your page. Maybe for example, it is a board challenge and you don't want to have anyone else creating a page on that team or event that you've created. Something that you can do in your settings is update your membership permissions, making the event invite only allows removes that join this button from your page. So only individuals that you're inviting will be able to create a page to invite individuals to your fundraising page. There is a section on your dashboard dashboard called participants where you can invite an unlimited amount of individuals via email to start fundraising for your organization. Once you put in their email information, an invite email will be sent to them with a link to create a fundraising page for your organization. Additionally, on your fundraising page or on your peer to peer fundraising page, there will be leaderboard on your team or event that lists out the different participants in your peer to peer campaign. You can manage your leaderboard and decide how you want individuals to be ranked. So for example, let's say you do want a leaderboard but you don't want to make a competitive you kind of just want to show people where how much they've raised. So you can set your leaderboard to be in alphabetical order. So it's not as competitive where people are seeing who's first and who's last, you're really just kind of sharing the progress that people are making, and making it a more, you know, a less competitive experience. If you do want a competitive you can have your leaderboard ranked by donors or donations. I'm sorry, dollars raised on on the left hand side as well on your dashboard for your team and event pages. So you'll see two different sections listed that is called campaigns and participants. I wanted to highlight this section because this can sometimes be confusing for people that are creating an event or team on the platform, because they're a bit similar but a bit different So campaigns refers to any fundraising page or team fundraising page that has been created a part of your team or event. So as you see in the screenshot here that will list that campaign name and when it was published and how much was raised. The participants section will be listed by the actual participant of the page and not the campaign. And this is where also you can invite individuals to join your event or team. So the difference is campaigns is really more relaying the exact like campaign name and the type of campaigns you have where participants is more about who the actual organizer who's actually creating that page and being able to contact them. With on a fundraising page, you have the ability to set a goal bar, a donor timeline, social sharing options. So whether you're part of like a team or event or your standalone, you are able to help update or change again based off that template. What you would like, you know what you want your participants to have on their specific fundraising pages. I'm going to just take a quick pause and look through questions. Okay, can this work more in favor for one group against the other. I'm not sure exactly the question there. So if you could just clarify that and I can help answer. How do I, how can I leverage Instagram, Facebook and what's up to recruit participants and donors is there an automated way. So yeah, in terms of social media, I think that is a great avenue, but I do think for peer to peer fundraising, the best way is going the personal route and directly reaching out to individuals because again it kind of depends on what your peer to peer campaign is right so if you have a walkathon that's a little bit different than if you have a board challenge. So it does depend on what exactly your peer to peer campaign is. However, I think if you're planning on something smaller not necessarily a walkathon or a marathon. But if you're first you're doing so doing personal outreach, I think is the best way because it may take, you know, you may have to explain exactly what is what are the expectations for someone to participate what do they have to do. You're also, especially if this is your first year, you may need to reach out to the people that are most connected to your nonprofit that are, you know, most likely want to kind of share your mission and your impact to their friends and family. In terms of being able to recruit people in an automated way using our participants tool I think is a really easy and helpful way all you have to do is just plug in their email and then a link to create a fundraiser will be sent to them. Again, that is not. There's still maybe some questions or asks that you may have to do further, but that's an easy way to for you to have an auto email that's sent out. How can you acquire peer to peer participants outside of your organizations network. So we'll talk a little bit about at the end with some examples of different peer to peer fundraising ideas. And I think that the best way to acquire peer to peer participants outside of your organization organizations network is going to be based off kind of the overall campaign that you're doing. Like I said, a walkathon versus board challenge or something that is, you know, a general like, you know, if you create a general team page, right. A walkathon you're going to attract more people because that has that community aspect of it, as opposed to just, you know, something that doesn't really have anything more specific and it's really just a peer to peer campaign that you've created. So to register for Giving Tuesday by got a message that we've already submitted registration request. Does this mean we're registered. Yes, if you've gotten that to mean someone at your organizations already registered. Our raffle prizes allowed to promote fundraising. So, on mighty cause.com. That's a good question because I think it's important to distinguish so on mighty cause.com for context. All donations that are processed through mighty cause.com are processed through a donor advice fund mighty cost charitable foundation. So when donations are processed through a donor advice fund, you are not allowed to promise goods in exchange for a donation. So in terms of asking for a donation, you cannot promise prizes for donors. However, for participants that are not making a donation but if you're trying to encourage them to reach out to more friends and family to network to even participate. Because you're not soliciting a gift in exchange in exchange for goods and prizes. I hope that makes sense on. Regarding dollars range how much should we expect from each fundraiser is there an average dollar amount that we can expect from each participant. So I think that's also a really great question and that's really going to depend on each of your organizations separately and also each of your participants that are going to participate. So I keep referring back to board challenge just because that's a very easy example but for example for some nonprofits their board has a requirement for how much money that they're responsible for donating or bringing in to their nonprofit. So if it's $10,000 their goal for each participant for board challenge, maybe different, based off, you know, another challenge. I think in terms of the average, like dollar amount, or the average goal set I think that's where the first step of kind of setting up what is your overall arching goal for your event. So if it's $10,000, and you have an idea of how many people on average maybe that you think would be able to participate. You can then kind of get an average dollar amount. Now, maybe that will change what your overall goal is maybe that will say well I don't think that we'll be able to have people raise $5,000. So you can adjust from there but I think first deciding on what is your overall goal and also looking at what is the average dollar amounts that you have received in general over the year to help kind of predict of what is a realistic goal for participants. And as well you know for some peer to peer campaigns, they allow the goal to be open to the individual so it really just depends on your participants and knowing them well enough if a goal is a great motivator for them, or if it's better to leave it open ended for your first year maybe set a smaller goal and have you know maybe hopefully them achieve more than your goal that you're setting. Will you be walking through the process of setting up a team fundraising program. I don't think we'll have time at the end, but I will provide resources as to where to go to walk through that process but it's really easy once you figure out when to where once you know where to go. If many of an organization's volunteers are not social media users is that is this a bad way to do it seems like for it to work this and those involved must use social media. So not necessarily.  That is a really great aspect of peer to peer fundraising which is getting your name out there, sharing it on social or you know, through community email communication, etc, getting people knowing about your organization. But at the same time, right, the goal of it or the benefit of it is that they're sharing it with your social network in terms of their friends and family. They're coworkers right so even if they're not sharing on social media, it still can be really useful tool because if I share my peer to peer campaign to my coworkers and say, hey, I'm raising money for homework trails in this example I adopted my dog from this organization. They're really awesome they do really great work and you know, rescuing animals and in this area. If you guys can make a donation to my page that would be great right that is so powerful. Because that is again sharing that mission in that in your organization to new people that you wouldn't have been able to reach before and that's not through social media that's just through word of mouth that's just through their personal connections. Okay, when an individual does peer to peer fundraising for organization will the disbursement setting that that have set and our organization page automatically could yes. With all of these different types of pages that we've talked through your disbursements are going to be disperse all the same it's all going to be accumulated together and will be dispersed to your organization. In lieu of monetary goals can goals be set for other metrics or schools such as growing Facebook social media likes newsletter subscriptions attending for event, etc. Yes, so in terms of the actual fundraising page where we have a set thermometer and there is going to be right a goal of monetary goal, but I think internally as a nonprofit I think having those different types of goals is, I think a really awesome to have right if you have a goal, then you can set up a strategy to work towards that goal. So if your goal is getting newsletter subscribers and you're going to go do that through newsletter or through peer to peer campaign.  So having those goals I think is really is really great. How do we find if we already registered for giving Tuesday, you can do so on your organization page. If you go to giving Tuesday.com, and you go to through your to your organization page you should be able to see if you're registered if not you can contact our support team. I want to get to the other questions but I'm just going to continue on because we don't have a lot of time so just want to make sure that we can get through it. So, in terms of creating a fundraiser outside of a team or an event. It is a really simple process if you're just looking if an individual like a board member is looking to create a fundraiser and you're not creating and a team or an event. They can simply just go to your organization page click fundraise get started and build a fundraiser on your org page you do also have a separate template that you can create. One thing to know about the template on your work page is that that is completely separate to the template on a team or event. So, a template on your work page is just related to individual fundraisers that are created for your work it's not tied to any team or event. Alright, and lastly, for managing your campaign, there is a donations report that you'll have access to so you can see specifically on your team or event. All the donations that have made specifically to that team or event you also have a donations report in your organization page that you'll be able to also keep track of, but this is a great way to kind of concisely see all of those donations. Additionally, if you want to add any offline gifts that are associated to a team or event or an individual participating in a team or event. So, you can see all the donations that the organization gives through your page through your team and event page and that will count towards any participants that you want to select. Alright, so some peer to peer examples that I wanted to go through that I think can help answer some of the questions that we have. So, the board challenge we talked a lot about this is a team fundraising page. So, as you see, this is just a board challenge with seven participants. So we don't have, you know, it's not a ton it's all of the board members, each of the board members are listed on the leaderboard it's by dollars raised. So, on the individual on the leaderboard that leaderboard would that the it would go to each specific a board member and their page. And I am just pulling that up right now. And as you see here with the join this team that allows for any new board member to join if they want to, but then the donate button is right there. And if you were to click donate. You can also decide if you want to donate to a specific board member, or if you want to. I'm just pulling this up right here. This is loading. One second, just gotta lock in here and I will be able to share that example. One second and as I do that I'll just answer one more question. I'd like someone to create a campaign do they need to create a mighty cause account. Great question. Yes, they're going to be prompted to create an account because you have to have an account in order to create a page right so like if you were to for example, you know, at your page and you wanted to come back and edit it again, you're going to have to have an account so you can log in and log out. So, all right, so I have the page here. Oops, I have, I have the older page so I apologize. But it will link back and I'll show another example. All right, so if we're talking about getting creative in terms of the type of campaign that you want to have. And again, kind of we're talking about how do we get participants this is a really, I love this campaign because I think it's a way that how do you get people involved, and it's having a fun peer to peer campaign. So this is Wild Pans by the Ark of Palm Beach County. So every year they have this peer to peer campaign where people create their own fundraising pages, and they kind of share their own crazy pans that they wear. And as you see in this example here, someone has like their own page where people can donate and support them. And then at the end of this event, they have a fashion show where they showcase all of the crazy events. So they've done this every year they've even done it virtually when COVID happened. But I think it's a really great example of like, when you're talking about well how do I get people involved right. It's a really great way of getting people involved that wouldn't normally get involved and this can start off with just your board members or with just your volunteers or staff members. And it's also a great way for friends and family to be motivated to like support you and your page and, and, you know, your fundraising that you're doing for the organization. So that helps answer questions in terms of recruiting individuals. All right, so here's another example. This is geared more towards schools, but I think one of the reasons why I wanted to highlight this again this is a team fundraising page. The Clark Sharks Readathon. So every student has their own fundraising page.  So I think that's like a really great example of how do you motivate people to raise money and, you know, participate in a peer to peer event. And I've just pulled up this page here. And just to share kind of what that looks like. So as you see, we have the team page here. If there's a new student, they can click join this team and start fundraising. And then you have the individual student page with their goal friends and family donating and then the set kind of description that they have. So this is a really great example of kind of the like peer to peer fundraising at like the, the simplest terms on. Okay. And then the last example I have is the 35th annual AIDS Walk Tucson. And the reason why I have this example is because this is an event fundraising page. And this is also an example of something that on event fundraising you can do which is connect with event break. And then you have something that an event fundraising page on the platform you have enabled, or you can enable which is if you do have a walkathon, for example, like this, where you want people to register their spot for the walkathon, you can enable your event page to event right so that they first have to go register for the walkathon they have to, you know, either pay a fee or just register, whatever. And then they're going to be prompted back to mighty cause to start their fundraising page and create their fundraising page. So this is another example of a different type of peer to peer campaign, but away if you do have like a registration aspect that you need to incorporate of how you can incorporate it. All right, so I'm going to leave the rest of the time for questions and I'll also go through our support tools and creating team and event. But let me go back to that. Is there any communication between mighty cause and CRM's exporting my list of participants from an event into our CRM. Yes. So there is you are able to download the list on your from your team or event fundraising page so you can just download that list and then import that into your CRM system. Do you do cash or check donations count as donations on mighty cause how do we track that on the platform. So, yes and no so on mighty cause, we have online gifts as we refer to it so gives me through the platform so gives me through the donation portal, but obviously if you have an online gift and a check or a cash donation, you can add that to the platform as what we call an offline gift. Now to clarify offline gifts for our giving to say event don't count towards leaderboards and prizes. If you're participating in another giving event, you want to check your rules for that giving event if they're counting offline gifts or not counting towards prizes. Some do some some don't so it depends on the rules, but regardless, you can enter offline gifts so that they can count towards a specific fundraising page. So if I was the administrator for this page, I could add an offline gift, let's say Jackson's, you know, and sends us a check. We can add an offline gift so that Jackson's total can reflect that check that's been sent. And that can all happen through the dashboard. In situations where donors don't have an email account, how do we go about getting them involved. So I think that's a great question. So I think in terms of an email account, I think one you want to consider if they don't have an email account how tech savvy are they are they like will they be able to have people donate to their fundraising page. And maybe they can but you that is something you want to consider if they don't even have an email account will they be able to receive gifts. But if they don't have an email account, you could create a page for them. Now, it would be under kind of your name. So, you know, they wouldn't be able to have access to like who donated or be able to you know, personalize or customize their own page, but you could create a page for them. One thing I will note for that or for anyone who is creating pages for participants is your leaderboard, and you can edit this, depending on again how you want set up, but your leaderboard will automatically show your organizers based off the user account name. So if you create the page for them on the leaderboard it will say your name. However, I'm not logged in but if I were to log in, I could change this so that it is not showing the name of the organizer but instead the name of the fundraiser. So for example, in this case, instead of you know, if this is Jackson's, maybe Jackson's mom, Brianna Wood, if I were to change this to show the fundraiser name, it wouldn't say Brianna Wood, it would say Jackson's Redathon fundraiser. And so that would show everyone's fundraiser name instead of the organizer name. So if that's something that you're planning on doing which is, it's not uncommon, it definitely happens. That's something that you want to consider changing on your leaderboard. So the ORC page can be up and going throughout the year. Am I understanding that correctly? Yeah. An ORC page is year round on Mighty Cause, so you can use that throughout the year. The Giving Tuesday platform is just related to the Giving Tuesday event, but Mighty Cause is available year round. For someone to donate, they will not need an account Mighty Cause, correct. You do not need an account to make a donation, not at all. If the donor wants to create an account, they can. It will have their donor history. They can manage recurring donations, et cetera, but they not require to make an account at all. Where can I get tips on setting up our page? I like it to be eye catching and add in text. So I think that's a great question to add or a great way to segue into our support forum. So our support forum has a dedicated area for team and event fundraising and it's divided up in based off team and event fundraising. If you are having questions about what's the difference between each one and want to know a little bit more, we have dedicated articles on that. And we also have dedicated articles that will guide you through exactly how to build a team or an event. So I definitely recommend checking out and reviewing these articles because it will definitely be helpful in terms of designing your page. We also have an article that kind of breaks down designing your page, choosing your logo recommendations, how to update your page, all that good stuff. And if you need any examples that you're specifically looking for, you can please feel free to reach out to us and we're more than happy to kind of help steer you in the right direction. But that is our support forum is a really great tool to utilize to get started and creating your page. Okay, do you recommend a lengthy description on the main profile page and then a brief or just description on the individual fundraisers. So I think it depends on exactly the aspects of your campaign I know I keep saying it depends but it really does. For example, if you're a walkathon, you're probably going to have a lot of details about, you know, what, like, where the event is happening. Can you participate? Where do you register all of that stuff? I think in terms of your event and team page, I think you want to keep it short and sweet and get to the point. So why are you raising money? What is the goal and the mission?


Okay, everyone, I'm here at Base Camp in Bihu, Lebanon and I'm just about to go on to a tour. I want to introduce you to Fajah. Hi guys. Here we have Fuji. So they get the data and depending on the data that they get, we dispatch 100 boxes per day approximately. We have also a lot of donations. So for example, everything that's cooked here, it's cooked for the volunteers. So here's the first aid team. So what happened is that directly after the bomb, we had a lot of people that were still injured and in hospitals were vulnerable. So people used to come here to patch up their wounds. Now it changed because everyone patched up their wounds and it's more like medical supplies. They can come and check on their families, like the kids to check if they have something. Here we have sanitary products. So for women, for children and for women. And we send them via thought-based. Every day approximately 100 boxes. Here we have Embrace. Embrace is a bond of a line for help, suicide of thoughts and depression, etc. And of course, after the explosion, you had a lot of people that lived these moments that are still suffering today. They can't hold Embrace and talk about it. Here's the cleaning team. So also the first few weeks here we had a huge number of volunteers that used to come to clean up the streets and the homes.  So we're still scouting. We send scouts with a Google form. They fill it. And we have all the data that comes into an Excel sheet. At night, that data is filtered out depending on which operations are we going to do. So food operations have their own data, sanitary construction, etc. And each operation has its own in-house operation. Okay, very cool. Right now the big chunk of work is reconstruction. That's nice. Which one? We can see it. Reconstruction, we divided. We have the heritage building. We're working directly with someone from Patrick. Actually, I called them today and told them we already have four buildings. The heritage building. We need to set up a strategy. So it's going to be one team. We have another team that's taking buildings as they are. So we already have four buildings. It was one building. Now we have an everyday operation, which is individual apartments at need-hand. And right now we already did the 80 to 100 apartments. And it's going to grow faster with every year. Hopefully. So that's the base camp. And how can people get involved if they're here on the ground? Where do they go to volunteer like me? I'm going to volunteer. So it depends on how you want to volunteer. You can volunteer maybe with the food boxes. You need to check with the food operation. Let's say you had experience in first aid. You could have them there in construction if you're an architect or an engineer. And you want to help with this. It depends on how you want to help and your specialty.


Oh, wait, you said probably. So there's hope. You haven't divested. I haven't divested. Okay, so why didn't you say I won't marry a black man? You said I probably won't. You have to make yourself into the kind of man that women want. You sound like Kevin Samuels. How? You're literally saying what he says. You have to make yourself the type of woman that these type of men want. So what's the difference? Because according to him, you shouldn't go to college. Because those men don't value that. Okay, well, what am I supposed to do? Sit in the hood and be poor as hell? But that's not the point. The point is the rhetoric is the same. That's not the same thing because that's not the same. No, no, no, the things are different. I agree with you. The things are different, but the rhetoric is the same.  Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. If I have to become the type of man that the type of woman I want wants, correct? You have to become the type of man that women want. Perfect. And if I said to you, you have to become the type of woman that the type of man you want wants. Is that correct as well? Wrong, because men and women are not the same. The reality for a lot of black women is that they are the breadwinners of their families. They are the higher earners. They are the ones who are most responsible. They are the providers and the protectors of the household. You know what I would tell them? Who have to keep the lights on. You know what I would tell those women? I would tell those women to go back to the drawing board and become the type of woman that the type of man that wouldn't require you to be the breadwinner you tried to. That's not realistic. That is not a realistic. Why not? Because... The point I was making is that a lot of our women don't hold white men or white love interests to the same pseudo masculine standards. So the white dude doesn't have to make six figures. The black dude does. Women ask for black men to make six figures. Sure. It might not be six figures, but it's other metrics. You guys impose. And again, if it was just me saying this at my age and other men saying this at their age, I've had conversations with boys in high school and they say the same thing. They're not making money, but they're talking about masculine features and things like that. So my thing is, why aren't you...  Black men don't... I mean... So for those men who are committed, who are doing the right things based on male curriculums or whatever the case may be, and we're still eating shit, what can you say to us? I'm saying that I don't see that as being a real problem because there are not enough black men... What's the definition of gaslighting? Making somebody believe that their reality is not real. What did you just do? You're not... Your reality... I mean, you... Your reality is... You're stuttering because that's what you just did. No. How can we honestly have this conversation and claim that black men are enjoying all the perks of masculinity and madness in this particular country without pointing out some of the pitfalls of manliness and specifically black madness that black men have to suffer? Because it's like, when it's time to give out empathy, we should take it evenly. When it's time to give out blame, we should take all the blame. Black men should take all the blame, and it's like, that doesn't make sense. Similarly, I could say black women have never had the disposition of femininity, even when black men did lead. I'm not saying that. Because you never led, because you never led, though. Black men never led. No. Ever. No. So Marcus Garvey means nothing to you. Elijah Muhammad means nothing to you. Martin Luther King, all married. Frederick Douglass, no, no, no. I'm not talking about those men in particular. I'm talking about the movements, the Black Panthers, the nation of Islam. So you're saying to me there's never been a collective of black men who led in spite of circumstances created to exterminate them? You're saying that? I'm saying that there is never, I'm saying that black men. So you're saying black men made a concerted decision to abandon? I don't know if a decision was concerted, I know that. Okay, but you said they abandoned their post? Yes. Okay, perfect. Before that, you said they never had a post. So which one is it? You talked yourself into that trap. You said we weren't leaders, then you said we abandoned leadership.  Because we got to stand beside and behind what we say. Okay, so I'm giving you an opportunity to recant your first statement when you said black men were never leaders. Black men were never leaders. But you just said they abandoned the home? Yes, but it doesn't mean they were leading in the home. Okay, so what did they abandon? They abandoned their kids. They abandoned their wives. Okay, and what is their role in their kids' and wives' lives? To be a husband and father. What is husband and father? What is that role? I don't know. It's what men are supposed to do if you're going to get married in that role. It's a leadership role, correct? But it doesn't mean you're a leader in that role. Again, if a man is married, he wasn't a leader in his marriage. Is husband and father a leadership role? No, not intrinsically. No. Not intrinsically, no. Okay, so what are you complaining that black men did? Because if you were saying black men abandoned their leadership responsibility, we can go there. But if we weren't leaders, we were never leaders, then what is your gripe with us? What are we doing wrong? Black men complain that the black community is woman-led. You complain that it's a democracy. You complain that feminism is taken over, but you don't need anyway. Mm-hmm. And according to you, we've never led. I mean, I don't know why you're so caught up on if you never or ever led or was there a point in time in history where you at one time did. What does that matter in 2022? Because history is cyclical and words mean things. And if you use very dangerous rhetoric, and let's say for instance, you have a son, you have a daughter, and you're teaching them history is that black men never led. That sets a very dangerous paradigm. And I think that's where it comes from when people say the divest community sounds like white supremacist.  It's not a lie. And even if, again, even- Okay, so prove it. What does that one kind of history do for us today? How does that help us today? Well, it's more than one time, obviously. For people who know history, it's more than one time.  But what it does is it changes the paradigm. Because one of the things that we often do as a community is we talk about ourselves as being incapable of doing better. Without recognizing the fact that we were kidnapped. Without recognizing the fact that we were put in situations to perpetuate our own dysfunction for the benefit of the white society that we now run to to be our saviors. I think it's very dangerous if we become dismissive of one another's experiences. So similarly, I could say black women in mass are not deserving of good men because they're not feminine. I don't say that. I say that these are the things black women need to do in mass. And for the ones who are doing the right things, if they are getting bad experiences, that's unacceptable, black men. Like you shouldn't, like you could treat the 90 other ones like that, but don't treat her like that. Like she's on a job. She's doing the right thing. Similarly, at the very least, what you could say is, if a black man is doing his job, he's deserving of a good black woman. But you're unwilling to say that. Man, I'm gonna say the ironic thing, man. The chick you just had on, and me, I'm gonna say, I didn't know her, but we from the same neighborhood. She's from Philly. I thought so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, we grew up in the same hood, man. I could understand her mentality, because I probably grew up, wasn't the greatest. Break that down. Just poverty, drugs, single mothers ramp it, abuse, just all kind of stuff, man. So I can understand why she feels the way she do about black men. Because like I said, you didn't see a lot of black men there.   Yeah, fact. So that goes back to your point of when you're young, that shapes your perception as an adult. You know what I mean? And I think that she doesn't recognize that. You tell me, like she doesn't recognize, okay, well, when I was young, seeing all this shaped my perception. So it's just built up childhood trauma. And like her baseline expectation of black men is what she saw as a kid. Right, Glenn, that's heavy. It makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. And that's why I encourage therapy, I encourage conversation. Because a lot of us, and black men too, a lot of our expectations are based on how our mom was, or the girls from the block, you know what I mean? So it's important that we grow and we see the world differently. So that's real, man. I mean, we went to some of the same schools, you know what I mean? Like we went to the same middle school. I don't know if we went to the same high school, but not, you know what I mean? And like I said, I get her, you know? It's just unfortunate that that environment made her into who she is. Like, you know, I don't know where I rank at, as far as earnings, yes, I'm above average, but so therefore, I mean, just even in that part of the, if I was the, because that's what I was doing to incorporate myself into that part of the conversation. And she was talking to me specifically saying that I was nothing to her. I go, what? I'm not like, and I can't because there's, I have so many other pitfalls that I'm overcoming though, right at 42, but earning wise, I'm way above. Right, right. What are you talking about? And that's all, that's all black men are asking. We're just asking, let, let, let us be acknowledged for the things that we're doing, right? As opposed to the narrative that that's constant and consistent about how it doesn't matter what you do, you will never be good enough. And we all grew up hearing that and it's unacceptable. Hey, if you've made it all the way to the end, please click that like and subscribe button. Also share this with somebody that you think would gain value from it. Also shout out to our Patreon executive producers and VIP members. Make sure you head over to Patreon to check out some exclusive content. A lot more happens on Patreon that can happen on YouTube. So please consider becoming a member there. Click the thumbnail at the top. If you want the full video, click the thumbnail at the bottom. If you want a video that's closely related to this, again, like, share, subscribe. Appreciate you guys for watching. Check out some more of our content. And I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.


Hello everybody. Welcome. My name is John Hamry. Welcome to clad to have all of you here We're very fortunate that Prime Minister Domrovskis is here with us today. He was delayed up on Capitol Hill and I don't know why that would ever happen Yeah, and but I'm delighted that he could join us for this event and it's we're looking very much forward to having him speak with us The Latvian delegation that we have say seats reserved up here for you, so please join us up front I've always marvel at when a country gets in trouble It somehow manages to bring forth its very best sons to help through the problem and of course, that's the case here This is an unusually talented man Who had a sparkling and bright career in the technical sciences in physics and then phd from From Maryland here in town in engineering, but at the same time had was able to get a master's degree in Customs policy and tax policy and all of a sudden coming forth at a time founded a political party and Coming forth at a time now when Latvia needs almost precisely this combination of skill and talent because this is a challenging day But we have an unusually gifted man who's in charge And so we're looking forward to his presentation. Our time is a little bit compressed We're first going to to hear the Prime Minister and then Heather is going to help field questions Heather do you want to make any further introductory remarks and let me turn let me turn it to you and thank you Prime Minister for being with us. Thank you Thank you so much. Dr. Hamry Knowing how honored we are the Prime Minister is with us and this is an important moment as Europe Tackles a daunting crisis and Latvia is certainly at the forefront of meeting that challenge and Mr Prime Minister, we're just grateful that you could be with us And our partner and ally in so many of the great endeavors of the day And so with that, Mr. Prime Minister, you can either choose to remain seated or you may use the podium We'll welcome your remarks and then we will invite you all to join the conversation. Mr. Prime Minister. Thank you Well, good afternoon everybody. It's a great honor for me to have the opportunity to address you here at CSIS Thank you very much For the president and organizers of this event So in today's presentation, I would briefly go through the situation as it has developed in Latvia as regarding economic and financial crisis and also some sorts of how the development should Or could continue in Eurozone and also in Latvia so to put Latvian crisis in the global economic crisis context I also try to Make some parallels So in any case we had Similar developments as many other countries had including us just pushed to the much more extreme side so after joining the EU in 2004 we Experienced at the period of strong growths at some occasions our growth rates even exceeded Increased to double digit growth rates and there was probably too much optimism about Economy to about too much optimism about are behind us and there is going to be eternal growth and Unfortunately turned out in global financial markets. It was a time when World was booming and Latvia was booming probably twice as much as the world but also While this economic development there were also Signs of trouble which at that time apparently went unnoticed While having a double digit economic growth. We still had a budget deficit and Government was interpreting a Mastery criteria which sets limits to budget deficit way to Simplified basically saying as long as budget deficit is below 3% which is master criteria limit Everything is just fine. Of course, that's not true. What master criteria really says is that? Budget should be balanced during the economic cycle and then in the times of stagnation or recession It should not exceed 3% of GDP Whereas our approach at that time was like, okay, we have 10% growth and our budget deficit is still below 3% of GDP What do you want? Also having this problem we had Inflation and also inflation before joining the EU for five years We had inflation between 1.9 percent and 2.9 percent Then after joining the EU inflation at certain stage reached Again double digit figure so it was some 10, 11, 12 percent inflation and part of this was Filled by or most of it was filled by domestic consumption which in turn was Filled by the easy accessibility of bank credits. So what we had during the years 2005-2006 amount of credit in our economy doubled. So those were huge Huge credit increase and that's where we were part of the booming global financial markets there was easy credit our currency was pegged to euro and We were basically Importing EU monetary policy meaning low interest rates 85% of our our loans were in euros which people then could exchange to lots. That's a fixed exchange rate and Enjoy this Cheap credits so this was really how our imbalances build up and also it meant while Having an economy which is running on on credit. So to say we also created a large current account deficit and if a decade ago or so People were saying economists were saying that the current account deficit of more than five percent of GDP Already spells some trouble Then in 2007 we had a current account deficit of 22.5 percent of GDP so Another issue was real estate bubble which then Couple of months after the US real estate bubble bursted our real estate bubble bursted but with a difference that in US Prices were going down from the peak values maybe by some one-third in Latvia in some segments The prices were going down by two-thirds of the peak value So really we were the real Showcase for economic disbalance and the last Drop was once Financial crisis started and Many financial institutions started to help problem. Also, we had to nationalize our largest independent commercial bank All together we put directly in some four point nine percent of our GDP in cash Another 2.6 percent of GDP in guarantees and that was exactly the point when we had to turn to IMF and European Commission for the international loan package so the international loan package was created of seven and a half billion euros to To finance our economy finance were budget deficit stabilized financial sector and Of course it came as a conditionality of rapidly reducing budget deficit and since the debate started of whether we should devaluate our Currency to address part of the imbalances and in this way to Get down the real income and values and of savings or We should stick with our exchange rate, which is effectively pegged to euro and Go through the internal devaluation and fiscal adjustment So we choose the second pass which at that time Created lots of questions and doubts about among economists. Is it reasonable? Why and is it possible? Also, there were speculative attacks on Lutz like in June 2009 we had a speculative attack on our currency. Well, which was successfully fought But in any case so what we choose we choose to have a fixed exchange rate and go through the fiscal adjustment so all in all 2009 amendments in 2010 budget we went through a fiscal adjustment of well over 10% of GDP which In such such a short period of time is well almost unprecedented at least we have not come up any Examples where This could Had been done as regards General economic and social policy Basically, our work was divided in three main directions first was fiscal adjustment fiscal consolidation second was economic stimulus of Which we could afford given the fiscal consolidation and serve as Social safety net to ensure social stability. I will briefly go through the three main those directions and then separately, of course, there was agenda of structural reforms which were partly Linked to the fiscal adjustment partly run by the fiscal adjustment, but also Many of them were long overdue before that so on fiscal adjustment measures we took Not not very surprising ones tax raises Including rays of VAT rate the value added tax Including rays of excises some income taxes wage cuts reduction of social benefits Reduction of public sector Jobs so all in all some More than 14,000 public sector places were downsized which may not sound Huge here, but we are a country of only 2.3 million people and on that scale. It's of course Feels quite substantially to give some examples like central apparatus of our ministries were reduced on average by 30% 3-0 Number of different kind of agencies was halved. So really and if we look at the budget State budget finance institutions Average salaries in first quarter of this year are some 25% below average salaries in 2008 of 2008 so really it's a very substantial adjustment. We had been taking Second given this Adjustment we couldn't really rely on domestic consumption as a driver of our economy. So we had to Do something else and not very originally because many countries are talking about this So we also decided to be like exporter into the economy and the fiscal stimulus Which we had which mainly was coming from European EU funds being a member of European Union we can receive certain structural and cohesion funds which for support of Economic development for support of infrastructure for some social programs. We reallocated those resources quite substantially towards Support of entrepreneurship and especially export oriented industries we created export credit guarantee scheme as of June last year and It seems to have been paying off because First quarter of this year was a first Quarter after eight month after eight quarters When we had a recession in the first quarter of this year, we had 0.3% growth quarter-on-quarter whereas if we look at the figures of industrial production and Exports so First quarters this year to first quarter last year industrial production was up 7.4% exports were up 10% So really we see that not only we are coming back to economic growth, but also our Structure of our economy is changing and Regaining competitiveness certainly was one of the key Priorities for this fiscal Not fiscal for this stimulus package, which we had third important issue while going through large-scale fiscal consolidation of over 10% of GDP It's important to ensure Social stability so for this also in cooperation with World Bank we involved Developed so-called minimum social safety network, which was Targeted as exactly those People who were most affected by the crisis. So we had a very substantive temporary works program for unemployed Prolonged unemployed benefits payments period increased guaranteed minimum income benefit, which was what people get after They stopped receiving unemployed benefit Co-finance some benefits to local governments improved accessibility of health care and medicines to poor people and Really, I think this was one of the factors which helped to ensure social stability So while facing tax raises and wage cuts and so people still could see that State is taking care of those most in need during this crisis Coming to the structural reforms agenda we had Had been doing quite substantial Structural reforms in the number of sectors including public administration education and health care and Interestingly on education and health care. Luckily. We did not how to come up with a new ideas Do reforms there because the principles of reforms were known already from 1990s there had been World Bank papers with Detailed proposals on structural reforms in education Introduction of principal money follows pupil optimization of the schools network. So there was detailed recommendations on what we call master plan in health care also to do with Optimization of hospital Network with Primary care and so on and so on so for there all those Structural forms from basically no, but as I love to say reform starts where the money ends So when those those documents were drafted It was just politically not popular to do so and so it basically nothing was done So what we had to do we basically had to take those reforms and Implements and was exactly what we did During the last year, of course, we had to do it in an accelerated pace without proper safeguards and Not everything went so smoothly as if would have been if it would have been done in a due time but well, unfortunately, we only Did those reforms once? Once our money ended In this term now it seems that we are on the path of economic recovery Unemployment is decreasing every month since March. So our first signs of Economic recovery growth not recession finally there is quite robot growth of industrial production and exports and Also from a so to say world attention point of view Latvia is off rather and where we were Considered to be the country worst affected by economic crisis in the EU Now this attention has shifted to southern Europe to Greece Spain some other countries and Properties there's also some Some lessons to be learned from our experience How to deal with internal Devolation because in a case of Latvia we Theoretically had this debate that we could have chosen also to go for devolution But our feeling is that devolution is easy way for a government. It's not even government decision It's central banks decision But certainly it's not an easy way for the people as it immediately erodes Real value of the savings real value of the incomes of pretty much everyone. So and it's also a huge redistribution of wealth from Pretty much everyone to a couple of exporters and even there being a very small and very open economy those competitiveness gains would have been short-lived because Imported energy prices will increase immediately imported component prices would increase immediately and we didn't see much gain on this Plus while doing through the fiscal adjustment We in fact had to implement also many Overdue structural reforms which otherwise probably would not be implemented again and those imbalances would continue to accumulate Whereas now if you look at the example of eurozone countries in eurozone countries Technically speaking there is no this option of devolution because If you are in eurozone and want to continue with euro as a stable and credible currency You cannot call for devolution of euro So really it is this pass of internal devolution, which is the one you how to follow and There I really feel that there is some Some lessons which could be learned from our experience which we had gone through in a last One and a half years. I'll stop here. Thank you very much for your attention Mr. Prime Minister, thank you very very much For those very insightful comments I have to say I really enjoyed the quote reform starts where the money ends and I think that's That's certainly a keeper and we're very grateful for For the articulation of really the measures and the scale and the scope of the measures that Latvia has had to take to to whether The economic crisis so with with your permission and the audience permission We have approximately a half an hour for for discussion and conversation The moderator has the great privilege of not only keeping the clock But if throwing out the first first question or so so with to get that conversation started and then We look forward to taking your your questions. Mr. Prime Minister. I have I have a two-part question one is sort of internal to the EU dynamic during this economic crisis and then one is sort of addressing the economic the ramifications of the economic crisis on NATO and larger European defense spending efforts for my first question Are you concerned that? Europe will start developing a two-tiered Europe those within the eurozone those who stay beyond And outside of the eurozone other countries have expressed their concern as the EU starts to Articulate its economic government structure Are you concerned about a two-tiered? Europe moving forward economically and then second you've you've articulated a series of very tough choices And Latvia had to make a very tough choice about whether to sustain its Deployment in Afghanistan during these very dire economic days and Latvia chose to remain In Afghanistan But moving forward do you think there will be more difficult decisions about Latvia's Military spending its its security posture vis-a-vis NATO in light of some of the these still Deep cuts that will have to be made in your in your fiscal outlook Well, thank you. So on our first question on Eurozone and eurozone versus non eurozone countries Well, I don't think there is so much concerned for developing a two-speed Europe and What we currently see with a crisis in eurozone? It's it's quite clear that the problem of eurozone is lack of control Mechanisms within eurozone because with new countries, which are just to join your eurozone It's relatively clear you either fulfill mastery criteria or you are not allowed in Whereas within eurozone, there are no control mechanisms and in fact, we know that most eurozone countries do not fulfill mastery criteria and That's certainly a problem and until 2003 there were in fact sanction mechanisms Those were later scrapped Now commission is coming up with the proposals of pre-screening national budgets before Those can be submitted to the parliament to ensure that Countries of EU countries basically would follow stability and growth packed rules Latvia is supporting this proposal and we're open to discuss also other kind of Proposals, it's quite clearly that there are control mechanisms needed within eurozone to ensure that countries fulfill their own rules because Unfortunately, we see that without those control mechanisms. That's not always the case another Important aspect on this there are lots of discussions about new EU economic governance, but My personal feeling is that These proposals still will help to work within the existing Institutional framework within this existing treaty Because there's not much appetite in the EU to draft a new treaty after two Failed referendums on the constitutional treaty in France and in Netherlands after two Referendums in Ireland on Lisbon treaty There is really not So much willingness to open the treaty again and to start to negotiate this once again so There will be limitations Which with a framework which in fact was created just before this economic trouble started and just before people started to Think about that kind of an economic government's issues So my guess is that will be still be acting within Lisbon treaty But also there you can be creative. We know that in what Germans are very much Indicating that there is a no bailout close in in the treaty So eurozone countries cannot be bailed out because they are supposed not to run in trouble And then Once the citation in Greece developed they had to read more carefully the treaty and to discover, okay bailout is not allowed let's call it rescue and That bilateral loans direct bilateral loans from EU member states or eurozone countries does a eurozone countries are not Prohibited and that's how the rescue package for Greece was prepared in a structure. It's Relatively similar in in fact to Latvia's package it's Europe it's Mainly European loans bilateral loans of EU member states with a substantial IMF financing In Latvia's case it was easier. We were not in part in eurozone. So we also have bilateral Loans of European countries with a substantial IMF financing, but we also have European Commission loans Which is not the case in Greece because of this no bailouts close But so really we will have to work with an existing treaty and recreate Control mechanisms to ensure that Eurozone follows its own rules. I think that's key for successful Functioning of the euro for credibility of the euro as global currency and As that's I think that's that's how it's going to happen. So second question on Defense spending and defense efforts. Yes, we also While downsizing budget pretty much every field was affected and defense was no exception So there we had to also prioritize our Spendings and quite clear one of our priorities was also to maintain our current existing level of engagement in Afghanistan in international operations because Our feeling is that we have to do our part of the job as a NATO members It's important for Latvia to be a part of the solution for global Safety rather than part of the problem. So we are sticking with our obligations and in fact our Contribution to NATO forces in or is our forces in Afghanistan is One of the highest in per capita terms So we are Maintaining this level of engagement and in fact during the crisis we also assumed lead nations status for a so-called northern distribution network, which she is Transferring us and NATO goods to Afghanistan via northern route through Latvia Russia Kazakhstan and of Pakistan to Afghanistan as an alternative and supplement to the southern route to via Pakistan and All in general, it's quite clear once countries will help to go through fiscal adjustment in EU Quite clear. It's going also to affect defense spending there's basically no way around it. So then it's question of prioritizing the choices and looking that it would not affect Defense capacity in a medium and long term. So that's how we also see The developments in Latvia and in fact this also allowed us to implement a successful commander form While really streamlining and downsizing command while it's the same time Keeping troops at the ground level Thank you, mr. Prime Minister. I'll just open the floor now to question if you could raise your hand we have colleagues with microphones and The wait for the microphone to come and if you could Please give us your name and your affiliation before you pose the question to the Prime Minister sir right there Thank you for brilliant presentation. My name is Alex Grigory. If I work in for Ways of America Russian service, what if thinking about the future of euro is a global currency mentioned about that But what do you think it about? Thank you? well, I think there is still future in Europe as a global currency and as a reserve currency, but it's quite clear that Now in a year or two Eurozone will be going through the crisis countries will have to do fiscal adjustment It may affect also the economic growth rate in Europe, but there is No way around it I don't think that Any of those hastily conclusions which are sometimes being drawn that eurozone would disintegrate or Countries would start to throw some countries out of the eurozone. I don't think anything of this will Happen it is going to be Here or two of quite substantial trouble to go through this crisis but I Think you Eurozone will stay euro will stay As a project, I think it's one of the most successful projects in the EU Internal market common currency and it has brought lots of benefits to the European economy. There are also some more ideas coming up on more bolder scale Also, probably making some joint European lending for sovereign debt and other ideas. So I think there is different Directions where you can in fact deepens this Cooperation so my prediction euro euro will stay in any case. It's also part of our exit strategy to bring budget deficit to the master criteria levels in 2012 with a target date for joining eurozone in January 1st 2014 and in this sense It was very important signal. We were receiving just previous weeks that eurozone is an open project and that Current eurozone troubles are not affecting eurozone enlargement We know last year Estonia met master criteria pretty much one of the very few EU 27 countries which met master criteria last year and They are on their path to eurozone accession in January 1st next year Yes, sir, the gentleman down the front microphone is coming My name is Walter Stathler National Defense University Foundation. My background is career diplomacy and by the way I was the US member of the IDAP the international defense advisory board for the three Baltic Republics during late 1990s and Early part of this decade my question concerns foreign investment Which as we know is really key to maintaining equilibrium in economy because it brings not only money but Employment and technology as well and my question is what is that is Latvia doing to attract that foreign investment Okay, so First of all again one of the macroeconomic data. I didn't mention during the introductory Speech also first quarter of this year was the one when we saw again increased flow of foreign The direct investment in Latvia First thing we had to do Initially was to really stabilize the economy. That's a short-term question Nobody is going to invest in a country which is deemed Economically and financially unstable. So that was really the first thing Once we did it once this signal is going through the world. So to say that really economy is more stable there are Gross potential and so then investors also start to look at other matters and this policy of internal Devolation also improved our competitiveness. They improved our real effective exchange rate and So we also see some increase in FDI then it also takes some Practical work to be done. So for we're working several directions as a plan for Improving the business environment and then work on implementing this plan. This is a continuous effort Now we also are setting Some project lists and team ad hoc working groups basically to deal with a large incoming FDI projects Because what we had felt as experience also in previous years that some projects were not implemented for the reasons that So we're just stuck somewhere in bureaucratic layers and could not really pass through them. So for this sense, it's important really to help Especially if you're talking on large projects to deal with a bureaucracy to deal with a red tape and also to signals It's this FDI is welcoming Latvia. So there we also see some growth John Miller with Raytheon May I ask do you think the economic situation will cause Be an impetus for greater cooperation with Estonia and Latvia and perhaps other countries? And if so what areas did you would you see greater cooperation coming to pass? Well, I would say regardless of the economic situation. We have a great cooperation with Estonia and Lithuania And it was also so so during the crisis. We were coordinating to extend our tax policies. We are now working on some projects of Even deeper economic integrations and EU would require to really Trying to create Baltic states as a single possibly single market and Certainly we have cooperation on political issues regular consultations where I would say traditionally We had been very supportive to each other So I would say in this political dimension. I wouldn't expect much major change Due to this economic crisis. It's really more to do with economic governments issues Some control mechanisms issues to ensure that we do not run in that kind of crisis again Also some political large political processes we can See like reset policy between US and Russia, which also has so far. I'd say positive implications for Latvian and Baltic states relations with Russia for EU Russia relations but I Don't think it's so directly linked with the economic crisis. So those I wouldn't make too much links there Hello, so welcome. Don Mayurich is from Embassy of Croatia Just wanted to hear your view on the EU enlargement process Not only to Croatia, but also to other Western Balkan countries. Thank you well Latvia has always advocated that you should be an open project also open to enlargement and In this sense, we have always supported Croatia's way towards EU accession and We see that you're making real progress and I think it's really a Question of relatively short perspective before you will be in the EU. We know that other Balkan countries are in different stages of negotiation and so far countries which had expressed interest from Balkans towards EU integration are really at various stages of Progress, we know that EU enlargement as as a whole is Also a controversial project Not every country in the EU are very supportive. There are talks of EU enlargement fatigue There were there is situation with Turkey as we know that first Granted candidate countries status and then questions are asked. Do they really belong to Europe? Probably should have been as a way around Briefly, there were some discussions of maybe Ukraine's way towards EU accession, but that was not even mentioned in EU enlargement strategy of like what was it 2004 or 2005 so Also, it has its limitations and political limitations within EU but as as regards Balkans I would say that's one of the regions where EU in general is positive and those There will be real progress and Croatia will be in in a matter of I don't know one two years Thank you. We have time for two more questions I'm gonna take the two that are right beside each other sir gentlemen the blue and then you can just pass the microphone to the gentleman beside you and The Prime Minister you can bundle those two questions and okay, so we'll finish up there Gentlemen with the blue shirt and yellow top and then pass it down. Thank you Bob McClellan retired Department of Defense more specifically Latvian historian It is my understanding that Latvia was experiencing a population drain has that stopped and Did the government taking any effort to stop it? Stephen Stoltenberg State Department analyst covering Poland in the Balkans Baltic States The cuts that you've described in terms of social benefits and salaries seem Amazing that you've been able that your population has been able to withstand that You're entering a parliamentary election season as I understand it and I don't see any evidence that the economic reforms that you've introduced or the cuts that you've implemented have necessarily Impacted you negatively in terms of your political prospects in the upcoming election. So my question is how did you manage to? implement this program and not In bring about a huge social backlash against against your government. I think that that might be an interesting lesson for other governments Okay, so On the first question really we had this problem with emigration, especially during Years 2004 2005 just after our EU accession Wage levels in Latvia were much lower than old EU member states and with a free movement of labor and Three countries initially opened up their labor markets. It was like you care Ireland and Sweden in fact Many people left estimates vary some more typical estimates are around 50,000 people left Latvia to work in Old EU member states then when economy was booming In fact, we saw that this tendency stopped and even reversed people started to come back to Latvia But now with economic crisis again with law High unemployment with wages suppressed to the extent again. We are again having this problem But as we learned from the previous way you cannot just increase salaries Because then without increasing productivity and that's exactly what happened in Latvia after EU accession We had a period of very rapid wage growth We lost our competitive competitiveness we run into deepest crisis in the EU and So that's why we are also thinking very much of the change of the structure of the economy So that our economic growth would be sustainable because fundamental answer to this emigration problem is To ensure more or less Equal salaries or not so dramatic salary differences between Latvia and some other EU member states Coming to the second question on social stability I mentioned one of the points which was this social safety network, which was important also we had lots of discussions with Social partners with employers organizations with trade unions with local governments union And in fact 2009 budget amendments, which were the most painful ones so to say were made based on agreement between coalition parties and trade unions employers local government union Not that I really wanted to know about it later, but it was written it was on paper Of course, and there were many Discussions yes, we kind of supported it, but not really but at least they were kind of on board which was important to also have them on board we launched what we call reform management group where government was sitting together with exactly this social partners and it also gave their part of the Contribution and Yes While the approval ratings of government or myself if you want were falling when we were making 2009 amendments 2010 budget It started to improve again once people saw that well situation is to the extent stabilized We are coming back to economic growth and really we see that it also improved approval ratings of my party of of myself being one of the most popular politicians in the country But of course, it's always Fragile of course there More decisions to make and you never know where exactly it's Too much politics is is always a very unpredictable business. So you cannot be Enjoying too much now and popular maybe in a month. I will not be unpopular again This is what you don't know. Yeah But really it was this social safety network and social dialogue, which are important to ensure and also Interestingly if we compare with a citation of Greece and public opinion polls in Greece show that most of Greeks in fact supports those austerity measures implemented by governments they understand that That's what it is that those are the choices and there are some militant entities which are creating those protests and this huge negative publicity about This situation that if you look at the polls in fact Most of the Greek circles say yes, we understand it's a crisis. We need to do something about it Well, mr. Prime Minister, I'd like to thank you for your thoughtful remarks You're very candid remarks, and I think I'll end where dr. Hammering began that in times of deep crisis our nation's turn to Leaders who can see them through those troubled times and Latvia and its wisdom selected you to lead them through this very Difficult time. So we thank you and I think the audience you asked some terrific Questions and very insightful as well. So I thank you very much. Please join me in a round of applause


Hi, this is Marylee Johnson with the 21 Convention, and we're here with Ed Akin. Your topic is not only interesting, but also useful, and those two things garner a lot of questions. So my first one was, if someone is just starting out, do you have a suggested first step? Well, yes, get clear on your intent as to why you want to train, if you want to train in martial arts. Some people want to compete, some people want to do it just for exercise. Some people find out they really fall in love with the whole aspect of it, so really get clear on your intent. If you want to, and you may not know that, sometimes you might just need to jump into a class and find, because we have a lot of choices, and it's very difficult without knowing what area they're in and which styles, which instructors are there. Sometimes you just got to try it, see if you like it. Is there a better set of techniques for people of different sizes? Like obviously, if maybe you were to train in a different style, then it would be better for me to train in a different style, and a guy who's 5'5", might... Yeah, definitely. Body structure is always something that we have to consider, and you should always consider that first, especially as you get older, sometimes injuries, you'll have to modify things. But you can generally look at somebody who's not very flexible, who's bigger, is probably not going to want to do a lot of kicking, if you have bad hips or something like that. And there's certain things that, depending on your strength, that you will avoid like in wrestling is a really strong, hard art on the body. And so if you're not really built like that, my wife is an athlete, I'm really not.  It's kind of a weird thing, but she was an athlete in high school. And so my style is a little more fluid, and hopefully that answers a little bit of the question. But as far as avoiding certain things, I really think you should once again try something, and if it doesn't feel right, if you're forcing yourself to do something that just seems unnatural, your body type probably isn't for that. And ask the instructor, ask him or her if they think that should I do it this way, or is there a better way for me to do it? A good instructor will modify it for you. So you just got done with doing your talk, and this is going to be a little preview of that. Did you want to tell the audience maybe a little bit about the high points of your talk? I thought there were a lot. But give us a little overview on what you are talking about and what they're going to be seeing. Yeah, so basically I wanted to talk about the three reasons why I think every man needs to train for extreme violence. And it's something that we start with a basic reason, which we go over, and that's pretty much a no-brainer. But my belief is that through the type of training that I've discovered, and I didn't develop it, but I was put through the furnace, and it changes you in a certain way. And so you get these pretty amazing benefits from preparing yourself for really bad things to happen. And that's really what the talk was about. And I think that my idea of getting universal concepts that even though we're talking about fighting, that you can take those and plug those into other areas of your life, I was excited that I could see a few of the guys really getting it. And they're like, oh man, I can do this in my work or my job or my relationship. And because they are universal principles, and that's what we're dealing with when we're, unfortunately violence is a part of life. But it's a really good, the training is a really good feedback mechanism to supercharge your neurology and to discover the cause of your own ignorance, right? And if you think things are gonna work in a certain way and you get punched in the face, then you're pretty sure that your understanding was faulty. So is there a way to get more adaptable more quickly? You talk about adaptability in your talk and it's really important, obviously, for all of life, but especially for fighting situations. Yeah, you can do, you can pick different ranges. We talked about today of picking scenarios and ranges. So if you wanna prepare a specific scenario, then break those ranges down and you can create a live drills where you have a lot of movement. So maybe you start in long range and you're moving that slowly progresses into a punching match to a clinch, then you go on the ground. And you don't have to do this hard, but you have to do it with movement. And so you can even do a 20 to 80 where you start at 20%, going slow, moving with your partner because it's a spatial relationship that makes you spontaneous. And it's the movement that really trains that type of focus.  And then you get back up and so, but you have that playful. It's not, you're not going hard right away, but you are moving and it's more realistic that way. Do you have any advice for somebody who's a little bit uncoordinated? Yeah, I was uncoordinated. So I didn't get coordinated till I was 19. I got coordinated through the martial arts. So doing a lot of different footwork drills really helped. And actually, Kali, which is a stick and knife art, it's like the mother art. There's a lot of different systems. But the moving the sticks and knives, Kali, yeah. Like the border Kali, like a dog? Kind of, but it's Kali, like the goddess, right? And so, but Kali is from the Philippines and it's a stick and knife art. And what that does is it coordinates your hands, because you're creating all these patterns and using your hands independently. So that helps to really understand line familiarization, body position, and then your footwork as well. And I would recommend probably isolating footwork because footwork seems to be guys who are uncoordinated just haven't developed that. Their feet are clumsy. Or girls, too. Yeah. The last thing that I really wanted to ask is, is there a biggest mistake that people make in life? That's that's a much bigger question. Don't do drugs. More so with martial arts and getting hurt. Oh, yeah. Well, getting hurt is a big one. That's not that's usually a mistake in their training method and in proper preparation, although as you get into combat, our injuries are par for the course. I think the biggest mistake that people will make is getting stuck in their paradigm, getting stuck in their system and thinking that that they have the answers to everything or thinking that they're prepared for a situation when they're not. And, you know, the idea is to look to all sources, look to, you know, different teachers, different systems, different styles, but try to recognize the universal truths, the reoccurring techniques that happen throughout those styles. That's because they work. And so, but if your style doesn't have this, if your style has an improper way of doing things, you may, you may be, you may not even be aware that it's, it's your caught in a paradigm. And so that's, that's great for life, too, is just to keep an open mind and to look to many different sources for truth. Well, thank you so much for your time, Ed. Thank you. Thank you guys for watching. This is Mary Lee Johnson with the 21 convention.