So, during the session, Tech and I are going to outline a new programme that we've been working on for the last 18 months, kind of 24 months at my own level. It builds very substantially on the, it builds on the terms of the urban quality and informality work that's been underway in Ireland since it's been a human settlerist group. And I guess it's, when I started, I really found myself in the longstanding full-time memory group in the settlement group. And that wasn't the case when I joined 10 years ago. And I guess when I started, the work was moving, the work our partners was moving from solely focusing on the quality of informality to thinking about adaptation and how that's raising the need for more settlements in such a high Africa and Latin America, foods also incorporate or would also incorporate a focus on resilience. But I guess, for most of the time that I've been here, there's been very little focus on decarbonisation and mitigation in formal settlements. I think that's principally these people that live in formal settlements where there are small companies, small companies that want to be burdened with decisions around decarbonisation. The programme of work that we're establishing at the moment with our partners is, is principally around this idea, they're a generation defining investments and cities that are happening at the moment on the focus on the situation. And if lowering them and all the communities that are excluded from those discussions and decisions in those investments, we know that poverty and inequality will be exacerbated. So that's the stuff with where we're at. And we're just going to have a bit of a conversation about how, how and why we're committed to those agendas. And then we're going to hand over to our colleague in part that she was going to send us over from Zimbabwe, I know who's online from Buenos Aires. Yeah, so this burden has really led to really fruitful conversations with the colleagues in IED as well as partners from the world, and also very often productive kind of tension and conflicts about where we put our attention and where we put our resources. But we maintain that is actually very important for us to begin the work to link kind of a global climate justice agenda as well as urban climate justice with mitigation and zero carbon cities. And this, it's taken a while to get here for the past couple of decades. Climate justice has really remained at this global level where the default subject was also a nation state representing kind of very abstract populations. It doesn't mean that haven't been effort to localize climate justice. There have been very commendable ones and they've focused for good reasons on adaptation. And that makes sense because poor populations in our countries disproportionately suffered the effects of climate change. We, as Anna was saying, so much of the drive and especially finance is focused on mitigation. And so we believe that if we continue to operate in this mitigation adaptation silos, we run the risk of leaving our prime low income populations as we kind of make very definitive decisions about what cities are going to look like and how we plan economic development. In fact, mitigation investments might end up subsidizing sustainable living for the middle and higher income earners in cities while they either ignore or potentially displace low income populations. And what we are trying to do is kind of moving beyond a conversation about cold benefits. So very often when we see climate policy experts talking about innovations in cities, and why we need to implement certain sustainable practices, it's sold with a series of cold benefits to make cities more inclusive, greener and healthier. But we would like to kind of start these conversations and with the priority of justice and equality as intertwined with decarbonisation. And we think that this is important, definitely from a normative perspective, but also because efforts to decarbonize simply won't be successful if you don't have a majority population supporting policies and do that. So we need to sell solutions that kind of operationally serve the interests of middle class of the work of course. When we see there are a lot of unmet needs and inequality, so we're looking at investment needs of 6 trillion US dollars to kind of provide adequate infrastructure to more than 1 billion people living in settlements. How can we leverage momentum and finances to respond to these needs. The kind of a staggering statistic is 80% of urban buildings and infrastructure that will exist in 255.5% content to be built. So how can we ensure that investments in a sustainable built environment that everyone in the city might be so bold to suggest that investments should disproportionately benefit the urban core than the urban core disproportionately suffer the consequences of climate change. Yeah, just in addition to that, I guess lots of people that are familiar with IRZs know that we have a long history of decentralising the need to decentralise development finance, to decentralise climate finance. Adige's work focus is quite strongly on the need to decentralise adaptation finance to make sure that it gets to communities and local governments who are on the front line of climate change, but we know that 90% of climate finance is actually on the need to decentralise adaptation and the idea that we haven't been able to develop a narrative or a framework with our partners that's focused on getting that finance to some uproading programmes to housing to basic services with a huge deficit and actually about investments is essential. I think that's the most important thing. Our work in this actually stuff in Latin America will get to the opportunity to start thinking about this and that's going to have to come to the group and that will take a bit more about that project. Sorry, so we have a few initiatives looking at the largest of which is an IKI funded project in Latin America. We've worked with a consortium of partners to set up five urban labs in Buenos Aires and Argentina, Teresina and Recife in Brazil and in Mexico, Leon and Nadalpan. This project is using urban labs with multi-stakeholder participants from communities from civil societies, private sector, municipal government as well as academia to define problems in the addressing and to deliver solutions that are aligned with zero-coding trajectories. What's interesting here, reflecting on operational patients, is that we can see the different approaches from the urban labs operating in different political contexts with different governing closures as well as different setups of what participation looks like and how it feels like and how decisions are made. This has led, again, to a lot of productive tensions not only within each urban lab but also when we close exchanges across geographies so they can exchange what does inclusion and participation mean and now on Mexico versus in Villa Renta, which is an informal salon in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This is very much the beginning of a conversation which we hope we can build on across future project environments. We're trying to kind of handle that process at the moment by using series of global and regional dialogues because we can do this work with partners in Latin America but we also have a really strong network of partners in South Saharan Africa. We've been working on issues within policy and adaptation for some time so over the next two to three months we're seeing a series of regional dialogues but we're trying to kind of try to unpick the relationship or the potential relationship between a fraudurising of climate action that includes decalculation and social justice and to dispel this myth but that we don't have a role to play in decisions or investments related to simplification. What's been really interesting in the last couple of weeks because we've just hosted the first dialogue is that we're considering how progressive climate action or focus on miscation could potentially crack open challenges around India or how local knowledge and local building materials can be brought to the table, given the debates that kind of largely European driven around potential to invest in a system that made up timber. So how can you bring them on a gym? How can you think about like that availability of local resources to not only upgrades in a sustainable way but in a way that kind of contributes to decalculation? Linking back to the theme of the day, we're going to highlight a special issue in environmental organisations that's going to be published next spring on this exact theme and we're going to host a couple of abstract workshops on that. And I guess just to emphasise for you to be trust through the theme that we'll host an abstract workshop in English and also in Spanish that you can submit in Spanish, Portuguese or English or French. So if you're interested in thinking and you'd like to kind of look test and abstract out with us, we'd really welcome your participation now. But before, I guess, unless you've got anything else to add, I'd like to invite George Macimbran to the text in the panel to talk a bit about the impact of climate change in forms that I'm looking forward to. George didn't prepare a pathway, but it's my fault. It's not up there. We have to connect. We'll be always learning. I'm not going to touch that. Thank you, Adam. Hello, everyone. My name is George Macimbran. I'm from Diolch and Shorthack, an organisation that is working in SLAMU last international. And I'm going to go through a presentation that will focus on the intersection between climate change and urban informality or informal settings. So as I indicated, I work with the SDI and in terms of the way that we do, it's grounded around the three key principles or approaches in terms of community management settings. The ... processes, and then learning along continuous relation processes. These approaches have been refined over the years by the SDI. We think they are very key in terms of the current project that we are coming forward. cymdeilio'r cyfrifio mor adresyn, lleiwyr cyflwytoedd, yn ffocws yn gyfor mawr sylwn. A oedden nhw'n cael ei ffordd y cyflwytoedd cyflwytoedd yn gyflwytoedd, gyda'r cyfrifio yng nghymru o'r gyflwytoedd yn Aral, a'rldeych yn ymddir i'w ddiwylliannol, mae'n ddiwethaf i'r eich ystyried o gyrfaenau, i ddim yn ymddir i'r cyfrifio'r cyfrifio'r cyfrifio, fylirio a'na fyddai werthio. Felly, y gallai cyd-feydd hynny yn paroedd o'r paroedd. Fy ydy'r hyn yn ymgyrch gael eu warnebu o'r holladeg ëa gynllunio Gwynhgyrch ond y gwelwaith holladeg ëa gael'r paroedd. Felly, y gallai cyd-feydd hynny yn yr ymgyrch, na fyddai yr ymgyrch yn paroedd... ..cynny'n roi'r paroedd ar y gynhau Gwynhgyrch... ..yna gen hopeau i s eden o hefyd o ddimyn nhw i'r fferwyd o'r holladeg o'r holladeg yn robbyd. of assets, loss of property, distraction of housing. In addition to that, we also notice a distraction of interest tracker is a value for the flooding, plug-in for drains, for example, as part of some of the effects that you notice in formal settlements. In addition to that, droughts, recurrent droughts also is a value or impact in formal settlements in terms of drying up for water sources and also a level for water in formal settlements. This is implications also on social issues. For example, whenever a challenge is to do with water, that also presents an added burden on women in terms of a collection of water, they have to walk long distances. And also, in addition to that, there are also social issues. If some of these communal water points are for gender-based violence and during COVID, for example, with very disturbing cases of sex for water, for example, communal water points for women or girls to access point. In terms of health issues in formal settlements, we talk of water-borne diseases in cities where we are flooding, vector-borne diseases in terms of flooding again, malaria, like that. And also, the amount of nutrition due to food insecurity exacerbated by drought conditions. So, all these impacts, all these issues, you consider them against the vector of the conditions in informal settlements, where basic services are a challenge, social services also are a challenge. Then you begin to imagine the kind of vulnerabilities, the kind of challenges that are faced by informal settlements in terms of climate change. If we talk about these impacts in informal settlements, I think that my problem just illustrates some of these impacts. I will proceed to the intro course. Why is it important to connect climate change actions with heaven upgrade or an improvement of informal settlements? Like I indicated, informal settlements constitute some of the most vulnerable parts of the cities with housing infrastructure planning. In that context, it is very imperative to connect climate actions with upgrading. In fact, climate change responses heaven upgrading in particular contributes towards adaptation and mitigation measures. For example, coming up with criminal water points, for example, coming up with innovations such as waterless sanitation toilets, for example, all these are innovations that fall under heaven upgrading, but at the same time contribute towards addressing the challenges that communities face in informal settlements. Then thirdly, there are very huge opportunities for connecting with community-led experiences around, for example, community management plans and the scale of climate change action. In other words, imagining climate actions or imagining upgrading in climate change actions is connected and allows us to then begin to develop approaches of climate actions from below, from the bottom up. Heaven took that point, the potential connections between climate change actions or climate actions in upgrading. What are the challenges that we have noted in our experience working in cities, working in informal settlements? First of all, it is important to note that this very limited, I like to present mention of data, was my challenge to speak to that as well. There is very limited evidence and institutional capacity in particular within government, all the central and global government level, which helps to illustrate intersections between climate actions in informal settlement upgrading. Assuming we have a lot of data in institutional capacity within government, at both level, central and global government level, that would then make it very difficult for an imperative to act or to ensure that climate change actions are mainstream in terms of how we imagine and progressives in our cities. In the end, as we speak, or in best-in-our context, there is very limited evidence, very limited data and institutional capacity. Therefore, at a policy level, the connection is not very sufficiently articulated and pronounced because there isn't that information, there isn't that evidence to really stress and highlight the connections between the two. Related to that, informal settlements are also not recognised, hence the challenge. So the default mode for local governments, for city managers, is to demolish informal settlements. And that presents a huge challenge in terms of how they deal with the impact of climate actions when informal settlements are not being acknowledged or at least considered as part of the city. Depending on the public also in many of the contexts in Sub-State and in the global south, also making it difficult because of issues to do with erosion of disposable incomes and end savings, which typically cushion communities in terms of the artist's impact of climate change. Then there is also the element of the huge costs that are associated with transitions to sustainable infrastructure that, for example, we talk of solar power lighting in informal settlements, much as that pathway is important and is desirable. Increasingly, what we are noticing is that that transition to sustainable infrastructure option is not an easy part. They are very expensive in terms of the initial costs that are associated with transitioning from non-sustainable metals to sustainable trips like this solar. Then lastly, in terms of the challenges, as a result of the lack of data that I talked about earlier, there is also a lack of policies and agreements to support specific climate actions. For example, decentralized energy solutions, decentralized infrastructure or off-grid infrastructure options. All these typically speak to a sustainable infrastructure and yet we don't have adequate policy agreements in our city that then embrace or incorporate these alternatives. They need to be. They haven't talked about challenges that exist. It's also important they have to play some of the opportunities that are there in terms of the intersections between climate change and informal settlements that are free. So in terms of the SDIs experience, there is massive grassroots infrastructure that has been set up in terms of organized communities that are safe in, that are regular meeting, that are engaging in each other, which presents an opportunity in terms of making sure that you can come up with local-related, for example, adaptation or localized climate actions that are designed or informed by community events. So there's that massive grassroots infrastructure in place. Then secondly, there's also massive experience around community-led data collection in terms of SDIs experience. And I've also talked about that. So essentially, what I'm saying is that it's important for any climate action to be also informed by community knowledge, by experiences or by those who are meeting this reality on a daily basis. So growing or connecting with community knowledge also presents opportunities in terms of dealing with access to climate change. Then as part of SDI, what we've also been doing is also experimenting around issues to do with co-managed funds. It's a way of creating alternative innovative financing mechanism that can potentially link with the global finance that seeks to address the advocacy parts of climate change. For example, we have what we call community-lawn funds that are operated, administered and governed by communities in terms of using savings as a way of ensuring that those funds are resolved. But they are not only being resourced by communities. We have also used those community-managed funds or city-level funds to also kind of leverage resources from the state, leverage resources in particular from city government. It's a prebuter about that, that besides creating additional resources that can potentially yield in terms of upgrading inter-pages, they also create an inclusive governance mechanism that can begin to potentially inform the money in each resources flow in terms of priorities for upgrading in terms of priorities for climate action. And then lastly, there's also a history of engagement in the state. I think somebody talked about the opportunities or potential for linking with the state. I think it's on the basis of the experience of FDR, there's been a lot of collaboration or collaboration that has been undertaken with the state, in particular focusing on local authorities. And we think that presents opportunities for building collaborations or also even scaling initiatives that are undertaken by communities in terms of also even building trust, even also potential for building state capacity and creating opportunities for collaborative actions that give the orient approaches towards informal settlements. Consider that I mentioned that it defaults response usually to informal settlements, usually demolitions, efficient sector. So in the interthink of collaborations, partnerships, that also is called for ensuring that more inclusive approaches given in informal settlements are adopted and employed as part of climate responses. I think with those a few remarks, thank you. I want to ask you a question of the proposed presentation. So it moves on how are we all the way over to the point of silence now. Snow Coney's idea like that here, which is an artistial presentation of ours, is that we have to represent the mountains. If you're there, I'm going to add it to you. I don't know, we'll have a pause of conversation about both. Yes, hello. Do you hear? Yes. Okay. Hello, everyone. I'm Florencial Mansley from IDD America Latina. We are based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. And as Stacker mentioned, before we are working together in this project, together with Mexico and Brazil. And I think I have a presentation if you can share. Morgan was telling me that it was Hold on one second. Sorry. Okay. Well, we were asked to think into questions how to link climate change, the carbonisation with the situation in informal settlements. That's the first question we want to share. We think about five priorities that can explain why to link these issues. Next, please. Next. First of all, it's the matter of growth of the cities and growth of informal settlements. We all know that most of the population in the world and also in that in the south, the global south and in Latin America, 25% of the population is living in informal settlements and 29% in Latin America. But we have 45% of the population in Nicaragua and 15% of the population in Argentina living in informal settlements. So there's a lot of investment to make in the next year in this part of the cities in informal settlements. The other thing is the inequality in the cities. You know, Buenos Aires is the richest city in the country. And this is the situation you can see that the informal settlements have in the middle of the city of Buenos Aires. The same has happened in all the cities of the country. Most of the people living in informal settlements live in a vulnerable way. But they are in an urban context with around. They have all the service and all the houses for living in better situations. But the visuals, that's how we call informal settlements in Buenos Aires, in the city, live in an urban context without all the benefits that this urban context brings to the other people in the city. The next. The other reason is to bring services and life conditions to the population and the community living in the visas. They are lacking services and conditions for better health and assistance in extreme events. And also they are not being the priorities actors in the decision making of the policies in the city and in the country. Next. And another thing is that we think that everything has to be done in these places in informal settlements. And it's the opportunity to change the way of doing things because there's a lot of investment to set in informal settlements. And this investment has to change the way of doing or making the city. And we have the opportunity here. This is an imagine of how the visa vente was at the first moment when the urbanization process began six years ago. And the second figure B is the meta where the informal settlement has to get to include social and urban in the city. And everything here has to be done. We have to open streets to make services, infrastructure, bring social inclusion to the population. And this is now being done in many aspects in the same way that was done 50 years ago. So it's the opportunity to change the construction of the city here. Next. And of course, the community, the social leaders, they are not in the center of the decisions. The community is who is the community built the neighborhoods and makes the great efforts to improve the place, but they are not in the center of the decision when the investments are put in place there. So which are the opportunities we have to change this? The next please. And the challenge we see for our work working in urban labs in the Indonesia in these last two years. The next please. The first things we think that the traditional way of planning interventions, in this case, urbanization process has to be changed through another framework that takes in account a process that has master plan has like a meta of this process. But in this process, things are decisions are made together with the local authorities, the social leaders and the community to go through this long period of investment and produce the change in the urbanization of the visa, in this case, visa rate. This process project allows to share knowledge in between the actors to look for innovation in the implementation of the process. And all of these things have to be done through the consensus building, not because one of the actors of the sectors decided not because of the consensus between all the actors involved in this process. The next. Another thing that is very important, and we were listening of this now in the session, the producing the collected data in a different way. We are trying to implement, we are implementing in the visa the collect of the collect of a temperature range. And this is going to do with the community putting different thermometers to take temperature and humidity in the visa. This system is going to produce data that everyone in the community with their phones has the possibility to consult. And this is the way that the community here, there are 5,000 families living in the visa can not only know, but produce data in a collective way. Next. The other thing that's very important is how to share learnings and capacities through the urban labs that are taking place in this event. People from the academia is participating, people from the government, local authorities, social leaders and community are participating. And we think that it's so important. People from the community are learning a lot from the academia and experts, but also experts. The academia sector is learning a lot about the real life in the community through the social leaders that are participating in the labs. So we think that the horizontal way of sharing knowledge is what brings the integration of an issue that is very difficult to include in the demands that climate change, because the social movements and the community is going through other demands. And speaking about climate change is not so easy, but when we start working with this project in Villa Rente, we think that it was going to be impossible to introduce this issue and knowledge of climate change, but it was a process of integration, all the things in Villa, the living conditions, the health conditions and the social conditions were integrated all with the issues of climate change. And now social leaders and experts have the same narrative about the process. And that is why we think that the horizontal learnings are important in this process to change things. The other thing is learning by doing that we think that it's important to change things. It's not about a formal capacity building or formal sharing knowledge. It's about sharing knowledge and learning through doing and implementing actions that change the city or the place in different parts of the region. Next. And of course, one of the opportunities we have is to introduce natural-based solutions and blue-green infrastructure in a rare urbanisation process in the city, but it's not so easy to do because we have some rules, norms that were written by 50 years ago. And it's not so... And these norms does not available the introduction of other kinds of infrastructure. And this is a transition moment to start changing these things and introduce a different path or streets in the vision so to show that things can be done differently. The next. Another situation is the maintenance of these communal spaces in the same way that infrastructure cannot be changed in many places. Maintenance communal spaces cannot be changed because of the ways that they were made along all these years and nothing is easy to change. So it's another issue that we have to work on. The next. So well, we think that we have to change the educational and productive metric and the status quo of the public works because everything is going on in the same way and it's a moment to change through education and through the productive way of doing things to change the way that cities and in this case informal settlements must improve the conditions of life. And also coordinating investment and decisions to make citizens resilient and inclusive for all the community of the cities. And this is the last one I think. Thank you so much. I'd like to explain what I would really like to get your thoughts and reflections on this. From both contexts, I think the thing that's most striking is how often we use the word opportunity with resused. The amount of opportunities that create new entry points to tackle all the problems as we start to think about mitigation. But I guess that mitigation might be anything in the context in the form of that, although that's right, you'll be looking at the technical framework problem. These are going to be the issues that I've got on there, but I know that this happens to be the first one since the 19th. But without the sake of any more time, I knew I was going to go out and have fun with it before lunch. Have you thought some questions, any specific questions? You might have to look at my list or any of those questions. If you're in a room, I'll just repeat the question back to you. Thank you very much. I'm Lorraine Dumbledore. I want to thank Mrs Trefford and Fema Foswllton. I think just reflections and I've been trying to link to the earlier session. What is really interesting is when we bring in community leaders, they tend to be at high to organise themselves, to think, to process things. It doesn't mean that they're rushing at this time or they're thinking of trying to do something of that kind of thing. But then when you then take the drop-down approach, in most cases, the timeline is very fixed and rushed. You bring time and finance in them. It has to be done in the same time. But when you look at these unions, it's a lot of time passes. You have time to think of the future. So the idea of thinking the everyday that was talked about and trying to link it to the future is something that is so demanding on those communities that have to deal with everything. So I don't know how that can be something that can be combined. It's this element of fun. Yes, I would do nothing, but we have to slow down. We have to go. And often what I also notice, especially in the multinatural development groups, corporations like the Asian World Bank and other places, they seem to not get to mean that when they're approaching communities need time. Do you think process the vocabulary that they are giving or introducing at this rate is? The process one views that has to, you know, they need to make sense of something that is coming from archive, which they are already experiencing anyway, but it comes with something new. Because we're using finance and knowledge. So I think time is really critical. And here also you find they are not approaching just as climate change or climate risk. It's evidence. So they are combining different things. Which again, if we look at the top down, they are generous and very silent, which is why I appreciate the idea of the world where we're looking at finance in relation to people that need to do that. So that's some of the learning I'm getting from the separate ways we're talking about such as that. And we're talking about that. But there are similarities to just the basic approaches. And it's sort of incremental. I think it just brought me back to accumulator resilience. One of David's paper, a paper that goes into accumulator resilience. Not that we used to say we need to do, finally we need to be managing resilience. But if we use other things in place, they will help in terms of management resilience. Because it's a constant, a long process. I think the adults are going for it. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments from the room? Thanks very much. I really enjoyed the presentation. Will I say a couple of things that come to mind on that? So when you highlight basically bottom up the process of data collection, but also the learning you might do into this, do you think it can bring to me the openness page for new representation, which is the one that I see in the face of this and making it great. And second, I think ideas are not only the knowledge that you see, but also basically the actual relationship that you're doing for the user. So to effect change, we need these cross-colours relation. So people that don't have a space to have any learning to be transferred to a book page. But I wonder, using these transformational spaces is not, if you can actually share something like, what has been affected with really built-religio feedback? So this might be the question for Pearl and George. We've got a connection on the sort of relationship that we've established across the whole institution where enable change, that way. Thank you for the question. So what we've also done is part of the processes around data collection, for example, is also bringing in multiple editors in general for the data collection process. So, for example, partnering with the state in terms of local government, and also, more recently, partnering with teacher institutions is a way of also even legitimising the data that is collected, but also besides just legitimising most of your implications. Because for a very long time, the data that is collected for me has been contested in some instances by the state. So, how producing the data has been one of the ways of ensuring that the data is also refined, but also is a way of strengthening relations, strengthening partnerships between communities or of bottom up processes with the central local government institution to get out academic institutions. And then even then go beyond just collecting data, it does not even, in some instances, proceed to pilot or experiment interventions that emanate from the findings that will come out of the data collection processes and all the way use that experience to strengthen faith of the relationships. I don't know if I addressed you or not. Just saying that. You do make the final move. We're on a good journey with this. We have time also on it already, especially if you're new to it, we're not going to call out for it now and then we're looking to get a lot to the trends. So, if you're something that you're interested in, could you return and I know that as you try with the community in general, do you think that much you might be able to speak in terms of those yet to the end of the month. It is very much an avenue to be done with specific data to be used at your own risk. What's with that?


Some cricket now on the Sports Mag Zone. Round three of the West Indies Championship is set to pull off on Wednesday with four matches. Gerard Marseille looks ahead. All matches around two of the West Indies Championship produced results with wins for Leeward Islands Hurricanes, Trinidad and Tobago Red Force, Jamaica Scarpeans and Windward Islands Volcanoes. The century's tally rolls with five of them coming from four players. However, there is still cause for concern as none of the West Indies Test batsmen were among them. But the standout was 23-year-old Leeward Islands Hurricanes opener, Mikhail Louis, whose pair of sentries in the win against defending champions. Guyana Harpy Eagles made him the 11th player West Indies first-class cricket to achieve the feat. On the bowling side, spinners now have five of the eight five wicket holes in the competition so far. Both Rikim Kornwall and Ashmi Ned took six in an innings in their round two fixtures. But 17-year-old Barbadians Zeshan Mottara was most lethal, grabbing a career-best seven for 108. The only bright spark with the ball in combined canvases and colleges 10 wicket loss to Jamaica Scorpions in Kingston. As it stands, Windward Islands Volcanoes lead the table with 42.4 points, registering two wins from as many matches. Captain Kimani Melia says his team is aiming to maintain that record. I've always told the guys over the past two games you know we aim for consistency not just over a period of two games but you know consistency right through consistency in everything we do. These two games are now history. We focus on what's in front of us which is the game against CCC. We come against them with the same intensity and same professionalism. Round three pits Leeward Islands Hurricanes against Trinidad and Tobago Red Force at Warner Park in St. Kittson Neves. While West Indies Academy moved to Coolidge Cricket Ground in Antigone, Barbuda to face Guyana Harpy Eagles. Jamaica Scorpions and Barbados prior clashing a marque matchup at Sabina Park while Windward Islands Volcanoes and CCC face off at Chenwin Park, both in Jamaica. Yeah terrific start to the tournament for the Windward Islands Volcanoes and their captain Kimani Melia says really led this Windward Islands Volcanoes team well and Lance and Mariah they must be pleased with the start they have to this competition. Yeah that's for sure. You know they have shown a lot of improvement in recent years and they are producing good cricketers. If you look at the West Indies set up at the moment and you look at players like Anthony's and Kevin Hodgson so on and players coming out of the Windward Islands you have to be pleased with the growth of a lot of their players and it's very heartwarming to see them top of the table at the moment and by so far such a huge margin. Yeah for quite some time we had too many of the bigger countries and if we were to put it that way dominating so it feels good to see them coming to the forefront and of course dominating. Yeah very much the case all right so Gerard mentioned Leeward Islands opener Mikhail Louis in his report as the standout batsman from Brown 2 and the 23 year old who is in his first season of CWI 4 Day Cricket joins us via Zoom. It's a pleasure to have you Mikhail I mean tremendous performance from you last week scoring two centuries in the game for the Leeward Islands. Terrific effort.  Good evening. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be on the show. From a young age I always dreamed of doing an interview on Sportsmax. We're happy to have you. Keep scoring those centuries and you'll be on. I will but it's a great feeling obviously for quite some time I felt like I had what it takes you know to play at this level and I would like to say thanks for the Leeward Islands cricket board for selecting me and granting me the opportunity to showcase my skills you know a lot of hard work a lot of sacrifices and I just happy that I was able to contribute towards a win for the Leeward Islands. Yes so many questions I have right but I want you to take us to the beginning I want an understanding of how you started this sport of cricket and your progression through the ranks to get you to this stage. From a young age my father he he's an adamant cricket lover you know he loves the game of cricket. Me I have two older brothers all of us played cricket. You know Joe Malawi he's the opening baller for the Leeward Islands and growing up we always play cricket. He ensured that we play cricket because he always felt like cricket is the best sport in Avenue for young men in the Caribbean. Yeah and then of course as what a 16 or 17 year old you were in the West Indies U19 squad that played List A cricket so you got an early opportunity there so played two matches and then nothing from you until this year. I know you were involved in the CPL at one stage as well. Talk me through that period the last what four or five years leading to where you are now. Yeah that was it was a trying period for me it was I would like to say it was difficult. I felt like you know I've been working hard and I would have liked a little more opportunities during this period but I can't complain you know this period it gave me the hunger though the desire you know. Yeah to really understand that when you do get an opportunity you got it with both hands and I'm just happy that that's what happened for me. Yeah here's a potentially tough one right. So there was an incident in the CPL in 2021 where you left the bubble and I understand you hadn't been given permission of course in difficult circumstances for you. Is there anything you can tell us about that experience and anything that you learned from that 2021 experience because you were ultimately sent home and unable to take part in the remainder of the tournament with the St. Kitts and Nevis Patriots. Well I wouldn't like to say much about this incident because I don't want to see any bad news or say anything bad about anyone in particular on the media but it was a bit of a misunderstanding and let's just leave that that it was a misunderstanding and I paid the price. Any lessons you learned from it? Many lessons man it was something that plagued me for years you know something that really hurt me and because I felt like this was an opportunity for me to really show that I have what it takes you know to perform at this level and you know without getting the chance to actually show my skills I was you know excluded. Yeah definitely Levan Lin and you're here now doing the interview that you wanted to do. Any plans or any goals you have for the rest of the competition? Yes I have some goals some personal goals I don't think it would be good for me to share them you know for all the other teams to hear my plans and goals. But you're already on the road to those goals I feel because you've already been picking up those sentries. Yeah you've seen your players in the Leewards camp players like Rakim Kanwal, Hainu Walsh, Jamai Hamilton, Casey Catti you know they really guide me and help me understand the game of cricket to a higher level and you know so I set goals that I feel like it's I'm capable of achieving. Yeah I don't think it's good for me to share them. Okay I respect that but how is it playing alongside your brother he's also been doing very well he picked up five for 29 a three for 41 also had four he scored 45. How is that for you? Well I mean I don't think there's a greater feeling of being in war with somebody you could trust a hundred percent you know somebody who really you know really have your back you know no bias no no no bad feelings towards you and in my first game you know I was a little nervous he came to me and he basically told me like you know you've been playing cricket all your life no need to get nervous no nothing new just go out there have fun continue doing your best you know and it's a great pleasure honestly to be on the same field as him because you know he's in my opinion he's the best cricket ever and I always tell him this. Great to hear young Mikhail talking about his big brother in that way you both went to Washington Archibald High School Mikhail can you talk to us about your high school experience and your brother being at the school even though he was several years ahead of you? Well in high school he was a superstar you know because he was he captained the cricket team he played national football he he did track and field for the national and the national circuit as well so you know he was really well known and people always saw me as his younger brother you know. So you got the benefits? Yeah so I was just giving my younger brother and I basically had a I was in the good books with the teachers you know the older students just for the mere fact that I was his younger brother. Mikhail know you're making a name for yourself and that's all that's important in 15 seconds quickly do you have aspirations of representing the West Indies which I'm sure you do do you feel you have the quality to get there and do well? Well I would like to say that I feel it's every young man's dream to represent the West Indies and the West Indian people I would love to play for the West Indies and I would this is something that I've working towards and hopefully I'll get there one day. Yeah Mikhail it's been an absolute it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you today and we wish you all the very best continue scoring those runs in the regional four-day tournament and you just never know opportunities are bound all the very best keep working hard. Thank you and thank you for having me on the show. Yeah it's an absolute pleasure Mikhail Lowe there from the Leeward Islands Hurricanes 11th West Indies player to be immortal in regional four-day cricket centuries and both innings of the last match let's take a break interactive to close.


Okay, before we start, why am I out of breath? I'm 24. Before we start this video I want to say that I'm not proud of my GPA by any means, but the reason why I got like a 2.7-something, the reason why I got a 2.7-something I think is so is a 7.6 or a negative 2.8. I don't know. We'll find out in a few minutes, but the reason why my GPA was under 3.0 was because I fell behind and then I had to play catch up and I wanted to graduate on time because one thing you'll learn is that when you have internship experience, companies care less about your GPA because your internships show that you can code and you build actual like applications that apply to real life and that outweighs GPA. And I also want to say that I would much rather have a 2.7-something in computer science and a 4.0 in business. Oh, and Jarvis made a video like this about a year ago and since YouTube still thinks me and Jarvis have related channels, I figured I'd make a video like this too. It'll just be a little bit longer. I wonder why they think our channels are related. You know that old saying, sees get degrees? Well, let me tell you, still holds true. Still holds true. So I just got to log in to my account. Okay, so we're going to start with fall semester 2014-2015. I went to a liberal arts school. So bear with me. Took public speaking, got an A minus. Nothing to talk about there. It's a computer programming in Java. That was a cool course. Funniest professor in the whole school taught this class. And you know, the funny thing about programming is when you first start, everything is just makes no sense. And the hardest question I ever got on a test for this course was to write a hello world a thousand times. You know, the funny thing about college is that some professors will make lab harder than the actual exam. So you end up being stressed out every single week, just to get a test that you could have probably passed if you never showed up. That actually was a good course. He actually had us build like a user interface. So that was my first exposure to UI, but I didn't know it was UI. He just called it a GUI. So I don't know if people still say that, but it was a GUI. Anyways, then I took English 1510, writing in rhetoric one, got an A, nothing to talk about. Oh, the computer programming in Java I got a B. You're gonna see this pattern that I got way better grades outside of the engineering college. So all right, I took college algebra. I actually never went to college algebra class. Like I never attended class. And the reason being is because I was taking that and Java at the same time. And college algebra was a flipped classroom. So you basically you did the lecture at home on the computer. And then in class you would do your homework. It would go over like professor will go over like the topic and then we would do homework. So there was no need for me to go to that class. And it was college algebra. I took PED 1004 jogging got an A minus a class you learn about your major. So you will have like a learning community leader who is like an undergraduate student that can help you with really anything that you need school wise in terms of like, Hey, what classes should I take? How's a college life and all that good stuff. And then you have like someone who was like a professor. We had like a PhD like student teach that class. But basically you just learn about your major. So I learned about computer science. I learned about like job opportunities. And also I learned about different organizations. I could join. So that was a good course. I had a really high GPA that semester. I think I finished with like a let's see here 3.5 a five. Okay, moving on to the next semester. It's going to get a lot more fun. I promise. Just bear with me. Great. Bring semester 2014 2015. Alright, I took PLTL for chem 1510. And that basically was like an extra like study session for chemistry 1510. Because okay, engineering likes to weed out people, especially people who don't want to work hard or people who just don't have a chance in passing. So you're going to find out real quick. And chemistry 1510 has a very high failure rate. As a matter of fact, in this class, I remember the professor saying, if you fail this, if you fail this first test, you have like a 15% chance of passing. Luckily, I got a C. So chemistry 1510 PLTL. There's no greatest called CR. I did all that work to the PLTL and all that good stuff and I ended up with a C. And then intro to computer science one. WP. Withdraw passing. And yeah, not good. But I withdrew from this class because I thought I wasn't going to pass. And I also was on scholarship when I was in undergrad. And I needed a 2.75 to keep my GPA. And I did not want to risk bringing that GPA down so early in my curriculum. So I decided to withdraw. And the reason why I was able to do that is because I had AP credit from high school that gave me enough credit hours, well, basically one credit hour short of the credit hours I needed for my scholarship, which was 15 a semester, which is 30 for the year. So I took coastal kayak. That was one credit hour that I needed to keep my scholarship. And that is rec 1142 interesting course. It was kind of interesting being around a lot of outdoor majors. I've seemed a lot less stressful for them. I took pre calc math 1300. Got a B plus. I mean, it was pretty calculus.  Trust me, way harder, especially because I took all my math and engineering college. So it was just harder in general. And then I took, check this out, EDEC 1600 intro to child. I think it's intro. It's called intro to child development. I got a minus in that everything was open book. And then yeah, that's pretty much spring semester 2014 2015. And I finished with a 3.027.  If you get a bad grade and a class that has a lot of credit hours, it's gonna really mess up your GPA. Even if that course means absolutely nothing compared to the other courses, you're gonna see a situation like that soon in a few minutes where I got like a C minus in a class that no employer cares about. But I got good grades and all the classes that get you the high paying jobs. So just to give you an example, you're probably wondering, like, how is my GPA only at 3.027 when I got a C, an A minus and a B plus and an A. Now, I just talked about how the credit hours play a huge role in your GPA. So that's C I got fundamentals of chemistry one, something that I use every day as a software developer. I got a C and it was for credit hours. So that destroyed my GPA because everything else was either three credit hours. There was another four credit hours, but C and a B plus ends up becoming like a B, which is a 3.0 or maybe even a C plus when you combine the two, I don't know off the top of my head. But I got an A in coastal kayaking was only one credit hour. So thanks coastal kayaking. Alright, moving on to sophomore year, right? One year underneath my belt. I'm good. Right. I feel confident. I'm going to get really good grades this semester. Actually, the semester wasn't that bad. Okay, so I took art 1100 remember liberal art school, seeing annoying visual art, three credit hours, I got a B plus. That class is actually harder than I thought it would be, especially if you only go to class 50% of the time, I got to be an intro to computer science one. So that class that I withdrew the previous semester, I took again with a different professor who was like my favorite, one of my favorite professors ever and ended up getting a B. I'm actually glad I retook that course because let me tell you the next computer science course, I got an even better grade. And for some reason, intro to computer science is so difficult. And I don't know why, but it actually ended up being like not even my highest computer science course grade and harder courses. I got better grades. Then I took math 2301, which was calculus also with a failure rate of like 54%. And I got a B minus. Shout out to Blake, he had a big homie. And I took five foundations of plant bio. So I took plant bio 1140. And I got a B. I think plant bio was weird. You like could take the second one first. But the first one is harder. We'll see once I look at what my grades were. I think junior year. I'll see like what that plant bio is called. But this is plant bio 1140. And I think the other one was 1130. But that class was cool. I actually enjoy plant biology. So let's see. For that semester, my GPA was a 2.978. I'm pretty sure I'm reading that right. Yes, 15 credit hours, total points, 44.67. And I didn't get one C and I had a 2.978. My QM was a 3.217, which was still good. Let me tell you, there's a hack. This is what you do. You don't have any internship experience and you're starting college. What you do, of course, there are pros and cons to this. Okay, I can't promise it'll work for you. But it could. Spring semester 2015, 2016. Wow. That seems so long ago. I took Intro to Computer Science 2. And I got a B. Okay, I lied. I thought I got a B plus in this course. But just think about it. I got a B in Intro to Computer Science 2. And I got a B in Intro to Computer Science 1, even though I took Intro to Computer Science 1 twice. I took it twice. Okay, I took Oh, this was a great course. CS 2650, professional and ethical professional and ethical computing. And it was two credit hours. And I got an A minus. Shout out Dolan. That course was fun. A lot of debate. It got real spicy, thanks to Jordan Ellsman. And then CS 3000, Intro to Discrete Structures. That class was, oh, okay, that class was tough. I wasn't doing really well in the beginning. I want to say I got like a 52% on my first test. That also was a pattern. I would always like, do really bad in the first test and then have to like, nearly do perfect for the rest of the exams. And just to get a B minus or B that happened a lot. Nice to be like, God, why can't I just get a C on a test? And then I could coast. I always would get like a D or an F. So I got a B minus in that course for credit hours. So multiply 2.67. I think 2.6. No, 2.6, a divided by four. Okay, I was right. Alright, so B minus is a 2.67. So you know that brought my GPA down. And then the next course I took calculus to that class was so difficult. You know how you take a new course and it's usually pretty pretty smooth the first couple weeks, you know, you can relax and you can chill. And you could joke around with your friends and lecture, not this course. You start on like chapter six and it was really difficult. No breaks in this course until really the end. I think when we got to vectors, that stuff was easy. But the beginning 98% of the course actually was really difficult. Management 2000 introduction and management 3.0 three credit hours and I got an A minus that class was cool. I learned about management. Wait a second, that was a business class and I didn't get an A. I got a B and A minus of two B minuses and an A minus. And that was a 3.4 3.0 41. So my GPA is continuing to fall. And now I have a 3.167. But guess what? I have a 3.167 going into junior year of college. As a matter of fact, when I'm applying to internships, in the fall of junior year, I still have a 3.167. I remember a company turned me down. They turned down on giving me an interview because I didn't have a 3.2. And then they hit me up on in the spring like, Hey, um, do you think you could bring it up to a 3.2? Or if you have a 3.15 or higher, we rounded up, they didn't tell me that when my GPA was a 3.167. Um, because it fell fall semester of junior year. But I was like, if you don't want me, because I have a 3.167 and a 3.2, I really don't want to work for you. Moving on to junior this is when it gets really spicy. So 2016 2017, I took four classes. And the first class CS 3560. This was a great course software engineering tools and practice. This was that course with a professor who worked at Microsoft. It was really fun. I learned a ton in that course about software tools and I was able to apply for like over 100 internships during that class period. Next was CS 3610 data structures for credit hours, which you guys think I got a D a C C minus a C plus. Ha, I got a B plus don't know how. Um, actually I do it's because of the curve and because I'm way better at understanding the mathematical side of computer science than programming. I just understand like data structures and time complexity more. Um, which I guess kind of makes sense. I got into this major because I thought I was solid at math. I'm actually not that good. Am I good at anything? I got a B plus and shout out to my advisor who taught this course. Um, it was cool. I learned a lot. I learned a lot and then I took 1024. This class made me so mad taught by one of my favorite professors. So I forgive him for giving me this grade, but I got a C minus an intro to computer engineering. Guys, this class was for credit hours. So yeah, there goes my GPA. I got an A minus and a three credit hour class, a B plus and a four credit hour class and then the C minus and a four credit hour class and then I took plant bio 1150. So I lied. The first one was 1140. I gotta be that class was really hard. Another example of like failing the first test and nearly getting a perfect and everything. Guys, I got a perfect. I got almost a perfect. I got the highest score in our practicum, which is basically a lab test where you're looking under a microscope. You're identifying things. I got the highest grade out of everybody. Even the plant bio majors. Why I couldn't just get a C on that first test in coastal rest of the semester. No idea. But anyways, intro to computer engineering killed my GPA. You think anyone is asking me about intro to computer computer engineering in my interviews? You think anyone cares? Sorry for moving this. You think anyone cares if I know how to do a car now a map? You think anyone cares? No, they don't care. But I got a C minus and it was four credit hours. So it killed my GPA 2.867. So looking back in my grades, they weren't as bad as I thought. Um, maybe I am a pretty smart whippers 2.867.  That's messed up. You know, that's crazy because that's the thing about college that I can't stand. GPAs don't matter because look at this. I got an A minus in software engineering's tools and practice. You know what I use now? You know what I use as a full-time software developer? I use git. You know what full-time software engineers use? They use git. You know where I learned git first? My internship. If you want a job at a Fang company or, you know, a high-paying software engineering job, you got to know data structures. And I got a B plus. This is crazy. I'm done with the rent. I'm going to move on to spring semester. So I'm going to change the term.  Yes, sir. Okay. So spring semester 2016-2017. All right. I took organization programming languages. I got a D plus and that class was really hard. The reason being is because I did bad on like a, like my first project was new here. Brought my grade down really bad. But this class was great. I actually built a compiler in this course and I actually did well on that project. That was really cool. So we, or no, I built my own programming language. That's what I built. I took CS4000. So that was parallel and web computing. I think distributed parallel and web computing. So that was three credit hours. I got a C. That class was crazy. We were all stressed out that semester. I took computer organization. That's EE3613. I never got yelled at more in college in my life than in that course. I managed to get a B minus. EE3954 which is microprocessors and microcontrollers. That class was super cool. Amazing professor. Super funny. B minus in that. I took English 30-30. So that's English for juniors. And remember, liberal art school. Well-rounded curriculum. Writing the professions. I got an A in that class. So it's three credit hours. So yeah. So let's change term to senior year.  I got to tell you what my GPA was that semester. That was a tough semester for me. So I got a 2.542 and I'm staying just above water. 3.008 QM GPA. Going into senior year. Woo! Thank you Jesus. Semester 2017-2018. Undergrad. Okay. So CS4040. Design and analysis. Algorithms. Oh algorithms. I got a D. Data mining and applied in life sciences. So that course was that was really hard. But I was exposed to Python. Machine learning. Random for random. Was a random force. Greedy algorithms. Understanding how to like do genomic sequencing. So I got to be in that class. Software design and development one. So that was senior design. The first semester. I got an A minus. And that grade was based off of I think how I did on some quizzes and then how well my customer said I was doing. Artificial intelligence. CS4800. Got a C plus. Marling was a tough grader. E3713. Probability and statistics. Man. Senioritis really really got to me in that class. I got to see. But the professor was great. So that semester I got a 2.4 15 credit hours. So my GPA came dropped to 2.922. I broke my heart because. Man I tell you I haven't had under 3.0 since middle school last semester. Pilers got a C. I remember C's get degrees. That was a really hard course. Bioinformatics tools. So that was like the soft. Skilled version of data mining. Data mining was a programming version basically bioinformatics. Bioinformatics tools was like learning just about bioinformatics and how to use tools to come up with I don't know bioinformatics stuff. I got to be in that course. Operating systems. That class. I want to say my our professor grade at like one project would be minus in that course really hard. Compilers we had to do it in C. For development design. Software design and development too. I got to be have no idea why that's basically basically the second half of senior design. Then I took geology 1010. For credit hours I got a C. I took geology to fulfill that last math science elective that you need if you get a computer science degree from a credit university and I took math 3200 apply linear algebra. 3 credit hours and I got a B. So that semester my GPA was a 2.57 and I graduated with a 2.87. Hey. Hey. An academic standing was good standing 2.87. I thought I had like a 2.76. That's my computer science curriculum. I have no idea if this video was done in 20 minutes or if it's going to be done in 10 minutes based on the editing. But um yeah if you like this at all give it a thumbs up. Comment down below some of your thoughts or some questions you have. Share it with someone who you think might benefit from it and as always I hope everyone has a blessed rest of your week and I'm praying that you and your families are staying safe and healthy. I'll see you all soon. This was a really fun video. Peace.