View allAll Photos Tagged leverage
Here’s another device that resurfaced recently as I did some searching deep in the lower compartment of my toolbox.
It is shown in its folded configuration. The handle (the straight part) swings a bit over 90 degrees into its working position. It’s another Snap-On brand item.
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Added hints:
1) Both the curved and the straight pieces have small tapered projections on them on their ends.
2) The tool isn’t of that much use other than for its intended purpose for which it is excellent.
3) Snap-On Tools still offer this item attesting to its continuing need. Their current one has a suffix ‘-A’ added to the catalog number apparently to reflect a slight comfort modification to the handle.
4) It is a leverage tool.
Photograph © Jill Maguire
Ever since Brady was a tiny puppy, we give him cardboard boxes to destroy. He's finally learned (or we've finally noticed) how he uses his body weight to give him leverage in destroying the boxes. You should have seen the disaster area he made with all the boxes and wrapping paper when we opened presents!
A remixed fan-favorite from the old EU.
The "next gen" version of the Hapes Consortium's premier capital ship, manufactured by Olanji/Charubah. Armed with two rotating rings of turbolasers, defensive triple ion cannons on both saucers, eight hangars of Miy'til starfighters, and sixteen pulse-mass mines to stop enemy ships from fleeing.
The current generation leverages advances in material science and structural engineering techniques to avoid the need for rotation support struts present in the iconic first generation.
An on-going side project I've been working on. Experimenting different ways to leverage my love for LEGO. #WorkInProgress
* All proceeds (minus STRIPS transaction fees) from digital guides goes to charitable organizations.
Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. © All rights reserved
Using Energy Efficiently
For all the energy required to propel a vehicle, not all of it makes it to the wheels. Some of it is lost to friction and heat. Vehicle inefficiency can be classified into two categories of losses: road-load and energy conversion. At Tesla, careful attention is given to both to achieve the maximum range. The Tesla Roadster leverages both an incredible electric powertrain and an engineer’s obsession with efficiency to be the most efficient production sports car on the market today.
London Drive the Future
A water pump (no longer functioning) with a long handle at the Château de Langeais in the Loire River Valley.
The Château de Langeais, to the right of the pump, is a medieval castle that was rebuilt as a château in the Loire region of France. It was restored beginning in 1886 by a wealthy citizen and later bequeathed to the Institut de France.
The romanesque L'église Saint-Jean-Baptiste is to the left.
Leveraging the intelligence of human stem cells, Amy Karle created Regenerative Reliquary a bioprinted scaffold in the shape of a human hand 3D-printed in a biodegradable PEGDA-hydrogel that disintegrates over time.
The sculpture is installed in a bioreactor, with the intention that human Mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs from an adult donor) seeded onto this design will eventually grow into tissue and mineralize into bone on the scaffold.
Credit: Florian Voggeneder
I was invited to spend two days at Europe’s most comprehensive IoT Event. This leading forum focused on case studies that show today’s Industry and Enterprises leveraging IoT technologies to transform their business through creating value and efficiencies.
The Internet of things (stylised Internet of Things or IoT) is the internetworking of physical devices, vehicles (also referred to as "connected devices" and "smart devices"), buildings and other items—embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity that enable these objects to collect and exchange data.
"Things," in the IoT sense, can refer to a wide variety of devices such as heart monitoring implants, biochip transponders on farm animals, electric clams in coastal waters,[16] automobiles with built-in sensors, DNA analysis devices for environmental/food/pathogen monitoring or field operation devices that assist firefighters in search and rescue operations.[18] Legal scholars suggest to look at "Things" as an "inextricable mixture of hardware, software, data and service". These devices collect useful data with the help of various existing technologies and then autonomously flow the data between other devices. Current market examples include home automation (also known as smart home devices) such as the control and automation of lighting, heating (like smart thermostat), ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC) systems, and appliances such as washer/dryers, robotic vacuums, air purifiers, ovens or refrigerators/freezers that use Wi-Fi for remote monitoring.
PACIFIC OCEAN (Oct. 21, 2018) Chief Sonar Technician William Imfeld, assigned to Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Shoup (DDG 86), watches a dog aboard a foreign fishing vessel during an Oceania Maritime Security Initiative (OMSI) boarding mission with the U.S. Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment 107 in the Western Pacific Oct. 21, 2018. The OMSI program is a Secretary of Defense program leveraging Department of Defense assets transiting the region to increase the Coast Guard’s maritime domain awareness, ultimately supporting its maritime law enforcement operations in Oceania. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communications Specialist 2nd Class William Collins III/Released)
I was invited to spend two days at Europe’s most comprehensive IoT Event. This leading forum focused on case studies that show today’s Industry and Enterprises leveraging IoT technologies to transform their business through creating value and efficiencies.
The Internet of things (stylised Internet of Things or IoT) is the internetworking of physical devices, vehicles (also referred to as "connected devices" and "smart devices"), buildings and other items—embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity that enable these objects to collect and exchange data.
"Things," in the IoT sense, can refer to a wide variety of devices such as heart monitoring implants, biochip transponders on farm animals, electric clams in coastal waters,[16] automobiles with built-in sensors, DNA analysis devices for environmental/food/pathogen monitoring or field operation devices that assist firefighters in search and rescue operations.[18] Legal scholars suggest to look at "Things" as an "inextricable mixture of hardware, software, data and service". These devices collect useful data with the help of various existing technologies and then autonomously flow the data between other devices. Current market examples include home automation (also known as smart home devices) such as the control and automation of lighting, heating (like smart thermostat), ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC) systems, and appliances such as washer/dryers, robotic vacuums, air purifiers, ovens or refrigerators/freezers that use Wi-Fi for remote monitoring.
24 July 2023, Rome, Italy - Special Events: Leveraging urbanization for food systems transformation. UN Food Systems Summit +2 Stocktaking Moment. FAO headquarters (Red Room).
Photo credit must be given: ©FAO/Riccardo De Luca. Editorial use only. Copyright ©FAO.
"When the whole universe weighs upon us there is no other
counterweight possible but God himself--the true God, for in
this case false gods cannot do anything, not even under the name
of the true one. Evil is infinite in the sense of being indefinite:
matter, space, time. Nothing can overcome this kind of infinity
except the true infinity. That is why on the balance of the cross a
body which was frail and light but which was God, lifted up the
whole world. 'Give me a point of leverage and I will lift up the
world.' This point of leverage is the cross. There can be no other.
It has to be at the intersection of the world and that which is not
the world. The cross is this intersection."
~ Simone Weil
Gravity and Grace
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*Photograph composition was created for the Our Daily Challenge topic:
A BALANCING ACT
Tigger on my tummy last night as I was trying to read (and save my fingers from her very sharp claws as she played). Later in the night, she managed to take off her tunic again. Her tunic is too long for her and sometimes her rear feet step on the back of the tunic, giving her leverage to walk out the front of it.
"Suguki" pickles barrel pressed with leverage and an weight stone.
Found at Kamigamo Shrine. Possibly a promotion exhibition by suguki makers.
Panasonic DMC-GF1
G 20mm F1.7
Christopher Blum, Managing Director and Head of Leveraged Finance, BNP Paribas
Steven Geller, Managing Director and Global Co-Head of M&A, Investment Banking, and Capital Markets, Credit Suisse
Ed Hammond, Senior Deals Reporter, Bloomberg
Drew Goldman, Global Head of Investment Banking Coverage and Advisory, Deutsche Bank
Melissa Sawyer, Partner, Global Head of Mergers and Acquisitions, Co-Head Corporate Governance, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
Kevin Sherlock, Managing Director and Co-Head of Global Financial Sponsors, Bank of America
Density Approximations for Multivariate Affine Jump-Diffusion Processes. Filipović, Mayerhofer, Schneider arxiv.org/abs/1104.5326 #q-fin
This is an illustration for Credit Suisse's strategic business design to leverage their existing investment banking business for the private banking business line...
Read about it on my blog about
Just prior, I was standing on the bag, pushing with my feet while pulling on the strap. It finally fit through the door of the bus.
An egg, and its shadow.
Got the idea for this last night as I was making a soufflé for dinner. Wanted to see if I could shoot a white egg against white in a way that it wouldn't just blend in, trying to leverage highlight, shadow, and texture to make that work. I think it worked out pretty well.
Set up some white foam core bottom, rear, and left, and balanced an egg on the bottom piece (yes, this is just balanced: no support, no salt, no glue, no trickery, just balance—and unlike the myth that circulates every so often, today sure ain’t the equinox.) Placed one strobe camera right, roughly level with the egg and firing left, and adjusted it to get the egg well exposed and casting a sharp shadow, which ended up being 1/64 power at 120mm zoom with the flash in center focus mode. Then tried to add some diffuse light with the second flash to make the background generally brighter. Tried a shoot-through umbrella first, but that wasn't diffuse enough, but bouncing off the ceiling in the kitchen worked. So, the second flash ended up right next to the first, but firing straight up, full power, 24mm zoom.
I did some tweaking in post: cropping, reducing vibrance a bit, boosted the definition on the egg itself a bit to emphasise texture, fixed some chromatic aberration, and cloned out the seam between the bottom and rear foam core.
Nikon D7000 w/Nikkor 18-200mm @ 120mm, 1/250s @ ƒ/13, ISO100. One SB-700 camera right firing left, 1/64 power, 120mm zoom center weighted. Second SB-700 camera right firing up for ceiling bounce, full power.
Left-overs from track works a crow sits next to the fence at Dronfield as 66723 passes working on 6H10 0556 Wellingborough Up Tc Gbrf to Tunstead Sdgs Gbrf
from Tim Robertson
Jun 15, 2014
Dear Friends and Family,
Last Saturday I found myself playing the role of fake teacher. I can now see the humor of the situation but it was not an experience that I had expected. I suppose I should have seen it coming the evening before, when my supervisor from the Office of Foreign Affairs invited me and my colleague out to dinner with some of her friends - the first time this has happened since I began teaching on the old campus. She began the occasion by giving us both a gift and then proceeded to apologize for not having done her job adequately in her responsibility toward us foreign teachers. I felt embarrassed for her since giving an explicit apology is quite uncommon in Chinese culture and, although true, it was surprising to hear her admit it. I quickly assured her that she had been very helpful and that she had a very difficult job with complicated situations. I wanted her to feel I was very sympathetic toward her so that she would be more inclined to get my papers filed and completed for my new job. I needed all the help I could get and I was desperate to use whatever leverage I had to move the process forward as best I could. Was this the answer to my prayers?
Midway through the elaborate dinner Greg and I were asked to help her friends to start a new English language school to prepare local high school graduates to attend college abroad. This was the real purpose of the invitation and by that time we had no choice but to agree to their request to help them recruit students and their parents. As it turned, out the next day the official college entrance exam (the infamous gaokou) was being held at local high schools so Greg and I were taken to various schools to pose as teachers for this new business. While there, I learned that I was not to identify myself as a teacher at the local college, since it would be illegal for us to work at a private school, not to mention a violation of our contract. We were just supposed to stand next to the local recruiters and lend a white face to provide prestige and credibility for a school that we knew nothing about. I don’t know how successful they were in signing up students but we went out in the morning and afternoon and were paid for our “services”. We were both relieved to find out that our participation was not needed on Sunday.
Hiring foreigners to pose as fake associates in a business is quite common in China (see link below) but it is was never something I aspired to do. In the past I have helped to give publicity for a local training school where I was actually teaching classes, and I expected that I would be doing somewhat the same this time as well. But the main motivation for me to accept was to curry favor with the college liaison in order to give her a personal reason to do her job on my behalf. She has been quite uncooperative and irritated with my frequent requests that she get the documents that are required by the system for this process to be completed. I am hoping she will be able to get the last document that I need to renew my resident visa, and then get a two week visitor visa to provide enough time for the process to be completed. This last official document should have been given to me a month ago but for political reasons too complicated for me to understand or explain, I will not get it until five days before my contract and resident permit expire. That is why I will need the additional two weeks to send the papers to Liaoning province, in order get my new Foreign Expert Certificate and resident permit.
Each of the ten documents so far have needed to be written, translated, signed and stamped by a different person, so it has been a real education for me to find my way through the bureaucracy without offending and irritating too many people by my persistence. If I do not get the last two documents all will be for naught and I will have leave the country in order to get a new entry visa, which can be quite expensive, time consuming and complicated. This is an education for me to see what Chinese must do on a regular basis and it illustrates the need to trade favors and use connections to get even simple things done. Being an outsider (non-Chinese) with no real connections or political influence, I am constantly bumping up against the inertia and indifference of officials who got their positions through family members in the party and feel no need to do anything to earn their salary. In fact, most of the time it is safer to do nothing so as to avoid irritating a superior or losing face by helping the wrong sort of people – like me.
This next week I will be doing final exams with each of my students by conducting an informal five minute discussion. It is challenging for me to ask different questions of each student based on their choice of one of the four movies we have used this semester. These students are masters at memorizing answers to questions if they know them ahead of time and, of course, they are expected to tell their classmates the questions that I have asked them. I find it difficult to evaluate their oral language skills objectively and consistently, especially when I am tired by doing so many within a limited time frame. My consolation is that I feel that I am getting better each time I do it, but I am keenly aware of my limitations. I also feel that I am responsible for their progress even though I have them for a total of an hour and a half each week, which is totally inadequate. But I do the best to work within the system, because, as my students often remind me, it may not be a good system, but it is the only one we have. So I feel compassion for them considering the system that they have work with and the disadvantages they have in this area of China.
Tonight I will go to my last English Corner and try to find something interesting to discuss. One of the recurring questions has been, “Why did you decide to come to work here?” This reflects the response to my question, “What is you biggest disappointment in life.” The most common response being, “having attend this college.” Anhui has the reputation of being the poorest province in China and has even been called “the Appalachia of China.” So it is understandable that they would want to know why I would want to teach at this college, which is in the poorest, most remote part of the province. They find it surprising when I say I like it here, but aside from it being true, I could hardly respond by showing lack of respect for the local conditions. I do like the students very much but many of them lack the motivation to study hard and do as little as possible. Perhaps this is true of a certain percentage of college students anywhere, but the standards here are dis-hearteningly low, with little incentive, since most everyone passes their classes no matter what.
To illustrate this point, I asked a graduating senior that I have gotten to know quite well and is known as a good student, “Did you download your senior thesis from the internet?” He became quite irritated at my question but not for the reason that I had expected. His response, “Of course I did, because 99% of all senior theses at this school are from the internet.” After looking over and reading his thesis, I was struck by how my research papers in high school had higher requirements, and that was before computers or the internet when I actually had to read books and type it on a manual typewriter with footnotes and bibliography. This was the only research paper required of these students in their four years of college. So it is easy for me to get cynical and feel I am part of a diploma mill as a fake teacher. But I take it as a challenge to give more than required and more than is expected out of concern for them as individual students and out of my desire to represent my Lord. Perhaps too out of a desire to feel that I am making a difference in their lives and they will remember and appreciate my efforts. Perhaps this illustrates my own overgrown ego to think I am doing something important and of eternal value.
Last week I went on a long bike ride with another foreign English teacher who is teaching at a local high school before returning to Iowa to begin her master’s degree. I took her on a ride I had made before, but this happened to be in the middle of the wheat harvest so the concrete road on top of the levee was covered most of the way with wheat stalks that were drying from the heavy rain a couple days before. As vehicles passed over them, the grain was loosened and would later be separated from the straw and the chaff. This is a normal part of the wheat harvest although it is technically illegal to use the road for drying and threshing of crops, but universally ignored. Perhaps we were of some assistance to the farmers as we rode on top of the wheat stalks, but it certainly took more effort and we often had to stop and manually remove the straw that had gotten wrapped around the gears and jammed the gear shift mechanism. This is an example of how the experience of riding over the same route can be completely different depending on the season and the activities of the local farmers. This week my allergies were activated by the smoke from burning straw in the fields - also illegal.
About a month ago I took a long ride with a couple of students and the fluff from the cottonwood trees was so thick in the air it seemed like a snow fall in mid-May. It was particularly enchanting because the “snowflakes” did not actually fall, but drifted on the breeze as far as the eye could see. I had to remember to close my mouth as I rode so as not to inhale the minute fibers causing me to stop from time to time to cough and clear out my throat. We paused to sit along the river bank in front of a local god house which had heaps of blown-up fire crackers and piles of ashes from the burnt incense. The door was locked but I could peer into the gloom and make out the three ancient ancestral gods of the village and three Buddhist images which seemed to have been recently added. It is always striking to me that one never sees a single image; there are always at least three versions of the main figure, and usually many more on the side, often stacked on top of each other. Like Lays potato chips you can never have just one, and the more the better, often numbering in the hundreds or thousands, like wallpaper. Such is the inflation factor of idolatry. One idol is clearly not adequate to represent a deity, but the more you have, the less the value. There is always a need for more, ad infinitum. So they have to build another temple and the process starts all over again, with many temples in a complex, and others under construction. Maybe it shows that they know the gods are fake too.
There is a small Buddhist nunnery a short distance from my apartment which I have visited on occasion. At present it is hard to find because it is in the middle of a massive construction site about a square kilometer. When I first arrived the area looked like a bombed out section of Berlin after WW2, covered with heaps of rubble and debris from demolished buildings except for the temple. Now, about 18 months later there are about a dozen high-rise apartment buildings rising out of the ground like erupting teeth in a toddler’s mouth. The work continues seven days a week and would be remarkable except this is going on all round the city and into the country side surrounded by farmer’s fields. This too would be remarkable except for the fact that this is going on all over China in every city and town, with no end in sight. “And now the day has come, soon he will be released, Glory Hallelujah! We’re building, building, building the perfect beast.” (Don Henley, 1984, Album: Building the Perfect Beast)
I have several good job offers to teach English in China so if you know anyone who is interested, I will be glad to send the job information and contact with a recruiter who will be happy to send a contract to start teaching in September.
Please pray during the next two weeks that all the paper work will be done on time and as I move to Dalian (more about that next time).
Thank God, he is in control!
Tim
Article on Fake executives: www.cnbc.com/id/37759560
Article on “naked officials”: qz.com/218369/beijing-is-having-a-hard-time-convincing-of...
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Surprise!
May 12, 2014
Dear Friends and Family,
Today I am thankful that I could take a shower, do laundry, wash dishes and flush the toilet again. Yesterday, instead of writing this letter as I planned I focused my attention and energy on getting the water turned back on to the foreign teacher apartment building and, thankfully I was successful. This saga begins about a month ago when I noticed an official looking message posted on my door. Being illiterate but curious, I asked a student to tell me what it was about. That is how I found out that the school had not paid the water bill and this was a warning that the water was about to be turned off. Fearing the worst I took down the paper and brought it to the foreign affairs office to see what should be done. The liaison officer told me not to worry, that it was no problem and it would be taken care of. So, having received these assurances I did not think much was amiss when there was no water this past Friday.
After a few hours I was informed by Greg, my upstairs colleague from the UK , that the water had been turned off due to non-payment by the college. So, at least they knew about the problem and it would be soon be resolved, I assumed. On Saturday morning I began to realize that all was not going as I’d hoped, so I began to send text messages and make phone calls, but got no response until around noon. We were told to go buy drinking water in the store, but that was not very practical for other necessities. Since I was going through a bout of intestinal difficulty, I was about to go down to the river next to my apartment and get a bucket of water to flush with. Eventually I got a return call telling me to meet a student who would take me to the appropriate office close by to make the payment and get the water turned on again. After an awkward discussion, several more phone calls, and my insistence that the water be turned back on to all of the apartments in the building, and not just my own, they told me it was the weekend but it would be done in an hour. After two hours I called again and was told that the man was waiting for the rain stop. Eventually, around 4:00 pm the valve was turned back on. Fortunately, I keep my bottles of boiled water numbered for just such an emergency.
This little vignette is somewhat symbolic of my relationship with my supervisor, whose job is to make sure that all goes according to contract. I am usually the one who goes to bat for the other foreign teachers, which often results in a satisfactory resolution of the problem but also gives me the reputation of a trouble maker and an agitator for change. I figure that if I am persistent, the unjust judge will eventually give me what I need, even if it produces the impression that I do not give proper deference expected by a Party member from an underling, and a foreigner to boot. So it was not a big surprise that the administration decided not to renew my contract for next year (coincidentally I found this out at the same time as I gave her the water bill notice). But perhaps being open about my faith, discussing taboo political topics with students, insisting on following the contract and persistent advocacy for my students were also contributing factors. My contract expires at the end of June, along with my resident permit that allows me to stay in the country. So I will need to leave China during finals week which does not give me a lot of time to finish oral exams, submit grades, pack my stuff and remove it from this apartment to my next location – wherever that may be.
When I wrote you last month I was planning on teaching here for another year with the same students that I have this year, so I was disappointed to have to change my plans rather abruptly. My job search via phone, internet and email for the last three weeks has resulted in four solid offers (so far) to sign a contract for next year. At the same time, I have been praying for guidance to lead me to the right place and make the best choice based on the limited information that I can get from various sources in English. As of yesterday, I have made a tentative choice as to which offer to accept and now all I need to do is sign the printed contract, scan it and send it back via email attachment. But I continue to pray for assurance before making a commitment for the next year.
This afternoon I am meeting a couple of students who asked to go with me for a long bike ride outside the city. It is somewhat ironic that I will be showing them the places where I have already gone but they have not yet ventured. Fortunately the steady rain of yesterday has given way to sunshine and a cool breeze. After that I will meet a man downtown, who has asked me to teach some of his students in an English school that he has recently started. I will see if his schedule will coincide with mine. It is another chance for me to learn by experience in a new setting and earn some pocket money. The opportunities that come my way are surprising and often don’t last very long for various reasons. So I hate to turn down the chance to try something new and challenging to my teaching abilities and add to my previous experience. Unfortunately I have only a few weeks left here to explore the possibilities.
At English Corner on Thursday I met several students from my class last year and invited them to come over to my apartment for a spaghetti dinner this evening. The students are always eager to try some American style food and “Italian noodles” are close enough to what they normally eat. I can buy the imported spaghetti and sauce at the local Walmart and cook it in my small kitchen with other local ingredients to make a reasonable facsimile. I only wish I could find Romano or Parmesan cheese to go with it since the supply that I brought back with me from the US has been consumed on previous occasions. I can fit 4 or 5 guests around my coffee table in the sitting room/office where I can play music from my computer and speakers in order to enjoy the friendship they have offered me. The students and teachers I have invited are always very gracious and complimentary toward my efforts at cooking since it is unusual for a man (and a teacher) to offer this sort of hospitality. They also enjoy looking around my apartment and relaxing in my back yard in the hammock among the palm trees and bamboo. Since the weather was great we ate outside until the darkness and bugs drove us back inside.
Now that I am facing a new future, I am eager to make the change to see other parts of China with different culture, climate and people. Perhaps I have become too comfortable and complacent here and I need to stretch my faith in God’s provision for me. I have chafed under the oppressive atmosphere at this college and I am hopeful that in time I will see his purpose in taking me through this valley. To paraphrase Paul in 2Cor 8-10: “I want you to be aware of the hardships I have suffered in this province in Asia. I was under such great pressure that at times I had lost hope. In fact I felt in my heart a sentence of death. But this happened so that I would not rely on my own strength, but on the Resurrection and the Life. He has delivered me from this hopeless situation and he will continue to deliver me. I have set my hope on his promise to keep on delivering me.” Hallelujah! God willing, I will go to the city of Hangzhou in September and spend the next year there teaching English, earning my salary and sowing seeds. (James 4:13-15) More on that next time.
I am finishing my series of classes on the movie Titanic. It has provided me an opportunity to point out many expressions of faith in the plot, dialogue and the music. For example, when Jack says “I am on God’s good humor.” I interpret that as an expression of his reliance of God’s provision for the future. When he says “Life is a gift and I don’t plan on wasting it,” it indicates that God is the giver of life and we have a responsibility to “make it count” for him. The popular theme song also expresses faith in an afterlife. “There’s nothing I fear, I believe that the heart does go on.” Faith is also expressed in the church service on the last day before the sinking and in the prayer of the priest as he quotes from Revelation and looks forward to “a new heaven and a new earth.” Jack can also be seen as a savior since he gives up his life for Rose and she says, “But now you know that there was a man named Jack Dawson and that he saved me in every way that a person can be saved.” There is also an example of lack of faith when Cal says, “God himself cannot sink this ship.” Director James Cameron has said he intended to depict the end of the world in microcosm. While not exactly the gospel, these offer an opportunity to discuss religious topics in class to students who have been indoctrinated with atheism. I pray that from such small seeds, faith can grow.
The influence and popularity of American culture is evident everywhere and hard to miss. From the never ending basketball games that occupy the fourteen courts and backboards that I see every day on my way to classes, to the popularity of faded jeans and tee-shirts emblazoned with fake designer brand names and other random English words. I am the only one on campus who wears shirts and hats with Chinese characters on them. That fits my status as a foreigner trying to honor the host culture that has shifted dramatically in the past couple of decades. Many of my students have watched more American TV shows and movies than I have (since they are freely available to download from the internet), and they know the characters names and personalities too. (Curiously, the most popular line from Titanic in China, which I frequently hear is, “You jump, I jump.” In the U.S. it is “I’m the king of the world!”) When I ask students what their dreams are, the most common response is, to go to America to study, or just to see places they have seen on their video screens. One of my quirks is to try to decipher the English words and letters printed on clothing since it is somewhat altered from the original, either intentionally or in error. Often the words and letters seem to be chosen without rhyme or reason. Most Chinese have no idea what the English words mean, just as many Americans have no idea what the Chinese characters say on their clothes and accessories. So are these people victims of fashion or willing participants in a bizarre cosmic joke? Either way, it brings a smile to my face.
Last month I mentioned that my mother’s has cancer is no longer treatable after over 20 years of successful treatment and she is expected to live only few more weeks. I had accepted that I may not see her again in this life, but since then she has regained some strength and I am hopeful that I will be able to see her after finishing this semester. I am still exploring options for how to spend the two months of July and August between spring and fall semester. I am open to suggestions and offers of hospitality. Perhaps this is a time to try to reconnect with members of my family whom I have not seen for many years.
Thank-you for praying with me,
Tim
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On Saturday, April 12, 2014 2:15 PM, "robertsontim66@gmail.com" wrote:
Dear Friends and Family,
I am have been experiencing internet connection problems for several days so I am not sure when I will be able to send this off, but as always, I do what I can and hope for the best.
Now that I have started my second year, classes are easier because I am able to reuse some of the lesson material that I created last year. I have to adapt them to my students on this campus who have lower English skills and don’t seem to be quite as motivated, but I enjoy the challenge. My students have become somewhat accustomed to my unorthodox teaching methods and my expectations of them. After many weeks I have gotten them to put away their mobile phones, and text books, and take notes in a notebook. That is the bargain I have struck with them, since they would much prefer using American movies as a source of dialogue than using their text, which is designed to teach British English to students in the UK. I have just finished a three week series using the Disney/Pixar video of Brave, which focuses on a mother daughter relationship and whether to follow tradition. Since 90% of my classes are made up of young women who are the first in their families to go to college, this is something they can all relate to on a personal level.
Next week I plan on starting a series on Titanic since it is a popular movie in China and many of the students have already seen it. Hopefully the level of difficulty will not be too high but I feel it is better to use real actors than animated characters, which I have used so far. I also choose popular songs to go with the plot of the stories from ones they have requested and written down for me in the attendance book that I pass around for them to mark. It usually takes three times before they feel ready to sing along, but repetition and review is part of the learning process. I also use short video clips of OMG!Meiyu that are produced by Voice of America and teach authentic language used by young people in American pop culture. The slang, idioms, and figures of speech are presented by a cute young American named Bai Jie (Jessica Beinecke) who speaks fluent Mandarin and has a large following on Weibo - the Chinese version of Facebook/Twitter. She is much more attractive and interesting to watch than me, so I use a couple of her three minute videos each week to help explain expressions related to the dialogue from the movie. I also find pictures and use music videos on the internet to help illustrate new concepts and settings. The combination of multi-media helps to produces images, sounds and scenarios so that I do a minimum of explaining and oral instruction. In addition, I make a list of new words and idioms from the script that I put up on the screen for them to write in their notebooks, along with the slang expressions, which I write on the chalk board.
After I show selected scenes from the movie with subtitles, and have them read the parts from the script (which I transcribe and project onto the screen) in groups. I then ask some of them to perform it in front of the class from a printed copy of the script, while the rest read along from the screen. In this way, they go over the same material three times. The visual images, pronunciation, context and plot are much better in communicating the meaning of the language than a textbook or a lecture on grammar or traditional memorization. This technique allows me to engage all of the students in the class all of the time without intimidation or embarrassment, since “losing face” is such a huge deterrent for them to speak up in class. I usually end the class by drawing parallels between the characters and situations in the movie to China and the students themselves. Thus, they learn English as well as how we share many things in common on a cultural and personal level. I teach each lesson eight times but I have to adapt and modify it each time according to how the students respond. By the end of the week I have the bugs worked out so that I can move seamlessly between the various programs and media in the right order and within the given time frame. The many hours spend preparing, finding and downloading pay off with greater enthusiasm and participation in the classroom.
I have started wearing short sleeved shirts as the weather warms and the bright green of new leaves appear on the various kinds of trees, especially the gingko and the dawn redwoods. The cherry blossoms are out and leaves are emerging on the bamboo and palm trees that I planted in my back patio area. I have strung up the hammock (that I bought in Qingdao last summer) between a tree and the concrete wall. I find it a relaxing way to end the day gazing up at the birds, moon and stars as they make their way through the tree branches in the evening. I listen to music with headphones or play my harmonica while tugging on a wire to keep swaying gently in the evening breeze. This reminds me of the many hours that I spent reading and relaxing at my home in the jungles of Peru many years ago, although I do miss the grand sweep of the Milky Way visible in the southern hemisphere.
The weather is also ideal for long rides out into the country side where the winter wheat is over a foot tall and the yellow rape seed is blooming in the fields and garden plots. The birds are singing to their mates, especially the black and white magpies which are as big as ravens and build onto their huge nests each year in the tops of the cottonwood trees. The air is full of the drifting fluff from the ever present cotton woods which is the primary tree planted for wood. On a recent ride I stopped to watch some men and women operating a large lathe to peel sheets off the logs, which are then cut put on racks in the yard to dry in the sun before being trucked off to be laminated. I was impressed at how much human labor was used and how small the logs were – usually less than a foot in diameter. The operators were happy to let me ride around and watch them at work, and even offered me a smoke. It was the first time I had observed this process although I have often seen the machinery and products along the road from a train or bus window. The physical exercise and the peaceful landscape, crowded with farms and villages give me a chance to see new aspects of life in this area which are good for body, heart and mind.
I have been gradually broadening my range of dishes that I can cook in my rudimentary kitchen equipped with only a hotplate, a microwave oven, a rice steamer and an electric tea kettle. As a result, I am finding it harder to shed the extra weight I gained during the winter when I spent many days without physical activity due to the weather and my travel itinerary. Perhaps I am also burning less calories in nervous energy that inevitably came with adapting to a new culture, profession and lifestyle. It seems I am continually moving around the cycle of tension, frustration, cynicism and complacency as a result of trying to solve various problems. I have learned to value the small progress in various areas from the classroom to my apartment and add to my knowledge of this strange and fascinating place called China. For instance, after eight months living in this apartment I was finally able to get my toilet bolted down to the floor. Now if it would only flush properly, stop flushing and refill the tank automatically! Each small victory encourages me to keep pushing for improvements on a personal or professional level. Although it does not seem like much, over time it adds up to significant progress.
Another interest I have is in teaching at a local pre-school one afternoon each week. I have finally realized that kids of this age are not impressed with technology and I have switched my focus to high touch. When I enter the room I go around to shake hands and greet them individually. At first, many were reluctant to extend their hands to me, but now they approach me and shake enthusiastically. When I leave at the end of class, I am surrounded by a crowd of three foot tall minions asking to shake hands and get a hug. Breaking the physical barrier also encourages them to speak and sing and dance with me even without the music and video on screen. Since most of my college students had never met or talked with a foreigner until my class, it is encouraging to see how quickly and easily three, four and five year-old children have adapted to me as their teacher – often, faster than college students. In China the old ways change very slowly but once the change has come on a personal level of experience, there is no going back. Building up familiarity, respect and credibility takes much time and effort, but it is the only way to open minds and hearts. In the same way I swing back and forth between empathy and impatience with my students and the pace of learning in the classroom, but the progress is evident and inevitable if I do not grow weary and lose heart.
There are many pleasant elements to life on campus, like the strains of instrumental melodies leaking out of the music building close to my apartment, and the family of feral cats that I feed on my back patio. (Thanks to Greg, my upstairs neighbor who buys their food.) They have gotten used to me giving them food and water, hanging up my laundry and hanging out in my hammock. So much so, that if I do not close my door, some of them will venture inside looking for more food. Somewhat less enjoyable is the chanting that comes from athletic field and vocal warm-ups of voice lessons starting around 6:00. I have gotten used to the frequent honking and the sound of fireworks going off at all times of the day or night. The students’ attire is also changing with the seasons and I am becoming accustomed to seeing short girls in high heels and short skirts with long straight black hair. They enjoy shopping for the latest fashions in the stalls and street markets as well as the large department stores. So, they are more attractively and fashionably dressed than us fashion-challenged foreign teachers. To compensate, I try to wear a different hat to class each week to go along with the lesson – another visual aid.
Along with these bright spots comes news of my mother who has recently returned home from the hospital and has been put on hospice care. The medications that she has been taking for the last twenty-five years are no longer effective and the cancer has spread from her breast to her lungs, diaphragm and liver. Unfortunately the cancer meds have also lowered her resistance to infection resulting in her stay at the hospital and taking high dosages of antibiotics. Her doctor estimates that she may have only two months left. I am trying to decide if I should return to Michigan to see her one last time, or for the funeral - as I did for my father about 18 months ago. I knew that when I visited her in early February that it might be the last time that I would see her. My oldest sister and her husband are there to help with another sister coming later from Canada to provide in-home care. The college administration has given me permission to go but I do not look forward to the time and rigors of travelling 10,000 miles there and back again, not to mention the costs. My younger sister has just begun to teach at an adult English training school in Shanghai and my older brother will soon be leaving for a job in Africa, but there will be many other family members who will be able to be there. So I am waiting to see what I should do and asking God for wisdom and guidance.
I hope you will pray along with me in this and many other matters that I face.
Looking forward to the resurrection,
Tim
= = =
Tim Robertson's posts about his time as an English teacher in Anhui at the Fuyang Teachers College are uploaded at: www.flickr.com/photos/ray_mahoney/9114089397/in/photostream, www.flickr.com/photos/ray_mahoney/8302698850/in/photostream, www.flickr.com/photos/ray_mahoney/14217075257/in/photostream; www.flickr.com/photos/ray_mahoney/9012874492/
ZHANJIANG, China (June 12, 2017) Sailors aboard the guided-missile destroyer USS Sterett (DDG 104) man the rails as the ship arrives in Zhanjiang for a scheduled port visit. Sterett is part of the Sterett-Dewey Surface Action Group and is the third deploying group operating under the command and control construct called 3rd Fleet Forward. U.S. 3rd Fleet operating forward offers additional options to the Pacific Fleet commander by leveraging the capabilities of 3rd and 7th Fleets. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Byron C. Linder/Released)
April 10, 2019 - WASHINGTON DC - 2019 World Bank/ IMF Spring Meetings. Beyond Uncertainty: Leveraging Trade to Reduce Poverty. Leaders address how increased protectionism and uncertainty impact the poor and what developing countries can do to ensure a future where trade benefits everyone. Kristalina Georgieva, Chief Executive Officer of the World Bank; Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund; Roberto Azevedo, Director-General, World Trade Organization; Stephanie Flanders Moderator - Senior Executive Editor for Economics at Bloomberg News and Head of Bloomberg Economics. Photo: World Bank / Grant Ellis
Matthew Grey Gubler from “Criminal Minds” and Beth Riesgraf from “Leverage” at the 2012 College Television Awards hosted by the Academy of Television of Arts and Sciences Foundation.
Ertharin Cousin, Executive Director, United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), Rome speaking during the Session: Leveraging Data Insights at the Annual Meeting 2017 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 18, 2017
Copyright by World Economic Forum / Sikarin Thanachaiary
BRIEFING WITH SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE FOR GLOBAL PARTNERSHIPS ANDREW O’BRIEN; DEAN KREHMEYER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA DARDEN SCHOOL OF BUSINESS INSTITUTE FOR BUSINESS IN SOCIETY; MATTHEW SWIFT, CO-CHAIRMAN, CO-FOUNDER, AND INTERIM CEO OF CONCORDIA; AND NICK LOGOTHETIS, CO-CHAIRMAN AND CO-FOUNDER OF CONCORDIA
MODERATOR: Thank you again for coming to the New York Foreign Press Center. Since everyone’s made their introductions, I’m not going to go introducing our speakers by name. But all of you have their bios. Today’s briefing is on the record. After our guests make remarks, we’ll open the floor to questions. Please state your name and your media affiliation before you do. And with that, let me turn it over to Special Representative O’Brien.
MR O’BRIEN: Good afternoon, everybody. As I mentioned, I’m Drew O’Brien, and I am Secretary John Kerry’s Special Representative for Global Partnerships at the U.S. Department of State. And our office is, obviously, delighted to share this platform today with the Darden School from the University of Virginia and Nick and Matt from Concordia. I’m going to talk a little bit about the importance of partnerships at the State Department and within the U.S. Government and then – and that will sort of help us frame what we’re doing here with the P3 Impact Award.
So our office, the Secretary’s Office of Global Partnerships, was launched in 2009, and we look at it as the entry point for collaboration between the public sector, the private sector, civil society, NGOs, universities. We’ve talked a lot about universities over the years, so that’s why we’re particularly delighted that Darden is with us in this and civil society. Under President Obama, public-private partnerships have become a priority for the U.S. Government, also under Secretary Kerry. They’re a critical mechanism for strengthening our diplomatic connections, enhancing our development work, promoting economic growth, and safeguarding our long-term security as a nation.
Partnerships bring together the best of the public and private sector resources to leverage the creativity, innovation, and core resources of partners for greater impact and to create a holistic, sustainable solution to critical challenges.
We were – our office was created to serve as a resource for the rest of the State Department in learning how to do diplomatic and development work through partnerships. And we manage a number of these things on our own, a number of these partnerships on our own, supporting the tech ecosystem in Sub-Saharan Africa, in Southeast Asia, to – we’re the office, the point person for diaspora populations within the U.S. Government, to using mobile technology to help people in remote parts of the world. So we do sort of a number of different things. Tomorrow, we’ll have a big gathering on a virtual educational exchange at the Aspen Institute that will connect students and teachers in the Mideast and North Africa with students and teachers in the United States.
So what we’re doing – we all do pieces of this work, and we’re here together these next few days – what I call spread the partnership gospel to others. We’re recognizing great work that’s done by our partners and organizations around the world. And that’s what got us to this P3 Impact Award with both Darden and with Concordia. We’ve created the award to recognize partnerships that are changing the world in most impactful ways. This collaboration helps to better understand the mechanisms and best practices of a modern P3. So this isn’t just sort of saying wow, aren’t they creative, aren’t they the best. This is actually looking at the pieces that go into it, recognizing there are pieces that can be employed other places toward success.
Judges from each of our organizations read over 50 applications this year and assessed them on each partner’s structure, impact, innovative features, and scalability. And I will tell you, they were – I mean, I don’t like to be – you have these big competitions, everybody’s a winner.
MR KREHMEYER: Right. (Laughter.)
MR O’BRIEN: But everybody is a winner, because this is – in a lot of ways, this is cutting edge of what government’s doing, and we’re very fortunate that we’ve got some very willing and eager partners and enthusiastic partners in the private sector with Concordia and Darden.
So I want to give my colleagues a chance to talk. I think we’ll start with Dean, give a little UVA overview.
MR KREHMEYER: Thank you. Thank you. Let me sort of add the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, delighted to once again partner with both the U.S. Department of State and Concordia in delivering the P3 Impact Award.
Drew sort of mentioned the finalists, and to say they were impressive and all the applications were impressive is kind of an understatement. What we’re seeing and what we are seeing through last year’s applicants and this year’s applicants is that businesses absolutely and increasingly are joining in public-private partnerships to address global challenges. They are providing a far-reaching impact on the communities and societies in which they operate.
What we’re also seeing at the Darden School is this is of interest to our students. This is of interest to students who are going to be the emerging leaders, tomorrow’s leaders, who are going to be engaging in these public-private partnerships. And it’s important that they see this as one of the mechanisms, whereby when they are leading organizations and when they are leading business organizations, that they are looking broadly at how do these organizations really provide value to all of the stakeholders they serve. One of the ways they do that is through the public-private partnerships, and there’s no better examples than the finalists we received.
One more note I’ll make about the P3 Impact Award is certainly it’s an award, and we had great applicants. The team did a super job of selecting finalists. But one of the important things about the award is yes, recognizing the finalists and recognizing who was selected as the winner of that, but also important and maybe more important is capturing the insights and the leading practices that come from those applications, that come from those finalists and that come from the winner, and how can we, through the report that we will issue tomorrow, share those insights and leading practices, so that other public-private partnerships or those that are thinking about engaging in public-private partnerships can utilize those learnings to be more effective in their own realm and sphere.
So let me just wrap up before – and I’ll turn it over to Matt and Nick – and sort of why is this important to the Darden School? The Darden School – our mission is to improve the world by developing and inspiring responsible leaders and advancing knowledge. And I can think of very few examples that would better illustrate that than recognizing these public-private partnerships – not just recognizing them, but also working with them to take the knowledge and sharing it broadly to have impact.
And with that, I’ll turn it over to Nick and Matt.
MR SWIFT: Thank you very, very much, and first let me say on behalf of Concordia how honored we are by the partnership with the University of Virginia Darden School of Business and the U.S. Department of State. This is a partnership that has really grown organically, come together very well, and it is one of the things that myself and Nick are most proud of as far as what we do at Concordia.
Concordia, as an institute, does three things. We offer programming, primarily most known for our annual summit held every year during the UN General Assembly, and Nick will talk a little further about our annual summit, which is coming up starting tomorrow. The second is our annual Partnership Index, and the third is our campaign series, which is really where we’re taking a lot of the public-private partnerships that are being built within the Concordia community, and we are helping make those have better social impact.
But let me talk to the first part, because that’s how it connects really to the award, the raising awareness piece. Concordia, we are proud to say, we strive to be one of the leading advocates for public-private partnerships in the world. And as part of that, our global platform and the community that we have built is a place to highlight some of the best practices and some of the best, frankly, public-private partnerships in the world, and there’s no better way to do that than with the annual P3 Impact Award. I have to say I was very pleased and proud of the number of applicants that came in this year, but also the quality of the applicants that came in this year. The process to judge and determine who was the winner was a challenging one, because all of them were exceptional. And what we hope that this award can do is show leaders of both the public and private sectors the real value of building their own public-private partnerships together.
So with that, I’ll pass to Nick.
MR LOGOTHETIS: Thanks, Matt, and I’ll just – my name is Nick Logothetis, co-chairman and co-founder of Concordia along with Matt. I just want to add my thanks to Dean and the University of Virginia and Drew and the team at the State Department. I’ll just talk a little bit about our fifth annual summit, which is coming up tomorrow and on Friday.
So Concordia initially started as a yearly summit, which then grew to a multifaceted organization, but our summit has always been our flagship event. And this year we’ll have about 1,000 people. We’ll have over 20 current and former heads of state. We’ll have some leading CEOs from companies Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, General Mills, Hershey’s, amongst others. And we’re very particularly excited that this year we’ll have remarks from Joe Biden, the Vice President of the United States, at the end of the day tomorrow.
So as we continue to expand Concordia, we also have developed partnerships with organizations that are real experts in what they do – organizations like the Atlantic Council, like the Rockefeller Foundation, like others. And so we have individual sessions with those different organizations throughout the day.
So we hope that you’ll be able to join us tomorrow and the next day, or one of the days. Will Hummel in the back there is working with us on our press outreach, and so we’d welcome you to come and see and experience what Concordia is about. And I just wanted to say thank you again.
MR O’BRIEN: I think if I could add two more cents about both partners – University of Virginia, the Darden School, where there’s – the colloquial expression is “Talk the talk, walk the walk,” and they do. As Dean said, you will see what we’re talking about today is infused in their students, it’s infused in their learning life.
And that makes a big difference, because what I think we’re trying to do – the State Department angle of this – we are trying to help people around the world prepare for an economy that’s 21st century and beyond. I – different parts of where I go in the world, I use the metaphor that we’re trying – a lot of places 100, 150 years ago had a shipyard or a big factory in their town, small town, big city. They had something that everybody went to every day and went to work. That’s how they paid their mortgage, fed their families. Those don’t exist anymore; we all know that. There are large companies, but those don’t exist. We are trying in a lot of ways – I use the metaphor, we’re creating the shipyard of the future. And it’s at people’s kitchen tables, at their home offices. It’s at a small business park in a non-urban area. It’s everywhere. And that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to help people think differently.
Concordia. If you have not been to the Concordia summit, my opinion – my opinion – it’s the premier private sector – public-private sector event in the world. I mean, I go to a lot of events. This is a room loaded with excitement, it’s a room loaded with people that are eager to talk about the issue. So we are very fortunate to have this great university partner and this forum that this team here at Concordia’s put together. It is – if you get a chance to go, go. You will be completely overwhelmed. So --
MR SWIFT: Thank you. Thank you.
MR O’BRIEN: No, and it’s true. It’s very accurate.
Questions? I know that you joined a little bit late.
QUESTION: I’m sorry.
MR O’BRIEN: That’s quite all right.
QUESTION: Sorry about that.
MR O’BRIEN: No, no worries. We can talk to you a little bit afterwards if you’d like to. Questions?
MODERATOR: The floor is open for questions. State your name and media affiliation.
QUESTION: I don’t even know where to start. I’m really overwhelmed. This is really very powerful and insightful. So my name is Bukola Shonuga; I’m with the African Views Framework. And I attended a few events this week with the president of Nigeria in town. And they’re looking for foreign partnership – for foreign partnerships and foreign direct investment and so on, and also looking to see how they can harness (inaudible).
So when you talk about best practices, Nigeria can be a case study of corruption and lack of adequate resources. Even when you look at a university education in the last 30 years, that’s an issue that (inaudible) taking over the government right now. So there are no existing industries for graduates to directly work when they graduate and come out of the universities. So I think that finding a way to private partner with this group will be one thing that we would like to recommend to the Nigerian Government, like let’s – it’s a new day. So if you’re talking about that much population and you’re looking to have youth employment or reverse, you have to first talk about best practices.
So it’s a long-winded, but my direct question is – and I’m really sorry that it was long-winded – will you take Africa in this context? What are your views of what is happening in Africa towards best practices, and how they can better utilize their resources to be the 21st century climate that it should be? And what would you – in terms of partnership with African countries, what would that look like to you?
MR O’BRIEN: Would you like me to – it’s a very good question. And – so President Obama in particular has placed a lot of emphasis on our outreach to Africa as a U.S. Government for what is now amounting to a good chunk of his both terms. And there’s – not only is it important in a geographical sort of way, but the reality is the world’s youth population is in Africa, and it will obviously continue to be that way. So it’s – the world population will be very Africa-centric in the years ahead. Africa has the potential to be the world’s bread basket. Africa is a place where people are enthusiastic about entrepreneurship and education, and I can talk a little bit about something our office does there.
There are – there’s a lot of opportunity there. It’s a matter of harnessing – doing sort of what we’re doing; making sure that government is focused on bringing the private sector to the equation, working with universities, working with other – we do a lot of work with hospitals and health centers. We – you have to be creative about this, so I think you have to be very open-minded about it, because government – and I’m talking about the United States Government – but government at one time was seen as fixing everybody’s issues here, right. If you look at sort of the post-war – post-World War II economy, U.S. Government did a lot for people, particularly after the Depression; not even the World War, but after the Depression. And that sort of – that influence has waned a little bit. You can see it in our political climate. And the direct foreign investment that we used to give away as a country has declined sort of steadily too.
What’s the solution? The solution is public-private partnerships. It’s bringing the private sector into the equation. Now, that could mean a Fortune 500 company; it could mean a Fortune 50 company. But I think for the work we’re doing, it’s getting people to think differently about how this equation works, and it’s finding young entrepreneurs, people who have great ideas, people who haven’t had the opportunity to have a formal education who may need that. And how do we make those links, and how do we show people who are – everybody’s going to – not everybody, but a lot of people make their living around the world, like I said, at their kitchen table, in their home office, at a small business park. Nobody should be left behind because that’s how the world economy is headed.
MR LOGOTHETIS: And just to add, what Concordia tries to do is not be an advocate for business and not be an advocate for government. We’re an entirely nonpartisan, nonpolitical organization. We try and bring the two groups together to help them better understand one another, to help them work more efficiently together, but also, as Matt said, I think, to learn from other experiences. Because there are unique ways to do business in different parts of the world, but there are many things that are similar. And so that’s what we try to play a role in.
Specifically as it relates to Africa, I’ll be honest with you: Concordia has not been as strong in Africa as we would like. We hope that’s changing. This year we have our first African CEO representative, a gentleman by the name of Jabulane Mabuza, who’s the CEO of Telkom in South Africa. And we’re very excited about that and hope to build upon what – he is on a panel to talk about youth unemployment – and build upon what sort of comes from that panel.
MR SWIFT: And I will also say we have a session entirely dedicated to public-private partnerships and health, focusing on Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon, which is a very important initiative from the State Department as well. So we will be – this will be the first year that we’re doing programming focused on the continent, and specifically in the area of health.
MR O’BRIEN: There’s – so we do – we have – our office has a program called LIONS@FRICA, which makes linkages between entrepreneurship communities in the United States – Cambridge, Massachusetts; Silicon Valley; Charlottesville, Virginia; and – just to name a few of sort of the – Miami – places we work with in connection with aspiring entrepreneurs, and takes them through trainings over the course of five to seven days on how to pitch a product, how to talk to an investor – soup-to-nuts entrepreneurship crash course. We do that. The Global Entrepreneurship Summit was just on the continent this past year. There’s a lot happening there. There’s a lot of things to be excited about.
QUESTION: Thank you.
MR O’BRIEN: Yes, sir.
QUESTION: Bingxin Li from People’s Daily in China, but I’m based at the UN. Talking about the Africa – the partnership in Africa, China has a lot of investment in Africa, and there used to be a lot of state-owned companies there, but now there are more and more private companies in Africa, and also as well as the U.S.
MR O’BRIEN: Right.
QUESTION: Mainly, they’re private companies. How – is there a possibility of U.S. and China partnership in helping African countries to – especially in the industrialization of them, (inaudible)?
MR O’BRIEN: I think one of the things that actually – of the equations – and I’m sorry to jump on this question, gentlemen --
PARTICIPANT: Please.
MR O’BRIEN: One of the equations we see that works very well is when we do have a multilateral or even a bilateral arrangement with another country on a particular issue area. We see this work very well with health and health care. We see it work very well – I mentioned the event we have tomorrow down in Washington at the Aspen Institute of virtual educational exchanges, because it’s multilateral. It’s the United States Government working not only with the private sector and NGOs, but also with other governments.
So I would say the direct answer is yes, and it’s a matter of doing what we’re doing here, which is trying to find the pieces to put together for success.
MODERATOR: Yes.
QUESTION: Vasco De Jesus Rodrigues, I’m from Vasco Press Communications in Brazil. Any thoughts on the Brazilian situation with the economy --
MR O’BRIEN: So --
QUESTION: -- on the low side? Okay, please --
MR O’BRIEN: Anyone want to – who wants to – I mean, I can talk about --
MR KREHMEYER: We’ll let you start on that one. (Laughter.)
MR O’BRIEN: Sure, but – so we work with other countries that – whose economies are on an upswing, we work with them that are stagnant, and we work with them when they are on a downturn. So I think what we do is actually – it’s not – I don’t want to say it’s immune from the larger economic situation, but in fact, we’re a solution – what we’re trying to do here. Public-private partnerships are a solution to that. We try – the things that government cannot do, we go to the private sector to help us. For the things that the private sector cannot do, either we’re doing or helping find other pieces to put together.
There’s a very significant large corporate U.S. presence in Brazil. General Motors comes to mind. It’s a great – and a great partner to our office – to the Secretary’s office, and they do help with other initiatives around the world. So we’re – I think we’re one of the solutions when it comes to sort of difficult economic times. We’re one of the – we sort of keep on chugging. In fact, opportunity may even knock when that happens.
MR KREHMEYER: I would just sort of add, and another way of looking at it is times of stress are often some of the times that create some of the innovations. And we actually, at the Darden School, have another awards program where we have looked at, within the Commonwealth of Virginia and looking at growing it, what makes resilient businesses resilient. And it’s looking at how have those companies that are in some of the most difficult economic areas within Virginia – how have they thrived, how have they grown, how have they added employees.
And once again, it’s an award, but let’s don’t stop at the award. We certainly don’t. We want to take the learnings from that, which we’ve done, given it to our faculty to look at what are some of the success factors. And I’ll tell you what one of them is. One of them is kind of what Drew referred to, is is there an ecosystem around those businesses that is providing support. And that includes communities that are engaged with the business, that includes trade associations, that includes government, public sector partners – all those things that create an ecosystem where success raises all those stakeholders together.
So we’ve seen that on the scale of a Virginia. I would suggest that the findings would be true globally as well.
QUESTION: Could you give us a bit of – sorry, I’m Gabriel Mellqvist with Sweden’s business newspaper. Could you give a historical perspective on the growth of this compared to five, ten years ago as the private sectors obviously demonstrated a bigger interest, or how has this (inaudible)?
MR SWIFT: I would say significantly. I think --
MR O’BRIEN: They know this stuff inside and out. (Laughter.) This is their thing.
MR SWIFT: I think for the last 15 years you’ve seen public-private partnerships, or P3s as we call them, as becoming very trendy in the business community. I think there are so many instances that can be cited where there’s been a failure of the public sector, a failure of the private sector, to accomplish what they need to. I think disaster relief is a very obvious arena where the private sector has stepped in and played an enormous role. And it is partnerships between corporations and governments – state, local, federal government here in the U.S. – where that has played an enormous role. And so one of the reasons why Nick and I founded Concordia in early 2011 was because we saw this as a trend that was growing. And if you’re the CEO of a large corporation, whether it’s your corporate social responsibility initiatives or something else, the public-private partnership model, I think, is a very appealing one to a CEO.
MR LOGOTHETIS: And it’s more and more, in certain cases, becoming not only appealing but essential if you want to do business in some places. And I mean, we can say that there are – another reason why Matt and I founded Concordia was there are – at times it is difficult to work with business and it is difficult to work with government. People – I think the question we get asked the most is: Who’s more difficult – business or government? (Laughter.) And it really – there’s no answer to that. It really varies in case to case.
In some cases you have a very entrepreneurial government, and I mean in different countries and different cities, who are pushing for it, who are acting like business in a sense. And in other cases you have a very bureaucratic government and a very entrepreneurial business where – but it really varies. And so what we tried to do was, as one of our main tenets, create a hub where those two groups could come together and learn from one another.
MR SWIFT: And let me comment on the private sector side. Here’s what – where we see this going. The CSR models at a lot of corporations today I think have an impact, but I think the public-private partnership model – the tool of P3s – are very much going to become the norm as part of the CSR approach that these companies take. And that’s very important, because there’s a lot of goodwill and interest on the public sector side and the private sector side, and in so many instances the public sector brings tremendous scale, the private sector brings great efficiency, and those two brought together really can create powerful P3s. And I think all of the P3s that applied for the award this year, and certainly the five finalists, which will be highlighted over the next two days, with the winner being announced by Drew and Dean and our director of research on Friday – I think you’ll see the evidence of that.
MR O’BRIEN: Yeah, and when I first took this position, when I was appointed to this position almost two and a half years ago, one of the first reactions you get from people is that you basically have your hand out, that you’re the U.S. Government going to talk to the private sector about what can – what’s in it for us, can you donate to this, can you donate to that. And that’s one part of the job.
I came to understand very quickly that it’s – and again, this is – these folks around the table with me study this and know this – this is about so many other things beyond money. This is beyond you’re – it’s the CSR that sort of everybody has in common, it’s that social responsibility that everybody has in common. It can be a question of resources. And I’m throwing names up, but Bank of America is very good with – a very great partner to our office and to the State Department on resources at different level. IBM has a model where their employees go and work in country. Not only are they working at maybe an IBM facility, but they’re actually engaged in some sort of public-private initiative in the area. That’s a tremendous model.
So as much as this can be about money that goes to a certain effort, you name it, this is about a lot of other things – resources, people sort of putting their shoulder behind it and their brains behind it. So again, everybody with me studies this and knows sort of the intellectual promise of this, and it is – as Matt said, it’s – it is where everything is headed on the business front. They were very wise to go down this road.
QUESTION: A quick follow-up. Do we know why companies suddenly are so interested in this? Do you have any idea where it comes from?
MR O’BRIEN: I would say the pressures of the global economy are making companies better global citizens.
MR SWIFT: Yeah. I think also the information revolution has made every person in the world sort of aware of what’s going on around them and sort of created a reporter out of everyone. And that puts a lot of pressure on companies to act in a certain way. I think you also see a lot of cities – cities are really leaders in this front – and countries that are looking to reconstruct or re-reconstruct, like a city like Athens, Greece. It’s not an emerging country. It’s sort of re-emerging, in a sense, after economic depression there, using – trying to use public-private partnerships as a tool to really reinvent their city. And cities often have more flexibility to act over states or countries.
MR KREHMEYER: And I will add from my perspective students.
MR O’BRIEN: Students.
MR KREHMEYER: Students, millenials. This generation is one that – and I think we should all be very optimistic about it – it’s a generation that wants to positively change the world. And you see all those complexities that we talked about. You see the integration of the global economy. You see the information age. They are looking at how can I lead organizations and lead initiatives that are really going to drive a lot of positive impact, notable impact. And for all the reasons that in particular Matt was just describing of why the public sector and private sector are coming together in these partnerships, those are exactly the reasons that students see as well. And that is certainly a tailwind that is pushing these public-private partnerships, I think, in a very positive way.
QUESTION: I was just going to – on a (inaudible) note, this sounds like the TED talk. (Laughter.) And on a serious note, I think it’s – I mean, especially with the breakthrough of technology, there are so many ways to get information across the world without having to be there. So I was just wondering again, in developing countries, if there are any plans, especially on the Acordia part – what’s your organization again?
MR SWIFT: Concordia.
QUESTION: Concordia, I’m sorry – to make this information available via a virtual training platform so that other young people, especially entrepreneurs and professionals around the world, would gain access to this information and be able to use it to empower their community.
MR SWIFT: Absolutely. And that’s something that we will do in the future. We have not done that yet, but every – at all of our forums and especially our annual summit, we have a series of sessions that we call P3 toolboxes, which is really where you come and you learn real – the basics, the fundamentals of how to construct a public-private partnership. Those have been very popular with our community, our global community that comes together, especially for the annual summit. But I think incorporating technology in that would be a – would be a great way to --
MR LOGOTHETIS: In other words, to package those eventually and then sort of release them to the world.
QUESTION: It’s also very clear that young people around the world actually have – they know the solutions to their problems; they just don’t have the resources to make some of these things happen. And I think an organization such as yours do really a lot of good if they have access to that information.
MR SWIFT: Absolutely.
MR LOGOTHETIS: Absolutely.
QUESTION: I’m a little bit slow, so can you give me – can you tell me more about the competition – how it works, who applies, what are the criteria, and just a little background?
MR SWIFT: Dean?
MR KREHMEYER: Sure, happy to do it. So what we do is we open the competition at the beginning of the year and use a number of media channels, social media channels, including great channels at all of our organizations, to invite applications. And we invite them from, as you might imagine, partners in the private sector, partners in the public sector, and oftentimes NGOs that might be involved as well. So we invite those. We extensively use our network.
The applications, when they’re received, are then reviewed by an esteemed panel of judges. Each of the applications gets multiple readings, and the judges then select the finalists – the five finalists and the winner, which, as Matt said, we will be featuring the finalists over the next two days at the summit and announcing the winner on Friday.
MR LOGOTHETIS: Are we allowed to say the finalists now or no?
MR SWIFT: Of course, that’s public who the finalists are. We can take you through the finalists if you would like.
QUESTION: Sure.
MR SWIFT: So I think we’ll start with the first one. Partners in Food Solutions. That’s a partnership between USAID as well as TechnoServe, and it’s a partnership with General Mills, Cargill, Royal DSM, and Buhler; also a partnership between the Nature Conservancy and Dow Chemical; a partnership focusing on Madagascar between Coca-Cola, RAIN, WSUP, and the Africa Foundation; TV White Space, which is a partnership between Microsoft and USAID; and then also the U.S. Global Development Lab partnering with Village Capital. Did I – did I miss anything?
MR KREHMEYER: Yep, that’s correct. Yep.
MR O’BRIEN: That’s it.
MR SWIFT: And so they will be – there will be five-minute features of each partnership over the two-day period, and then the winner will actually be announced by Secretary Kerry.
MR O’BRIEN: That’s right, via video. (Laughter.)
MR SWIFT: Yes. (Laughter.)
MR KREHMEYER: Secretary Kerry.
MR SWIFT: Asterisk.
MR LOGOTHETIS: Asterisk.
MR SWIFT: Yeah. (Laughter.)
MR O’BRIEN: Via video. Statistic-wise, just important to reference Matt’s indication that this will grow, we had – and we did the first one last year in 2014 – we had 18 applications. This year, I think we had at least 50.
MR SWIFT: Fifty-two.
MR O’BRIEN: Fifty-two.
MR LOGOTHETIS: Read off some of the names. I mean --
MR SWIFT: We have Chevron, Dow, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wal-Mart, Save the Children, Unilever, Nike, Discovery Education, Walt Disney Company, Yale University, the Nature Conservancy, TechnoServe, RAIN, USAID, Microsoft. All were applicants in some form, those partnerships.
QUESTION: Was there a theme of this year’s competition? Is it about water or --
MR O’BRIEN: No.
QUESTION: Just any --
MR O’BRIEN: We look at – I mean, anybody in the partnership space can apply. We had a whole range – health and sanitation, environment, education, technology, public safety, economic development. We had applications from across the board.
MR KREHMEYER: What’s interesting to me about the names of the organizations that you read, Matt, is – and encouraging to me – is that these are leading global organizations. These are organizations with – yes, deep resources, both financial and capability leadership skill-wise, and a lot of demands on those resources. And yet one of the important priorities that they place at the head of this list is their engagement in these public-private partnerships, which I think reinforces some of the points we’re making here – is to see these leading organizations, it’s in a lot of ways – we get some, I think, intangible benefit because we actually get to read through all these and really see the exciting things going on in the world of public-private partnerships.
QUESTION: In the light of this – something just came to mind – with the recent recall of 11 million cars by Volkswagen – is that the news, something to that effect, they have recalled --
MR SWIFT: I think it’s 17.
QUESTION: How many?
MR O’BRIEN: It’s more than 11.
MR SWIFT: I think it’s 17 --
MR O’BRIEN: Seventeen --
MR SWIFT: -- as of today.
QUESTION: Anyone comment on that quickly?
MR O’BRIEN: I don’t – I actually don’t know enough about the issue.
QUESTION: So – okay.
MODERATOR: So I think we’re just about out of time unless I see a hand raised, one more question or so? Well, if --
MR O’BRIEN: Thank you.
MODERATOR: -- there are no more questions, everyone, thank you all very much.
MR O’BRIEN: No, that’s very great. Thank you very much.
MR SWIFT: Thank you all for coming.
MR LOGOTHETIS: Thank you.
MODERATOR: Today’s briefing was on the record and our transcript will be posted as soon as it’s ready at fpc.state.gov, and that concludes today’s briefing. Thank you so much.
###
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2015, 3:00 P.M. EDT
NEW YORK FOREIGN PRESS CENTER, 799 UNITED NATIONS PLAZA, 10TH FLOOR
Read: New applications leverage the popularity of social networks - Finance and Commerce.
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Ertharin Cousin, Executive Director, United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), Rome speaking during the Session: Leveraging Data Insights at the Annual Meeting 2017 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 18, 2017
Copyright by World Economic Forum / Sikarin Thanachaiary
30 May 2018 - Leveraging Data Science for the Public Good - Civic Innovation Hub - BLI
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2022-10-20: Hassatou Diop N’Sele, Acting Vice President for Finance and Chief Finance Officer address during the Finance in Common 2022 - HLE 9 – How to Mobilise Capital at Scale by Leveraging Private Finance.
Over the past year, with the generous support of Innovation Norway, UN Women has been assessing the potential of leveraging blockchain technologies to address challenges faced by women and girls in humanitarian settings.
As part of this work, UN Women, in partnership with the UN Office of Information and Communications Technology (UN OICT) hosts a four-day Simulation Lab from January 29 to February 1, 2018 at the UN Women New York Headquarters.
This Lab enables UN Women to explore, in collaboration with the private sector, cutting-edge solutions that hold potential for closing gender gaps in humanitarian action.
Based on the results of the Lab, four to five solution providers will be invited to submit a request for proposal (RFP). UN Women intends to pilot two to four solutions in the eld in collaboration with its UN and private sector partners and with the support of Innovation Norway, with the intention to thereafter upscale the most successful solutions as part of UN Women’s Global Flagship Programmes for Disaster Risk Reduction (Gender Inequality of Risk) and Crisis Response and Recovery (LEAP-Women’s Leadership, Empowerment, Access and Protection).
Pictured: Simulation participants fill out evaluations and leave comments regarding the eight blockchain solutions they were presented with.
Read More: www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2018/2/news-event-blockch...
Photo: UN Women/Ryan Brown
The County of Los Angeles is working on plans to secure additional Medical Sheltering options. To increase capacity at each facility the County is recruiting and training personnel to serve as on-site managers. Currently 904 Medical Sheltering Units have been procured. Transportation, food, laundry services and security services are available at these sites. The County is working to quickly leverage the incoming offers form local hotels/motels and on—going solicitations for assistance in the COVID-19 response.
The Dockweiler RV Park is one of 5 medical sheltering operations in Los Angeles County. The Office of Emergency Management, Department of Public Works, LA County Fire Department, LA Sheriff Department, and Department of Health Services, other County agencies have come together to establish these new medical shelters. (Photo Credit: Los Angeles County)