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blackjack meaning Daily Post Nigeria Walk through Benin streets for N50m — APC challenges ex-Governor Obaseki Home News Politics Metro Entertainment Sport Politics Walk through Benin streets for N50m — APC challenges ex-Governor Obaseki Published on November 27, 2024 By Enahoro Iyemefokhai The Edo State chapter of the All Progressives Congress, APC, has promised to reward the immediate past governor of the state, Godwin Obaseki, with N50 million if he could walk freely on the streets of Benin City and receive a rousing welcome from residents. DAILY POST reports that Prince Kassim Afegbua, a chieftain of the party and member of the Edo State Assets Verification Committee, threw the challenge at a press briefing shortly after the inauguration of the committee by Governor Monday Okpebholo at Government House in Benin City. Afegbua, who responded to some allegations and criticism against the barely two-week-old administration of Governor Okpebholo in the state by the state chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, opined that the people-oriented policies and steps so far taken by the new government had endeared him to the people. According to him: “The reason for the press briefing, just like the chairman said, is to respond to some insinuations out there. “First, they said that the government of APC, that is barely 14 days old, has shut down the e-governance platform. That is very laughable and very incorrect. What they called e-governance is actually e-corruption. “That is the basic truth because we tried as much as possible to access some of the information that was paraded before this new government, we couldn’t even access them. “Secondly, the opposition is saying that our thugs invaded their secretariat. I think they are just trying to call a dog a bad name in order to hang it. We are too preoccupied, too serious, and too busy trying to pick up Edo State from the ashes of underdevelopment that the previous government plunged it into. “To be looking at the secretariat of an opposition party that was humbled at the last election, beaten flat in their domains by the resounding victory that we got from the Edo people? “The decisions and policy focus of the present government is such that we will not be bogged down by claims [of those] trying to attack us, just to distract us. “Only today they issued another statement complaining about the facts that because we lack what to do, we are setting up an asset verification exercise. “Everyone knows that all over the world, it is good for you to have a status report of a government when you are taking off. The practice is not just for Edo State or Nigeria alone; it is everywhere. “And, because the previous government was short in terms of facts and figures that dominated its own governance process, we have a duty to, as APC, in line with the Renewed Hope Agenda of the Federal Government to begin to interrogate certain gaps as already captured by the chairman of this Assets Verification Committee. “So, we want to tell Edo people that as few days as the new government has taken off, the projects we have embarked on as a government and as a party, and the steps we have taken so far have endeared us to the hearts of Edo people. “If the opposition is truly serious, they should please invite ex-Governor Godwin Obaseki to come to Edo for a street walk. We are ready to pay him N50 million for that particular exercise and let us see who the Edo people will embrace,” he said. Afegbua alleged that the immediate past governor has hired some persons across the state to attack and cast aspersions on APC and its government in the state. He, however, said that would not distract the government and the party from keeping their eyes on the ball and providing credible projects that would help address the challenges that the state currently faces. Related Topics: APC Benin Obaseki Don't Miss Stop endorsing, passing vote of confidence on Ganduje – APC Chieftain warns legislators You may like Stop endorsing, passing vote of confidence on Ganduje – APC Chieftain warns legislators Gov Okpebholo inspects schools, mocks ex-Gov Obaseki’s EdoBest program Commissioning of Stella Obasanjo Hospital a scam – Okpebholo knocks Obaseki Gov Okpebholo squandered over N30bn left by Obaseki in 14 days – PDP alleges I accepted half of my salary with Super Eagles to coach Benin – Rohr Gov Okpebholo’s Asset verification committee will not witch hunt Obaseki — Umakhihe Advertise About Us Contact Us Privacy-Policy Terms Copyright © Daily Post Media Ltd

Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save A recent study that recommended toxic chemicals in black plastic products be immediately thrown away included a math error that significantly overstated the risks of contamination, but its authors are standing by their conclusions and warn against using such products. Published in the peer-reviewed journal Chemosphere , experts from the nonprofit Toxic-Free Future said they detected flame retardants and other toxic chemicals in 85% of 203 items made of black plastic including kitchen utensils , take-out containers, children's toys and hair accessories. In a blog post, Joe Schwarcz, director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society in Canada, explained that the Toxin-Free Future scientists miscalculated the lower end of what the EPA considered a health risk through a multiplication error. Instead of humans being potentially exposed to a dose of toxic chemicals in black plastic utensils near the minimum level that the EPA deems a health risk, it's actually about one-tenth of that. (Dreamstime/TNS) The study initially said the potential exposure to chemicals found in one of the kitchen utensils approached the minimum levels the Environmental Protection Agency deemed a health risk. 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Somers Point man killed in two-vehicle crash in Egg Harbor Township Ocean City group's ideas for ex-Gillian's Wonderland site include muscle beach, dunk tank But in an update to the study, the authors say they made an error in their calculations and the real levels were "an order of magnitude lower" than the EPA's thresholds. The error was discovered by Joe Schwarcz, director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society in Canada. In a blog post, Schwarcz explained that the Toxin-Free Future scientists miscalculated the lower end of what the EPA considered a health risk through a multiplication error. Instead of humans being potentially exposed to a dose of toxic chemicals in black plastic utensils near the minimum level that the EPA deems a health risk, it's actually about one-tenth of that. Though Schwarcz said the risks outlined in the study aren't enough for him to discard his black plastic kitchen items if he had them, he agreed with the authors that flame retardants shouldn't be in these products in the first place. "The math error does not impact the study's findings, conclusions or recommendations," said Megan Liu, a co-author of the study who is the science and policy manager for Toxic-Free Future . She added that any traces of flame retardants or toxic chemicals in cooking utensils should be concerning for the public. Flame retardants are getting into commonly used items because black-colored products are being made from recycled electronic waste, such as discarded television sets and computers, that frequently contain the additives. When they're heated, the flame retardants and other toxic chemicals can migrate out. If you're wondering whether your old black plastic spoon or other utensils are a part of this group, Liu shared some more guidance. Generally, how do I know a product is harmful? It's nearly impossible to know whether a black plastic product is contaminated. That's because these products that include recycled e-waste don't disclose a detailed list of all ingredients and contaminants in the product. Liu said it's also unclear how many types of flame retardants are in these black plastic products. Some of the products that researchers tested in this recent study "had up to nine different harmful chemicals and harmful flame retardants in them," she said. How can I find out if black plastic food trays are made with recycled contaminated plastic? Anytime you're looking for the type of recycled plastic a product is made of you're going to look for a number within the chasing arrows (that form a triangle) logo. Recycling symbols are numbered 1 to 7 and we commonly associate the numbers with what we can toss in our blue recycling bins. The 1 through 7 numbers stand for, respectively, polyethylene terephthalate, high-density polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), low-density polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene or Styrofoam, and miscellaneous plastics (including polycarbonate, polylactide, acrylic, acrylonitrile butadiene, styrene, fiberglass and nylon). The study found higher levels of toxic flame retardants in polystyrene plastic, which is labeled with the number 6, said Liu. MIKE STOBBEAssociated Press When did recycled e-waste begin contaminating black plastic products? There isn't a definitive timeline of when recycled electronic-waste started to be incorporated into black plastic products specifically, but e-waste started to get recycled in the early 2000s, Liu said. The way computers, cellphones, stereos, printers and copiers were being disposed of previously was to simply add them to a landfill without reusing salvageable parts. But as the National Conference of State Legislatures notes, electronics production required a significant amount of resources that could be recovered through recycling. Recovering resources such as metals, plastics and glass through recycling used a fraction of the energy needed to mine new materials. However, the study pointed out that flame retardants and other chemical contaminates have been detected in and near e-waste recycling facilities, in indoor air and dust at formal e-waste recycling facilities in Canada, China, Spain and the U.S. It also noted contamination in soil samples surrounding e-waste recycling sites in China and Vietnam. What are safer alternatives? The safest nontoxic material options for kitchen utensil are wood and stainless steel. The 20th century brought airplanes, radio, television, the internet, and plastic. Lots of plastic. That plastic is now showing up on shorelines, forming islands in oceans, and generating mountains of translucent trash on land. Around 700 species of animals in the sea have been found to interact with plastic daily. Companies across every industry face pressure to reduce the amount of plastic they produce. Seventy-two percent of the world's largest have made voluntary commitments to reduce their plastic waste, according to a Duke University analysis. One industry, in particular, has greatly benefited from advancements in single-use plastic technology: the medical industry. Only in recent years have businesses and academics in the field begun to talk about minimizing their impact on our environment like beverage manufacturers and other consumer goods-producing businesses. Medical Technology Schools analyzed academic studies published in the National Library of Medicine , the American Medical Association , and news reports to shed light on the medical community's use of plastics through history, their environmental problems, and proposed solutions to reduce their impact. And the impact can be significant. A single hospital patient generates nearly 34 pounds of waste a day —as much as a quarter of it is plastic. The COVID-19 pandemic only worsened the problem. The pandemic pushed hospital capacity to the brink and led to a massive increase in personal protective equipment and medical supply usage. Medical-grade masks and other protective equipment like face shields, made mostly of nonrenewable plastics, were in high demand. In 2020, the World Health Organization estimated that the international need for PPE manufacturing would boost 40% to address the public health crisis. Hospitals needed an estimated 89 million masks, 76 million gloves, and 1.6 million goggles every month of the pandemic. To date, nearly 677 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered, each requiring their own plastic syringe, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Global consulting firm Frost & Sullivan estimated that the U.S. would produce a year's worth of medical waste in just two months due to the pandemic. The World Economic Forum warned that the COVID-19 crisis threatened to " stall and even reverse progress " to reduce large plastic waste. It's a challenge researchers acknowledge today as they search for solutions. Plastics introduced an era of ultraconvenience to the world. It makes our clothes. It's made bike helmets and airbags possible. And it's a cheap material to produce, meaning it's cheap for consumers too. Almost as importantly, it's durable and incredibly easy to make into complex shapes—a trait that helped plastics invented in the mid-20th century quickly replace more expensive metal and wooden goods. That adoption extended to the medical field, where the single-use nature of plastics represented a move toward more hygienic tools for physicians and hospitals. But it wasn't plastic's sanitary qualities that the industry first latched onto. Like so many other technical advancements, convenience and cost were the initial driving factors. That they were more conducive to creating a sterile environment for patients was a benefit that health care began to tout closer to the end of the 20th century. PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, replaced glass bottles previously used to hold IV solution and replaced rubber tubing used throughout hospital settings. Plastic has also become the go-to material for making syringes and catheters. Plastic products are generally made from chemicals derived from the oil and natural gas refining process. Chemists use those byproducts to create synthetic materials with malleable and durable chemical structures. The low cost of these materials has helped medical device-makers support better health outcomes for communities across the U.S. since the 1900s. No longer was health care priced at rates only the elite could afford—it was accessible to a much larger swath of the public. In the last decade, the U.S., in particular, has emerged as a massive market for medical plastics. The country generally accounts for nearly half of the global market for medical devices. Plastic's durability is not only a benefit but a detriment to the environment, as the material can take many years to deteriorate when it enters landfills or trashes oceans. Estimates vary widely, but scientists ballpark that depending on the kind of plastic and the environment in which it decomposes, it could take dozens to thousands of years to break down entirely. COVID-19, which remains a burden for health care systems, isn't the only force raising the stakes for a health care industry pressured to reduce reliance on plastics or find ways to reuse them. Global annual production of plastic has doubled in the last two decades , according to the Environmental Protection Agency. As the U.S. looks toward the future, its aging population is another factor that could exacerbate the rate at which medical plastics end up in landfills. People require more medical care as they age, and aging baby boomers are expected to place increased demand on the medical device industry. At the same time, governments are under pressure to lower health care costs, which have become unaffordable even for those insured . As recently as 2021, researchers lamented a lack of data on efforts to recycle medical plastics. Around 350 hospitals participate in Practice Greenhealth's Environmental Excellence Awards . Practice Greenhealth is an organization working to help hospitals increase their sustainability. It's one of the few sources of hospital sustainability data, and its roster of participating hospitals represents a small fraction of the more than 6,000 hospitals operating in the U.S. To meet the need to reduce plastic waste generation, some hospitals are moving away from using plastic in certain applications. Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center replaced health care workers' disposable plastic isolation gowns with reusable cloth gowns at its hospitals in the last decade, saving money and preventing literal tons of medical waste. It also implemented a process for sterilizing and incinerating the boxes that hold used needles, allowing them to be reassembled and reused in a health care setting. Recycling plastic medical waste is complicated by the potential for contamination and the need to separate contaminated and noncontaminated waste; once separated, they can be broken down with heat or treated with chemicals and reprocessed. However, using chemical methods to break down and dispose of plastics has drawbacks. Over 200 nongovernmental organizations signed a letter in 2023 urging the Biden administration to end federal support for methods like these, arguing they generate toxic pollutants. The Vinyl Council of Australia is working with hospitals to recover used materials made of PVC . The materials are broken down into tiny pieces, washed and heated at high temperatures, and remade into things used outside medical settings. In the U.S. and Europe, there's the Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council, a coalition of companies working in the health care device space that includes DuPont, Johnson & Johnson, and Medtronic. In 2021, the HPRC, advised by professionals at Kaiser Permanente and other health systems, rolled out a medical waste recycling pilot project with hopes of scaling it across more hospitals. Story editing by Ashleigh Graf. Copy editing by Paris Close. Photo selection by Clarese Moller. This story originally appeared on Medical Technology Schools and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio. Build your health & fitness knowledge Sign up here to get the latest health & fitness updates in your inbox every week!Property Management Market: From USD 3.04B in 2019 to USD 4.85B by 2031

Dublin, Dec 1 (AP) A marathon vote-counting exercise was underway Saturday in Ireland's national election after an exit poll suggested that the contest is a close-fought race among the country's three largest political parties. Election officials opened ballot boxes at count centres across the country, kicking off what could be several days of tallying the results. If the exit poll is borne out, that could be followed by days or weeks of negotiations to form a coalition government. Also Read | Bangladesh: ISKCON Claims Arrest of 2 More Monks, Ranganath Das Brahmachari and Chinmoy Krishna Das' Assistant Adipurush Shyamdas Without Warrant Amid Row. The exit poll suggested voters' support is split widely among the three big parties — Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, and Sinn Fein — as well as several smaller parties and an assortment of independents ranging from the left to the far right. The poll said that centre-right party Fine Gael was the first choice of 21 per cent of voters, and another centre-right party, Fianna Fail, of 19.5 per cent. The two parties governed in coalition before the election. Left-of-centre opposition party Sinn Fein was at 21.1 per cent in the poll. Also Read | Gautam Adani Breaks Silence on US Fraud Charges, Says 'Every Attack Makes Us Stronger, Every Obstacle Becomes Stepping Stone for More Resilient Adani Group'. Pollster Ipsos B&A asked 5,018 voters across the country how they had cast their ballots. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.4 percentage points. The figures only give an indication and don't reveal which parties will form the next government. Ireland uses a complex system of proportional representation in which each of the country's 43 constituencies elects several lawmakers and voters rank candidates in order of preference. As a result, it can take some time for full results to be known. The cost of living — especially Ireland's acute housing crisis — was a dominant topic in the three-week campaign, alongside immigration, which has become an emotive and challenging issue in a country of 5.4 million people long defined by emigration. The result will show whether Ireland bucks the global trend of incumbents being ousted by disgruntled voters after years of pandemic, international instability and cost-of-living pressures. The outgoing government was led by the two parties that have dominated Irish politics for the past century: Fine Gael and Fianna Fail. They have similar policies, but are longtime rivals with origins on opposing sides of Ireland's 1920s civil war. After the 2020 election ended in a virtual dead heat, they formed a coalition. Before polling day, analysts said the most likely outcome was another Fine Gael-Fianna Fail coalition. That remains a likely option. The front-runners to be the next taoiseach, or prime minister, are current Taoiseach Simon Harris of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail leader Micheál Martin — despite their parties' relatively lackluster showing. Harris, Martin and Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald all won-re-election to their parliamentary seats in results announced Saturday. Fine Gael candidate Paschal Donohoe, a minister in the outgoing government, said the main theme of the election was “one of the centre holding.” “The big picture is, at a time in which incumbent governments all over Europe are struggling to get re-elected, the two larger parties within this government, in particular Fine Gael, are going to deliver a very strong performance,” he said at the count centre in Dublin. The two parties would need the support of smaller groups or independents to achieve a majority in the 174-seat Dail, the lower house of Parliament. The Green Party, which held 12 seats in the last parliament and propped up the governing coalition, acknowledged that it was headed for a disappointing result. Among a large crop of independent candidates was reputed organised crime boss Gerry “the Monk” Hutch, who has seen a groundswell of support since he was bailed on money-laundering charges in Spain this month in order to run for election. Early results suggested he stood a good chance of winning a seat in Dublin. Sinn Fein achieved a stunning breakthrough in the 2020 election, topping the popular vote, but was shut out of government because Fianna Fail and Fine Gael refused to work with it, citing its leftist policies and historic ties with the Irish Republican Army during three decades of violence in Northern Ireland. Though Sinn Fein, which aims to reunite Ireland with the independent Republic of Ireland, could become the largest party in the Dail, it may struggle to get enough coalition partners to form a government. During the election campaign, both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail maintained they wouldn't go into government with it. A Sinn Fein-led government would shake up Irish politics — and the future of the United Kingdom. The party is already the largest in Northern Ireland, and a Sinn Fein government in the republic would push for a referendum on Irish reunification in the next few years. Party leader McDonald said that Sinn Fein had “broken the political mold” in Ireland. “Two-party politics is now gone. It's consigned to the dustbin of history, and that in itself is very significant," she said as she awaited results at a count centre in Dublin. “The question now arises for us, what do we do with that?” (AP) (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)

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Thought just 17, Donald Trump’s granddaughter appears to relish her role as an aspiring, up-and-coming MAGA influencer , as she shares slickly produced videos on social media about the fun she has hanging out with her beloved, president-elect “grandpa.” But there’s only so much that Kai Trump can do to soften the image of a man who has been compared by critics to history’s most dangerous fascists and who regularly hurls insults and makes profane remarks. His opponent in the election, Kamala Harris, received some 74 million votes to his 76 million. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.

West Virginia's women's basketball team provided a bit of salve to the wounds suffered by Mountaineer football fans on Saturday with a 82-47 rout of Boise State in the semifinals of the Gulf Coast Showcase. Sydney Shaw tied her career high with 20 points and JJ Quinerly topped the 1,500 career points mark in the win, which WVU took control of early. Quinerly finished with 14 points and Jordan Thomas had 10 as WVU ran out to a 22-6 lead after one quarter and a 45-23 bulge at the break. As per their profile, the Mountaineers forced 23 Boise turnovers, scoring 27 points off those miscues. "We have the ability to turn people over and speed them up, and we were able to rush them and get them out of their rhythm shooting threes," Mountaineer head coach Mark Kellogg said. Boise did make seven 3-pointers, but it took 26 tries to do so, while WVU nearly matched that total with six. The Mountaineers also ran off a 14-2 advantage in fast break points. as they were never seriously challenged in the game. Boise State fell to 7-1 with the defeat. Quinerly moved into 14th place on WVU's all-time scoring list, and now has 1,502 career points. She is just two behind Jenny Hillen and 32 in arrears of Oliva Bradley, who stand 13th and 12th, respectively. WVU now awaits the winner of the Texas - Butler semifinal, which is being played this evening, for the title of the Showcase. Tip time for that contest in the Hertz Center in Estero, Florida, is set for 7:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, Dec. 1.Our Favorite New Car Reveals of 2024

IN 30 YEARS John Rynne has seen a revolution in crisis responses to humanitarian catastrophes. In a career spanning three decades the Louth man has spent much of that time in Africa responding to crises in Ethiopia, Rwanda, Somalia and elsewhere. He is now the regional director managing the African-based teams of Irish aid agency Goal. We accompanied Rynne recently on a tour of a number of sites in South Sudan. What we found was an aid effort stretched to the point of full capacity as refugees cross the porous border from war torn Sudan. We sat down with him in the chaos of capital Juba to speak about his career, how new methods of responding to crises saves more lives and how, in the past, some NGOs desperate to help have caused more harm than good to the people they are trying to assist. It is not just aid work Rynne has done – he has also worked in child protection in places such as Dublin’s Darndale, Oliver Bond Flats and Ballymun communities as well as Tower Hamlets in London. But the intensity of that work led him towards the role that he performs now as one of Ireland’s most experienced humanitarians. “Frankly, I didn’t want to spend the next 30 or 40 years of my life dealing with child abuse and child neglect,” he said of his decision to move towards Aid Agency work. “I also felt that if I had an opportunity to do something like aid work it would be something that I thought I would enjoy, and would be a real opportunity for me to learn, and also a bit like doing the social work, and not to sound trite, but to give back as well.” This led him to first become an unpaid volunteer and spend two years working in Ethiopia in the 1990s. He describes that experience as being a “brilliant university”. He came back and worked in social work again but would ultimately become an employee based in Ethiopia, where he worked in a mix of urban and rural programmes. His mettle was tested most however on the Somali border at the height of that country’s civil war. “The people would have been the same position then, but our ability now to support and help is dramatically different, much more effective,” he added. Following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda he travelled to that African country where he worked with those left behind after the horrific blood letting. There was also work in Zaire and Tanzania as country director and then for 13 years he lived in Ethiopia as the country director managing day to day services. “Ethiopia, it’s a fascinating country to work in, and it’s a huge learning opportunity,” he added. There were projects in urban areas and a return to his social work style of working with street children. He also worked on rural projects which are based around long term development – lifting up communities. Rynne has also seen other changes – the food technology advances that now mean that high energy pastes for children and biscuits for adults are saving lives. “I would have worked in the 90s, very close to the border with Somalia, where we had all the traditional feeding centres, and literally, six to ten children a day died in those feeding centres. “The approach now is much more sophisticated, even though it doesn’t look it, but that’s part of the genius of it,” he added. He said the advances in feeding technology used to solve malnutrition are part of a broader effort by humanitarians to learn from past crises. Another advance is the giving of cash to people, particularly women, so that they can buy food and clothes or whatever they need once they cross the border. “I really would draw a distinction between the scale of the problem, which easily is comparable to Ethiopia in the 80s and 90s but the sophistication of the scale of the response mutes and mitigates, to a significant degree, the worst aspects, not all aspects, but the worst aspects as regards the number of people dying.” Rynne said that while the humanitarian response has changed so has the environment they respond in. He said the effects of climate change are now “vivid” and having a huge impact. He said the most obvious impact of it is in the lives of pastoral or nomadic herders in Ethiopia – Rynne said their livelihoods are centred around the animals foraging and getting water but successive droughts have meant their way of life has collapsed. More broadly he also said that there is clear evidence now that tensions that exist in general among groupings, tribes and clans in many areas across Africa are spilling over because of those effects of climate change. He believes that Africa is at a critical juncture where the borders drawn by former colonial countries a century ago are now being redrawn by the people living there. It has resulted in tensions across the continent – notably in Ethiopia, Sudan and across the Sahel and west Africa. He believes this disturbance in nationhood combined with climate affects will drive greater instability. “I do think more and more we’re seeing that the the maps drawn in colonial times are starting to erode and, and ethnic divisions are coming to the fore, and it’s very difficult to put that back in the box once it’s got out of the box,” he said. Those tensions will make life harder for humanitarians to operate but Rynne has said that they have already adapted. In times past the response was simply to deal with the emergency in front of them but now a more holistic approach, using connections with governments and communities is beginning to reap rewards. “Unfortunately, I think over the past number of years there’s been increasing awareness and acceptance that sometimes, even though you want to do the right thing, you can inadvertently cause damage to to the normal infrastructure and of society,” he said. Rynne uses the example of how aid agencies can come in to assist a large displaced population. He said within that society there may be small vendors such as someone selling buckets and blankets to those displaced people. He said the effect of a blunt intervention of aid agencies handing out goods to refugees has the impact of destroying the local economy that allows people to have agency and independence – in other words it is the inadvertent consequence of unthinking aid operations that makes the situation worse. “What we’re really trying to do is understand how we could be clever, and how we can have multiple benefits and multiple impacts and really make money and resources go as far as possible,” he added. One key response Rynne said is the provision of cash directly to displaced people to help support those locals who have businesses in areas where camps crop up. He said that doesn’t remove the need to directly feed and shelter people in “phase one” of a response to starvation but it does help when events calm down after the initial shock. “We definitely don’t profess to have all the answers, but we would work very closely with local communities to understand how their livelihoods work, how the market systems work, and what the vulnerability points are,” he said. Goal is achieving this by keeping it local with aid workers and a massive network of people from the area working closely with local governments. Rynne said they have projects supporting farmers, creating fishing communities and other initiatives that are designed to empower the local communities to build a resilience for the next crisis. Goal is using systems to map the needs of individual communities and “vulnerability points”. Goal’s main source of funding is from the Irish Government’s Irish Aid, as well as US Aid, the European Union and various UN agencies as well as private donors. While the fighting is raging in Sudan, Goal has been able to keep working because of connections its workforce has established with loca entities and officials. One example saw was how one of the workers in Renk, a local man Deng Wek Deng acts as the liaison between Goal and the local South Sudanese regime. It builds resilience Rynne said but it is a difficult task given the crises gripping South Sudan and Sudan. Rynne said that there is a lot to be proud of with the work of Goal in the region and they are making a difference but he said he is “conflicted between optimism and pessimism”. “What we’ve seen in the last couple of days is the best of people, yeah, the people who responded, who were there in the front line, who were working seven days a week, working on really remote areas, and you can’t help but admire people like that. “I think the way Goal works is we have to focus on the optimism side, and we have to work to ensure that people’s lives are better, but we also have to acknowledge the extreme cruelty and the fact that the world does seem to be a more insecure place, that there’s more civil war, there’s more more unrest – that’s not the reality,” he added.Culture Management Group Reveals Lineup and Programming for Culture Beach Jam 2024 in Accra