Daily Archives: July 5, 2017

Researchers developing monitoring system to expose modern slavery – Phys.Org

Posted: July 5, 2017 at 9:07 am

July 5, 2017 by Charlotte Anscombe Credit: University of Nottingham

The sight of people cleaning cars in disused petrol stations and by the side of the road is now a common scene in towns and cities across the country, but have you ever stopped and thought about whether the person polishing your car is being treated fairly?

Up and down the country 'cheap' car washes are being exposed as 'hives' of modern slavery. Employees are being poorly paid, are being provided with little or no protective equipment and are made to work long hours without breaks.

The UK government estimates that there are 13,000 slaves in the UK. Globally, there are 46 million slaves alive today. However, government agencies, such as the police, face barriers to the identification and prosecution of perpetrators.

However, government agencies, such as the police, are faced with barriers which can impact on how easily they can identify and prosecute the perpetrators.

"Although they might not be aware of it, people are faced with modern slavery in their everyday lives," said Dr Alexander Trautrims, an expert in supply chain management at Nottingham University Business School and the lead on the Unchained Supply, a Rights Lab project.

"The signs of labour exploitation are often hidden, and are often seen as somebody just being in a bad job, making it hard for the general public and law enforcement to identify victims.

"Whilst companies have to disclose certain information and data on their business activities, their performance and the impact they have on society, it is difficult to see whether the information they provide is always accurate."

With this in mind, Dr Trautrims and Dr Thomas Chesney, also from the Rights Lab, have developed a new computer programme which will enable government agencies to uncover businesses that are using slave labour without them ever having to step foot on the company premises.

The team of experts have created a tool which can help to verify if the data being provided by a company is accurate. To make this even easier, the programme enables interested parties, such as the police, to make these decisions, merely by observing the company's activities.

"By using this programme, we aim to scrutinise businesses or organisations by using data that is publically available, so that outsiders who have no access to company accounts can use proxies and assumptions around the business that allows them to see what is taking place within the company itself," said Dr Trautrims.

As the number of cheap car washes using modern day slaves is on the increase, the team felt that a good pilot for the programme would be a business such as this in Nottingham, to illustrate how it may be violating UK minimum wage regulations.

Dr Chesney says: "What we want from this programme is to be able to look and observe what is going on within a business and to create a model which captures the realistic behaviour behind it."

From an external perspective, Dr Trautrims and his team were able to count how many cars were being cleaned by the car wash in an hour. Using the charges per car displayed by the car wash, they were then able to calculate how much the company was making on average a day. They are also able to see how many workers are based at the business, and over the space of a month, the computer programme can use this data to determine the amount of profit the company is making.

As well as the data that the team can collect by observing the car wash, they also used Google traffic datawhich is publically available, and means that they don't have to sit and count the number of cars going past.

"Whilst a car wash is relatively open and easy to observe, a lot of businesses will be behind walls, so you can't see what is going on," says Dr Trautrims.

"There are ways around this though as what we can see, is what is going in to the building, and what is coming outlike with the Google traffic data. So for example, in a factory you can see how many vans are going in and coming out. You can then make assumptions which allow you to come up with a robust statement saying that whatever they are claiming to be doing in therecannot be true. We can prove it from our external observations, without having to raid a business or go into it.

"You could, for example scrutinise the costs the company is claiming to the tax office for personal protection equipment and then the size of the car park, and you could make the assumption that there isn't enough protection for the people who work there. Or you could do it the other way around and say that maybe there are more workers in there than you say there areand why aren't they being accounted for?"

Dr Chesney adds: "We are not saying that all car washes are illegitimate, but we want to put a system in place which can help law enforcement agencies to uncover the ones who ARE breaking the law.

"We are now looking at a whole range of applications where this programme could be used. For example- we're reviewing harvesting fields in Spain.

"We can easily see how many workers there are and how many oranges are coming out. If you are using slaves then that means you have workers that are not accounted for in any of your records. So you could have a farmer who sells a certain amount of cabbage and declares a profitbut then they are only declaring a certain number of workers in the fields who couldn't possibly have achieved the amount of harvested produce.

"Our aim is to create a monitoring system to assist law enforcement agencies and to help expose those who aren't treating their employees in the right way."

Detective Superintendent Austin Fuller, of Nottinghamshire Police said: "We are really excited about piloting this new programme. We worked closely with Dr Trautrims and Dr Chesney to help develop it and have high hopes about what it can achieve. We're really stepping up a gear now to combat this horrific abuse and exploring all avenues to prevent it from happening in Nottinghamshire. We continue to urge people to look out for the signs of modern slavery and report any suspicions as soon as possible."

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Researchers developing monitoring system to expose modern slavery - Phys.Org

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BEN RAILTON: How two Massachusetts slaves won their freedom – Lowell Sun

Posted: at 9:07 am

By Ben Railton

Special to The Washington Post

By now, most Americans have seen the jarring dash cam video of police officer Jeronimo Yanez shooting Philando Castile as Castile calmly reached for his license. Just as shocking, a jury acquitted Yanez. The verdict, in the eyes of many, was just one more piece of evidence for how American laws work to protect the powerful and oppress the powerless.

But while the American legal system can be seen as largely constructed to maintain the status quo, it has also served as an agent of change to expand rights -- even in the years before the Constitution was ratified. Activists -- even slaves -- have used the courts to weaponize American ideals and escape oppression.

Before debates about the Constitution began, states grappled with how to adapt the lofty ideals promised by the Declaration of Independence to the reality of slavery. The first was Massachusetts. Its 1780 Constitution marked Revolutionary America's first attempt to create new legal and political arrangements that gave individual citizens rights in the newly liberated nation.

Yet in Massachusetts, as in every other American colony, the constitutional promise that "all men are born free and equal" didn't hold true for African-American slaves. The application of the law exposed the imbalance between the powerful and the powerless, the included and excluded.

Two Massachusetts slaves highlighted this contradiction.

Sedgwick took Freeman's case.

In May 1781, the same month that Bett's case was heard in Great Barrington's County Court, a Worcester slave, Quock Walker, sued his former master Nathaniel Jennison for battery. Walker, likewise believing he had a legal right to freedom, had run away from Jennison and gone to work at the neighboring Caldwell farm, where the abolitionist brothers John and Seth Caldwell helped Walker find a lawyer and take his case to Worcester County Court.

The county courts decided in both Freeman's and Walker's favor. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the state's highest legal authority, was tasked with enforcing the state's foundational laws and applying its promised rights and freedoms to all residents. Freeman, Walker and their allies pressed the court to decide whether the Constitution's laws and rights pertained to slaves, hoping to change the conversation to include, rather than exclude, this Massachusetts community.

It worked. The Supreme Court Chief Justice William Cushing explained that the 1780 Constitution and the new nation's ideals rendered slavery illegal because "a different idea" had taken hold when the Constitution declared "all men are born free and equal." As a result, he could only conclude that slavery was "inconsistent with our own conduct and Constitution."

Within a decade, pressured by both the court decisions and their communities, Massachusetts slave owners voluntarily freed their slaves, often by changing the arrangements to those of wage labor. The 1790 federal census listed no slaves in Massachusetts, making it the first state to comprehensively abolish slavery.

Abolition in Massachusetts happened because Freeman and Walker took the state's and the country's founding laws and precepts at their word. In highlighting the contradiction between concepts of equality and rights and the circumstances of slavery, they found powerful allies who helped bring their cases to the state's most powerful legal bodies, forcing collective decisions that would reverberate across the state.

Protection of the powerful is written into the law of the land, but so too are avenues to use ideas of freedom and equality to change communal conversations and legal practices. And it is this tradition that has begotten constitutional victories expanding rights and freedoms to increasingly greater number of Americans over the past two centuries.

A San Francisco-born Chinese American cook worked with attorneys and community organizations to win the 1898 Supreme Court case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which made clear that the 14th Amendment's promise of birthright citizenship should apply to all Americans.

When that promised citizenship was still not extended to Native Americans, Yakama performer Nipo Strongheart and other native activists gathered tens of thousands of signatures on petitions, allied with the Indian Rights Association, and pressured Congress to pass the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act.

And it was individual African American parents in Topeka pursuing educational opportunities for their children who worked with NAACP lawyers and their allies to win Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. The landmark Supreme Court decision demonstrated that all Americans were included equally in our public education system, began the dismantling of Jim Crow segregation and launched the Civil Rights Movement. Those parents, like Strongheart, Wong, and Freeman and Walker before them, used ideas to create a more just society, providing hints as to how today's activists can best work to achieve progress.

Railton is a professor of English and American studies at Fitchburg State University.

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BEN RAILTON: How two Massachusetts slaves won their freedom - Lowell Sun

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Retail sector taps youth slaves – MacroBusiness (blog)

Posted: at 9:07 am

By Leith van Onselen

The Turnbull Government announced on Monday that it would expand its controversial Youth-Jobs PaTH program to prepare, trial and ultimately hire young Australians into the retail sector, which has driven a strong push-back from the union movement, Labor and The Greens. From 9News:

Up to 10,000 internships will be offered to unemployed youths over the next four years in a deal struck between the federal government and retail sector.

But not everybody is pleased with the scheme, with unions arguing if there are retail positions available, employers should instead be offering young welfare recipients ongoing work.

Jobless youths aged between 15 and 24 will undertake training before securing 12-week placements with major retailers under the governments PaTH internship program.

They will get a start at a job and, you know what, they could go on to great heights, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Monday

The PaTH scheme (Prepare, Trial, Hire) offers young jobseekers $200 a fortnight on top of their income support payments to undertake internships, and gives employers a $1000 upfront payment for taking them on

But Australian Council of Trade Unions president Ged Kearney said the program offered no path to qualification, employment or workforce protection.

This is a government-sanctioned program that actually borders on slavery, she told reporters in Melbourne.

If this does create new jobs, then pay the kids for the jobs. Pay them a wage. Theyre going to be productive. Theyre going to be contributing to the bottom line of these businesses

Labor and the Greens are opposed to the program, insisting it will allow young people to be exploited by employers.

If the PaTH program becomes simply a supply of cheap labour for employers who would otherwise be paying people full time wages to do that work, then thats a bad thing, deputy opposition leader Tanya Plibersek said.

About 620 young people have been given internships through the PaTH scheme since it began on April 1, with 82 young people securing ongoing work.

Separately, the policy director at Interns Australia, Clara Jordan-Baird, also criticised the program, noting that it risked normalising internship culture in the retail sector:

My first job was at Bakers Delight. I didnt need to do unpaid work experience for 12 weeks to learn how to do it. Nobody needs to. After a short period, you are performing productive work and deserve to be paid for it as an employee.

It shouldnt be normal to pop into your local Coffee Club and see an intern waitress working for free.

MB noted similar concerns when PaTH was initially announced. That is, while the PaTH program may help at the margins, it wont do much to increase the overall supply of youth jobs and could also lead to employers substituting a regular employee for an intern, saving themselves money in the process.

Consider PaTH from an employers perspective. They will get a free kick as the Government is not only the one paying the intern, but the employer also receives $1,000 up front for employing the intern without the need to worry about sick days, annual leave or penalty rates.

Why would an employer hire a young worker on a casual basis when they can effectively get paid to take on an intern? Indeed, the evidence on these types of programs shows that employers will generally substitute a worker receiving a wage subsidy for another worker who would otherwise have been hired.

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Retail sector taps youth slaves - MacroBusiness (blog)

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Abolition of posts in mental health at the hospital of Chicoutimi – The Sherbrooke Times

Posted: at 9:06 am

Jean-Franois Tremblay

Tuesday, July 4, 2017 22:28

UPDATE Tuesday, July 4, 2017 22:31

Look at this article

SAGUENAY | reorganization of units in mental health at the hospital of Chicoutimi is cringe unions, who complain of cuts to jobs and fear for the care of patients.

Nineteen vacant positions of nurses and auxiliaries will not be renewed. The other four positions occupied by nursing assistants are also abolished. In contrast, five part-time positions will be posted.

For the posts of assistants, the Centre intgr universitaire de sant et de services sociaux (CIUSSS) of the SaguenayLac-Saint-Jean has argued that he will attempt to retain the expertise of staff in the department by displaying other items. In the last year, 36 of the 56 mental health beds have been occupied. The directorate is preparing a medical team for 46 beds, as early as mid-September.

In the department of rehabilitation in mental health for adults, it removes the end of the week, two of the seven days work of a special education teacher who prepares patients to return home. There will only be one person full-time. However, the CIUSSS has added five days of social work.

The unions find it hard to accept that mental health is being hit again.

The respondent policy to the Alliances professional and technical staff of the health (APTS), Lynn Brie, said that this is a customer easy to touch, because it is vulnerable. Staff will make follow-up less intensive and will have to make choices about the care they receive.

The case of fugues in a hospital environment who have already made the headlines concerns the representatives of the staff.

The loss of hours in rehabilitation, to be effective on September 17. For the positions of auxiliary nurses, their abolition is expected somewhere in the fall.

Ms. Brie adds that it is no longer able to hear the speech that the cutbacks in health spending do not affect patient care.

The regional president of the Fdration interprofessionnelle de la sant du Qubec (FIQ), Martine Side, went a step further by arguing that it is necessary to take the time to work with this customer, but that it takes the world to do it.

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Abolition of posts in mental health at the hospital of Chicoutimi - The Sherbrooke Times

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GST Rollout: Octroi abolition may save Rs 2,000 crore, cut freight … – Economic Times

Posted: at 9:06 am

MUMBAI: Abolition of octroi could result in saving of more than Rs 2000 crore and cut down freight time for trucks and commercial vehicles by at least 25%.

As many as 22 states have abolished their check posts since July 1 with the advent of GST. Tax rate on transport services has been increased to 5% from 4.5%, which will be borne by the buyer or seller of the goods whoever is availing the freight services; the latter can then lower final tax liability by claiming input credit. Also, a GST notification exempting registration of some of the associated entities would save transporters from a lot of paper work.

Less time, less cost "On an average we spent three hours waiting at the check posts and there was a lot of harassment. In addition, if there are any minor issues with the documents, there was delay of another 3 to 4 hours. And irrespective of whether the documents are in order or not, there was always some bribe to be paid to officials," Said Anil Vijan of G Shantilal Transport Company who operates a fleet of 80 trucks in the southern states. According to him, covering the distance from Mumbai to Bangalore, along with loading/unloading of cargo, should not take more than 18 to 20 hours, but all trucks had to wait for an extra 6 to 10 hours at the two check posts on the route.

Surjeet Singh Chawla of Chawla Road Lines who operates a fleet of 35 trucks on the Mumbai-Kolkata route had to deal with five check posts. "We expect to save one full day now," said Chawla.

According to industry circles, bribes at each check post was anything between Rs 200 and Rs 1000 per vehicle; the average time wasted was around 5 to 7 hours. Bribes added 3% to the total cost; delays stretched the travel time by 25-40%.

"Post GST, overall direct savings estimated for the operators is close to Rs 2000 crore which could lead to significant improvement in the return on assets ratio for ground transportation companies," said Sandeep Upadhyay, senior vice president, Infrastructure Solutions group, Centrum Capital. In the listed space, companies such as VRL Logistics, Gati and TCI are the major players in the segment. When contacted, VRL and Gati officials said that the development was a big positive but refrained from spelling out the gains.

Spokesperson for Bombay Goods Transport Association (BGTA), too said that the savings for the industry would be substantial and the state government too would save upto Rs 2000 crore.

Typically, a driver of a commercial vehicle putting in 12 to 13 hours a day covers at least 350-375 km. Long hours and hurdles on the way often made certain routes unviable for many fleet operators. As a result operators chose to limit services to specific routes.

More business for transporters Businessmen like Nilesh Rajpopat, owner of the Mumbai based Noble Industries which makes metal pipes, is exploring the possibility of tapping markets in other states. Thanks to discrepancy and complications related to various state taxes, till now he only dealt with buyers of a handful of states. If more like him reach out to buyers in other states, demand for transportation services is expected to rise. Rajpopat felt some of the railway freight traffic could move to roads.

Charities can deliver services and campaign robustly – The Guardian

Posted: at 9:06 am

Sir Stephen Bubb, former chief executive of the charity leaders network Acevo, has a long track record of advocacy for charities to play a bigger part in the provision of public services.

Although its never good to rush these things, its taken us almost one and a half millennia to work out exactly what charities are for. And we still arent sure.

We are a sector that delivers, campaigns, balances both, concluded Sir Stephen Bubb, who was thinking great thoughts about the future of charities after he surveyed their history in a lecture on 3 July at Oxford University. But, he conceded, their role in relation to government was still not settled.

Bubb, until recently leader of charity chief executives body Acevo, is essaying a way forward for the voluntary sector in his new capacity at the Charity Futures programme he has established. His lecture was an attempt to encapsulate the sectors story so far.

Starting in the year 597, when St Augustine founded The Kings School in Canterbury still a charity today Bubb demonstrated that charities have always delivered public services and campaigned for change.

Critics of charities latter-day engagement in the justice and penal systems should note that they were running prisons from the 12th century, he said. Critics of their political campaigning should note their decisive part in great social reform movements like the abolition of slavery.

Some of the best modern charities managed to combine both roles, he argued, citing the way the former Royal National Institute for Deaf People, now Action on Hearing Loss, had in the late 1990s campaigned forcefully and successfully for the provision of digital hearing aids on the NHS while continuing to work in partnership with state services.

While this showed it was a false dilemma to suggest that charities needed to choose between providing services and lobbying to change them, Bubb admitted that the sector had never fully recovered its sure-footedness in the former arena since the birth of the welfare state 70 years ago.

Charities have always delivered public services and campaigned for change

That singular advance of the state in service provision had given rise to the idea of subsidiarity that charities should do only those things the state did not, and where they developed innovative and proven ways of delivering services, those should become state services.

Bubb has a long track record of advocacy for charities to play a bigger part in the provision of public services. So his case against subsidiarity and for a return to what he called our good old English fashion, quoting the Duke of Wellington on the 19th century voluntary sectors clear dual role of service delivery and robust campaigning, needs to be seen in that light.

But other voices are also urging charities to make more of what they do and to be more confident of the effect they have.

In a survey by FTI Consulting for Pro Bono Economics, which enlists volunteer economists to work with charities, 81% of 1,100 members of the public said they would prioritise donations to charities that could demonstrate their economic impact.

Pro Bono said the finding showed the critical importance of being able to show and quanitify value in the post-truth era.

Julia Grant, chief executive of Pro Bono, said that by their own admission, many charities would struggle to demonstrate their impact on society in terms of hard evidence, but building the capacity to prove the importance of their work is crucial to their future stability and sustainability.

It goes almost without saying that Bubb was already on the case in his lecture. Charities spent 1,578 every second improving lives and supporting communities, he calculated. And that included animal charities rescuing 800 stray cats every week.

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Casino Luxembourg Forum d’art contemporain – E-Flux

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Mikhail Karikis Love Is the Institution of Revolution July 1October 15, 2017

Casino Luxembourg Forum dart contemporain 41 Rue Notre Dame L-2240 Luxembourg

http://www.casino-luxembourg.lu Facebook / Twitter / Instagram

Mikhail Karikiss practice embraces moving image, sound, performance, and other media, and emerges from his long-standing investigation of the voice as a sculptural material and a political agent. His works explore the energies that create collectivist dynamics, and are intended to resonate with peoples economic, cultural, psychological, and moral circumstances. He often collaborates with communities to orchestrate performances to film, in order to highlight alternative modes of human existence.

Love Is the Institution of Revolution features two projects by Karikis: Children of Unquiet (201315) and Aint Got No Fear (201617). Both focus on the voices of post-millennials and their visions of their own future in the wake of rapid deindustrialization in the West, specifically in Europe, and legacies of crises (from environmental to financial) inherited from the current power-holding classes.

Children of Unquiet takes place in the Devils Valley in Tuscany, Italy. This is the very location where sustainable energy production was invented a century ago, and where the first geothermal power station in the world was built. Until recently, five thousand workers and their families lived there in a group of villages designed by the architect Giovanni Michelucci. Following the introduction of automated and remote operation technologies, unemployment increased and prospects for the young became limited, resulting in rapid depopulationeven the abandonment of entire villages.

The centerpiece of Children of Unquiet is Karikiss film of the same title, which he produced in collaboration with 45 children from the region. The film orchestrates their takeover of a deserted village. Youngsters five to 12 years old burst into the eerie, depopulated site and nearby scorching, vaporous wasteland and turn it into a playground. They read about love, work, and the productivity manifested by insects, and sing along with the Earths roaring geothermal sounds and the incessant hum of factory drones that form the soundscape of their childhood.

For Aint Got No Fear, Karikis worked with teenagers who live in Grain, a remote industrial corner of southeast England. In response to the isolation of their village, and the consequent lack of places and opportunities to express themselves, they organized raves in a local forest, which were raided by the police.

Using as their beat the persistent crushing noises from the demolition of a nearby power plant, boys of eleven to thirteen years sing a rap song they wrote about their lives, in which they recall memories of their youth and imagine their future in general and old age in particular. Reminiscent of a grime video, the film offers glimpses into teenage experiences on the edges of urbanity, following the youths to their secret underground hideaways in disused military tunnels and capturing their rackety reclaiming of the site where the raves used to take place.

Children of Unquiet and Aint Got No Fear reveal ways in which youths reimagine industrial locations with a sense of spatial justice defined by friendship, collective agency, love, personal empowerment, and the thrill of subverting authority. By turns playful and meditative, spectacular and intimate, operatic and realist, these works resonatewith new waysof thinking about the destiny of territories scarred by industrial obsolescence, and hint at foreseeable or potential futures conjured up in the imaginationboth poetic and activistof the generation most affected by current social shifts.

Mikhail Karikis (b. Greece, 1975) lives and works in London. He has had recent solo shows at Carroll/Fletcher, London (2015-16) and The Gallery, Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle, UK (2015). Recent group shows include the British Art Show 8, various venues, UK (201517); the 19thBiennale of Sydney (2014);and Manifesta 9, Genk, Belgium (2012).

Love Is the Institution of Revolution is curated by Miguel Amado and Kevin Muhlen. The exhibition was initiated by Casino Luxembourg Forum dart contemporain and is organized in collaboration with Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, UK.

A short film about Mikhail Karikiss practice can be viewed online at CasinoChannel.

Press contact: Nadine Clemens, nadine.clemens [at] casino-luxembourg.lu

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Casino Luxembourg Forum d'art contemporain - E-Flux

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Bill McDonald: Technology is now about empowering humans – The Scotsman

Posted: at 9:05 am

09:43 Monday 03 July 2017

Putting customers in the driving seat will be increasing role of tech advances, writes Bill McDonald, MD for management consultancy Accenture in Scotland.

Just the way we watch the television shows how much empowerment of the individual has changed. And it speaks of the wider picture of how technology is no longer a take-it-or-leave-it template, but a bespoke service tailored to the individual.

Can you picture early television broadcasts? They were carefully scripted and delivered to present a highly curated programme, forcing us all to not only share the same worldview, but also to watch on the programme-makers terms.

Powell: 5 ways to make financial decisions easier – USA TODAY

Posted: at 9:05 am

Robert Powell, Special for USA TODAY Published 7:00 a.m. ET July 5, 2017 | Updated 7:00 a.m. ET July 5, 2017

Many people think of their personal finances as something "cold" or analytical. Then they see those financial decisions outside of themselves and tend to avoid them.(Photo: Richard Drew, AP)

Making decisions about money isnt easy.

In fact, research suggests many people often neglect their personal finances, in part, because they feel those types of decisions are too "cold,"analytical, and unemotional for them, according to Jane Jeongin Park, a doctoral candidate University of Florida and co-author of Not My Type: Why Affective Decision-Makers Are Reluctant to Make Financial Decisions.

People feel that "financial decisions are 'not them,' "according to Parks, and her co-author Aner Sela, an associate professor at the University of Florida.

Given that, what might you do to make better decisions about their money?

Think outcome, not investment decision. Mentally re-frame financial activities in terms of desired life outcomes; lifestyle goals in retirement and dont think of them as financial investment decisions.

Why? "Because the term itself activates much of the negative baggage that is associated with financial decisions,"Park says.

Re-framing in this manner also reduces the tendency to avoid or delay such decisions.

Others agree with this tactic. "Re-frame the financial goal in terms of the outcome or emotional or personal meaning associated with an outcome,"says Ruth Lytton, director of the financial planning at Virginia Tech.

In their study, Park and Sela found that merely labeling a financial decision choosing annuities for retirement as "a decision about your life in retirement"instead of as "a decision about financial investments for retirement" dramatically decreased peoples tendency to avoid the task and the level of discomfort they experienced.

"This is something that people may also be able to do for themselves: namely, think about financial decisions in terms of the life outcomes they are supposed to serve, instead of focusing on their being 'financial,' "Park says.

Lytton shares this point of view. "Dont think about the annuity in terms of an investment but the satisfaction, reduction in stress, or benefit from 'regular'income that will support the goal of travel, golf, time with family, and the like,"Lytton says. In other words, focus on the 'end'result, not the interim of the research, ranking alternatives, decision making, and the like that may increase stress and lead to procrastination.

Focus on your vision. Motivation is what changes behavior, not knowledge. "Focus on your vision,"says Laura Mattia, the founder of the Womens Money Empowerment Network. "Put a picture of the house you want to buy on your computer or whatever it is that will motivate you and just keep working towards that goal. It may sound corny but it works like magic."

Be mindful."Realizing that ones subjective discomfort in the face of financial matters is simply a bias or an automatic association, and not an indication that one is unequipped to handle the decision itself, may encourage people to take action,"Park says.

How does it make you feel? Anyone that has tried to influence behavior knows that it is emotion that changes behavior, not intellect, says Mattia. "Investors should reframe their decisions in terms of howthey will make them feel in the long-run and how it will influence their lifestyle and their lives,"she says.

Lytton also says focusing on your feelings can help you make better financial decisions. Ask yourself: 'How will you feel'if, at 18, there are no savings to help your child attend college? How would you feel if there is money? What can you visualize?

"If the questions are phrased in a way to help (you) truly think and identify that emotion and the experience, that may be much more motivating than the daily coffee I have to give up now,"Lytton says. "We tend not be long-term thinkers, born out by lots of research, but if we can link the feelings of the future with the decision to be made today, it may be more motivational than the pain of immediate loss."

This should not be interpreted as manipulative or "guilt-inducing," she says. Rather, it's fundamentally about how to do we help people make decisions in their best interest. "We want to contextualize the decision, which makes it less scary and more urgent to deal with,"Lytton says.

Think values."I dont start with goals," says Mattia. "I like to talk about values. When you start with your life purpose, your values and your vision for your life, it opens up possibilities that may not have existed if you go directly to goals. It is motivational and inspiring."

MORE POWELL:

How to make your own financial wellness program

Why Facebook could ruin your retirement

How to keep earning a paycheck in retirement

Powell is editor of Retirement Weekly, contributes regularly to USA TODAY, The Wall Street Journal, TheStreet and MarketWatch. Got questions about money? Email Bob at rpowell@allthingsretirement.com.

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Siskiyou native develops ‘Rivers for All’ program – Taft Midway Driller

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During his high school years, Paul Gillingham participated in many outdoor programs and camps through the Siskiyou Family YMCA, including a raft guide course they offered. That course inspired Gillinghams love and respect for rivers and was a driving force behind his decision to develop the outdoor education program Rivers for All.

As a boy growing up in Siskiyou County, Paul Gillingham was surrounded by rivers. During his high school years, Gillingham participated in many outdoor programs and camps through the Siskiyou Family YMCA, including a raft guide course they offered. That course inspired Gillinghams love and respect for rivers and was a driving force behind his decision to develop the outdoor education program Rivers for All.

The mission of Rivers for All is to increase river access among local, under-served populations through low-cost, river-focused adventures that deepen connection to local watersheds and build leadership in our communities.

Having participated in cub scouts and boy scouts in his childhood for a combined ten years, Gillingham recalled that the skills he learned and fun he had with troop made him want to pursue more outdoor adventures. He also credits his father, Charlie Gillingham who volunteered countless hours to help with many boy scout troop activities with instilling a desire in him to help others.

After obtaining his raft guide certification through the Siskiyou Family YMCA, Gillingham worked at YMCA summer camps, taking campers on rafting adventures on Siskiyou rivers. Friends of his also worked as raft guides at the camps. After looking back on those times years later, Gillingham reflected, "Lots of youth groups came through the summer camp. Even though it was for them, we felt like we were the campers, and we learned a lot from them. We were super lucky."

Gillingham graduated from Yreka High School in 2008 and moved to Arcata, California, where he worked as a raft guide while obtaining his bachelors degree in environmental science from Humboldt State University. He was also co-director of a program through HSU called LEAP: Leadership Education Adventure Program. After earning his degree, Gillingham moved to White Salmon, Washington, and continued to work as a raft guide while honing other outdoor skills.

Though residents in Siskiyou County are accustomed to rivers - the Klamath, Salmon and Scott, just to name a few within the countys borders after Gillingham moved out of his hometown of Yreka, he witnessed firsthand that many youth lack easy access to rivers.He knew from countless hours spent enjoying rivers and all they have to offer, that those youth were missing out on the many lessons rivers can teach us.

Gillingham explained, Ive learned so much from rafting and being a guide: Humility, good judgment, decision making, personal empowerment, confidence ... the list goes on. The rush of navigating whitewater rapids helped Gillingham build upon other concepts that translate directly to the real world as well. I had to get comfortable with being scared, he said, and being OK with taking a risk and being OK with not taking a risk, too.

Out of his years of experience both learning and teaching in the outdoors, Gillingham said, "I wanted to create [Rivers for All] for other kids, as a way to give back."

With the help of his friend Heather and assistance from the nonprofit CultureSeed which helps passionate people raise money for projects and programs through seed funding Rivers for All was launched.

Rivers for All is currently working to raise $4,000 toward its goal for the 2017 summer season: To provide 60 local youth with a free rafting program on the White Salmon or Klickitat River in the Columbia River Gorge.

Three thousand dollars will go toward 60 youth rafting this 2017 summer, which equates to $65 per youth. As RFA acquires more gear and resources, the cost per youth will go down. The remaining $1,000 will go toward the printing cost of Rivers For All T-shirts which will be sold at rafting companies and RFA events which will generate more funds to help RFA expand its outreach.

Gillingham said he counts himself lucky to have grown up with so many opportunities for easy and free river access and that the more youth get to experience the joy and beauty of rivers firsthand, the better communities will come to understand the important role rivers play in our lives.

Rivers for Alls fundraising site notes, Local residents often dont have the same opportunities to connect with the rivers in their backyards yet they are the ones most connected to the health of our rivers. Youth that would benefit most from an "outdoor classroom often cant afford participating in recreation. We need your help to change that!

To donate to Rivers for All, visit generosity.com/education-fundraising/rivers-for-all-outdoor-education-program. More information can be found by visiting facebook.com/riversforall.

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Daily Archives: July 5, 2017

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BEN RAILTON: How two Massachusetts slaves won their freedom – Lowell Sun

Retail sector taps youth slaves – MacroBusiness (blog)

Abolition of posts in mental health at the hospital of Chicoutimi – The Sherbrooke Times

GST Rollout: Octroi abolition may save Rs 2,000 crore, cut freight … – Economic Times

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Casino Luxembourg Forum d’art contemporain – E-Flux

Bill McDonald: Technology is now about empowering humans – The Scotsman

Powell: 5 ways to make financial decisions easier – USA TODAY

Siskiyou native develops ‘Rivers for All’ program – Taft Midway Driller

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