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Education, Religion
'A really joyful journey': Preparing people with intellectual disabilities to receive the sacraments
December 14, 2020 sndden
A volunteer at Caritas St. Joseph in Hendon, north London, on March 16, 2012. Credit: Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk.
As book titles go, the "Directory for Catechesis" is hardly the catchiest. But this volume could potentially transform the lives of thousands of people.
That is the conviction of Gail Williams, center manager at Caritas St. Joseph in Hendon, north London. When the updated directory — formerly known as the General Directory for Catechesis — was released in June, she was struck by what it said about people with disabilities.
"People with disabilities are called to the fullness of sacramental life, even in the presence of serious disturbances," the directory said. "The sacraments are gifts of God and the liturgy, even before being rationally understood, asks to be lived: therefore, no one can deny the sacraments to people with disabilities."
"It means so much for it actually to be printed in there," Williams told CNA, "because the General Directory for Catechesis is the go-to for anybody that's not really doing this work. And they'll often say: 'Well, is it in the General Directory for Catechesis?'"
"To be able to say 'Yes, it is' is just amazing, because then you have real proof and back-up that actually the Catholic Church does want to embrace everyone and does want to encompass those that are usually ignored."
For the past 40 years, Caritas St. Joseph has supported people with intellectual disabilities, as well as their families and friends, in the English Diocese of Westminster. Formerly known as St. Joseph's Pastoral Centre, Caritas St. Joseph wants to share its expertise far beyond the borders of Westminster diocese, which includes all of London north of the River Thames and some outlying areas.
Williams believes that some parishes are scared of catechizing those with learning disabilities. She is on a mission to persuade them that it can, in fact, be "a really joyful journey."
Her interest in catechesis began when her oldest son, who is severely dyslexic, started his First Communion course at the age of seven.
"Nobody understood how he functioned. In those days, it was all 'sit down and read from the book,' and it was so difficult for him," she recalled.
She realized that her son's faith grew by listening to the words said at Mass, as well as through the sounds and smells at the church they attended.
In 2006, Williams attended a course called "Symbols of Faith" at St. Joseph's. When she returned to her parish with a deeper knowledge of how to teach the faith to people with learning disabilities, she made a disturbing discovery.
She found that there were families that didn't bring their children to church because they couldn't cope with crowds or remain still during the quieter parts of Mass.
"To go back and find that part of my parish family was missing because of all these reasons was a real eye-opener for me," she remembered. "That's when I really felt quite strongly that everybody should be included."
Williams continued: "When you're a parent of a child or an adult with a learning disability, and you are on the phone constantly to doctors, fighting for them at school, the last thing you really need to do is to feel shut off from your faith."
The latest catechetical directory is the third since the Second Vatican Council. The first, the General Catechetical Directory, was published in 1971. The second, the General Directory for Catechesis, was issued in 1997. The latest version updates catechetical methods for the digital age and is likely to have a profound impact on the teaching of the Catholic faith around the world.
When Williams begins catechizing a child, she takes them into an empty church and helps them to appreciate all the sensory elements: the colors, sounds and smells. She may lead them to the altar and explain why it is much more than an ordinary table.
"It's not about long, convoluted words. It's about showing and supporting them in making their own discoveries," she said.
Williams urges parents of disabled children to raise the directory's new recommendations with their pastors. If their parish doesn't know where to begin, she advises them to contact Caritas St. Joseph or similar organizations where they live.
We can come out and we can train people, and we can share our knowledge, expertise and resources. But once you are trained, don't be afraid to be the voice for those people who are left on the fringes of your parish," she said.
Williams noted that, while her work is deeply rewarding, it can be emotionally draining. At one point, she was visiting families after finishing her day job.
"Sometimes you would spend one minute with the child because he had had enough at school that day and just wasn't interested," she said. "But then you would spend half an hour with the mum, because she hadn't seen anyone all week or he had had a difficult day at school and she needed to talk to someone."
"At those times you think 'Well, I can't catechize today.' But actually you're supporting the whole family. And it's so important that even if it seems impossible, actually it isn't. Kindness, patience and time is the best gift."
There are also heart-lifting breakthroughs. Williams talks about discussing transubstantiation with a child who responded by making two sign-language gestures, one meaning "change" and the other signifying "creation."
"So then you know that actually she's understanding that that's the Consecration, that the bread and the wine is changing and creating the Body and Blood. You get moments like that, that absolutely clarify what you are doing," she said.
Above all, Williams wants parents to know that, thanks to the latest directory, a new path is open to them.
"It doesn't matter where you are or who you are. God can always be present in your life," Williams said.
"Quite a lot of time we get the question 'Do they really know?' And yes, they really do. Sometimes you have to work with someone for four years, sometimes for a year. Sometimes you can support them straightaway on the Communion program."
"Just don't be afraid," she concluded. "It is possible for everyone."
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/a-really-joyful-journey-preparing-people-with-intellectual-disabilities-to-receive-the-sacraments-23270
Children, Education, U.N
UN: Nearly 500 million children excluded from remote schooling
September 25, 2020 sndden
UNICEF report says even children with adequate access may face other obstacles to distance education [Ali Hashisho/Reuters]
An estimated 463 million children have been unable to access remote learning amid the coronavirus pandemic and widespread school closures, according to the United Nations children's fund.
A new report published on Thursday by UNICEF said at least one-third of the world's schoolchildren lack the equipment or electronic access that would allow them to pursue distance education.
"The sheer number of children whose education was completely disrupted for months on end is a global education emergency," Henrietta Fore, executive director of UNICEF, said in a statement.
"The repercussions could be felt in economies and societies for decades to come," she said.
The coronavirus pandemic has caused the largest disruption to education in history, with schools closed in some 160 countries in mid-July, affecting an estimated 1.5 billion students, according to the UN.
A new report published in July by international charity Save the Children said nearly 10 million children may never go back to school because of deep budget cuts and rising poverty caused by the pandemic.
In an attempt to prevent the spread of the virus, many countries switched to online learning, but aid groups say this has only widened the learning gap between children from rich and poor families.
The UNICEF report underlined gaping geographical differences in children's access to distance education, with far fewer affected in Europe, for example, than in Africa or parts of Asia.
The report is based on data gathered from roughly 100 countries, measuring public access to the internet, television and radio.
Even children with adequate access may face other obstacles to distance education – whether the lack of a good workspace at home, pressure to do other work for the family, or a lack of technical support when computer problems arise, the UNICEF report said.
Of the students around the world unable to access virtual education, 67 million are in Eastern and Southern Africa, 54 million in western and central Africa, 80 million in the Pacific and East Asia, 37 million in the Middle East and North Africa, 147 million in South Asia, and 13 million in Latin America and the Caribbean.
No figures were given for Canada or the United States – the worst-affected country by the virus – where the issue of reopening of schools has sparked fierce political debate and concern among educators.
With the new school year soon to begin in many countries – including in-person classes in many places – UNICEF urged governments to "prioritise the safe reopening of schools when they begin easing lockdown restrictions".
Where reopening is impossible, governments should arrange for "compensatory learning for lost instructional time", the report said.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/500-million-children-excluded-remote-schooling-200827053540044.html
Education, Ghana
This nun aims to get Ghana's children off the streets, and into school
September 9, 2020 sndden
Sister Anthonia Orji, and Rays of Hope Students
Accra, Ghana, – Salamatu Abubakar spent years of her childhood picking up scraps of plastic on the streets of Accra, the African coastal city that is the capital of Ghana. Her dad took the plastic to an open air market, selling it in bulk to recyclers and scrap dealers, and barely earning enough to get by.
In that same market, Samuel Ganyo, who had come with his mother to Accra from a poorer city in Ghana, sold slices of sugar cane to marketplace vendors, shoppers, and people passing by in cars. A popular snack across Africa, sugar cane didn't pay enough for Samuel and his mother.
Daniel Lomotey started working in another Accra market when he was 10. He dropped out of school then, and started working for his uncle pushing a handcart hired by vendors to move their products in the Mandela marketplace. It was hard work, and it didn't pay very much. And because Daniel, like Salamatua and Samuel, wasn't going to school, his prospects for the future looked grim.
When Daniel was 12, he met Sister Anthonia Orji of the Daughters of Sacred Passion, a Nigerian religious sister working in Ghana. Sr. Anthonia helped kids do hard, heavy work on the streets, and helped them get back to school.
Sr. Anthonia is the centre manager and education officer at the Welfare, Empowerment Mobility Centre in the Archdiocese of Accra. Her work is part of the Rays of Hope project, which aims to help Ghana's street kids, like Salamatua, Samuel, and Daniel, by giving them a home, and getting them enrolled in school.
Daniel is 18 now. He met Sr. Anthonia in 2014. And he told ACI Africa, CNA's African news partner, that meeting her is the best thing to happen in his life.
"Through her guidance and support, I am now a final year Junior High student at the St. Peter's Catholic School in Ayikuma. Apart from that, I have acquired the skills in sewing and barbering through training at WEM," Daniel said.
Samuel, who is 16, also lives at the center, along with 22 other young people.
"I have learnt a lot like farming and barbering of hair as an additional skill to my schooling and I advise all vulnerable children who have the opportunity like me to make good use of it," said Samuel.
The center doesn't discriminate based upon religion. Though a Muslim, Salamatu said she has come to love Catholicism, through the guidance of Sr. Anthonia, whom she said is her mentor and mother.
"I picked polythene on the streets for my dad to sell in the Ashaiman market to earn a living. But thanks to Rays of Hope, I now live a life of dignity," she told ACI Africa, adding, "Through the skills training and way of life at the center, I can pray the rosary and other Catholic prayers very well even though I am a Muslim."
Ghana's constitution prohibits many types of child labor. But Sr. Anthonia told ACI Africa that the constitutional law is not always followed, and that many poor children are put to work because of the poverty of their families.
Sr. Anthonia lamented school drop-out, child mortality, child labor, child trafficking, rape, prostitution and defilement of vulnerable children and urged Ghanaians to create a sense of belonging in street children.
She said that with the outbreak of COVID-19, the children ranging between the ages of 7 and 15 in residence at the WEM Center have been placed in various homes.
All the children, she said, were schooling at the St. Peter's Catholic School.
"For the fear of the spread of the coronavirus at the WEM Center, 20 out of the 23 children have been placed in various homes of volunteer families and they are monitored daily by our re-integration staff," Sr. Anthonia told ACI Africa.
The main aim of the center is to help Ghana's street children get to school, and stay healthy, while staying connected with the parents and extended families of the children. The religious sister said that a lot of effort goes into establishing a frequent contact between the street survivors and their families.
"We believe that what God has created and bound together should not be separated. The connection to one's family is the most valuable foundation for becoming a successful and responsible member of society. Therefore, we are convinced of putting all our effort, patience and love into the reintegration process of our beneficiaries," she said.
Sr. Anthonia said that Christians have been endowed with the ability to perceive, appreciate and understand the situation of the vulnerable person, identify their needs, design needed services and facilitate the provision of requisite intervention to bring relief to them.
She appealed to parents and opinion leaders to jointly take steps to curb drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, teenage pregnancies, armed robbery, occultism and cyber fraud among the youth, especially those on the streets.
The work of her project, she said, begins with finding street children eager to go to school, and families willing to approve that.
"We search the streets of Ashaiman, Tema, Accra and its environs from the First Contact Place. Every year, we search for street children in the major cities in Greater Accra and those who are willing to be supported, along with their families, sign a contract for onward enrollment every September," she told ACI Africa correspondent.
She explained that the center's educational approach is divided into pre-school classes, formal education and informal education as well as moral and religious aspects of life.
"Pre-school" isn't for younger kids, as the term denotes in the West. At WEM, all new recruits are prepared for school life through intensive one-year pre-school classes.
"The children who were once on the streets and not schooling will have to be prepared to enhance their reintegration into school life," the nun said, and added, "This demands patience, energy and love."
"In pre-school classes, we focus to improve their oral, literary and arithmetic skills through a structured curriculum, and in the later stage of their development in pre-classes, other subject areas are introduced."
There are 36 children at the collection center who are being prepared for school life. The collection point, in extreme cases, serves as a temporary shelter for beneficiaries, whose relatives or parents have not yet been located.
The Nigerian nun explained that at the collection center, the beneficiaries come on a daily basis to be taught mathematics, English language and other subjects by the class teachers and volunteers.
"They are also educated on personal hygiene, social, religious and moral skills through classes and special programs," she added, and explained that the children have a period of morning devotion after their chores, before they go into their classes for lessons.
The classes, she said, are divided into three levels to meet the children's individual academic needs, as they undertake five hours of classes per day.
When they complete the one-year pre-class, they are enrolled into basic school after they have met the criteria, which include punctuality and discipline, ability to read and write, to calculate simple arithmetic, personal hygiene like bathing, washing, and neatness in dress, Sr. Anthonia said.
The children are admitted into Catholic schools because "we believe the environment and as well as the Christian routine will help grow their moral and religious values," said Sr. Anthonia.
As part of its humanitarian activities, Rays of Hope sponsors the former vulnerable children from the basic to the tertiary level of education, providing shelter, food, accommodation, and school fees.
Sr. Anthonia said that passion to restore dignity among young people who have made mistakes in life inspires her apostolate.
"The work at Rays of Hope for me is not just work but rather it is a ministry and a call. Ordinarily, when you look at it with human eyes, you might not want anything to do with it," she said.
"It is all about a call from God and a passion to make an impact in the young people's lives."
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/this-nun-aims-to-get-ghanas-children-off-the-streets-and-into-school-15527
Education, Girls
Education and nutrition ministry for women and girls of the Maasai community
August 14, 2020 sndden
Grail Sr. Rose Mmbaga, second from left, walks with some Maasai women who are gathering wood to fuel cooking fires. (Provided photo)
As a Grail sister of Tanzania I have had the privilege of ministering in the Maasai community of northern Tanzania, East Africa for many years. We started by educating the Maasai women, and as we lived with them and shared their lifestyle, we gradually learned what their special needs were and what we needed to do. For example, we have started feeding the Maasai children to reduce malnutrition and kwashiorkor due to lack of proper food and treatment.
The Maasai are semi-nomadic herders, who depend on their livestock for wealth, and the milk, meat and blood they provide. Their colorful traditions, customs and dress, and the fact they live near East African national game parks have made them well known among Kenyan indigenous ethnic groups. Most of them are either Catholic or Lutheran. Maasai women respect God, regularly meeting for small community every Sunday and Wednesday and for preparation of song for Sunday.
Presently there are a number of serious issues in Maasai society. For example, our Maasai girls — not just our students but the girls in primary school or younger — are being forced into early marriages. Sister Samba explained to me that the parents want them to get married in order to get their dowry. The dowry comes in the form of cows; in Maasai culture, the more cows you own, the higher your prestige.
Another serious issue is Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Sister Deonisia tells us about this. It is a cultural initiation ceremony in which a number of young girls are circumcised. There are many negative consequences to their health, even death from heavy bleeding. Circumcision is a door to early marriage since most are married after the FGM ceremony.
We have kept records, and out of 389 girls we know that received FGM, 146 got married during this COVID-19 "holiday." We have been working hard to get them back to school, and also we are fighting for the younger girls to get into primary school.
In struggling to get girls back to school, we make use of the police force to catch the parents, on the basis that they are neglecting the rights of their children to acquire an education. Most of the girls who are involved are between the ages of 6 to 13 years old.
Right now, the cases of girl students who were married during the COVID-19 crisis are now at the police court for judgement.
How can these girls be helped? I think the most important ways are:
Girls (students) need to be supported materially with uniforms and learning materials like exercise books, pens and pencils.
They need help with school fees to help them learn without worry.
We need to provide these girls with a dormitory because of the long distance from home to school; many girls have been raped on the way to school and have become pregnant.
Security is important when students are at school.
Parents need to be trained through seminars on the importance of a child's rights to education.
Early marriages and FGM have led Maasai women to bring their girls to our convent in order to save the girls from these practices. As a result, we have started a center for Maasai girls. We have rescued them from FGM and fistula, (often a result of early-age childbirth) and have reduced the rate of death. A good number of Maasai girls have enrolled in the school. We have been so successful that our center for Maasai girls is now too small for the number of girls we serve, and we are trying to get a grant to make it bigger.
Freedom of speech is also an issue for Maasai women. Most men exercise power over women's lives and personal freedoms; some women even have to get permission to go to town or visit friends.
Overworking is also a problem for Maasai women. In the Maasai community, women are responsible for maintaining the home, for cooking and cleaning, collecting firewood and water, looking after children, and building and repairing their huts.
It is obvious that married Maasai women have a workload that far exceeds that of married men. In a typical day, they clean their houses, cook, look after young babies, and fetch water. As there may be more than one wife in each household, the women share the workload among themselves and may delegate tasks to children and unmarried women in the homestead.
We Grail Sisters are working in more than seven villages, and the Maasai women, men, girls and children have become our friends. We share many things with them, and they tell us their likes and dislikes. They complain to us about some of their traditions: they don't like FGM or early marriages, and are trying to stop these bad traditions. We are there for them and look forward to helping them improve their lives.
https://www.globalsistersreport.org/news/education-and-nutrition-ministry-women-and-girls-maasai-community
Children, Education, Uganda
With schools closed, child labour on the rise in lockdown Uganda
July 17, 2020 sndden
Omara Mark Desmond, 13, sells masks outside a petrol station to support his family. Child rights organisations say they are seeing a rise in child labour during the coronavirus pandemic. Photo taken on June 22, 2020, in Gulu, northern Uganda. Sally Hayden/Thomson Reuters Foundation
GULU, Uganda, – Every morning soon after dawn, 10-year-old Moses leaves home carrying trays of hard-boiled eggs and walks for half an hour to sell them outside a petrol station in the Ugandan city of Gulu.
With schools closed indefinitely since the nation went into a strict lockdown to fight COVID-19 in March, Moses is among some 15 million Ugandan children at risk of being forced to work as families are pushed towards extreme poverty, charities say.
After seven hours hawking his eggs, which sell for 500 Ugandan shillings($0.13) apiece, and doing his best to avoid police enforcing the lockdown, Moses picked up his trays and headed home.
"Business isn't good. We won't have enough food," he said, as a group of boys, also selling eggs, asked him how his day had been.
A Save the Children report carried out in May found 56% of Ugandans had noticed an increase in child labour since the beginning of the lockdown.
"(There are) children in the streets selling stuff, selling alcohol, selling food in the markets, but also some of the big gold mines, we've had quite a few reports of more children going to work there," said Alun McDonald, head of advocacy and communications for Save the Children in Uganda.
He said the charity has also been getting reports about increasing numbers of teenage girls being drawn into sex work to help their families make ends meet and buy everyday goods including food and sanitary pads.
The pandemic has put millions of children worldwide at risk of being pushed into labour, reversing two decades of work to combat the practice and potentially marking the first rise in child labour since 2000, the United Nations warned in June.
'LIFE IS SO HARD'
Moses lives with his grandmother Fatima Khamis, 45, who looks after 16 children in total. As the only elder in her extended family she is expected to care for relatives' children in a crisis situation, such as the pandemic.
Before the lockdown, Khamis used to run her own business selling snacks to students, but she had to shut down as customers stayed home.
Government food aid has barely covered the capital city, Kampala, and Khamis has received only 3 kg (6.6 pounds) of beans and 5 kg of rice since the coronavirus curbs took effect.
Besides Moses, two other girls work selling samosas but the household's meagre income only stretches to one meal a day now.
"Life has become so hard," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Some of Khamis's wards are orphans, some are her own children, and others have been placed in her care because their parents were unable to look after them.
Moses's father is out of work while his mother got stuck in southern Uganda when the lockdown started.
Even before the pandemic shut down her business, the four youngest school-age children living with Khamis were not attending classes because she could not afford to pay school fees and buy books, paper and pens.
https://news.trust.org/item/20200708085058-8ptfw/
Sierra Leone lifts ban on pregnant girls attending school
April 1, 2020 sndden
A girl holds her chalkboard as she arrives to attend lessons at the evening school in Ouakam neighbourhood, Dakar, Senegal January 16, 2019. Picture taken January 16, 2019. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra
DAKAR, March 30 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Sierra Leone on Monday overturned a ban on pregnant girls attending school in a victory for human rights activists who had fought against it for five years.
The West African country introduced the ban in 2015 after a rise in rape, abuse and poverty during the deadly Ebola outbreak fueled a spike in teenage pregnancies.
The government held that allowing pregnant girls to attend school would tire them out, expose them to ridicule and encourage other girls to get pregnant, while critics said the ban increased stigma and set thousands back in their studies.
"The Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education… hereby announces that the 'ban on pregnant girls attending school' is overturned with immediate effect," the government said in a statement.
"Overturning the ban is the first step in building a radically inclusive Sierra Leone where all children are able to live and learn in safety and dignity."
After years of advocacy proved unfruitful, human rights groups filed a case against Sierra Leone with West Africa's top court in 2018.
The court ruled in their favour in December, saying the ban was discriminatory and violated the right to equal education.
"It's been such a long fight," said Sierra Leonean child rights activist Chernor Bah.
"We didn't need to have gone through this. I feel for those girls who were abandoned by this policy, who went through all of this and who, most of them, will never probably recover," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Education Minister David Sengeh said the state would replace the ban with two new policies focused on "radical inclusion" and "comprehensive safety" in the education system.
Details were not yet announced, but the safety policy will include measures to protect girls from sexual violence in schools, said Judy Gitau, Africa coordinator of women's rights group Equality Now, which worked with the government.
"We did not anticipate that the response would be as positive as it is," she said.
Several other African countries also ban pregnant girls from attending school, including Tanzania and Equatorial Guinea.
Activists urged their counterparts in other countries to keep fighting.
"This victory shows the importance of collaboration between a variety of partners and not giving up," said Sabrina Mahtani, a human rights lawyer who worked to lift the ban.
https://news.trust.org/item/20200330132934-vp8ja/
Children, Education, Nigeria
Nigeria's child development crisis is a tragedy. Here's how we can end it
January 20, 2020 sndden
Computer lessons in Lagos. A national emergency response is needed to get all Nigeria's children into quality schooling. Photograph: Cavan Images/Alamy
If you want a window on the condition of children in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, there is no better vantage point than the Katanga health centre in the impoverished northern state of Jigawa.
In a hut that passes for a nutrition clinic, a group of 25 women wait with their children. Tiny bodies bearing the hallmarks of acute malnutrition – distended stomachs and twig-thin limbs – are lifted into a weighing harness and their arms measured to check for signs of wasting. Ali, who has just reached his first birthday, weighs only 5kg – the average age of a two-month-old in the UK. His mother is 14.
Sitting under a tree in the forecourt, another severely malnourished child is gasping for breath. Nayo, who is seven months, has the telltale symptoms of severe pneumonia – a collapsed rib cage, deep cough and fever. He desperately needs antibiotics and medical oxygen. The clinic has neither. "I'm worried for his life, there is nowhere to go for help," his mother tells me.
Nigeria is Africa's largest economy and a global energy-exporting superpower. It is endowed with vast natural resources. But the country is rooted near the foot of the World Bank's global league table for human capital – a composite measure capturing the health, education and nutritional status of children.
Five years ago Nigeria's leaders joined the rest of the world in embracing the 2030 sustainable development goals. They include targets to end preventable child and maternal deaths, eradicate malnutrition and give all children a quality education. Almost half of Nigeria's 200 million population is under 15, and achieving these goals would catalyse the dynamic and inclusive growth needed to create jobs.
Unfortunately, Nigeria is either treading water or sinking like a stone on all the key 2030 indicators for child development. More than 800,000 children lose their lives each year, mainly to preventable diseases such as malaria, pneumonia and diarrhoea. Over the past decade, the country's share of global under-five deaths doubled – to 16% of the total – and continues to rise.
Malnutrition is endemic. Almost half of Nigeria's children are stunted by nutritional deprivation, with devastating consequences for health and cognitive development. About 2 million face life-threatening malnutrition. Vaccination against killer diseases is critical for malnourished children. But millions of children in Nigeria have not been immunised.
More than 10 million children aged 5–14 years are out of school – more than in any other country – even though education is nominally free and compulsory. Most of those in school are getting a fifth-rate education after years of underinvestment. Children with eight years of schooling typically have learning skills equivalent to four years of primary education.
There are also deep fractures linked to inequalities in wealth, region and gender. Children born into the poorest 20% of families are eight times more likely to succumb to fatal illness. Young girls, especially those in the northern states, are far more likely to be forced into early marriage. Almost one in five girls are married by the age of 15, according to Unicef.
Nigeria's child development crisis is a tragedy for the country. Over the next three decades the population will double, making Nigeria the world's third most populous country. By 2050 almost one in every 10 children born in the world will be Nigerian. Sheer weight of numbers dictates that the fate of Nigeria's children will shape the world's development.
So what can be done to break the malaise?
First, Nigeria urgently needs to convert economic wealth into human capital, starting with investment in children. Current revenue collection levels are among the lowest in the world, holding back vital public spending in areas such as health and education. Changing this picture will require a broader and deeper tax base, with strengthened royalty collection from oil companies.
The federal government has passed some encouraging legislation on education and public health. But at 0.6% of GDP, Nigeria's health spending is comparable to countries such as Yemen and Afghanistan. The result is clinics like the one in Jigawa, without trained health workers, medicines and vital equipment.
Second, a national emergency response is needed to get all children into quality schooling. Unlocking the potential of Nigeria's children would transform the country.
That won't be possible without a third component for change – a concerted drive to combat the deep inequalities facing girls and women. It is surely time for Nigeria's politicians, as well religious and traditional leaders, to push for an end to child marriage – a practice that violates human rights, destroys opportunity and perpetuates poverty.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jan/15/nigerias-child-development-crisis-is-a-tragedy-heres-how-we-can-end-it
Education, USA
High school founded by former NFL star aims to make virtuous students
May 29, 2019 sndden
Former NFL player and Unity School co-founder Matt Birk. Credit: Ravens by Richard Lippenholz at Ravens Practice Balto Co/wikimedia. CC BY 2.0
by Perry West
Minneapolis, Minn., (CNA)– Not everyone who goes to high school will go to college, the founders of a new Minnesota high school say, but everyone should be prepared for leadership, service, and virtuous lives.
Preparation for a good life, no matter what comes after graduation, is the goal of Unity High School, set to open this fall in Burnsville, Minnesota.
Matt Birk, a retired football player who played with the Minnesota Vikings and Baltimore Ravens, and Tom Bengtson, the owner of a small publishing company, are the founders of the school.
"At Unity, we are sure a lot of kids will go into college, some will go into the workforce, some will go into the military, some will discern religious vocations, and we think there is equal dignity in all of those things," Birk told CNA.
"We are college prep but we are not only college prep. Not everybody is a candidate for college, people choose different paths and we believe that there is equal dignity in any of these paths. We are happy to prepare kids for post high school life regardless of what it looks like," Bengtson added.
Birk has been involved with education programs in underprivileged communities since 2002, when he was playing professional football. As a father of eight, he said he knows that not all kids thrive in a competitive academic environment, noting that a "high-stakes" test-taking culture is not for everyone.
"If you look back at the genesis of the American education system, I think the original charter says the goal of education is to teach knowledge and develop character. As the U.S. keeps falling on the global list of test scores, we just keep focusing more and more on the testing," he said.
"Character has been pushed out of mainstream education because it is all about the test now," he added.
Birk said that because public school funding is tied to test scores, education models focus on test-taking skills, instead of adapting to the needs of each learner.
Birk added that while not every student is meant for college, every person can be formed for success.
"If we are only doing it to show how well we can take a test, what's the point?" he asked.
"If you go to an Ivy League schools is that a guarantee to a great life? No, no it's not. I would say the most important thing to me … is that they would have a firm foundation in their Catholic faith, that would be number one, and then, number two, I would say to be equipped with some skills to be able to help them with whatever path they choose."
Birk added that digital technology has been detrimental to some areas of ingenuity – communication, teamwork, and social and emotional intelligence. As a result of increased technology and media influence, he said students are suffering more narcissism and depression, while developing less empathy and abilities to handle anxiety.
Unity will aim to address those issues when it opens this fall at Mary, Mother of the Church Parish in Burnsville. To start out, the school will only teach high school freshmen, but it plans to add a new grade each year, until the first incoming class graduate as seniors.
The school will start small. It has about a dozen students enrolled right now, and its founders hope to bring in around 25 for the first year. It is also working to be recognized as an official Catholic school in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Unity will focus on practical opportunities for students to develop skills in academics, character, leadership, and service.
Birk said the school will "be vigorously Catholic," including opportunities for students to engage with an instructor who can foster "interior life and their personal relationship with Jesus."
The former NFL center's own faith is central to his life, he said. He is especially active in pro-life work. In 2013, after Birk's team won Super Bowl XLVII, he declined to attend a reception at the White House.
"I have great respect for the office of the presidency, but about five or six weeks ago, our president made a comment in a speech and he said, 'God bless Planned Parenthood.' Planned Parenthood performs about 330,000 abortions a year. I am Catholic, I am active in the pro-life movement and I just felt like I couldn't deal with that. I couldn't endorse that in any way," Birk said.
He said he hopes Unity School will form students who are committed to faithful Catholicism.
"We really want the faith to be alive, to really be a part of the kids' lives, not just taking a religion class," said Birk.
Citing the cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude, Birk said, the Catholic faith has a great framework for building character. To foster character development, the school will be involved with long term service projects, like monthly outings to nursing homes, where the teens can get to know the people they are serving.
A major component of the school will be its "Real World Wednesdays." On those days, the students will take "life skills" classes and character development, including opportunities to listen to guest speakers and undergo field trips and service projects.
The teens will learn entrepreneurship, leadership, interview techniques, resumes, and financial literacy. The students will also be exposed to trades, through courses and workshops in auto maintenance, metal or wood shop, or home economics.
The school will also partner with an organization called Pursuit Academy, which teaches ethical enterprise, encouraging students learn to become entrepreneurs, to plan and manage their future goals, and to be leaders in their communities. Among other things, the teens will learn about engaging with peer pressure, managing risk, and public speaking.
Birk said a focus of the "Real World Wednesdays" will be developing what he calls "the-other-people-matter" mindset.
By identifying the good in themselves and in other people, students will establish better relationships in the community and a better relationship with God, he said.
Developing leadership skills and character "might not necessarily help them get an A on a test or score higher on their SAT, but they are going to be equipped with skills that they can use in their lives, whether it is in the careers or their marriages or as parents or as communities members."
"Let's get them some of that stuff," he added.
In light of the school's emphasis on both academic and practical skills, Unity has chosen two patron saints: John Paul II and Mother Teresa of Calcutta. These saints are not only modern figures for students to model after but fantastic examples of the school's goals, Bengtson said.
"John Paul II had all this rich philosophy of the dignity of the human person, which we will be teaching at Unity High School, including Theology of the Body," Bengtson said.
"Then you got someone like Mother Teresa who took that theology and put it into practice – reached out to the poorest of the poor and saw dignity in folks who were in extremely dire circumstances."
"In my mind, I seem them as both the hands and the heart at work together," he added.
Bengtson said the school is convenient financially and geographically. Tuition will be $6,500 for the first year, which is half or even a third of the prices at other Catholic schools, Bengtson said. He also said the school will fill a neighborhood need in the southern metro area of the Twin Cities.
"It's a large geographic area with 10 Catholic grade schools, through eighth grade, who collectively are graduating 300 students per year. Most of those students will go into public schools," he said.
"About 75 students will stay in the Catholic school system and they have to travel quite a distance to Catholic high school."
The lower price does mean there will be tradeoffs, Bengtson said, noting that the school will have to improvise for a gymnasium, science lab, and auditorium. However, the school will have a thoroughly Catholic culture, he said, with Mass three times a week and a holy hour once a week, which is not offered at all Catholic schools.
Birk expressed enthusiasm for the new venture.
"We are still very much like a typical school in a lot of ways, but we are tweaking the model. I don't know where this goes, but hopefully it will show people that there is a better way to do it."
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/high-school-founded-by-former-nfl-star-aims-to-make-virtuous-students-60406
LA's teachers can teach the working class about the power of labor strikes
Teachers from Kentucky gather inside the state Capitol in April to rally for increased funding. Photograph: Bryan Woolston/AP
Eric Blanc and Meagan Day
Educators in Los Angeles, the second-largest school district in the country, are going on strike on Monday. By deciding to walk out for smaller class sizes, more support staff, fewer standardized tests and charter school regulation, LA's teachers have ensured that California will be the next state hit by a strike wave that shows no signs of ebbing anytime soon.
The teachers' upsurge was one of the defining stories of 2018. It began in West Virginia, where teacher and support staff decided to shut down the schools until their demands for better pay and healthcare were taken seriously. They won big, and they inspired educators across the nation to follow their example. Work stoppages soon swept across Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky, North Carolina and Colorado. Though not all their demands were met, teachers won major gains and changed the national conversation about the reasons for public education's crisis.
Confounding all expectations, most of these actions erupted in Republican-dominated regions with relatively weak labor unions, bans on public sector strikes, and electorates that voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Media pundits dubbed this a "red state rebellion". But blue states are hardly immune to low pay, underfunded schools and frustrated teachers. Last fall, educators across Washington and charter school teachers in Chicago joined the strike wave – and strikes are now looming in Los Angeles as well as Oakland, threatening to disrupt business as usual for tens of millions of people on the west coast.
Above all, the teacher revolt expresses a rejection of the austerity and privatization agenda pushed by both Democrats and Republicans, particularly since the Great Recession. Today, 29 states have lower education funding than they did in 2008, and nationwide, education funding is still about $450 lower per student than it was a decade ago, according to a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report. Last year, educators across the nation reached their breaking point, finally squeezed too tight by rising living costs, crumbling schoolhouses, and an encroaching school privatization campaign that opportunistically treats the crisis caused by underfunding as a pretext to further erode public education and labor unions.
However, 2018 wasn't just the year that teachers had enough. Something else happened, too. West Virginia and subsequent battles have hammered home one of the labor movement's most fundamental (and forgotten) lessons: strikes are the most powerful tool at working people's disposal. Teachers have been rallying and lobbying against public education budget cuts for years – yet it was only once they began striking that politicians were forced to start making concessions.
At most times, in most places, workers feel powerless in the face of management. But when they organize to bring work itself to a halt, the balance of power fundamentally shifts. Suddenly the true importance of workers' labor is laid bare, and the powers-that-be have a crisis on their hands. Strikes transform ordinary working people with little wealth and political clout into a force to be reckoned with. And all that's necessary to tap into this game-changing, table-turning power is for workers to recognize the extraordinary value of their work, and organize with each other to withhold it.
Yet strike numbers have been declining for decades and it's not hard to figure out why. Fewer workers are represented by unions than at any point in the last 70 years, thanks largely to a ruthless corporate offensive against the labor movement and basic union rights, including the right to strike. Unfortunately, most union officials have responded by retreating into a self-defeating reliance on electing and lobbying mainstream Democrats, instead of building disruptive strikes.
The teachers' upsurge points the way forward for unions and the working class. But it will face new challenges in 2019. With the movement now spreading to the blue states, educators and their unions will no longer be primarily battling Republican politicians. To win in a city like Los Angeles means nothing less than taking on the Democratic party establishment. The corporate-funded drive to privatize LA's public schools is not led by acolytes of Donald Trump. To the contrary: Austin Beutner, the billionaire investment banker installed as superintendent by deep-pocketed backers of school privatization, is a proud liberal and a longtime funder of the Democratic party.
Confronting Democratic politicians won't come easy to many union leaders and educators, but the success of the movement depends on it. And if the strikes continue to spread, expect this growing labor militancy to exacerbate the polarizing intra-party struggle between the Democratic establishment and insurgent forces led by socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Winning in 2019 will also require foregrounding progressive taxation. Though districts and states can afford to make some immediate concessions – LA, for example, is sitting on $1.86bn in financial reserves – public education's crisis can't be solved without a massive re-investment in our schools. But who will pay for this? Against the inevitable attempts of mainstream politicians to pit teachers against other workers by cutting other social services or raising regressive taxes, educators and their unions will have to convince the public to join the fight for the only equitable solution: tax the billionaires and corporations.
The stakes are high. Public education remains one of the few remaining public goods in the United States. For that very reason, corporate politicians are doing everything they can to dismantle and privatize the school system. But if the teachers' upsurge can reverse this offensive, there's little reason to assume that working people will stop there. Saving public education may be the first step towards building a revitalized labor movement capable of bringing many of society's basic necessities – from healthcare to energy production – into the public sphere.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/14/la-teachers-working-class-power-labor-strikes
Education, Girls, Kenya, Opinion
Dr Natalia Kanem, Chief of UNFPA, "We are steadfastly committed to our three goals: Zero preventable maternal deaths, zero unmet need for family planning, and the elimination of harmful practices including violence that affect women and girls". Credit: UNFPA Tanzania
By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Teenage pregnancy in Kenya is a crisis of hope, education and opportunity.
The New Year has begun. Can 2019 be a year of affirmative action to ensure hope and opportunity for Kenya's adolescent girl?
Consider this. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) says that when a young adolescent girl is not married during her childhood, is not forced to leave school nor exposed to pregnancies, when she is not high risk of illness and death nor suffering maternal morbidities, when she is not exposed to informal work, insecurity and displacement; and is not drawn into an insecure old age-she becomes an asset for a country's potential to seize the demographic dividend.
So what is the demographic dividend?
It means when a household has fewer children that they need to take care of, and a larger number of people have decent jobs, the household can save and invest more money. Better nutrition, education and opportunities and more disposable income at the household level. When this happens on a large scale, economies can benefit from a boost of economic growth.
One of the goals of development policies is to create an environment for rapid economic growth. The economic successes of the "Asian Tigers" during the 1960s and 1970s have led to a comprehensive way of thinking about how different sectors can work together to make this growth a reality. This helps explain the experience of some countries in Asia, and later successes in Latin America, and optimism for improving the economic well-being of countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Republic of Korea is the classic example of how its gross domestic product (GDP) grew over 2,000 percent by investing in voluntary family planning coupled with educating the population and preparing them for the types of jobs that were going to be available.
With over 70% of Kenya's population less than 30 years of age, the country's favorable demographic ratios could unlock a potential source of demand and growth, Kenya is currently in a "sweet spot". Fertility levels are declining gradually and Kenyans are living longer. There is reason for optimism that Kenya can benefit from a demographic dividend within 15 to 20 years. It is estimated that its working age population will grow to 73 per cent by 2050, bolstering the country's GDP per capita 12 times higher than the present, with nearly 90 percent of the working age in employment.
The key to harnessing the demographic dividend is enabling young people and adolescent girls in particular, to enjoy their human rights and achieve their full human potential. Every girl must be empowered, educated and given opportunities for employment, and above all is able to plan her future family, this is the very essence of reaping a demographic dividend.
Each extra year a girl stays in high school, for example, delivers an 11.6 per cent increase in her average annual wage for the rest of her life.
The UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem has said: "We are steadfastly committed to our three goals: Zero preventable maternal deaths, zero unmet need for family planning, and the elimination of harmful practices including violence that affect women and girls".
So what can be done?
First, end all practices that harm girls. This means, for example, enforcing laws that end female genital mutilations and child marriage.
Second, enable girls to stay in school, at least through high school. Studies have shown the longer a girl stays in school, the less likely she is to become pregnant as an adolescent and the more likely to grow up healthy and join the paid labour force.
Third, reach the marginalized and impoverished girls who have traditionally been left behind.
Forth, make sure girls, before they reach puberty, have access to information about their bodies. Later in adolescence, they need information and services to protect themselves from unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.
Finally, take steps to protect girls' – and everyone's – rights.
As we countdown to 2019, let us prioritize the development of every girl's full human potential. Our collective future depends on it. We must do everything in our power to ignite that potential-for her sake and for the sake of human development and humanity.
http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/12/adolescent-girl-holds-key-kenyas-economic-transformation-prosperity/


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By: Donnia Harrington October 9, 2019 October 9, 2019
DCJoaquin Phoenix, Joker, Joker Movie, Joker Movie Controversy, Joker Review, Joker Rotten Tomatoes, Todd Phillips
I Cannot Stop Thinking About Joker: Reflecting On How Society Failed Arthur Fleck
Spoilers ahead for Joker.
I spent last Thursday and Friday night in a crowded theater. Surrounded by a considerable mix of singles, couples, and groups, I sat in silent excitement for one of my most anticipated movies of the year, Joker. I won't beat around the bush; I loved this movie. It was better than I ever expected; I walked in the theater confident that I'll at least like it and walked out speechless, realizing that I may just call this film a masterpiece. It wasn't until Friday that I solidified that thought.
Leading up to my second viewing, I couldn't stop thinking about Joker. I already had Hildur Guðnadóttir's soundtrack for the film on my phone, so I listened to it as I walked to the train after my Thursday show. It was raining outside—how eerily convenient. Aside from Joaquin Phoenix's transformative performance, her score instantly stood out to me during the film, perfectly encapsulating isolation with a melodramatic but haunting orchestra-led melody. I was in a crowded room, but I felt alone as I watched Arthur Fleck's descent into madness.
The controversy surrounding Joker has been forced, to say the least. Headlines proclaiming that the film is so dangerous that police will be at theaters undercover (the police were at my Thursday screening in full dress. They were nowhere to be seen after the movie ended) despite police routinely being deployed at other "big" movies such as Star Wars. No credible threats were found by the military despite headlines suggesting otherwise. What was it about this film that had and still has American media convinced that something terrible would happen if audiences watched it? Joker isn't the first film to center on an unreliable narrator, it isn't the first film to have a bad guy as the protagonist. There's no denying that the Joker is a villain, the film doesn't hide it—but perhaps the discomfort lies in what got him there.
Some critics claimed that this movie would make us sympathetic towards the Joker, therefore sympathetic towards a killer. No, you won't feel sympathy for the Joker, but Arthur Fleck is a different, complex story. During my second viewing, my feeling of excitement towards experiencing the movie again turned heavy as I watched how society failed Arthur. He relies on various medications just to feel something other than negativity, but nothing works. Funding is cut at the social service center he goes to for therapy, so now he doesn't have access to his pills. His therapist doesn't care anymore, because the government doesn't care. Thomas Wayne is running for mayor and says that he wants to help the city, but he has no connection to working-class people, therefore they reject him.
The brutal—but infrequent—violence wasn't ingrained in my memory like I was led on to believe. Instead, I found myself constantly thinking back to how Arthur would create fantasies in his head of happiness—when he watches The Murray Franklin Show with his mother Penny, he places himself in the audience where he becomes the center of positive attention from not only the crowd, but most importantly, Murray. The son he never had, that's what Murray tells him.
Hearing those words puts a smile on Arthur's face, a genuine smile caused by delusion. But nonetheless, a smile. A stark contrast from the beginning of the film where he stares at himself in the mirror, using his fingers to force a smile so unnatural that a tear escapes his eye. Even more striking is the reveal that Sophie, Arthur's love interest, is nothing but a fantasy he creates because, in reality, she smiled at him in the elevator. Something so simple turned into something so significant to him because of this brief gesture of kindness. Receiving kindness has been a rarity throughout his life. That's what makes his eventual turn into the Joker so tragic because there's no redemption.
He was always going to be beyond saving and both his abusive background and how society treated him as a mentally ill person contributed to it. It's implied that he repressed the physical abuse that he went through at the hands of Penny's then-boyfriend because when he finally discovers the truth regarding his mother's patient file, something "clicks" in him, and he goes on to kill her in the next scene. Although he killed before this moment, this death is particularly significant because he chooses to kill his mother, someone that he personally knows. His rage comes from learning that he's actually adopted, his real parents are unknown, and that Penny has been lying to him for his entire life.
There's also something to be said about Penny's mental illness. Arthur learns that she has narcissistic personality disorder and suffers from delusions, and yet she still maintained custody of him. Why was she allowed to still care for Arthur after being committed to the hospital and neglecting her son while her boyfriend abused him so badly that he got brain damage? She's a victim of abuse but at the same time, she did nothing to stop Arthur from being abused, even going as far as convincing both Arthur and herself that he was always happy growing up.
If the system valued children who weren't born into riches such as Bruce Wayne, Arthur would've been taken away from her for good and she would've stayed at the hospital. Instead, she essentially gaslit him into believing that his purpose was to bring laughter and joy into the world in order to cover the truth about the abuse he endured as a child. He hid his pain so much that it could even be theorized that he developed his laughing condition due to Penny forcing him to smile to suppress his trauma. She was allowed to raise him in a lie because Arthur didn't matter. He never mattered to them. Even his therapist tells him that, before telling him that they don't care about her either. This broken system, what little he had in the form of talking to a half-hearted therapist and having medication, stripped from him without a second thought into what the consequences would be.
Joker isn't dangerous. It doesn't uplift or validate mass shooters and incels. I think what makes people uncomfortable is their unwillingness to admit that the movie showcases the obvious faults in our system, especially regarding mental health and the disconnect between social classes. Throughout Arthur's descent into madness, we also watch as the less fortunate lead a revolt against the rich, prompted by Arthur killing three Wayne Enterprises businessmen.
These men are presented as upstanding citizens in the media, but before they were killed, they harassed a young woman and attacked Arthur for his laughing condition. The good guys are nowhere to be found. They were never in Arthur's life to begin with. The film doesn't condemn or justify Arthur's behavior to this, rather, it candidly shows him finally reaching his tipping point because it was only a matter of time. We know killing people is bad. We know it's bad when Arthur does it, but now we know why he does it.
I've been distracted since seeing Joker. When I listen to the soundtrack, a feeling of heaviness takes over. I find myself replaying the events of the film, particularly Arthur's fantasies, thinking what if, what if, what if. What if something else could've been done? But ultimately, nothing could've been done to stop him. Help simply was not there for him. And that's what makes Joker a true tragedy, more impactful than spreading a false narrative that it's dangerous, that the film will cause an incel uprising. No, it won't. Joker will make you reflect on how the ugliness of our society is a product of our system, and the realization that even today it's still broken is enough to leave you questioning our humanity.
Donnia Harrington
Donnia is a writer who enjoys foreign cinema, female-centered video games, Korean music and Scandinavian crime novels. Follow her on Twitter for daily rants.
Posted by:Donnia Harrington
Martian Manhunter Was in Justice League's SNYDER CUT
Fighting The Good Fight: How DC's Cinematic Trinity Helped Me Out of The Darkness.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Give Me My Remote > About Last Night > About Last Night…ARROW, LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, MANIFEST, and More
About Last Night…ARROW, LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, MANIFEST, and More
November 20, 2018 by Marisa Roffman
MANIFEST — "Point Of No Return" Episode 108 — Pictured: (l-r) J.R. Ramirez as Det. Jared Vasquez, Melissa Roxburgh as Michaela Stone — (Photo by: Virginia Sherwood/NBC/Warner Brothers)
Let's talk about Monday night's TV!
ARROW: With Diaz, seemingly, the villain of the season, I'm curious what his capture leads to. Was his presence a bait-and-switch? Will he get away? Or is he going to cause mayhem in other ways?
I am enjoying the evolution of Other!Laurel. If she's going to stick around, she absolutely can't just be evil. Last night's episode felt like an important step to having her stick around to be part of the (accepted) team.
THE VOICE: The dedication theme was simultaneously great and cheesy/early—it let us know more about the contestants, but the song choices were also maybe not the best. The early/unexpected standouts: Sarah Grace, Makenzie Thomas, and Deandre Nico.
LEGENDS OF TOMORROW: If you asked someone to describe the hour in ten seconds with a straight face and they were able to succeed…they might be worthy of a jackpot prize. THIS CRAZY SHOW. A sea creature was brought to life by a magical book, and then was defeated because an angry Legend with a major case of writers' block was inspired to create a three-breasted warrior. Oh, and creatures escaped at the office and they were really hangry. This. Crazy. Show. (I love it so much.)
MANIFEST: It was really nice to see Cal be a kid. It feels like there is a really delicate line the show is walking with pursuing its mythology, while still knowing real answers are likely years and years away. But it's fun having the Stones working with Vance.
Which shows did you watch last night?
Follow @GiveMeMyRemote and @marisaroffman on Twitter for the latest TV news. Connect with other TV fans on GIVE ME MY REMOTE's official Facebook page.
And be the first to see our exclusive videos by subscribing to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/givememyremotetv
About Last Night…THE VOICE, ARROW, LEGENDS OF TOMORROW
About Last Night…THE VOICE, ARROW, MANIFEST, and More
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Orders issued against 9 businesses for not passing Rs 560-crore GST rate cut benefits
Categories: GST Recent News, News
The GST anti-profiteering authority has issued orders against 9 businesses which were found to have not passed on rate cut benefits to the tune of Rs 559.88 crore to borrowers, Parliament was informed Friday. In a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla said the GST Council has recommended goods and services tax rate reduction in respect of 400 groups of goods and 96 groups of services. "Government has taken cognizance of cases for not giving full benefits of the GST to the people by some companies. To investigate such matters, the government has set up National Anti Profiteering Authority (NAA)," Shukla said.
He said the NAA has received 80 investigation reports from the Directorate General of Anti Profiteering (DGAP), from which final orders have been issued in 29 cases. "Nine orders where profiteering confirmed amounting to Rs 559.88 crore (approx)" were passed by the NAA, he added. Shukla said the NAA has been holding regular meeting with zonal screening committees and the chief commissioners of GST to stress upon the consumer awareness programmes. "Consumer welfare organisations have also been roped in to facilitate outreach activities," he said, adding the NAA helpline number is 21400643 and consumers can also send complaints through email to the NAA.
In reply to a separate question, Shukla said the overall disposal rate of sanction of GST refund of unutilised input tax credit to the various taxpayers, including exporters, is more than 95 per cent. "The government has not failed to pay input tax credit refunds to exporters," he said, adding the pendency of refund claims is being constantly monitored by the senior officers and appropriate action is initiated. As of december 27, 2018, 1.17 crore taxpayers are registered under the GST, which include 60.73 lakh existing (excise, service tax) taxpayers and 56.74 lakh newly registered. "A new simplified return filing system shall be rolled out on a trial basis with effect from April 1, 2019," Shukla said.
Read more at: https://retail.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/orders-issued-against-9-businesses-for-not-passing-rs-560-crore-gst-rate-cut-benefits/67383768
No anticipatory bail, GST violators can be arrested without FIR, clarifies SC
I-T finds Rs 12 lakh crore mismatch in ITRs declared in FY 2016
Sabka Vishwas (Legacy Dispute Resolution) Scheme shall not be extended beyond December 31, CBIC
GST, biofuels push on the wish list of oil & gas companies in NDA's second term


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Trending No Man's Land COVID-19 Vaccination Guide BART Policing Changes Where You Stand in Vaccination Line Capitol Riot Updates COVID-19 Updates Race for a Vaccine
College Football Playoff Jan 11
Unstoppable Tide: Alabama Routs Ohio State for National Title
The celebration was at once familiar and unique. The confetti cannons sent a crimson and white shower into the air and Alabama players ran to the sideline to grab their championship hats and T-shirts.
College Football Playoff Jan 14, 2020
Burrow, LSU Cap Magical Season, Beat Clemson 42-25 for Title
From small-town Ohio kid to Louisiana Legend, Joe Burrow capped his record-breaking, Heisman-winning season by bringing a national championship to LSU.
College Football Dec 8, 2019
Oklahoma to Face LSU in College Football Playoff Semifinal
Oklahoma is in the College Football Playoff for the fourth time, but has yet to win a game. This time around the Sooners get No. 1 LSU in the semifinal. It marks the third consecutive year the Sooners face an SEC team. Oklahoma and LSU have split two previous meetings: The Sooners won the 1950 Sugar Bowl and the Tigers…
Michigan Nov 30, 2019
2017 Rose Bowl Preview: Who Will Win Between No. 5 Penn State and No. 9 USC?
The 103rd edition of the annual Rose Bowl game, affectionately called, "The Grandaddy of Them All" kicks off on Monday afternoon and features two of College Football's most historic programs.
Santa Clara Mar 4, 2019
Clemson Tramples Alabama to Capture National Title at Levi's Stadium
Led by freshmen Trevor Lawrence and Justyn Ross, the Clemson Tigers dominated the Alabama Crimson Tide 44-16 on Monday night to capture the College Football Playoff national title at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara.
California Jan 4, 2019
Tickets for CFP Title Game at Levi's Stadium Available for Cheap
Qualifying for the college football championship game never has been harder for teams other than Alabama and Clemson. Getting into the stadium to watch the Crimson Tide and Tigers play for the title for the third time in four years has perhaps never been cheaper.
Tickets for CFP Title Game at Levi's Available for Cheap
Qualifying for the college football championship game never has been harder for teams other than Alabama and Clemson. Getting into the stadium to watch the Crimson Tide and Tigers play for the title for the third time in four years has perhaps never been cheaper. Anoushah Rasta reports.
California Dec 30, 2018
Alabama to Meet Clemson Again for College Football Title
The top-ranked Crimson Tide and No. 2 Tigers both had double-digit victories in their semifinal games Saturday, setting up what has quickly become an annual postseason meeting. They will meet in the College Football Playoff for the fourth consecutive year, the third time in the championship game. And the winner this time will become the first 15-0 FBS champion. Alabama-Clemson...
NFL May 10, 2018
Tessitore, Witten, McFarland, Salters on ESPN 'MNF' Crew
Three new voices will work ESPN's Monday night games this NFL season: play-by-play announcer Joe Tessitore, analysts Jason Witten and Booger McFarland.
NFL Apr 27, 2018
Cleveland Browns Select Baker Mayfield with 1st Pick of 2018 NFL Draft
The Cleveland Browns ended weeks of speculation by selecting Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield with the first pick in the 2018 NFL Draft. The 6-foot-1 senior is the fourth quarterback the Browns have selected in the first round since 2007, and the first quarterback the team has taken first overall since Kentucky's Tim Couch in 1999.
Antioch High School's Najee Harris Helps Propel Alabama to National Title
Thrown into the biggest game of the college football season, a former Antioch High School star and current University of Alabama freshman decided to break out.
Florida Dec 10, 2017
Walk-on to Heisman: Oklahoma's Mayfield Wins in Landslide
Baker Mayfield took a unique road to the Heisman Trophy, a long and winding climb from walk-on to one of the most accomplished players to ever play college football. The brash, flag-planting Sooners star became the sixth Oklahoma player to the win Heisman Saturday night in one of the most lopsided votes in the 83-year history of the award.
California Dec 5, 2017
Clemson, Oklahoma, Georgia, Alabama in College Football Playoff
The road to college football's next champion is becoming a little clearer as the field is set for the College Football Playoff.
Santa Clara Jul 31, 2017
Foster Already Up to Full Speed for 49ers
Foster has had two interceptions in first three days of 49ers training camp
Michigan Feb 10, 2017
coach Jan 12, 2016
Alabama Beats Clemson 45-40 to Win National Championship
No. 2 Alabama won its fourth national title in the last seven seasons, outlasting the dynamic play of Deshaun Watson and No. 1 Clemson in a 45-40 victory Monday night in the College Football Playoff championship game.
The Crimson Tide (14-1) became the second team in college football's poll era, dating back to 1936, to win four titles in seven seasons.
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Spirit Space is on the 2nd Sunday of the month with Coffee and Cake from 6pm-6:30pm with the service commencing at around 6:30pm. There is no fixed end time although most services are between 60-90 minutes. Feedback has been that the service style has allowed some quiet and reflective moments in setting up in readiness for the week ahead. There is interaction with one another and a time to listen to God.
Spirit Space follows a theme but with the freedom for different people to be involved in the service through prayer, activities, personal testimony, interactive sermons, Taize-Style Worship and other forms of Worship appropriate to the setting.
In 2017 we followed a theme of "Encounters with God" which opens up the opportunity for people to share their personal testimony related to a particular story within the Bible highlighting the very personal journey we make. Whilst the testimony takes up about 10 minutes within the overall service it is surrounded by a reflective activity that we can relate our personal journey to. As always with Spirit Space we have excellent worship led by Matt.
Our first session of the year was on refugeeism with a story shared by a refugee and the family that took them in.
Our second session is based on the Prodigal Son and is a story being shared by our Reader Sara.
We always welcome individual to become involved in the service whether through personal testimony, helping out on the sound desk, being a part of the musical worship or if creative, becoming involved in a creative part of the service.
Please let Simon know by email simon.prestney@recruiterz.co.uk, by phone 07760 786730 or have a chat after a Sunday morning service.
In 2016 we followed a theme of Fruits of the Spirit from Galatians 5.
We had some great contributions and have been on a journey of softening our hearts to the Lord and growing the fruits in our lives.
Contributions from individuals, couples and groups (internal and external) have been welcomed where specific Gifts of the Spirit have been unpacked and explored.


text:
A-Rod: Shot Up With "Bole," Was Young and Stupid, Never Took HGH
by Roy Edroso
At his press conference in Tampa today, Alex Rodriguez said he didn't know that the substance he took back in 2003-2005 — which he identified as something known in "the streets of DR" as "Bole," presumably the anabolic steroid Primobolan — was a steroid. He referred to taking the substance as "stupid" and "ignorant" at several points, and generally portrayed the experiment as a youthful misadventure. (A-Rod was in his mid-twenties at the time.)
Brian Cashman, Joe Girardi, Hank Steinbrener and several Yankees were on hand, but did not speak at the conference. Cashman and Girardi are expected to speak later.
A-Rod said he and a cousin, who experimented with him and whom he declined to name, "knew we weren't taking tic-tacs," but didn't think about whether it was a banned substance.
At one point he started to say, "And to my teammates," and took a very, very long pause, evidently emotional, before the Yankees' Jason Zillo started a Q&A session.
He said he stopped using the substance because in 2003 he had a "serious neck injury," and because the players voted for the drug policy now in place. Since then he said he's been tested regularly — and took a test today, and will take one next week for the upcoming Baseball Classic.
He also revealed that back in his Mariners days, he took "ripped fuel," an ephedra derivative, before it was banned by MLB and removed from GNC shelves, but stopped before it became illegal. He also said he never took human growth hormone.
Someone else asked if A-Rod noticed a benefit from the drug. He said he's not sure: "When you take anything, it's half mental and half physical. If you take a glass of water and say this will make me a better baseball player…" Someone else asked how, if he was taking it once or twice a month for three years, he didn't know what it was doing for him? But he begged off again that he had been "stupid."
Asked if he thought it was cheating, he said "that's not for me to determine," and repeated that he had been young and stupid. He said he "made a lot of mistakes," that he would "handle them and move forward," and that "baseball is a lot bigger than Alex Rodriguez."
"I laid my bed," he said, "and now I'm gonna have to sit on it. I have to take my medicine," presumably referring to the questions. He said he'd had a rough year with his divorce and "the tabloids," but hoped people would judge him by his future actions.
More:DrugsEventsSports


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I usually move them to other directory before I search, but I found a very simple trick to exclude it.
It's very easy. Simply set that folder to "hidden", and notepad++ will not search it, unless we check the "In hidden folders" option.
Just right-click and select "Properties". And then change the attributes to "Hidden".
You don't need to apply changes to subfolders and files. Just the root folder.
Do not search hidden in hidden folders.
Make sure you don't check the "In hidden folders" option in Notepad++ "Find in Files".
And that's it 🙂 Simple and easy way to exclude directory in notepad++ search.


text:
British Import The Woman in White Can't Seem to Solve the Mystery of Its Source Material
By Alexis Gunderson | October 19, 2018 | 2:00pm
Photo: Courtesy of The Woman in White Productions Ltd. / Steffan Hill / Origin Pictures TV Reviews The Woman in White
Published serially as a "sensation novel" in 1859, Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White has everything a discerning TV viewer in 2018 could want: moody, Gothic settings that only get moodier and gothier as the story progresses; headstrong women who set themselves firmly against the entitlement of the men, vicious and disinterested alike, who might be instruments of their devastation; a mystery that is as much about class and power as it is about a dead girl. Doppelgängers. It even (centrally!) has doppelgängers—a.k.a, television's (and Paste's) favorite excuse to pull out the old "actors playing their own twin" trope.
The almost spooky small-screen adaptability of Collins' proto-mystery novel goes even deeper, though. It goes so deep, in fact, that one would be forgiven for wondering if Collins might not have been a time-traveler all along, stuck in Victorian England with nothing but the dream of an industry yet unborn to keep him muddling through. On the meta level, the collection of voiceover-ready "investigative notes" of which its uncommon narration is comprised functions as a series of framing devices that, as one limited-perspective account breaks off and passes the torch to another, weave anxiety and dread into even the simplest domestic scenes. On the specific and improbably camera-ready level, it has a complicated human-shaped shell game playing out across the English countryside, a woman donning her darkest cloak and petticoats to scramble across roof tiles in the rain, at midnight, to spy on the deadly plots being hatched behind her back, and a catastrophic fire in a dilapidated parish church that sees one protagonist rise to hero by banging together a battering ram to break down the vestry doors.
It is, in short, the thrilling feminist mystery costume drama that fans of any one of those things might, here in the ragged fall of 2018, be grateful to snuggle up in front of at the end of each bruising week.
Or at least, it should be. But while the sharply chilling preview of the the newest take on Collins' classic, produced by the BBC and set to premiere Sunday on PBS, seemed to indicate an understanding of the novel's on-screen potential, any hope that understanding might prevail falls apart the moment it becomes clear that condensing the 700-page brick into a tight five hours meant turning Collins' carefully arranged "investigative notes" into a series of flash-forward interviews, conducted after the [spoiler] by a hired scrivener invented from whole cloth for just this purpose. And when I say [spoiler] I mean, the show spoils the book's first central mystery immediately. Like, in the trailer immediately.
The fact of Laura Fairlie's suspicious death (sorry! blame the BBC!) is not the only thing spoiled by the forcible insertion of scrivener Erasmus Nash (Art Malik) into the narrative—his presence also neutralizes the anxiety and dread Collins built organically with the shifting, singular frames of his original narrative structure, thus forcing the series to find ways of regaining that dread through heavy-handed camera work and sound design. It also directly contradicts, from the outset, the conclusion that romantic hero Walter Hartright draws upon completing the investigation, without the help of any paid outside agent, about the valedictory benefits of his own relative poverty. And whatever the flash-forwards of the miniseries' premiere might indicate, Walter's survival is not a spoiler—it is the one established fact of the book's original narrative, of which he is the fictional editor. Just one more element of Collins' original, lost to the bulldozing whims of careless adaptation.
To go into detail about the absurd counterproductivity of every single choice this adaptation makes would take as much time as just sending you off to watch the premiere for yourself—after the first episode, my notes devolved into a cascade of WHY???s interspersed with whole paragraphs indignantly cut and pasted from an ebook copy of The Woman in White I checked out solely for that purpose—but for the sake of this review, it's enough for you to know that nearly every change made by this production, from the substantial (the timeline of Walter's involvement with Anne, Laura and Marian; every element of Count Fosco's character, down to his little white mice) to the inane (the calendar date of Laura's wedding; the deletion of Walter's sister) forces the story's plot, characters, and themes into contortions that Wilkie Collins would barely recognize.
Of course, not everyone tuning in to The Woman in White will have read the novel recently, or at all. For all of you in that position, or for those of you who coudl care less about the precision of book-to-screen adaptations, as long as the final product is entertaining, this adaptation will certainly be easier to enjoy—especially for those who watch PBS' period dramas mainly for the charming costumes and soothing accents.
But even without making comparison the thief of joy, The Woman in White doesn't sufficiently rise to the occasion. While the acting, especially from Ben Hardy, Jessie Buckley, and Olivia Vinall as the central trio of Walter, Marian and Laura/Anne, is strong, the series has palpable difficulty with both tone and pace. Much of the menace of Laura and Marian's situation arises naturally from the brittle civility of Victorian mores, and thus benefits from long stretches of apparent tranquility. This adaptation doesn't seem to trust itself to execute that contradiction on screen, and so instead undercuts the entire production with a creaking, gloomful score that persists from start to finish. Similarly, the series doesn't seem to trust the audience to be clever enough to pick up on social or narrative cues, and so seeds the script with the most patronizingly unsubtle exposition of what would almost always be better off shown, which ends up forcing the story to leap gracelessly from one major plot point to the next just to make it to the end in time.
Most critically, this adaptation doesn't trust anyone—not itself, not the cast, not us in the audience—to understand that men can, as Marian Halcombe so affectingly stresses in that opening clip, crush women without that crushing necessarily having a sexual element. The Woman in White is not about men exerting sexual control over women. It is about money and class and the deadly danger in losing one or the other, and it is about how powerless women are to control their own lives, even with money and class, in a patriarchal society. That might include sexual dynamics, and is certainly a part of why rape culture exists, but it is not what this particular story is about. It is, in fact, explicitly not about this, as the book establishes Laura's as a sexless marriage, and Fosco's obsession with Marian as heartfelt respect for her robust intellect. But this adaptation can't seem to take Collins at his word, and so forces sexual violence and the threat of sexual violence onto both Laura and Marian.
In the end, an adaptation tells you as much about the inner landscape of those adapting it as anything else: This is how they read the original. The changes they made reflect their interpretation, accurate or not. And for the team adapting The Woman in White for the BBC this time around, in the midst of the #MeToo movement, this was the invisible subtext they couldn't shake. There are implications in this particular brand of willfulness—#MeToo can't progress if we can't open our imaginations to less explicitly sexual vectors of gendered power—but that discussion is for another time.
For now, watch The Woman in White for yourself and draw your own conclusions. Or don't. Or watch the 1948 film when it airs on TCM on October 25. Or just read the book, and trust Collins' authorial instincts where the BBC couldn't! The 27-hour long Naxos audio edition was how I did it, and their interpretations were terrific, but Tantor has a version with my personal favorite Simon Prebble among the voice cast, so I imagine that would be a good choice, also.
The Woman in White premieres Sunday, Oct. 21 at 10 p.m. on PBS.
Alexis Gunderson is a TV critic whose writing has appeared on Forever Young Adult, Screener, and Birth.Movies.Death. She'll go ten rounds fighting for teens and intelligently executed genre fare to be taken seriously by pop culture. She can be found @AlexisKG.
the woman in white
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Thank you Clifton Swanson PAC Community Fund!!!
In the spring of 2017 Friendship Through Dance (FTD) applied and gratefully received a grant of$2000 from the Foundation for the Performing Arts Center.
community an opportunity to see great talent in our local area at a reasonable cost.
was greatly appreciated by the performers, the studio and the audience.
supporters to the great variety the art of dance has to offer.
last performance for the studio.
Thank you so much for participating in the raffle for the Photographs of our RAD teams. Winners have been notified. If you were not a winner and would like to purchase the photos Erin Clausen has made the photos available for purchase on her website and all purchase made in the month of JULY will have 10% of their purchase given back to Friendship Through Dance.
May Friendship Through Dance use photos of your dancer on their Social Media Pages?
Copyright © 2017 Friendship Through Dance. All Rights Reserved.


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Thousands of health workers will attend mass rallies in the North-East today in protest at job cuts in the NHS.
Staff and patients will march from Barnes Park in Sunderland to the city's Royal Infirmary to lay flowers as a symbol of jobs lost in the region.
At the same time, there will be a rally in Darlington. Several more events organised by NHS Together - a group of unions and health organisations - will be staged across the country.
Unions warn that services are under threat from financial deficits, expansion of the private sector and too much reform.
Anger at NHS policy has been heightened this week following the announcement on Thursday of a pay deal amounting to a 1.9% rise for nurses and other NHS staff.
Last night TUC Northern regional secretary Kevin Rowan said: "For as long as I can remember, we've never had so much concern about the future of the NHS being expressed by so many workers and patients.
"These demonstrations will show the strength of feeling. The Government would be wise to listen to the concerns expressed to them.
"While we recognise there's been large-scale investment in the NHS under this Labour Government, it's the staff that make it work.
"The Government needs to demonstrate it values and appreciates those staff by showing they have a future, their jobs are secure and also that they're paid properly for the work that they do."
Unison regional head of health Liz Twist said: "For healthcare staff, the announcement about pay has been a huge blow.
"While the focus of the demonstrations is really about NHS services, it doesn't help. We need to show we're valuing people."
Health Minister Rosie Winterton said last night: "The NHS reform agenda is about putting patients first and involving staff at the heart of shaping services. Every union and stakeholder signed up to the principles of the NHS Plan, which set the course for reform over 10 years.
"The NHS needs to keep reforming to provide care closer to people's homes and to keep pace with rising public expectations and new medical technologies. If we know that change will deliver better quality care and better value for money for taxpayers, then standing still is simply not an option."
The Sunderland rally starts in Barnes Park at 10.30am. The Darlington demonstration begins at 11am in Bondgate.
Motorists are being warned about extra congestion as a major road improvement scheme in Gateshead progresses.
We are a law-abiding family living on a small farm in Northumberland.