Feminism as an act of love

Feminism as an act of love

What is patriarchy?

What is patriarchal masculinity?

Men don’t feel pain.

We can observe sexist myth making in shows directed to children.

Patriarchal sexuality

The role of women

Male’s misery in patriarchal world

Patriarchy demands of men that they become and remain emotional cripples.

Where to turn to seek change?

So they passively support the status quo.

Cultures of domination attack self-esteem.

Love and fear cannot coexist

Women and children suffer from the lack of satisfying relationships

That quest is rarely satisfied.

Men are longing for love.

Feminism as the solution

We need feminist blueprints of the future vision.

Ending patriarchy is actually a way to liberate men.

What is feminist masculinity?

In the partnership model, male identity is centred on essential goodness

No power over.

So what can we do about it?

Tolove again: the heart of feminism

Feminism makes it possible for men and women to know love.

To choose feminist politics is a choice to love.

Do it like a Woman

Do it like a Woman

“Feminism is like a tapestry; every woman brings her own thread.”

In her book “Do it like a Woman”, Caroline talks about the palpable impact of role models which can “influence academic choices, alter knowledge of political candidates and likelihood of voting, transform public speaking ability, … “

She explains how women have better results when they read biographies of female leaders or give speeches in rooms with women’s portraits.

Through different chapters (Speaking like a Woman, Advocating like A Woman, etc…), Caroline shares the stories of multiple female role models: from Lady Anne Blunt, Victorian equestrienne and breeder of Arabian horses to South pole explorer Felicity Aston, from Women in graffiti like Femme Fierce collective to beatbox artists like Dana Mc Keon, from Sahira Sharif, founder of Mirman Baheer poetry society in Afghanistan to Mae Azango, journalist from Liberia.

“I always think of patriarchy as the film Matrix. You are living in it everyday but you don’t see it.

It’s because you live in it that you don’t see it. It’s everywhere, in everything.”

As a proverb from Renaissance England says: “An eloquent woman is never chaste.”, making an implicit connection between lips on the face and lips between the legs.

In Homer’s Odyssey, Telemachus tells him mum Penelope: “Speech will be the business of men, all men, and of me most of all; for mine is the power of this household.”

Since then, public speaking and oratory have been exclusive practices defining masculinity as a gender. Public speech was the defining attribute of maleness.

Undermining women’s voices as shrill or nagging implies that women don’t have a legitimate political opinion.

As Mary Beard suggests, de-authorising and silencing women’s voices is embedded in our culture.”

Just check the data of online abuse and the dropping participation stats of women in online forums…

Andrea Dworkin adds: “Men often react to women’s words as if they were acts of violence. And react with violence. So we lower our voices, we whisper, apologize, shut up, shrink, trivialize what we know, pull back.”

Even in times of war, women are shut out of negotiations when they could actually bring another perspective to the debate.

Sara Khan thinks like Soljenitzyn that words will break cement.

She founded Inspire, a counter-extremism organization based on the voices of British Muslim women.

Yet, the silencing can have dramatic consequences.

The culture of disbelief towards women is so engrained that only 10% of the rapes are reported and when they are, the conviction rate does not surpass 4% in the UK… 1% in the UK military…

We don’t believe women when they speak.

CBS report says that the arrest rate for rape is 25% when it is 79% for murder…

No victim of rape in the US military who denounced still retains her military career. Rape is seen as an occupational hazard of military service…

From there the campaign Protect our Defenders:

As Catherine Mc Kinnon feminist lawyer puts it:

“Most rapists are men, most judges are men and the law rape was created when women were not allowed to vote.”

Laura Bates, founder of Everyday sexism launched the #FBrape campaign: “More than 60,000 tweets and 5,000 emails later, the spirited campaign that revolved around the #FBrape hashtag resulted in Facebook admitting that it has failed to remove content that promotes gender-based violence. The company has now agreed to drastically revamp what it considered gender-based hate speech.”

Caroline’s talking about this worldwide epidemic:

When Boko Haram in Nigeria considers sexual exploitation better than girls being educated.

When disparity in university entrance requirements between men and women is a growing trend in China.

When Chinese men are not so keen to marry the new breed of successful, highly educated women and shame them as sheng nu, China’s leftover.

When in South Africa, a girl has higher chances to be raped than to learn to read…

We are immersed in collective denial

In her essay Men explain things to me, Rebecca Solnit talks about what she calls “The Longest War”.

The fact that 1 in 5 women will be raped in the US in her lifetime.

That more women have been killed each year by men in UK than British troops in 3 years in Afghanistan.

That Gender Based Violence has been denominated as an epidemic by the WHO.

Inspite of that, the Geneva convention still does not consider gender as a reason to be threatened.

Men as the norm and Women as the exception: seeing reality through one prism

Aristotle put it simply: “The female is female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities. We should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness.”

Simone de Beauvoir wrote: “Humanity is male.”

Men are considered humans and women deviant men.

The blogger Sophia Gubb talks about “Male as Default”. An example: up until April 2014, the vast majority of animals used by medical researchers to develop new drugs and treatments were male. As a consequence, more women experience side effects or less effective treatment.

The symptoms of heart attack we all know only apply to male not female.

The world is different when it has been designed around you and your needs.

A lot of sexism is not so much deliberate and malicious as it is a problem of perspective and a lack of consideration of female needs.

Caroline thus gives the example of environmental activists movements like Greenpeace who design show off activities with consideration of female physical needs.

Or the US army which only had uniforms designed for female bodies in 2014.

Or the field of robotics where scientists shall first determine which problem is the most pressing to be solved by the robot and then which parameter to maximize. In both cases, perspective is key and we need female scientists like Angelica Lim to ensure future robots will also take into account women’s needs.

Similarly, women lead in a different way. Not so much because they are innately different, but because they experience the world differently.

Women as Allies

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote in 1792: “Considering the length of time that women have been dependent, it is surprising that women have been dependent, is it surprising that some of them hug their chains?”

Women are brought up in the same women-hating society as men, there is no logical reason why they should be free of misogynistic thinking. They internalize their own oppression and often repackage it as chosen freedom.

There is safety in joining in and attacking other women, far more so than standing against it, because you become a focus for attack.

As the Egyptian activist Mona Eltahawy says: “It’s up to you to decide where upon a spectrum of activism you stand. I am being extreme on purpose so that I am opening a bigger space for others, to be more mainstream, more average.”

Media actually paints the world more male-dominated than it is.

If we women don’t talk about what affects women, men journalists won’t.

Political news stories in the UK talks about 1 female vs 10 male when in reality there are 2 female MP for every 10 male.

So the media is not representing the world as it is.

Male dominated media tend to think that the most important stories are the ones dominated by men.

Ex: the NSA surveillance scandal is more important than the global epidemic of men killing women.

51% of the population is getting 24% of the news space.

Which offers a narrower and less diverse perspective on the world.

Because again male perspective is seen as the universal.

80% of pictures are even deemed irrelevant to the stories they accompanied: men are more likely to be featured in words and women in images. (cf. page 3 of UK papers)

Nature vs Culture

According to a study from BBC Radio 4 Today program, men and women are equally competent at looking after their baby immediately after its birth. The idea that women are predisposed to wiping bottoms is practice being interpreted as innate function. But is is the experience that obviously makes you an expert at it.

Women have for centuries been aligned with irrationality. (cf books like Men are from Mars and women from Venus)

Male anger, at the opposite, has never earned men the label of irrational.

In her book Delusions of gender, Cordelia Fine shatters any claims of neurosexism. Babies are much more programmed by their parents conditioning than by their innate brain. Parents act in a different way if they know or not the sex of their babies.

An entire multi-million dollar industry has been built around the power of the subconscious to store up messages and alter our behaviours.

In her essay The Equality Illusion, Kat Banyard explains that there are no difference in frequency of assertive behaviours in babies.

But the difference lies in the way adults respond to these behaviours.

If a male baby is assertive, the caregiver would respond 41% of the times (against 10% for female babies).

When a baby is seeking attention, he gets a response 55% of the time if he is male and 15% if she is female.

So babies learn and adapt.

Pressure on physical aspect

And finally, Caroline insists on the tremendous pressure women receive about their physical appearance. Is it a hazard that

90% of all cosmetic surgery patients in the UK are women?

Can we still consider it a real choice? What about high heels?

“The average woman could learn a language or climb a mountain or get another degree with the time she’s spending worrying about how she looks.”

In Iran, Masih Alinejad set up the website My stealthy freedom to show pictures of women letting their hair run free.

She considers the prohibition of women’s hair as a form of control.

Once you control women, you control half of the society. You control the way children are raised and the future generations.

Yet, the world is rarely transformed by seismic shifts: it’s all the little individual changes we barely notice that make the difference.

Role models matter. They give young girls a place to aspire to.

Like the ones Caroline portrays in her book.

This text is a summary of extracts and quotes from “Do it like a Woman” book from Caroline Criado-Perez.

Who is shifting the balance in Pakistan?

Who is shifting the balance in Pakistan?

There are places in the world with bad reputation. And Pakistan is one of them.

A country where more than 1,000 women’s and girls’ lives are taken each year from honour killings.

Where social media star and controversial female celebrity Qandeel Balochwas strangled to death by her own brother only a few months ago.

A country where director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy recently won the oscar with her documentary A girl in the river about the impunity for the relatives committing those murders.

A country ranked the second worst in the world for gender equality for the second consecutive year. 143 out of 144, just before Yemen…

And in spite of this situation (or perhaps because of it), initiatives are blossoming in different parts of the country to shift the gender balance.
So here are a few of them…

Reclaiming the public space

In Lahore, the Fearless Collective gathering artists, activists, filmmakers and researchers has set up its first public art intervention in Anarkali bazaar to challenge society’s fear of judgement by families and friends. This fear of tarnishing your reputation acting as an unspoken mutual oppression.
I watch you. You watch me. So that none of us is free.

The mural, with deep earthy colours and sprawling calligraphy asks:

‘log kya kahenge
log hum hi to hain
hum kia kahein ge?’

‘What would people say?
we are the people
what will we say?’

Deeply entrenched stereotypes were the topic of the Moving Towards a Gender-Neutral Society panel we were invited to in the massive School of Tomorrow event this past month of November.

One exceptional example fighting stigma and transphobia is Kami Sid, the first trans model from Pakistan.

In Karachi, the collective Girls at Dhabas is also reclaiming public space for women in Pakistan. So many dhabas, tea shops or street cafes are exclusively occupied by male and female don’t dare entering them without facing stares or feeling deeply uncomfortable. That’s why the collective organizes nights out where groups of women and girls go out for a tea and publish photos online “occupying the space”.

They have been inspired by the Why Loiter initiative and book from Bombay which believes that “only by celebrating loitering as a radical act for most Indian women can a truly equal, global city be created.”

Because transportation is still a key issue

How do women join the workplace, how do families support their professional activity when they constantly face the challenge of being groped and harassed by male rickshaw drivers or public transport users.

The recent introduction of CAREEM and UBER has recently revolutionized the field, but only for those who can afford it.

In Lahore, the Pink rickshaws also aims at offering safe rides to other women and children. Providing instalments and lease plans developed specifically for women, the initiative also allows women to become owner/operators of their own Pink Rickshaw and generate income for their families.

Women on Wheels is also a project from the government of Punjab to encourage women to motorcycle. The training plan was designed to enable the women to acquire the riding skill in a few weeks and culminated in a public rally to encourage female bike riding.

She means Business

In Karachi, we met the entrepreneurs from the WomenX programme which provides business education and support services to women entrepreneurs running small and medium sized enterprises in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar.

CIRCLE also develops the capacity of professional women and entrepreneurs to exercise leadership in new and courageous ways.

They also founded the ELEVATE campaign to ensure a better representation of female speakers in conferences and public debates.

In Lahore, the Herself initiative recently partnered with the program She means business from Facebook to support women entrepreneurs in their business growth.

That is where we had the opportunity to run a workshop with women entrepreneurs and executives who shared the many stereotypes they face with a mix of shrugged acceptation and resilience.

The joy of the family to welcome a boy, the curfew they face, the questions during the job interviews about their upcoming marriage, the harassment in the workplace or in the public transport, the family expecting the next pregnancy more than any promotion. The invisible pressure of others deciding on your behalf, “for your own good”.

We found out that men and women were craving for a safe space of self expression and that is what the blogger Hiba Masood from Drama Mamas is offering in her Happy Place in Karachi.

Media as a tool to portray new female role models

In Lahore, Daniyal Noorani launched Qaid Say Baatein, a three-minute cartoon series to develop a civic sense in kids, but in an entertaining way. In each episode, the heroine Zainab encounters a different problem, which she then solves by remembering the words and actions of Quaid-e-Azam, the founder of Pakistan.

Noorani’s ambition? To make Zainab a local hero for kids just like Dora — the explorer.

And in Islamabad was born Burka Avenger, the first animated TV series produced in Pakistan which offers a positive role model to counter Taliban opposition to girls’ education

Leveraging the power of technology

After assisting a friend in removing herself from an abusive marriage, Hera wanted to create a one-stop platform for women experiencing domestic violence in Pakistan — somewhere they can go to seek advice and information about their rights. Seventy global volunteers worked together to crowdsource (with love!) all of the information for the platform, and in May 2013 Chayn Pakistan was launched.

CHAYN is an open-source project offering relevant information and documented toolkits for specific cases: violence, divorce,…

The founder, Hera Hussain explains in her TEDx talk how Chayn leverages technology to address the problems women face today in Pakistan and elsewhere.

AMMI about to being launched soon plans to use voice messages to share maternal health information to rural women allover the country.

Finally, DoctHERS is an initiative which is merging online technology with healthcare, to create a marketplace where female doctors can access patients remotely, especially since 50pc of female doctors never work after graduation.

And yet the country is not lacking inspiring female role models.

Would it be Aneela Darbar, the first US trained female neurosurgeon of the country or Hajra Khan, the captain of the feminine football team or many more featured in the recent #unbeatable campaign from UN Women Pakistan.

What about the men?

But one of the most striking reality is the need expressed by the men themselves to challenge the status quo, questioning the inheritance law in their families or finding innovative ways to recruit and keep female employees in their start-ups.

Feel free to consult and share our work on that subject:

Meanwhile, we are preparing our next visit to the country to engage in many more fruitful conversations!

So stay tuned for more updates on our Shiftbalance website and Facebook page!

Je rêvais d’un autre monde

Je rêvais d’un autre monde

Last week, I attended the 4th edition of the Ouishare Fest.thumb_IMG_7717_1024

The place where traditional corporations and market economy are challenged by the new sharing economy.

The place where central authority is challenged by decentralized tools like blockchains or bitcoins.

The place where “sedentarism” is challenged by digital nomads.

So here is a quick summary of what I learnt!

Blockchain 1.0.1.

Let it be clear. Nobody really understands blockchain…

So when I saw that most of day 1 was dedicated to it, I joined the Blockchain for dummies session organized by Blockchain Hub from Berlin. Here is what I understood…

Personal computers used to be isolated. Then TCP IP protocol connected them. But data is still stored locally and centrally (even with the cloud), which is extremely risky and supposes large investments in cyber security.

Blockchain actually decentralizes the transaction verification, which is why it has been called by The Economist the Trust machine. This allows to switch from information monarchy to information democracy and eliminates the middle man in a true P2P society. It also allows Smart contracts or auto-enforceable contracts when both parties meet thepre-established rules.

And this can translate in:

  • Money without Banks: Bitcoin
  • Companies without managers: DAO
  • Countries without politicians: Bitnation

So in blockchains, transactions are not verified by a central authority but by the community, then encrypted and join the top of the chain. Each transaction being a block, the longer the chain becomes, the harder it gets to decode it.

Bitcoin was actually the first block chain and in that environment, transactions cost only a few cents (against 5-10% of the amount with traditional banks) and take a few seconds. Santander estimated this shift will save banks USD 20 billions in the coming years…

This translates in many potential concrete applications as:

  • The smart lock of Slock it: where Airbnb apartments become fully automated, wifi routers can be rented on demand and unused office spaces get a new lease on life.
  • The digital property and authentication of Ascribe for artists and creators to securely share and trace where the digital work spreads.augur
  • Provenance which allows the customers to check the supply chain of the products they buy.
  • Or Augur which decentralizes the prediction market, based on the wisdom of the crowd principle: If you ask a mass of people a prediction, the average will be more accurate than a selected group of experts.

Now the question is: in a true global democracy where one. person represents one vote, the hegemony of the West will be severely questioned. Are we ready for that?

Go and hack yourself

Jean Noubel ran this workshop urging us to hack our bodies in order to hack our brains. According to him, the plasticity of our body helps to get more plasticity in our minds and our emotions.

So that is why it is important to learn to break social codes (the stiff clothes which prevent movement, not touching each other, …). The same social codes we have learnt from a very young age in order to adapt to the pyramidal structure of our society which supposes a chain of command of predictable people.Contact1

How do you reunite body and essence when they have been separated for years?

So during 3 hours, we walked around the room, tickled each other, crawled on the floor to break this mould. We experienced Sistema Russian martial art, learning to avoid blows by increasing body’s fluidity and flexibility.

And then we learnt about the 4 types of collective intelligence:

  1. The oldest one being swarms (termites, fishes) where individuals look the same, don’t have much freedom and follow the same path as in street protests or traffic jams.
  2. The original collective intelligence of groups of animals: small groups, highly individualized, like a jazzband which requires specialization and synchronization. This supposes “holoptism”, to have the vision of the whole, like a football team but only works for small numbers of individuals in the same physical space.Holomidal
  3. The pyramidal structure is based on centralized power, casts, labour division and scarce currency. It requires predictable people obeying to doing and not being. But the top can’t process the complexity of the whole and is disconnected from the bottom so it can’t really respond to greater levels of systemic complexity.
  4. Finally the holomidal organization which emerged since Internet requires augmented holopticism, a collective vision of the whole.

KingAnd to get there, we need to hack ourselves and eliminate the old patterns.

A good example of it is the language we use and its multi layers of consciousness. Since semantic structures are very deep, we need to rewire:

  • Using e-prime for example, a derivative English
  • Avoiding the verb TO BE (Paris is a rainy city) which imposes a reality, a belief, a judgment.
  • Break social codes like the urge to interrupt in a conversation and learn to breathe before speaking.

Basically, we need to hack our language and evolve in individual consciousness to be able to progress in collective consciousness.

We share loss

Ariane Conrad, from Bookdoula, ran this session about death rituals.

We tend to experience loss and grieving in an individual way, we feel ashamed if it takes longer than expected and we realize that we do not know how to deal with trauma together as Sebastian Junger suggests in his talk about war veterans and PTSD.

After a traumatic experience, individuals deal better with loss and fear in a context of tribal closeness than in a lonely and individualist society.

But as wealth goes up in a society, suicide rate goes up as well.

So it’s time to reclaim death rituals like Dia De los Muertos in Mexico and how to better deal with trauma together…

Digital nomads

Of course, many digital nomads were present at the Ouishare Fest, sharing their experience on the subject and presenting some future retreats like Betahaus Camp in Lemnos during the coming month of June.Beta

Middle East Panel

Different initiatives were mentioned on sharing economy in the Arab world and collaborative inclusion for migrants such as:

  • The Jamiya Project which brings together five networks to suppothumb_IMG_7698_1024rt higher education for Syrian students.
  • Or THOT, the new French school for refugees and asylum seekers.
  • ArabShare an organization whose mission is to empower the Collaborative Economy in the Arab World and work to promote this movement in the area.
  • Or Indigo, the Social Network of Mutual Help with a platform which enables its members to access every items and services for free thanks to a new virtual currency : The Digo.

Women and tech

The Womanity Foundation granted her awards to the best project leveraging technology to end violence against women. Their choice was set on Take back the tech in its new collaboration with Luchadoras, a weekly TV show that hosts feminist activists in Mexico. Both decided to join forces to tackle violence against women through ICTs.

Check their video here!Take back 1

Feminists of the arab world

Asmaa Guedira and I decided to run a session on feminist icons of the Middle East, the historic ones and the polemic ones, sharing some grassroots projects shifting the balance!

Here is the slideshare of the workshop!

We also had a long conversation about islam and feminism so we invite you to check this website.

Hypergender panel

And finally, we had the opportunity to be on the main stage for our final panel on hypergender, the first time gender was formerly included in the fest agenda.

As much as OUIShare wishes to switch from a top-down, vertical, market-oriented economy to a horizontal sharing economy, gender activism is all about challenging the central authority and the top-down oppressive patriarchal system, ending hierarchies and traditional power structures.

But in many militant movements, gender is put aside. It’s not the issue. The issue is the new world.  With the risk to build a new world based on the old patterns.

In this article of Les Inrockuptibles on the Nuit Debout phenomenon, women’s public participation to the debate on the République square was analysed and it turned out that even in revolutionary movements, gender norms are still present and women occupy less space than men.

Because we are all instinctively driven by our stereotypes.

So how can we be mindful at a personal level?

Because the personal is still political.

If we really want to build a new world, we also need to deconstruct our inner boundaries and explore.

Explore new ways of being a woman, new ways of being a man.

At work, at home, in bed, on a public stage.

And it’s deeply challenging because there is no right or wrong answer.

How can we go beyond gender labels?

So we talked about gender fluidity and the greater acceptance of exploration within changemakers communities.

TameraWe mentioned the festival culture of events such as Burning Man and Borderland or communities like Tamera in Portugal.

We talked about salsa and contact dance, two complete different body expressions of gender roles.

And we challenged the audience: How did they experience gender in this conference? What do they do on a day to day basis to shift gender norms?

So, as conferences are now the future of work, we definitely enjoyed the experience this year at Ouishare and learnt a lot! Looking forward to the 2017 edition!

je revais

Meet the changemakers from the Gulf

Meet the changemakers from the Gulf

This month of March was dedicated to the discovery of a new part of the world, the GCC countries or Gulf Cooperation Council including Koweit, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Oman.

Many stereotypes linger about the Gulf region, and above all about Saudi Arabia, where I was invited to run storytelling workshops for creative entrepreneurs.

A unique opportunity to experience from within a country raising so many fears, especially given the difficulties for a single European woman to obtain a visa of entry.

Aurelie Salvaire_EN

I first headed to Ryadh, the capital of the country and the most conservative of its towns at the heart of the Nedj plateau.

From the airport, the segregation between men and women started and the jackhammers sound surround us in the chaotic traffic around the metro works.

My host Shibin, co-founder of iArt garage creative agency, welcomed me in town and Tawfiq, who I later discovered to be a local star in freestyle football, offered me a tailored abaya specially designed by one of the local entrepreneurs.

From now on, I will wear this large black cloak in public and sometimes the veil even if it is not compulsory as a foreign woman.

Uber or Careem taxi apps are a blessing in a country where women are not allowed to drive.

The workshop takes place in between the mandatory prayer breaks and the calls of the religious police to the organizer since men and women are mixed in our audience…

Then I joined Jeddah, the more open city on the coast of the Red Sea, where the abayas are more colourful given the harbour heritage and its openness to foreign influence.

Within the Kayan coworking space developed by Tashkeil, I met again Sofana Dahlan, the mind behind this whole program.

We met a few years ago in the Deceler8 program in Bali and I later invited her to speak at the second edition of TEDxBarcelonaWomen about seeing Saudi women beyond the labels.

Sofana is highly dedicated to develop the creative scene of her country and she worked hard to design this ambitious Saudi National Creative Initiative in spite of all the administrative and logistical setbacks.

Getting something as simple as an authorization to run a public workshop can quickly become a nightmare but agains all odds, she decided to trust her faith about her own people and their deep potential.

She thinks that the main catalyst for any social change lies among the creative entrepreneurs, the artists, designers, bloggers, film makers who challenge the status quo.

That is why she wanted to empower them through the exposure to more than 40 international trainers over the course of 12 weeks in between 3 different cities. Crazy challenge…

Her wish was also to show these experts another side of her country, the bourgeoning creative scene ready to blossom and thus challenge our own stereotypes.

And it is true that during this week, I was amazed by the artists I met, by the sheer creativity of so many poets, painters, designers who found alternative ways to express themselves in a context of extremely limited freedom of speech.

I thus met Bashayer who tries to instill positive thoughts to her followers in social media or Solkem who runs a museum in Jeddah and wishes to set up a creative space in Ndjamena, the capital of her home country Chad to foster a greater harmony between cultures and religions, or Haifa who set up Kalimat, a literary community for females in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia.

All of them shared their story, digged deep into their why and challenged the vision I had of the country.

I was surprised by the diversity of their heritage from Indonesia to Africa, from Yemen to Lebanon. I was surprised by the deep creativity emerging in different forms below the uniformed white thobes and black abayas.

I was surprised by their resilience and their capacity to keep moving, imagining, dreaming in spite of the political restrictions.

These workshops were also the opportunity to share names of women of the Middle East rocking the tech scene. Check our presentation on that topic!

Arabs unseen

Among them, in Dubai, Hebah Fisher who challenges the common narrative on the Middle East through her podcast Kerning Cultures.

Or Nina Galbraith who set up the accelerator Flat6Labs in AbuDhabi and is now exploring workshops to foster female self confidence in the region.

After my workshops in Saudi, I decided to head directly to Bahrain, across a 17kms bridge from Saudi Arabia. Bahrain is seen as a more liberal place, home to the ancient Dilmun civilization and to the pearl trade. As an former trade hub, it was also more open to external influences and we can even feel the breeze of spirituality from the ancient fort overlooking the city.

There I had the opportunity to be hosted by Tariq Al Olaimy, an energetic young social entrepreneur co-founder of 3BL Associates. Deeply active in terms of climate change and interfaith dialogue, he is a founding National Coordinator of the Arab Youth Climate Movement (AYCM), member of Global shapers and TEDx curator.

And thanks to him, I ran another workshop with the Bahrain Development Bank within their Women Entrepreneurs Incubator Riyadat.

Afterwards, I joinedwe are doha Qatar and its capital Doha, which invested massively into education through its Qatar Foundation and the construction of its Education city hosting the campus of Georgetown or other major US or European universities. I even visited the alumni chapter of my own business school HEC Paris who runs an executive program from here and I paid a quick visit to the local team of the WISE summit, an anual event gathering worldwide innovations in the education field.

Doha is the home to the Al Jazeera TV channel, a unique voice from the Arab world, where I had the opportunity to meet Youssef Gaboune, Head of Business Development at Al Jazeera Media Training and Development Center and collaborator of the Al Sharq Forum, which aims at a greater understanding between cultures.

In Doha, I also met amazing creative people like Lara Black, creator of the Loser Sphinx character or the poet and writer Ali Al Saeed as well as the collective We are Doha, wishing through its videos to spread the image of a diverse country.

But the climax of my trip was definitely my last step: Oman, on the eastern part of the península, way into the Arabian sea, open to the world.

From the very moment of the arrival, the atmosphere shifts. No more skyscrapers. No more gigantic airports. No more rush. The peaceful vibe infuses every single moment in this kingdom where the beloved ruler has managed to transform drastically his country in only 40 years, rising from sheer poverty to a prosperous state.

Diner Oman

According to the UN, Oman has been the most improved nation in those last 40 years, as shows the report published by Ernst and Young at this occasion.

In thBe exceptional the loungeis beautiful country who even celebrates Omani Women’s Day on October 17th, I actually met amazing women:

  • Fatma Bahwan, co-founder of The Lounge Oman, the first coworking space for young creative entrepreneurs in Muscat
  • Rym Aoudia, young powerhouse running Knowledge Oman platform developing local social entrepreneurs
  • Lamya Al-Haj, Asst Professor Sultan Qaboos University, holding a PhD in Structural and Molecular Biology , and a huge role model for women in STEM
  • And Nasra Al Adawi, empowering civil society through with Tawasul.

Interview Tariq 2 good

I was even offered the book Arabs unseen  written by a former Omani airforce pilot and discovered the trajectory of many social entrepreneurs from the Arab world, such as Tariq Al Barwani who even interviewed me for the Oman radio…

You can listen to that fun moment there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuIphhtFXQE

So it is extremely energized that I finish this GCC tour, knowing that I will be back soon, to explore more in details the creative ecosystem of the region and contribute even more to change the narrative!

How unconscious biases are driving us

How unconscious biases are driving us

A man and his son are in a car accident. The man passes away. The son is brough to the hospital. When he gets into the surgical ward, the surgeon shouts: This is my son!

Who is the surgeon?

Close your eyes for 5 seconds and try to find the answer.

The surgeon is the boy’s mother.

Had you found out?  I hadn’t.

And for me, that was when I realized how deeply engrained our stereotypes are. No matter how feminist I could be, my first thought was not to think that the surgeon could actually be a woman.

In this brilliant talk, Yassmin Abdel-Magied shows how we are all much more biased than we think. Assessing unconsciously our interlocutors according to our suppositions.

What is your first thought about a woman wearing hijab? Would you imagine her as running a team of men on an oil platform at sea?

Yassmin thus challenges us to work on our stereotypes and to mentor a person from a different background in order to break that vicious cycle.

The topic of unconscious bias is now more than ever a hot one.

Because it partly explains why our companies, governements, media are still overwhelmingly run by white middle-aged men.

When Google had to release their diversity data, they were ashamed to acknowldege that their staff was at 69% male and 60% white. Same for Apple. And Twitter.

Here is the data from Apple in 2015 for example:

Yet many studies proved that diversity is good for the bottom line. A recent study from Mac Kinsey, Diversity matters, showed that more diverse companies are more efficient, come up with more innovative ideas and connect better with the end consumers.

But a lot of work still needs to be done. Google thus engaged in an intensive row of diversity and inclusion workshops in order to make their staff more aware of the existing biases.

In this talk about Unconscious bias at work, the Head of diversity at Google Ventures, mentions that given that we receive 11 million bits of information bits every moment, and that we can only process consciously 40 bits, the rest (99,999999%) is up to our instinctive decisions. And they are not objective.

Just have a look at the Yale study where 2 sets of identical curriculum were sent to research heads, ones named John and the others named Jennifer. Both men and women rated better the John’s CVs than the Jennifer’ ones.

The good news is: we can reprogram our brains.

First, by making a conscious effort to be aware of our biases.

By assessing and measuring the current situation as the Open Diversity Data project is.

By learning about the best practices in the field.

By holding yourself accountable, questioning your first impressions, justifying your decisions, asking for feedback.

And finally by holding others accountable, creating a culture calling out biases, making others justify their decisions, making decisions collectively.

If you want to have get more information on diversity best practices, here is our slideshare presentation.

The power of positivity

The power of positivity

In many of my workshops, I like to ask the participants about their superpowers. What do they think they are good at? What do they get complimented for?

Skills, abilities. Being a great cook, an awesome writer or a social media guru. 13924624137_63120ef357_z

I just ask them to name three of them.

And I am always impressed to see how difficult it sounds to so many of them. How arrogant or self-indulgent it seems to be. How they don’t feel good enough or even perfect enough at anything to claim it as a superpower. How the inner judge is powerfully mining them down.

That is why I was really happy when I received as one of my early Christmas gifts the last book from French positive psychology new guru Florence Servan-Schreiber, centered on how to detect and embrace your own superpowers!

Because we’ve been brought up not to brag.

We have even been wired for negativity, cynicism and self-criticism.

Out of the four basic human emotions (joy, sadness, fear, anger), only one is actually positive.

Our species actually survived thanks to the ability to spot dangers and risks in our environment. And now we hardly find a middle way between self-esteem and self-deprecating.

Try for example to spend one full day without voicing or thinking anything negative about others or about yourself. Hard, right? It is crazy how this tendency lies deep within us. The good news is that you “only” need 21 (or 66, it depends) days to make it an habit, so why not give it a try?

This is the reason why, more than ever, we need to develop our “strengthspotting”, as Robert Biswas-Diener calls it. A few helpful questions for that:

  • What have you achieved you are particularly proud of?
  • What do you find exciting in your life right now?
  • What are you looking forward to in the coming days?

Because positive psychology is actually “the science of happiness”.

One of its founders Martin Seligman explains in this talk how psychology has often been centered on treating the problems or the diseases but not so much focusing on keeping people sane and happy. So positive psychology is much more about prevention than treatment.

As defined by the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, “Positive Psychology is the scientific study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive. The field is founded on the belief that people want to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, to cultivate what is best within themselves, and to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play.”

So what did the investigators find out?

First, Seligman, Myers and Peterson, founders of positive psychology identified 24 character strengths in all the cultures. Anywhere in the world, from any culture or background, human beings share these common strengths in different levels.

So if you want to identify your top 5 ones, feel free to take the test!

My first one is love of learning!

Secondly and even more importantly, investigators found that the quality time that we spend with the people we love is one of the most accurate indicators of our well-being.

That is the result for example of this 75-year-old study on adult development, happiness comes essentially from good relationships.

Intimacy. Meaningful conversations. Deep and active listening.

And that is what I also tend to develop in my workshops.

I really love to foster one-on-one conversations between participants, drawing and exchanging about their life or career map, making them write their epitaph or what people would tell about them at their 80th birthday, or just looking at each other in the eyes for two minutes while describing what they see.

While holding the space and creating an atmosphere of trust, intimate stories and deep motivations can be shared.

Fully listening to each other. Dedicating total attention. Being completely present. Looking at each other for real. Smiling.

These seem like simple and obvious ingredients and yet I am always impressed by their power. How people feel happy and satisfied after a real conversation with their colleague, sometimes for the first time in years…

In some cases, I even use some mindfulness exercises from the Plum Village to restore communication between conflictive teams. Like these four steps of beginning anew:

  • First sharing your appreciation for the other person.
  • Then voicing regrets or apologies for the hurt we might have caused in the other.
  • Expressing what has hurt us in the other person’s actions, speech or thoughts.
  • And finally, asking for support regarding a difficulty we are currently experiencing.

The key of the exercise being to let the person talk freely without reacting and interrupting, as in a feedback session.

I also enjoy asking participants to draw their relationship map. Writing their own name in the center of a sheet of paper. Writing down the names of the important people in their life, family, partners, friends, colleagues,… around theirs. And drawing arrows from their name towards the others’ and backwards, adapting thickness or color of the line according to the depth of the relationship and the support provided. The result is usually pretty revealing…

Another interesting exercise is the RBSE (Reflect Best Self Exercise) where you actually ask 10 or 20 people around you to tell you moments or circumstances in which they saw you thriving.

The psychologist Arthur Aron actually developed 36 questions which allow you to develop intimacy with a person you meet for the first time and it works!

An initiative exploring the possibility to develop emotional intelligence in all of us is actually The School of Life. In different cities allaround the world, clases are offered on how to mindmap your thoughts or to learn more about the imposteur síndrome. They also offer free videos on their Youtube channel about a vast array of topics, from suicide to confidence.

So, if the quality of our relationships actually conditions our satisfaction level about our life, we’d better start working on it right now!

And this is important not only in our personal life but in our professional one too. In this talk about the happiness advantage, Shawn Achor explains how happiness leads to success and not the other way round. Business outcomes actually improve when employees are positive in the present. Apparently they even have twice as many ideas!

And that is why positive psychology is making its way into companies now…

Because happier companies are actually better performing!

Last year in Le Havre, the Positive Economy Forum actually explored positive answers to the challenges faced by companies today and tomorrow.

And the third and last magical ingredient is actually gratitude.

In her very nice talk at TEDxParis, Florence Servan-Schreiber developed the idea of the tremendous power of the gratitude which makes us feel happier, live longer and improves the quality of life around us!

And to make it very concrete, she recommends simple everyday exercises:

Like buying a nice notepad and writing down every night or sharing with your family your 3 “kifs” of the day, the coffee with a friend, the warm bath or the great meal you had that made you happy today. This simple everyday act helps you to see your life differently and rewire your brain towards positivity.

3 kifs par jour

You can even organize a gratitude meal where you share your best 2015 moments with your friends!

Many love and kindness meditation practices are actually based on that idea: sending love to yourself first, then to a person you appreciate, a person you feel neutral about, a person you may not like that much and finally the universe as a whole is a powerful practice.14108193221_45c3baaac8_z

Finally, following the relationships map, feel free to pick a few people or colleagues around you and write them a gratitude letter or email, a few words about how you value their friendship and support. And if you feel like it, you can even read it to them. You would be surprised by the result!

So in our current world where our natural tendency might lead us to the fear of the other, let’s dedicate some time to get to know each other better and to spread some joy and positivity in the air!

Here is a pocket reflection worksheet from Holstee about your past year.

Wishing you a happy 2016!

When technology challenges the narrative of the European refugee crisis

When technology challenges the narrative of the European refugee crisis

Last December 2nd in CodeNode space in London, I joined the second Techfugees event launched by Mike Butcher. This open tech community has grown from the European refugee crisis, organizing non-profit events and hackathons in order to leverage the knowledge of the tech community to contribute to solve one of the most complex current humanitarian crisis.

Many large NGOs or UN agencies gathered in this modern coworking space to share their experiences with entrepreneurs and developers and see “where the technology world can bring its considerable firepower.”

The first speaker, Oisin Walton, from the Vodafone Foundation presented two of their programs:

  • the award winning Instant Network Program providing free communications and technical support to aid agencies and victims, in areas affected by natural or humanitarian disaster.
  • the Instant Network Schools introducing tablet-based learning in some of the world’s most poorly resourced refugee camps. The initiative provides internet connectivity, hardware, software & teacher training that enables students and teacher to access free digital educational content. They currently equipped 13 of the 40 schools in Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya with laptop, tablets and batteries to create self-sufficient digital classrooms.

Some members of the UNHCR innovation team then shared their insights. Rebeca Moreno, Katy Drew and John Warnes told us about their main challenges on the ground: the fact that refugees were moving all the time for example and spending a maximum of five hours in transit as in an airport terminal, the rapid changes in context which require constant updated information and the use of at least five different languages. So in that case, technology is key, would it be tablets with translated audio for the staff or digital signage.

2. unhcr_innovation_logo_detail

 Especially when the first questions asked from refugees are: “Where can I charge my phone? Is there wifi here?”

Their experience was corroborated by the testimonial from Hassan, 27, Syrian refugee who made it to UK the past month of July.

Like the tragic story told by Melissa Fleming, the spokesperson of UNHCR at TEDxThessaloniki, Hassan told us how after fleeing Syria and spending time in Lebanon, Egypt or UAE where he never felt welcome, he decided to try his chance to reach the UK. During his first attempt, he was rescued by the Turkish safeguard and brought back to Turkey. During his second attempt, his boat was attacked by some armed men who drowned their boat, as this article shows happens frequently.

He lost his passport and his mere belongings and managed to swim up to the Greek coast, where he landed in Lesbos. Through information gathered on Facebook groups and whatsapp with other refugees who had made the journey before him, he then joined Athens and walked to the Macedonian border.

At this time of the year, beginning of July, no NGOs were there yet to assist them apart from the Red Cross. He then crossed to Serbia, Hungary, Austria and finally made it to Calais, to the infamous jungle camp, the “largest slum in Europe” where 8.000 people live in shacks waiting to cross to the UK. During two months, he tried every night to cross the fences and jump on the Eurostar and was caught every time, then changed tactics and went every night to the Belgian border to climb into a lorry to pass the tunnel. Again, every night was a failure until one night, he miraculously made it.

“I wish there were a better way…”

More information on Calais situation:

And then, one he got to the UK, what? “Once you arrived in the UK, you can stay in a hostel for one month and then you have 20 days to evacuate. The real challenge starts then: you have to find out how to stay and to integrate. Legalize your situation, get a place to stay, find a job.”

A former Afghan refugee currently working for Save the Children agreed with Hassan’s perception: When arriving, refugees are left in a limbo for months or even years until they are allowed to work. Meanwhile, the idleness, the boredom and the feeling of not being welcomed or treated as criminals break down people’s confidence as skilled individuals end up working in take-aways.

According to Breaking Barriers, “in 2013, the UK was home to 120,000 refugees and there are 20,000 new applications every year for refugee status. Although these refugees have higher levels of education, skills and qualifications than the UK average, an eagerness to work and are mostly of working age, unemployment levels in refugee communities remain above 50%, compared to 6% for the national average.”

The immigration lawyer Colin Yeo, editor of the Free movement website, told us more about the current status of immigration regulations in the UK, clarifying the real definition of the refugee status and the current effort to change the existing Dublin system. His blog is actually a resource for any other lawyer who wants to keep up to date “in the incredibly fast moving world of immigration law and policy.”

Nando Sigona, researcher at the University of Birmingham, shared some interesting data with us: according to him, even if we experienced a huge influx of refugees in 2015 (1 million people in 2015 compared to 200.000 in 2014), the mortality in the Mediterranean has been stable around 3.500 deaths. The routes have progressively been switching from the Mediterranean to the Turkey-Greece route towards European countries that show very different policies (75% of the refugees requests have been declined in France vs 25% in Sweden for example).

All along the event, the tech community was challenged by the different needs expressed from the ground: How can technology help you stay in touch with your loved ones? How can you overcome the language barrier? How do you get updated local information in real-time?

So below are a few interesting initiatives answering these challenges:

Refunite allows refugees to reconnect with their loved ones. In East Africa or in the Middle East, through family tracing, with an user friendly, online global database of over 405,000 profiles, users can now search for their missing loved ones with the click of a button.

refunite logo

Meshpoint is a world-proof rugeed wifi. The croatian firm has designed a highly-portable rugged, all-weather wi-fi and 4G mobile device that can connect up to 150 people to the internet at the same time.

Empowerhack brings together technology, design, and NGOs to address challenges that affect women & girls around the world.

NaTakallam, (we speak in Arabic), pairs students learning Arabic with displaced Syrians in Lebanon, and increasingly beyond, for conversation-focused sessions over the internet. This social business allows a unique cultural experience while providing Syrians with an enriching part-time work opportunity in a country where finding a worthwhile job is difficult.

With GetAcross, refugees can talk in their own language with aid workers, medics, officials and volunteers, with the help of volunteer interpreters. Making language barriers a thing of the past.

Get Across

The Refugee Aid App provides a single point for refugees to find information, connection and support and a single point for NGOs and charities to share their resources with refugees – location based. The Refugees Map is also sharing up to date information about the different routes.

The Clinic Finder developed with Medecins du Monde is a website for refugees and people on the move designed to provide information about free healthcare and medical services.

Migreat was founded in 2012 by two immigrants to the United Kingdom with the goal of assisting other individuals through the burdensome immigration and integration process. It offers a unique & free solution to help you find the best way to enter & remain in a new country.

Different hosting initiatives appeared where citizens rent to refugees their extra-rooms to make them feel at home, like CALM (Comme à la Maison) in France or Refugees Welcome in Germany.

Refugees Welcome

Kiron University is a pioneer social business in open higher education, which provides refugees with world-class education and the opportunity to graduate at a university free of charge.

Funzi, whose new content package delivers current, trustworthy and high-quality information for newly arrived asylum-seekers in Finland. “About Finland” operates on Funzi’s easy-to-use mobile service, forming a tool for integration. Funzi also develops entrepreneurial training in Somali or Arabic.

Start-up boat provides start-up solutions to tackle migration. Among them, the Migration HUB enables refugees in Europe to start their own businesses with the support of young Europeans.

400contacts is a mentoring program with one goal in mind.
To help refugees with a background in engineering get their first skilled job in Sweden.

Breaking Barriers offers a holistic service designed to make sure that refugees can find meaningful employment that is commensurate with their skills, experience and qualifications.

Marhacar is the first carpooling community by volunteers for volunteers in crisis regions.

In Greece, Taxibeat, a smartphone taxi app, collaborated with METAction, Action for Migration and Development who helps Greece’s asylum authorities with a range of services, including interpretation services during legal procedures. Taxibeat will send a car to the doorstep of anyone who wants to help refugees by sending them essential supplies, like clean clothes, shoes, personal hygiene items, baby food and clothes, towels, sheets and blankets, packaged foods, toys, children’s painting sets, color markers, balls and big trash bags.

One of the main impacts of the event was to challenge the traditional myths we might have about refugees.

In his last talk at TEDxVienna, Alexander Betts thus explains how the perception of helpless people being a burden to a state could be challenged by the talents and skills of the refugees he met, “doctors, lawyers, nurses, even an Olympic athlete who introduced him to table tennis.”

Refugees are not economically isolated, they actually create jobs.

They are not homogeneous, they have a wide variety of skill sets

They are not technologically illiterate. Mobile phones are ubiquitous.

And they are not all dependent on assistance.

So given the current political situation, it is important that we question the existing narrative about the refugee crisis and that we tap into our innovation to solve one of the most pressing challenges of our time!

Bad feminists reaching momentum @TEDWomen2015

Bad feminists reaching momentum @TEDWomen2015

Livestream hall

Livestream hall

Cultural entrepreneurship seems to be the new leverage to change behaviours.

But the real show started on Thursday!

Memory Banda

Memory Banda

Negin Farzad

Negin Farzad

Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay

Michael Kimmel

Michael Kimmel

So, as always, an amazing brain spa.

It’s time to shift the balance

The last speech from Patricia Arquette in the Oscars ceremony showed how, more than ever, the conversation on gender equality is reaching a momentum on an international level.

Source CNN

After a strong push from the feminist movement in the seventies, a common misconception today is that the situation is globally OK and that the fight is over.

But discrepancies and stereotypes are still very much present, all the more so that we consider the situation as resolved.

You can’t be what you can’t see

lavanguardiaDuring our last diversity workshop, we spent the day with a diverse group of men and women from different ages and geographical origins, deconstructing the gender roles that we have been socialized in.

Men were sharing how they felt expected to initiate seduction or cover the expenses and how they could be excluded from caregiving.

Women explained how they would be catcalled in the street on a regular basis, how their parents expected them to « behave properly » and take their part in household chores from early age.

A fun media exercise consisted in creating a massive collage of male and female representations in men’s and women’s magazines. The final image speaks for itself (men on the left, women on the right):

men women

We even headcounted the illustrations of Spanish newspapers: in El Pais or La Vanguardia, men’s pictures outnumbered women’s by 5 to 1.

Diversity helps the bottom line

Source: Always

International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde has spoken about the need for countries to increase the female labour supply.

“In a world in search of growth, women will help find it.”

According to the IMF, having as many women in the labor force as men could boost economic growth by 5% in the United States, 9% in Japan and 34% in Egypt.

Different campaigns like Lean in, Ban Bossy or HeforShe are bringing this conversation to the forefront, at least in the US.

On the corporate side, we watched different new ads from Pantene, Always or Dove who understood that challenging gender stereotypes could be very profitable for their brand, when women represent 85% of consumers purchases.

And we shared solutions to everyday sexism, like Harassmap geolocalizing in real time sexual harassment, or Goldie Blox building toys for future women engineers.

It’s sexy to be a feminist

Obama is a feminist too!

We especially deconstructed the taboo around the word “feminist”.

When asked, many people (men and women) defend themselves from ever being called a feminist, given the negative connotation of the word.

Yet, when we come to the real definition (Someone who believes in the social, political and economic equality of sexes), many of the participants finally recognize themselves to be one…

It’s time to master the narrative, it’s time to acknowledge the fact that inequalities are still there and that we all have a role to play about them, would it be in the language we use, in the way we educate our children or how we choose the speakers for our next conference.

Source: YouGov

And that’s where all the participants took concrete commitments for their everyday lives.

Because, as Emma Watson reminded us in her famous UN speech« If not me, who ? If not now, when ? »


Leon Cato, Marketing

Leon has more than 13 years experience in marketing spanning both the creative and data disciplines. His BA in Sociology coupled with his MBA in Marketing Management and Information Systems provide him with a keen insight into customer relationships and a well-rounded analytical and results-driven approach to technological marketing solutions. Additionally, his experience as an entrepreneur enables his creative thinking to be strategically applied to business challenges.


Outdoors with your toddler: Hiking Mount Longonot

I started working out (in earnest) a few months back in October. So on the Mashujaa Day holiday, I decided she was old enough for a long haul hike and I was strong enough to tag her along. And this is how the ever demure but challenging Mount Longonot was decided upon.


Community Research and Development Information Service - CORDIS

All cells possess signaling pathways designed to trigger antiviral responses against invading viruses. Importantly, infected cells also deploy stress response to cope with viral infection, including autophagy. Autophagy is a catabolic pathway by which cells break down damaged organelles and protein aggregates via sequestration in vesicles and degradation by lysosomes. Autophagy regulates cellular homeostasis and interconnects with various cellular pathways. While autophagy can contribute to the removal of viral protein aggregates from the cells, the same process can have a positive impact on viral replication via indirect regulations. For example, we demonstrated that HCV uses autophagy proteins for the translation of incoming viral genomes in newly infected cells. Interestingly, DENV also usurps autophagy pathway for its own benefit, by providing energy required for replication by ingestion of the lipid droplets. Our recent work suggests that, autophagy also regulates DENV replication in cells issued from its mosquito vector i.e., Aedes Aegypti. Intriguingly, as opposed to the proviral function of autophagy in human cells, autophagy restricts DENV propagation in the mosquito host.

Importantly, autophagy is emerging as a key regulator of viral propagation by regulating positively or negatively the production of antiviral molecule. Such response is triggered by recognition of viral nucleic acids and leads to the production of type I interferon (IFNs), inflammatory cytokines and IFN-stimulated genes (ISGs). This first line of host response suppresses viral spread and jump-starts the adaptive immune response. Not surprisingly, virtually all viruses have evolved mechanisms to inhibit host-sensing pathways within cells that they invade. For example, dengue virus (DENV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) encodes viral proteases, which inactivate key adaptors of signaling induced by the cytosolic sensors (RIG-I) and the endolysosome-localized sensors, i.e., the Toll-like receptors (TLR). Nonetheless, these viruses strongly induce the expression of IFN and ISGs in infected patients, suggesting the existence of alternative pathogen-sensing mechanisms.

OBJECTIVES: We aim at better our understanding of the activation of innate immunity by virally-infected cells.

MAIN RESULTS: In the context of DENV infection, we uncovered an alternative sensing pathway mediated by the recognition of infected cells by the plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs), which involves physical cell-cell contact between the pDCs and the infected cells. Such cell-cell contact is also required for the detection of evolutionarily divergent RNA viruses and is now increasingly recognized as a hallmark of the pDC-mediated antiviral state. Importantly, we recently showed that actin network concentrates at the cell-cell contact and constitutes a structural platform for the transmission of the activating signal from infected cells to the pDCs. Furthermore, we demonstrated that immunostimulatory viral RNA can be transferred by non-canonical carriers (i.e., independently of infectious virions) from infected cells to pDCs. In particular, in the context of HCV and DENV, we reported that infected cells produce non-infectious and/or non-canonical vesicle that efficiently transfer immunostimulatory RNAs to pDCs (HCV RNA-containing exosomes and DEN immature particles respectively). This leads to a potent antiviral response by pDCs, characterized by IFN production, and that are not subject to viral inhibition, because pDCs are non-permissive to HCV. Similarly, pDCs are non-permissive to most viral infections, hence emphasizing their essential role as IFN producers for the antiviral response of the host.

CONCLUSION: our work underscored that cell-cell contact is a newly ascribed feature of pDC biology that is required for many different modalities of pDC activation, therefore we anticipate that our results will serve as a conceptual framework for similar analysis for other viruses.

The address of the public website describing our research objective:

Related information

Documents and Publications

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Life Sciences


Judges are provided with a set of criteria on a checklist that they must evaluate for every application (the checklist and criteria are not published to the public). They read your answers and compare what you write with the criteria on the checklist. Judges also draw on their own experience and knowledge of your business category to determine how well you satisfy the criteria. It is up to you to convince the judges why your application is the best in the given category. You can and should submit as much evidence as possible that can make the case for you without a site visit. Include videos, photos, brochures, PDFs, articles from the press, customer reviews, even a virtual reality tour, whatever you think will give your business the best chance of winning! Then our judges make notes and then submit their final score to Association staff. Once all entries have been judged, Association staff process the scores and determine which entries have ranked the highest. If there is a tie, or a particularly difficult application, two or sometimes three different judges will be involved in the review of that application. If a judge has personal knowledge of or experience with your business, he/she is asked to abstain from processing your application, and another judge will review it.

Judges are unable to visit businesses in person due to the time and expense it would take to do so. If a business or destination wishes a more thorough on-site assessment for the purpose of its own development, please see our Business Assessment or Destination Assessment products.


Elli Earring Silver

As a gemstone, Pyrite is used as a unique protector that draws the energy from the Earth all through the physical body and lays it into the aura and creates a defensive shield that protects against the negative powers, ambiance pollutants, physical harm and emotional attack. Pyrite also supports the wearer with a strength of assertive and bold action when he protects the others in the greater community. It also simulates the Second and the Third Chakra by enhancing the ability and power to see the reality behind the facades.

DROP: 3cm drop
ELEMENT: Ethical Sterling Silver

Supplied in luxury Temple of the Sun wallet and gift box


Smart Ways To Safeguard Your Luggage And Money

Most people travel at some point during their lives. Whether you stay at home more than you travel, or vice versa, there is always something new to learn. In this article you will find some great advice about traveling.

When venturing abroad, be cautious when using taxi cabs. Be sure that you choose legitimate operators. Sometimes, people will try to defraud you with their credentials.

Want To Get The Most Out Of Your Travel Dollar? Try These Ideas! Even if you are taking a long flight, bring your own comfort supplies and don't rely on airline personnel to provide them. A flight is often more comfortable when you bring along comfort items; such as a blanket, a pillow or your own set of headphones. Don't forget to pack a few snacks to make sure you have some food that you enjoy during the flight.

Do not expect an airline to cater to your whims when you are flying. Bring anything you need to keep yourself entertained and comfortable. Perhaps you should bring some snacks if it is allowed.

Taking sleeping pills will help you get through a long flight. Lots of people aren't comfortable sleeping on planes, because the place isn't familiar, the seats are uncomfortable, and the passengers and airplane make noise. You may want to take a sleeping medicine if you will be on an extended flight, so that you may rest comfortable while flying. However, do not take the pill before takeoff, just in case there is a problem or delay that requires the plane to return.

When going on a long trip, pack a raincoat with a lining. You don't want to be caught in terrible weather without a way to protect yourself. You can also use it as a robe or windbreaker.

It isn't always possible to get accommodations at the best places, and sometimes you end up at the worst places. Be sure to have a rubber doorstop in your suitcase to secure the door in iffy areas. Just wedge the doorstop underneath the door and secure the deadbolt and chain. While intruders may be able to pick a lock or break a chain, it will be next to impossible to open a door that has a door stop wedged beneath it.

Stay up as late as possible, or at least until around 8 o'clock in the evening, to help adapt to the time change. Going to bed too early can keep you set to your natural time zone; that will make jet lag worse. Focus on your adjustment to local time, and you will decrease your jet lag quickly.

Many people get jet lag when they travel to different time zones. To help prepare for this try to get a few extra hours sleep before leaving on your trip. Additionally, sleep during the flight as much as possible.

To conclude, it is expected that most everyone will travel at some point in time. By learning all there is to know about traveling, you will get yourself ready for whatever you may encounter during your travel experiences. Behaving correctly, knowing a little about the culture and having the ability to communicate will make your trip more enjoyable.


We've updated our monthly workforce analysis to include last week's Employment Report for March. The unemployment rate remained at 4.1%, and the number of new nonfarm jobs (a relatively volatile number subject to extensive revisions) came in at 103K.

The Unemployment Rate

In the latest report, this indicator remained at 4.1%. The age 16+ population increased by 163 thousand, and the labor force (the employed and unemployed actively seeking employment) decreased by 158 thousand. The number of employed decreased by 37 thousand and the ranks of the unemployed decreased by 121 thousand.

Unemployment Rate since 1990

Unemployment in the Prime Age Group

In the latest report, this indicator inched up to 3.5% (to one decimal place), unchanged from the previous month. The cohort population increased by 41 thousand and the labor force decreased by 95 thousand. The breakdown of the growth is a decrease of 69 thousand employed and a 26 thousand decrease in the unemployed.

Unemployment Rate Ages 25-54


Red Bull Formula 1 advisor Helmut Marko remains unsure what sparked Daniil Kvyat's dramatic downturn in form that led to his eventual dismissal from Toro Rosso earlier this year, saying it was something that the team "could not cure".

Kvyat enjoyed a solid first year with Red Bull's senior F1 team in 2015, beating the highly-rated Daniel Ricciardo in the final drivers' standings, but was demoted back to Toro Rosso after four races in 2016 to make way for Max Verstappen.

Kvyat was benched twice through 2017 at Toro Rosso due to poor form, with his final dropping coming after the United States Grand Prix in October, leading to his eventual exit from the Red Bull motorsport programme.

Asked in an interview with the official F1 website why Kvyat cracked under pressure, Marko said: "Unfortunately we don’t know why. Maybe because of that we couldn’t cure it.

"In his first year in F1 he was a revelation, often being quicker than Ricciardo - that’s why we moved him to Red Bull Racing. But then suddenly his curve started to run south. This happens sometimes unfortunately.

"We gave him more than one fair chance, but he could not use his potential.

"That’s how it sometimes goes."

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Terrifying dashcam footage captures yesterday's treacherous driving conditions after rain and hailstorms battered the region .

Selina Callender and Jamie Robins captured the footage on their dashcam while driving through Connah's Quay .

The road had surface water on it but the car is soon hit by waves of water as another car passes.

They were driving behind a Volkswagen when its engine cut out because the water is so high.

Selina made her way through the flooding before kindhearted Jamie walked back to help the stranded driver by pushing his car through the water. Meanwhile Selina blocked off the road with her car so no one else had the same trouble.

Read: A55 driver describes moment car crashed off road in Flintshire during 'freak hailstorm'

After all the heavy rain, the region is now set to be hit by snow with the Met Office also issuing weather warnings for ice and flooding.

A Met Office forecast for Wales said: “After an icy, bright start showery rain will move in from the west through the morning. There will be heavy outbursts with the risk of thunder and it will fall as snow over high ground.”

What do you think of this video? Let us know by commenting below.


IRS Form 8621 – Information Return by a Shareholder of a Passive Foreign Investment Company (PFIC)

Form 8621 Penalties & Suspending the IRS Statute of Limitations

Form 8621 Penalties & Suspending the IRS Statute of Limitations

IRS Form 8621 (Information Return by a Shareholder of a Passive Foreign Investment Company or Qualified Electing Fund) is an IRS Form required to be filed by individuals who have any interest in a Passive Foreign Investment Company — whether or not they received an Excess Distribution, as long as they are not otherwise exempt from filing.

Unlike IRS Form 5471, there is no minimum ownership requirement. Technically, even if you have “fractional ownership,” of a PFIC you are still required to file — unless you meet one of the very limited exemptions/exclusions.

Moreover, the mere ownership of Foreign Mutual Funds and other foreign passive investments (that you do not technically own in a PFIC company) requires you to file the form.

The form can be daunting, especially when the filer also has a tax liability in accordance with form 8621.

PFIC Reporting

Under the updated PFIC Reporting Rules, individuals are required to file a Form 8621 simply to report their PFIC. This is true, even if the person has no tax liability. Previously, individuals would only have to file a Form 8621 if they had a tax liability/excess distribution.

Failure to File Form 8621

Notwithstanding Excess Distribution calculations, the “main non-numerical” penalty associated with form 8621 is completely unfair (you can read here about the sheer horror of the “Excess Distribution calculation“).

Why? Because technically, while there is no specific numerical penalty included regarding non-filing of Form 8621, a tax return is still considered to be “open” until the 8621 is filed. In other words, the statute of limitations countdown for the IRS to audit your tax return (usually 3 years) does not even begin to tick if the 8621 hasn’t been filed.

*Even if you try to argue the return only remains open as to the 8621, the IRS will most likely still take you to task as to the whole return. Even if you could convince the agent that a post-statute audit should be contained to 8621 issues, the IRS would just need to show some relation from the 8621, to other parts of your return, to continue with a more expansive audit.

Example of an Excess Distribution?

Is it an Excess Distribution?

What is an Excess Distribution?

How do I Analyze the Distribution for IRS Tax Purposes?

Why the Additional Tax?

It Sounds Bad

Let’s use some numbers:

Step 1: Determine the amount of the excess distribution. In this particular scenario, there were no prior distributions and therefore the total amount of the distribution will be considered an excess distribution (except for the current year distribution allocation will be taxed differently). It is a $20,000 Excess Distribution.

Step 2: Determine the holding period of the investment. In order to keep it simple, which it rarely ever is, lets say the holding period is exactly five (5) Years. That means the holding period was 1826 days (since at least one leap year must be included every 4 years)

Step 3: Divide the excess distribution by the total number of days in order to determine the amount of excess distribution allocated to each day in the holding period. If you happen to have paid foreign tax on any of the distributions, it should be noted at this time as well.

Step 4: Determine how many days in each year the investment was held. For example, if the investment was purchased on January 1 and sold exactly 5 years later, the number of days in each tax year would be 365 with one year being 366.

Step 5: multiply the number of days in each tax year the investment was held by the excess distribution allocated to each day. Using 2011 as one of the five tax years in this example, the $20,000 excess distribution would be divided by 1826 days is $10.95. The $10.95 is then multiplied by 365 days, which equals $3998.

Step 6: Determine the tax liability: Using the example above, the highest tax rate in 2011 was 35%. Therefore, you multiply $3998 (the allocation for tax year 2011) by 35% (the highest tax rate for that year) to determine the increase in tax for that tax year, which comes out to $1399. If you happen to have a foreign tax credit then it may be applied at this time but allocated accordingly.

  • This is then done for each year and itemized separately per year.

Step 7: Interest: You are not done yet. From the IRS’ perspective, not only should you have been paying tax during each year that the money was not distributed (because you have not paid tax for years of undistributed earning) you now have interest due on the undistributed money — which is being taxed at ordinary income tax rates.

– Generally, in order to determine a rough estimate of your interest, you would take the applicable IRS Interest Rate, divided by the number of days in the tax year and then multiply it by the amounts of tax due along with the number of days the tax has not been paid. So for example, the 2011 tax due should of been paid by April 15, 2012 (remember, if you receive an extension that only applies to the filing date but not to the actual date of payment due, 2012) and if you have not paid that tax (how could you…you just learned about it with the initial distribution), the interest can be significant.

Step 8: Rinse, Wash, and Repeat. You must perform the same analysis for each year of the tax, with the understanding that it is rarely going to be 365 days for tax year. Rather, the year in which you purchase the investment in the year and the year in which the investment was sold will presumably be less than 365 days (unless you bought/sold on first or last day of the year).

Step 9: Current Year Distribution: The current year distribution will get taxed at your ordinary income tax rate, and not necessarily the highest tax rate (you do not get capital gains or qualified dividend treatment). In other words, the distribution allocated to the current year will go into your tax return calculation. The tax liability for the excess distribution will end up on line 44 of your 1040.

As you can imagine, depending on the amount of the distribution and holding period, once that foreign mutual fund has its first distribution (aside from the initial year of holding) and it is entirely an excess distribution, you may be paying well beyond 50% – 75% in tax liability, wherein the tax liability for a US mutual fund would have been a lot less.

Failure to File Form 8621 and…

If the analysis above is not enough to give you stomach pains, keep in mind that if you have not filed a proper 8621 for a prior year, then your tax return is not considered complete and the IRS can try to come after you for as long as they would like. With that said, arguments have been made that if the statute of limitations have already expired on auditing your prior returns, then the IRS should be limited to auditing those returns solely for 8621 issues.

In 2013, the IRS initiated a new rule requiring individuals with foreign mutual funds to file Form 8621 even if there was no excess distribution.

**Under the new rule guidelines, if you owned foreign mutual funds pre-2013 and did not file an 8621 prior (and did not have any excess distributions during those years), you are not required to go back and file it for years prior to 2013.

Exceptions to Filing Form 8621

Finally, there are a few exceptions to having to file Form 8621 – namely if the total annual aggregate ownership of your PFIC investments is under $25,000 if you are single or married filing separate or $50,000 if you are married filing jointly, you do not have to file Form 8621.

But, keep in mind that this is for “annual aggregate ownership.” Thus, for example, if you have 10 PFICs each worth $20,000, you still have to file Form 8621 for each PFIC. If you have 10 PFICs each worth $1,000, then you do not have to file Form 8621.

General IRS Statute of Limitations

One of the most brutal aspects of failing to file Form 8621 is that such a failure to file suspends the statute of limitations. In other words, if a person fails to file form 8621, then the IRS can audit the entire return “forever” and would not otherwise be barred by the general statute of limitations.

Under ordinary circumstances, an individual can only be audited on the return for three years (presuming the return was filed timely – if no return was filed, the statue limitations does not even begin). The idea behind a Statute of Limitations is that it provides a form of closure for an individual to know that the tax return was filed and accepted by the IRS; it would be unfair to allow the IRS audit you “forever,” as documents and memories fade over time.

There are other circumstances in which the IRS can audit you for six years instead of three years (significant unreported income from U.S. or domestic sources) or no statute of limitations if the IRS can prove fraud.  Fraud is a lot different than unknowingly not filing a Form 8621 because you never even heard of the form.

Getting into IRS Tax and Reporting Compliance

It is crucial that if you were required to file form 8621, but did not do so that you get into compliance as quickly and safely as possible. One of the most effective methods of getting into compliance is to submit to IRS voluntary disclosure.

We have summarized the IRS voluntary disclosure process for you below:

When Do I Need to Use Voluntary Disclosure?

Golding & Golding – Offshore Disclosure

The Devil is in the Details…

What if You Never Report the Money?

Getting into Compliance

Contact Us, We Can Help!


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Pet Nutrition - Senior

Older pets are a growing and very diverse group of animals. Nutritional requirements of senior and geriatric pets are not well defined, as each should be treated as an individual case.

Pets are generally considered to be a senior in the last half of their expected life span. An indoor 10 year old cat may be considered a senior animal as its life expectancy is approximately 18-20 years. When a dog is considered a senior depends upon the breed as smaller breeds have longer life spans than large and giant breeds.

Nutritional requirements of senior pets have not been documented to be different than the nutritional needs of adult animals; however, senior diets generally have nutrient profiles adjusted for the most commonly diagnosed diseases in older pets (kidney, heart & obesity).

Do you need help feeding your senior pet? Why not click on Chef to request a consultation?

Pets are generally considered geriatric in the last fourth of their expected life span. Indoor cats are considered geriatric generally after 15 yrs of age. As with senior dogs, when a dog is considered geriatric depends upon the breed. The nutritional needs of geriatric pets are very difficult to predict because most of them have clinical signs of one or more diseases that may alter nutritional needs.

If you need help feeding your geriatric pet, we can help. Click on Chef to request a consultation.


Extraordinary things happen at low temperatures. One of the best examples is surely superconductivity. This phenomenon, wherein the electrical resistance of a solid drops to zero below a critical temperature, has been known for a century, and now has applications in science and industry. Physics and chemistry students can even make their own levitating magnets from superconducting alloys.

Most superconductors, like most solids, are crystalline: their atomic structures are built from periodically repeating cells. Since the 1980s an alternative form of solid, the quasicrystal (QC), has become prominent. Although QCs have symmetry, like crystals, they have no repeat units. This lack of periodicity results in unusual electronic structures. Now, in a study in Nature Communications, a research team led by Nagoya University has discovered superconductivity in a QC for the first time.

This extremely low critical temperature, just 1/20 of a degree above absolute zero, explains why superconductivity in QCs has proven so hard to achieve. Nonetheless, the QC alloy showed two archetypal features of superconductors: a jump in specific heat at the critical temperature, and the almost total exclusion of magnetic flux from the interior, known as the Meissner effect.

For the origin of superconduction in the QC alloy, the team considered three possibilities. The most exotic was "critical eigenstates": special electronic states only found near absolute zero. The electronic eigenstates are extended in crystals, and localized in random solids, but the spatial extent of the critical eigenstates in QCs--which are neither periodic nor random--is unclear. However, the team ruled them out based on their measurements. That led back to Cooper pairs, in either the extended or the less-common "weak-coupling" variety. In fact, the alloy closely resembled a typical weak-coupling superconductor.

The article, "Discovery of superconductivity in quasicrystal," was published in Nature Communications at DOI:10.1038/s41467-017-02667-x.


The meaning and experience of well-being in dementia for psychiatrists involved in diagnostic disclosure: a qualitative study.

BACKGROUND Literature indicates that people's experiences of receiving a diagnosis of dementia can have a lasting impact on well-being. Psychiatrists frequently lead in communicating a diagnosis but little is known about the factors that could contribute to potential disparities between actual and best practice with regard to diagnostic disclosure. A… (More)
DOI: 10.1017/S1041610216001484

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