RI Library to host interactive "Wizard of Oz"
ROCK ISLAND -- The Rock Island Public Library will be off to see the wizard on Wednesday, Dec. 27, with an interactive version of the classic family movie "The Wizard of Oz."
The interactive film will be presented for free from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Rock Island Downtown Library, 401 19th St.
The interactive experience puts a new twist on the adventures of Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion and Toto, too. Moviegoers will have opportunities to sing along with the Munchkins, boo the Wicked Witch, chant along with the palace guards, and have other fun, according to the library.
Because each audience member will get a free movie kit containing supplies to help with interaction, registration is required. To sign up, call the library's children's department at 309-732-7360 or go to rockislandlibrary.org.
For more information about Rock Island Library services, events and more, visit the website or call 309-732-7323.
Source: RI Library to host interactive "Wizard of Oz"
In Kenya, UN refugee chief urges support for Somali refugees and host communities
Grandi expresses his gratitude to Kenya for hosting almost half a million refugees and keeping its borders open to people fleeing war.
By Melissa Fleming
NAIROBI, Kenya – UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi has expressed his gratitude to Kenya for continuing to host almost half a million refugees and keeping its borders open to people fleeing war.
In a meeting with President Uhuru Kenyatta on Wednesday (Dec 20), Grandi received assurances that as the Somali refugee repatriation programme progresses, no refugee will be returned against his or her will.
"At a time when many other countries are closing their borders and adopting restrictive measures, Kenya is continuing to host refugees," Grandi said. "This commitment of Kenya must be matched by the international community with humanitarian and development funding as well as increased resettlement places, university scholarships and other opportunities."
The Somali refugee crisis is now entering its 27th year and Grandi said that as long as Somalia remains fragile, many refugees will remain apprehensive about returning home. Nevertheless, he noted that a significant number of refugees are deciding to return.
So far this year, over 35,000 refugees from Dadaab refugee camp have moved back to Somalia under UNHCR's voluntary repatriation programme, while over 18,000 have registered to leave. Since December 2014, over 73,000 refugees from Dadaab have returned voluntarily to Somalia.
"These refugees are hopeful, and have made informed choices," Grandi said, pledging continued support from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency in providing them with reintegration assistance upon arrival in Somalia.
On Monday, in Kismayo, Somalia, where most returning refugees from Dadaab have settled, Grandi met families who had lived in refugee camps in Kenya and Djibouti for two decades. Although the families were concerned about security, they expressed joy about shedding their refugee status and determination to contribute to rebuilding their country. UNHCR, together with the American Refugee Committee, is building simple settlements for returnees in greatest need of housing, and providing vocational training to help them find work or create businesses.
On a visit to Dadaab on Tuesday, together with Ahmed Hussen, the Canadian Minister for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Grandi spoke to refugees who were trying to decide whether to remain in Dadaab or return home to Somalia. Both Grandi and Hussen visited the repatriation 'help desk' where UNHCR carefully verifies the voluntary nature of their decision. While meeting refugees, Grandi appealed for stronger international efforts towards stabilization.
"Somalia continues to need international efforts to help rebuild infrastructure and to create security conditions for refugees to return," he said.
During his visit, Grandi heard from Somali refugees about their challenges and hopes for the future. He also met with local authorities and host community leaders.
"It's useful for me to be here to learn and hear from you, even as we continue to do our best to support you," he said, at a meeting with women and girls who are survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in Dadaab's Hagadera camp.
The women and girls displayed artwork they had been trained to make through a UNHCR-funded programme, managed by the International Rescue Committee, that supports vulnerable women. The women, who receive counselling at the center, expressed gratitude for the support they received but asked for more sewing materials so they could sell their wares, citing a lack of sufficient income-generating activities in the camp. "I can assure you that UNHCR and our partners are doing our best to use the scarce resources available to meet the most basic needs," Grandi said. He expressed his regret that donor support is diminishing at a time when refugees here still require ongoing aid.
Receiving Grandi in her modest shelter with a tin roof and a dirt floor, Ladan, a mother of five, told Grandi that conditions were tough. She was relocated after her section of the camp was closed as people left for Somalia. "I struggle to get enough food for my children as the food we used to receive was reduced by half," she said, referring to World Food Programme's ration cuts, a consequence of reduced donor funding.
Her woes were echoed by other refugees, including community leaders who met with Grandi and outlined the challenges they face in the camps. The leaders cited high numbers of school dropouts and lack of higher education, decreasing opportunities to be resettled to third countries and lack of specialized services for people with special needs as some of their challenges.
Grandi listened carefully to their concerns, particularly the need for more university education scholarships and vocational training. He was inspired by 16 high achieving students whom he met with Minister Hussen and had been awarded university scholarships under the World University Service of Canada, but regretted that hundreds of other successful high school graduates would not have the means to continue their studies.
The High Commissioner said he would continue to appeal to international donors on their behalf and work with the government of Kenya in realizing President Kenyatta's pledge to establish a vocational education center in Dadaab for both refugees and the host community.
"Our appeal to donors and hosting countries is not to give up on Somali refugees," Grandi said, noting that the World Bank had allocated US$100 million in loans in recognition of Kenya as a major refugee hosting country. Much of that investment is planned for infrastructure development and environmental rehabilitation programmes in Dadaab.
Grandi called for a departure from a dependency model of enclosed camps like Dadaab. He said he was encouraged that Kenya had signed on to be one of the 13 countries that have adopted UNHCR's new Comprehensive Refugee Response model. "In the future," Grandi said, "we will strive to adopt an approach that provides both refugees and the host community access to services, while promoting self-reliance and economic opportunities to improve their living conditions and avoid aid dependency."
Source: In Kenya, UN refugee chief urges support for Somali refugees and host communities
Peacebuilding brings together refugees and host communities
Adjumani, 19 December 2017 – "We need our community to transform and change to a peaceful community where there should be no violent conflict," says Bosco Geri, a 28-year-old community leader in Pagirinya, a refugee settlement in the Adjumani district of northern Uganda.
Bosco was one of the participants at a community peace facilitators workshop organized by the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in Pagirinya this past October. The workshop was the first of 6 that were scheduled to take place in neighbouring refugee settlements and nearby host communities.
Facilitated by members of Friends of Kids and Youth International (FKYI), the workshops provided skills, competence, and motivation for leaders to promote peace and harmony in their communities. They were particularly relevant for the settlements in Adjumani where inter-ethnic conflict among South Sudanese refugees prevails. In recent years, these conflicts have worsened due to the scarcity of resources that is brought with sharing land and social services between refugees and their host communities.
In Pagirinya, which hosts just over 30,000 refugees, the ongoing conflict is twofold. First, there are resource-based conflicts between locals and refugees. With only 600 locals in the nearby village, most of whom are entirely subsistence agriculture, the host community feels increasingly threatened by newcomers. Secondly, this particular settlement has a high level of domestic violence which is mostly fueled by perceived familial power imbalances and substance abuse.
This most recent workshop was the first step in engaging community leaders and members to reflect on the two manifestations of violence in their society, and to begin to explore solutions. At the end of the workshop, the participants designed a three-month action plan that will carry through until March 2018.
"There had been workshops on peacebuilding by other agencies in the settlement but the host community has not been invited to attend. For the first time ever [this] JRS peacebuilding workshop involved the host communities," says a local and camp commandant in Pagirinya, indicating why this workshop was revolutionary and unique.
Beatrice, another participant was happy to have learned how to focus on the things that bring the community together, rather than tear it apart: "…the things connecting us are the schools; even if you are in bad terms, nonetheless your children still go to the same school. The market also connects us together…and youth playing football together."
Workshop participants requested that JRS continue to facilitate community dialogue and peaceful coexistence in the region.
Reconciliation is essential to JRS's work with forcibly displaced people, and opportunities to promote peace and understanding in diverse societies are fundamental to answering Pope Francis's call to build communities of encounter and hospitality.
Source: Peacebuilding brings together refugees and host communities
Web Host Builder in ASP.NET Core 2.0
I want to share something from the first chapter of my upcoming book Front-end Development with ASP.NET Core, Angular, and Bootstrap.
While reviewing and updating the code from ASP.NET Core 1.0 to version 2.0 I was faced with the challenge of how to explain what's going on in the initialization of the WebHostwhich was made much more simple and logical in ASP.NET Core 2.0 but at the cost of being more "magical."
But let's get back to basics a bit. The initialization happens inside two files:
The ASP.NET Core 2.x the initialization of the WebHost in the Program.cs file is just a few lines of code:
public class Program { public static void Main(string[] args) { BuildWebHost(args).Run(); } public static IWebHost BuildWebHost(string[] args) => WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args) .UseStartup<Startup>() .Build(); }And the code in the Startup.cs file is exactly just about configuring the request execution pipeline.
public class Startup { public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) { } public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env) { if (env.IsDevelopment()) { app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage(); } app.Run(async (context) => { await context.Response.WriteAsync("Hello World!"); }); } }But now you don't really understand what has happened. Especially if you have worked with ASP.NET Core 1.x where everything was much more verbose and explicit.
I bet you would be surprised to know that after this 3 lines of code you have:
In ASP.NET Core 1.x, you had to specify everything explicitly, even adding references to a few additional Nuget packages.
All these configurations are hidden inside the CreateDefaultBuilder method. To understand better what's going on I recommend you go on the ASPNET/MetaPackages git repo and read its implementation.
How do you like this new approach? I personally like it as it declutters the code and removes all plumbing code from what is supposed to be just the creation of the execution pipeline of your application. But I admit it made my job of explaining what happens behind the scenes more difficult.
Node.js application metrics sent directly to any statsd-compliant system. Get N|Solid
Topics:
web dev ,asp.net core 2.0 ,web hosting
Source: Web Host Builder in ASP.NET Core 2.0
M.anifest to host fifth edition of Manifestivities on December 22
Music of Sun, 17 Dec 20170
M.anifest to host fifth edition of Manifestivities on December 22
The annual musical concert marks the fifth edition of Manifestivities
Ghanaian rapper M.anifest is set to host Hennessy Artistry fifth edition of Manifestivities annual musical concert, on Friday December 22nd at 7.30pm at La Tante DC 10 in Airport.
This year's event promises to be its biggest. Ladies' man Kwabena Kwabena fresh off the launch of his new album, Ahyesi and Kasahare legend Obrafour headline the performers.
Notable guest appearances will be made by Bisa Kdei, King Promise, Kwesi Arthur and Faith Be.
M.anifest said, "the whole idea this year was ease, ease in buying tickets and ease in accessing the venue."
M.anifest added, "Airport is as central as it gets and our ticket partners Ayatickets have made it so easy to purchase tickets whether via mobile money or bank cards."
Early bird discounts are currently available and can be purchased at Ayatickets.
The event has grown from its humble beginnings in 2011 and is on course to becoming a premiere music event on the continent.
Source: M.anifest to host fifth edition of Manifestivities on December 22