 It really gives me enormous pleasure to be here with you to announce the next phase of our climb on Columbia Life Improvement Monetary Boost, Columbia's guaranteed income pilot project. For the fathers participating in this project, it will be the most important and hopefully most transformative phase of this effort. Two weeks ago, these fathers came here to the Midlands Fatherhood Coalition. It's been doing so much amazing work across the Midlands the last several years and participating in orientation sessions to learn about the climb project and how it will benefit them over the course of the next year. In addition to learning about the project, each of these fathers were issued a climb debit card beginning tomorrow the first of the monthly $500 unconditional payments will be loaded onto the climb cards. The payments will then continue over the course of the next year. This pilot seeks to determine the effectiveness of regular monthly payments to address financial instability and the subsequent effect in strengthening fathers, their families and their communities. All funds for the crime project are privately and philanthropically raised. Columbia has joined 10 other cities across the country in launching guaranteed income projects. These efforts have been coordinated and given guidance by the national organization's mayors for guaranteed income, a coalition of mayors in cities that will explore cash payment programs in our cities. The founding mayors of the network include our amazing leader, the former mayor of Stockton, California, Michael Tubbs, Chokwe Lumumba of Jackson, Mississippi, Melvin Carter of St. Paul, Minnesota, Riz Baraka from Newark, New Jersey, Asia Brown, Compton, California, Eric Garcetti, Los Angeles, California, Adrian Perkins from Shreveport, Louisiana, Libby Schaff from Oakland, California, and Victoria Woodards from Tacoma, Washington, and of course myself, Steve Benjamin, proud to represent the people of Columbia for the last 12 years. In each of our individual cities, these mayors have initiated similar guaranteed income projects to provide for families, struggling mothers, artists, those lacking stable financial resources such as banks, those who have recently served prison sentences, workers who unfairly receive less than the lawful minimum wage, and so many others. In a moment, you're going to hear from Dr. Jemaine Johnson, he'll detail and acknowledge the different local and national partners who work with our staff over the last year to strategize, design, and launch this program. I do want to give a huge thank you to our Columbia City Council. Although this program is funded privately and philanthropically, it's important to have a statement of values from our city council. This council voted unanimously on the resolution and support of the climb pilot program just this past June. Thank you all for being here now, to more fully detail how these payments will benefit fathers in Columbia. It's my pleasure to introduce Midland's Fatherhood Coalition Executive Director, Angela McDuffie, so after Angela, I think we're going to hear from Dr. and State Representative Jemaine Johnson. It is my pleasure to welcome you to Midland's Fatherhood Coalition, where we recognize that fathers are essential, that they are valued in the lives of their children. I will be remiss if I did not acknowledge the one person who single-handedly hand-delivered this opportunity to us, and that is Dr. Jemaine Johnson, who has been an advocate for our organization in more ways than one, and so I want to thank him for this tremendous opportunity. I also want to thank Mayor Steve Benjamin in the City of Columbia. I cannot tell you how immense this opportunity is. I mean, we strive to build strong families, and this is just one nugget in things that we feel are yet to come. I do want to bring up our Chair of our Board of Directors, who will provide a little more information about the Midland's Public Coalition, Mr. Mark Shook. Good evening. It's my pleasure to be here with you. My name is Mark Shook. I'm the current Board Chair of Midland's Fatherhood Coalition. On behalf of the Board, I extend our thanks to the CLIMB team for the work that they did in identifying the program participants, contacting them. I'm also appreciative of the science that went into this study. This program is not only supplying funds to individuals to see if it can make their lives just a little bit easier as they attempt to assist their families, but it's also a study designed to see the effectiveness that can be shared with other people. I'd also like to thank the fact that they selected Midland's Fatherhood Coalition for this, and I believe a lot of that is the credibility that this organization has within the community. We've been doing this work in Columbia for over 20 years. We're part of the South Carolina Center for Families in Fatherhoods. Parents of all types interact with this organization, whether it is to go through our formal curriculum, which lasts a full year, or whether it's to engage some legal support or advice or just to find a mentor. I know in my own life, I'm a father of three, and there's nothing I find more intimidating than that work. And many times, our fathers need support. They need advice no matter what background they come from. So again, these funds will be used with people that have interacted with this organization. And I just want to say thank you and invite the man of the hour, Dr. Johnson. Good afternoon, everybody. Again, my name is Dr. Jermaine Johnson. I'm also a state representative for House District 80. And I'm just so excited to be here today for the launch of this program. This has been something that has been in the works for a very, very long time. At least over the past year, we have been designing and coordinating and meeting and just doing everything that we had to do to make sure that all of our T's were crossing our eyes without it. And this was just a hard fought program to get going for. So I have to thank a lot of people on this, which is why I brought my paper over here, just so I can not forget everybody that I had to thank. First person, of course, we need to thank is Mayor Benjamin for his vision for being a part of this. We've had a number of meetings. I've been talking to Mayor Benjamin for a long time, trying to get him to be a part of this program and to kind of buy into the concept. And we talked about the data and the research and the things that go into this. And you know, I got a text message from him sometime last year, we were like, you know what, y'all were right. So let's get this thing moving forward. From then on, we decided to build and see what we could do with this program here. So I have to thank, you know, Mayor Benjamin and the City of Columbia for this. Next, I definitely have to thank the Midlands Fatherhood Coalition. I'm very, very, you know, aware of what the Fatherhood Coalition does. I was working with the Father Coalition for some years. So I know firsthand the effects and what they have in the families and these fathers and these communities. They don't just sit here and do peer support groups, but they're in these communities. They're doing things where they're doing grassroots, they're knocking on doors, they're talking to people, they're doing job fairs. They're really strengthening these families and bringing men back to the forefront, to the front of, you know, doing what they have to do to make these families and keep truancy down and just to do things for these children. So we definitely have to thank them. I work very closely with the staff here at the Midlands Fatherhood Coalition, most notably my buddy, Andrew Costin. You know, we sat down late nights and early mornings and meetings and just, you know, Zoom meetings and here and there to make sure that everything was going to run efficiently. I have to thank MGI, Mayor's for Guaranteed Income and Mayor Michael Tubbs. What he did was to come over this entire concept and fight for the United States, you know, just to make sure he did a whole trial run in Stockton, California, make sure everything was going to go smoothly. And he didn't just stop at his own town, his own city. He wanted to move this all across the United States and invite other mayors into the fold to say, you know what, this works in my town. Let's see if we can work in yours. Let's try to help other individuals out on this. So, you know, he was really, really, you know, just an advocate for what we were doing here. We've all talked to him. So things were just so exciting to be a part of that whole coalition there. You know, I also have to thank Mokify and Ignite Cities. You know, they work hand to hand to help us provide these debit cards to get together so we can have a way to facilitate the financial backing and the financial, you know, just to know how to do everything with this, to load the debit cards. We have to thank the Climb Task Force. A lot of the members are here today. We've got a task force full of individuals who were for Guaranteed Income and also a couple of critics who were against Guaranteed Income because you have to have everybody in the fold so you can flesh out the best solutions to these things. So, you know, we've got people who like it, who were against it. But, you know, if we can convince the people who were against it to actually be for it, then we know it works. We know it'll be a piece of data that will be supported. We have to thank SC Thrive. SC Thrive came in here with us and they did the benefits counseling. They sat all day with us right here in this building going over all the 100 participants that we had to offer them the benefits counseling and how this money could affect them, what they could do with it. Also, to offer additional benefits for these individuals that were coming through here so that they know that all these different benefits are available to them so we can, you know, strengthen these families the best way that we know how. I have to thank Central Carolina, who is our fiscal partner. You know, they have been so accommodating, so helpful to us over this past year, making things, you know, quite frankly, to be, you know, very simple because, you know, they reached out to us, they sent us everything that we need to do and they've just been on board with everything, so we want to thank them for their partnership and facilitating a lot of these things. You know, like Mayor Benjamin said, none of these these contributions are used from city or state funds. These are all private donations that are coming here, so we want to be able to expand this this this program here, you know, and as long as we're receiving more private donations, we can expand it as far as we can. So, you know, I want to thank the the UBI advocates all across the United States of America right now, you know, it's not just here in Columbia, they're everywhere, they're all across the United States and they believe in what guaranteed income can do for families. So we want to extend and expand this program, so if you want to get any more information, please go to columbiaclimb.com. You can contribute from there, but you can also go see the the FAQs on the frequently asked questions and get any more information you want to know about the program, how you can contribute, how you can volunteer, how you can assist and what more can be done to further this movement. The last thing I want to do, I want to thank my team, my client team, everybody who's been around, who's has stayed up with me and who's who's argued with me and you know, going back and forth about the design and the facilitation and how these things are going to work and doing the research and the data. You know, I have to thank my team because we work tirelessly for over a year trying to make sure that these things were going to happen. So I really just want to again thank everybody for coming out here today. You know, my team is around. If you want to ask any specific questions, they'll be here to ask any questions that you may have. This is something that I plan on trying to expand on a statewide level. There will be some legislation that will be introducing and hopefully this is something that we can make a trend for the whole entire state of South Carolina. So thank y'all so much for coming. Yeah, I can answer part of that right there. So we chose five because there is a parallel research study that has gone on in Jacksonville where they did it with mothers. So we need to have data that supports all sides of the spectrum, not just one specific side, but you know, other side. So it's unconditional payments. Doesn't matter, you know, what criteria you're in. We want to be able to have data that supports it up because we're a small part of a larger coalition of data and research that's going on all across the United States. There's other countries that are participating in this and we just want to be able to add and contribute into the fold of the data that's already existing. Yeah, so we are in our treatment group. There are 100 individuals in the treatment group, but we also have 130 in a control group. We are also the criteria you had to be 18 years of age or older. You had to be a father and you had to have some affiliation with the Midlands Fatherhood Coalition. So these individuals, they have come in here, they've asked for some sort of, you know, assistance on something, some sort of service. And that's how, you know, we got in contact with those individuals. And you had to be a resident of the city of Columbia 100 correct. Correct. We would all of their data would be tracked. It would be anonymous. So we won't know how any individual is spending their money. We won't know how any individual, what they're doing or how they're doing it. But we will have overall generalized data of where the economic impact is and make no mistake about it. There will be an economic impact that is coming to the city of Columbia based off of all this money because all the residents are in the city of Columbia. So this is where there will be more than likely will be where they're spending their money to come right here. So each participant is getting roughly around $6,000 for the entire year. So, you know, you times that, you know, by 100, you have $600,000 coming right here in the city of Columbia that will be spent right here. It's a mixture. It's a mixture of fathers, some are single fathers, some are, you know, fathers that have custody of their children. Some are married individuals. You know, and one of the good things about this is when we did the onboarding, I asked all of them one on one, I said, Hey, you know, how do you plan on spending your money? What are you going to do with your money? A lot of them, you know, you'd be surprised by the answer you were hearing. Man, I got, you know, it's a blessing because I get to fix my car or it's a blessing because now I get to save up and I get to give this to my child when it gets older or I get to open up a new bank account or I get to, you know, get some clothes for my children. None of the things that they said were self serving ideas. It was all about uplifting their families, uplifting their children, helping the communities out is what they all said. And I was, I was, you know, taken aback by that because I was so surprised that these individuals, they're not selfish individuals. They were truly individuals who were looking for a hand up. It's back to a few of the questions. Don't leave my mask on. The it's important also to recognize the charity of Jack Dorsey. So again, while city council has endorsed this program, mayors for a guaranteed income, we raise the money, all the money directly from Jack Dorsey. Okay, just to be frank, the founder of Twitter is the the person who has helped stand these programs up all across the country. Different size awards to different communities. I made the decision to select the Midlands Fatherhood Coalition as a recipient of these flights. I'll make that clear. And that's based on the data that's been presented year after year by this wonderful organization in the way it's been changing lives every single day. Every program has been very different. I know the wonderful benefits of having a fantastic father who sometimes worked three jobs in order to provide for his children. And I know that so many men have given the same opportunity to provide even a very small amount of resources to help their children live up to the God given potential would also jump at the same opportunity. That's why I selected the Midlands Fatherhood Coalition. It's important to note that some of these other partners who have been involved have been very involved in Colombia over the last year plus as we've been working way through the pandemic. Ignite SC has been a long time partner of ours. You may remember them. They were the primary partner that helped us roll out the mesh Wi-Fi network over the colony and Bethel Bishop. Last year, George Bersiag and Rayard Cosme and the team there, MocaFi, we spent time with them over two years ago during my term as president of the Composite Mayors. We brought them to the table as well. Jermaine Johnson, Dr. Johnson, and Andrew Yang and so many others did a wonderful job all across the country extolling the virtues of universal basic income and raise I think a number of different, raise a different level of awareness across the country particularly as we're dealing with the challenges of automation, AI, and advanced machine learning. It's important to note, however, this is not UBI that many of us in this room would not ever qualify for this program. Everyone doesn't get a check. This is based on, this is a guaranteed income for men in this city and other cities that swim and other cities that sit particularly maybe a geographical area of census tract. People who are people of need who need that extra push or the extra bit of help. So again, fully philanthropically funded. It's important to say the name Jack Dorsey as many times as we possibly can. But this is not universal basic income. This is a guaranteed income and we will be tracking the information day by day. We hired Dr. Johnson because Dr. Johnson has been a leader in this space and recognized lead in the space and he will be leading this initiative going going forward. But I think it's important to recognize Jack Dorsey and also make it clear that it was important to me that if we're going to have a partner to do this with it needed to be the Midlands Fatherhood Coalition. And I'm glad we made that selection. He's got a lot of money. I'm usually there with you. I think in a perfect world, just as Representative Johnson, I keep going between Jermaine, Dr. and Representative, but just as Representative Johnson just intimated, I believe that smart policymakers follow good data. And that's the reason we chose the Midlands Fatherhood Coalition. This good data that shows that if you make smart investments investing people and give them a shot, they'll perform. They've been doing this program day by day. So that's why we selected the Midlands Fatherhood Coalition. If in fact this program may as for guaranteed income in partnership with this wonderful organization shows that the proof is in the pudding, then it ought to serve as a platform for not just local investment, but also state investment and federal investment as well. This is a chance to show people that if in fact you actually invest directly into citizens doing it in an randomized way, it's amazing. I won't drift into some of the other policy discussions going on right now, but there are a whole lot of folks who are working their tails off right now, y'all, working their butts off and are not earning a livable wage. We should be doing better. We should raise the minimum wage. That's a whole other story. We can talk about some other point, but there's dignity in work and there ought to be dignity in what we pay workers as well. We can do better. This is a way to show folks that just as each of us makes very difficult decisions and we invest in the things that matter most to us and our families, that these men will do the same. I believe the data will prove that out and serve as a wonderful platform for some smart policymaking by legislators going forward. Absolutely not. This is like Mayor Benjamin said, this is guaranteed income. So there's no strings attached. So if they want to buy a movie ticket, they buy a movie ticket. They want to pay for the child to take swimming lessons. They pay for the child to do swimming lessons. There's nothing that we're going to do that's going to change the amount of money that they're getting or remove it away from them. This is unconditional payment. So if they choose not to talk to me ever again, they're still going to get their money for this full year, because we're not in the business of dictating how people spend their money. We're in the dictating of giving people the resources so they can better their own lives. We stepped up. Michael Tubbs, a former mayor of Stockton who started this effort through his Stockton Seed program, is a friend. He'd say a mentee of mine. I'd say he's probably a part mentor and mentee and a dear friend. When he realized there might be an opportunity to secure a number of significant private sector partners to expand the Stockton Seed program all across the country, he reached out to his circle of friends. It was important to me because just as we've done on any number of different policy issues across the map, it's important to be able to show people that thoughtful ideas that are pro-people, that are pro-business, that are sometimes considered progressive, can thrive in the American South. So often we think that the former Mason-Dixon line is a Berlin wall where ideas that might actually invest in people, invest in the humanity and their dignity, don't flourish here. So it was important that just as the mayors of Jackson and Shreveport stepped up, it was important that we'd step up and be able to show that, and I think I guess we don't have any other folks who are that much closer, a whole lot of folks in the West Coast and up in the upper Midwest, but obviously have served as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, president of the African American Mayors Association. So that space is a space where we enjoy a lot of friendships and relationships, and we've attempted over the last several years to leverage them as much as possible for the benefit of Columbia, and this is one fantastic example of it that will help, I believe, change lives. And Chris, back to your question, we want these fathers to buy movie tickets. We want them to fix their cars. We want them to buy books, and if it just means they're going to spend some QT with their kids, building up, but as Representative Johnson mentioned, these are unconditional payments. This is their money. This is not our money. This is not your money. This is their money, and we'll have an opportunity to track it in an anonymized way to be able to prove the theory that we all have, that they have the same needs that we have, and if in fact we invest in them, everyone's going to be better off. The collective will improve, but we want them to buy movie tickets for the kids and themselves as well.