 And we're here at the first meeting of the South Sudanese Community Association of Maine. What's going on? Oh, well, there used to be just one big organization for all the Sudanese who came here about 10 years ago. But last December, they decided to divide into two groups since the country had divided into two groups. And we're here today for the election of their officers. And what's the process going to be? Well, they've already nominated. They had nominated six candidates, and gradually two people decided that they didn't want the responsibility. So now we're down to four, and I think they're going to vote until they come up with just one. They're also going to vote for the treasurer and the vice president and the secretary and a couple of other leaders of committees. And what kind of work does the association do or will it do? Well, they provide support to individual families. If a family is having trouble, the organization will all pitch in and give them assistance. They may run workshops. We're planning on running workshops to educate the families about what are some opportunities for their children in terms of education and legal assistance. Do all kinds of things. Whatever the community wants to do, they'll probably want to have some kind of fundraisers to send money back home to South Sudan to their native villages. We'll see how that works after we get them organized. And here in Portland, how many people are from South Sudan? Well, this is for the whole community of Maine, so we're talking over 3,000 people. The representation here today, though, is more like maybe there'll be 300 people voting before the end of the day. And what kind of services do these people need normally? They need to understand American infrastructure so they can take advantage of everything that's available to all of us. And they also need to know how to avoid pitfalls of starting a business, for example, without any capital because they often try to do that because in Africa you can do that and get away with it. Here it's a catastrophe. Good evening. I thank you all for being here today and stepping away from your family or your friends to enjoy your Saturday to be here and to do your civic duty and also to, I guess, fulfill your duty to your country. My name is Lars and while I'm running for chairman of this community, I'll talk about my future or at least what I plan to do for the future of this community. As it was mentioned, we need inclusion. We need to include as many branches, as many tribes, and we also need to bring in other communities as well so that we can actually be stronger when we need to swear certain opinions and at least get our perspective and listen to by the politicians. So the first thing that I would want to do is, as they mentioned, they struggled, there is no budget or there wasn't any budget for 15 years. My plan is to get money, to have grants, to get a good funding, a good amount so that we can actually hire decent people that can actually do the work, that can lobby for us even all the way in Washington or even in Augusta to get our point of view listened to. And also for the elders and the youth, ones that want to go to school or want to go to college to get training for them, if they didn't want to go to college to get vocational training so that you can actually get employment, gainful employment, to remain in Maine rather than to go elsewhere hunting for jobs. And for the elders or the elderly, the ones that are aging, if driving is hard or going places is difficult, finding resources that you need or require to survive, my plan is to get assistance with that either through other agencies or governmental grants to actually help your life be much more easier. And to work with other, I guess my cabinet or my council would be young and to bring in some young females that have already spoken to a few and also to consider some of the current councils who have been doing a wonderful job and continue to do a wonderful job and to have a diverse, distinct opinion, distinct perspective. And to only not assist our community here, but to also assist our fellow brethren and sisters that are left or still suffering back home. To make life easier, to raise money, to have or to bring in or to create scholarships, to bring in our students from South Sudan, to raise and encourage young people out here to put them in the South Sudanese government, to lobby for the diaspora and also to lobby for the country in Washington. So I guess my plan is, my small plan is to get the community becomes a heavy hitter. You want to matter in this state and you want to matter in this country. So I plan to get you there. For example, today I invited one of the mayor candidates, Tom McMillan, who's out there in the back. So after this, he's going to be talking to you guys about his point. So doing such outreach, and if, you know, should he be elected, that is an asset and an ally that we have in the city that can actually help us out. So I'll wait for your questions to elaborate more on this. Good evening. Thank you for everybody here to be here. And I'm happy to be here. But the first thing I want to say is thank you for everybody to be here. And thank you even we've been going for a long time since 1955. And I know there's a lot of people, possibly because to have these days to be South Sudan nation, but for my heart, my grandpa born in the fire, a born in the fire and old generation. But I just feel there's a time for me to remember. This South Sudan innocent came overnight. It was a lot of awful from grandpa, grandma, a lot of people. But today we're happy to have a nation, but we have other jobs to do. The best way to do it, everybody's important. If really, we'll have to make this community strong, I believe it's about discipline and respect. Everybody's important. If I have a chance to be a candidate, the only thing I know, I have to remember I'm a servant. I want to example anybody here seeing me sometime, but we'll tell her I don't see that one. Because really, since we'll be born in this world, we talk more than jobs. And I believe if we stop the 75 negatives, when we put 75 to be positive, we can make a change. South Sudan is ready for the change, but it's not easy. But I can't do it alone. That's why I would say the first thing, to put people number one. To put the value of the people, everybody's important. Sometimes we don't disagree, but it doesn't mean we cannot work together. Because chairman without the people, there is nothing can be done. And the people who are very important, for my concern to be a leader in this community, the mother and the kids. The more we'll be connected with the mother and the kids and the father, we'll get there. The joint is not overnight. If in this country we stay here to find people when you go to the store, somebody ask you, oh, are you on the line? That even it doesn't come overnight. If a lot of people die before this country be more organized. If we South Sudanese, we need to have a different, we need patience, we need to remember, everybody fight for this South Sudan. Even Arab, even white people die for this country. Today we have it. Let's just pay respect for the people who died for this nation. And how we can make a difference until we say we're fucked. Until we love ourselves who we are. Because that give us the key to make a difference. I can't tell you guys, I'm here, I'm gonna make a change myself now. The first change is we have to respect this stuff. And we have to raise value of everybody. Everybody's important. It doesn't matter where you come from. It doesn't matter how you look like. If we have that, a vision will be very clear. Because when people unite in the words of one heart and one people, it's almost make a lot of sense. Thank you, Mauro. I would like to offer my thanks to the organizing committee that made this election possible. I would like to also thank everybody for being a part of this process. I know how busy we all are outside of a gathering like this. And I would like to thank all of my opponents as well. For all the work that they've done to go and talk to you guys, how much research they've done to actually come out and start the discussion about the community that we're building. I know that you guys have heard my introduction. I just wanna jump straight into the reasons why I am here contesting for this position. I feel that I represent a new perspective. I represent a new future for our community here. Being a young person, I think that we are at a point in our history where we need to start empowering the young people to build a future that may not be imaginable to some of us. Even myself, I know that there are things that younger people than myself know better. And I feel like for myself, I represent a new future for this community as does the organization. Now with that, I bring new ideas. I know that we've talked a little bit about how hard it is to get this work done as a person. And that's why I would like to propose a new structure to our leadership for this community. What I would like to propose is that instead of diselecting one chairman and then choosing the offices, I would like to provide more room for more people to be able to participate in organizing the affairs of my community. So what I'm proposing is to have the cabinet chair committee. So if I appoint Lars as secretary of finance, I would allow him to get a committee, a financial affairs committee that provides room for some of you guys who are very passionate about the issue of finance, who have ideas. They have vibrant ideas so that we have more people participating in the affairs of our community instead of just having the four or five people that are elected. So I feel that that's a new idea that I'm proposing. And I think that's one of the things that I bring on the table that the other candidates aren't bringing forward. Another thing that I've heard from our other candidates is that we need unity and I agree with all of them. This is the one thing that I believe we all agree on. And I think that one of the things that I, again, a new idea that I bring to the table is that I wanna bring the leaders from the smaller communities onto the table so that we're having one big discussion about what's good for all of us South Sudanese rather than having smaller discussions at smaller different corners. I would like to bring, I've seen some of these leaders here, they're already doing that kind of work. We wanna have one big discussion about what's good for all of us. So I feel that that is an effort to uniting our community in the way we get things done. I also, I would like to stress that I have a strong background in working on issues related to education in this community. I've actually, I've worked on some of the projects that are being implemented in the public school system. One of which is the Make It Happen program, which pairs some of our kids with adult mentors who are guiding them through their decision-making processes and trying to point out resources to them. I feel that our community has the capacity to really provide mentoring and guidance to our kids. And when I am elected as chairman, I'll make sure that we create the kind of structure that allows my uncle who knows a lot about our culture to be able to sit down with another young man and be able to help them graduate. It's not a big lecture. It's a very small session where we get to close that gap between the young people and the older people. So I feel that I really bring a lot of new innovative ideas with a strong background in actually program implementation. I served as president of the student government at my college and I felt that I had a lot of experience supervising smaller projects and being able to troubleshoot things while things go around. So I thank you very much for the time. And I appreciate all of you guys. Thank you all for coming. I heard that you are the only one to say thank you. I'm sorry, it was me, it was me, it was me. It was a burden to bring the other one. Anyway, as you all heard earlier from our sister Nagyok, I've been working for quite a long years with the Sudanese community. Just before I even touched into that, let me say that I work with four president of the Sudanese community. Maybe some of them will not be there to buy a phone but I said one of those guys. We got the old man Oliver, I'm sure some of you remember that. And we have Matthew, the second guy replacing his office. And we have the late Angelo, they got with his soul. And then also we have the representative from the state administration which is sitting somewhere there. And then we have Marianne, of course. I have worked with the Sudanese community as a representative to the New York community, as you heard it earlier. And I have done that for quite four years. I think I did okay to my American community for another six. I was able to pass some of the information from the Sudanese community to the New York community and able for us to get to know each other and able for us to kind of agree to some common ground and how we move forward as the Sudanese back at the time. Anyways, let me just talk a little bit about our community. We have community, we don't have differences. We think we have differences but apparently we don't. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here today. Our differences, we make them up or we create them based on what we heard. And we just kind of like push it from there and say, hey, well, this is what I heard so I really don't like quads. So we have a diversity community that have some issues. But I mean, how could we solve our issues if we do not talk about it? The best way to do it is to talk about it. And I am very confident that I can talk to any of you. You take it from my community which is your community and pass it along to other three communities and the friend group. I have in contact with each one of them and I will not really be shy to say, hey John, I'm from the Sudanese community and this is exactly what I want from you, partners from in the friend group. Well, one thing that motivated me was, like what I mentioned earlier, three Sunday ago we went to a debate and that debate was only two people. It was Mr. Laos and Mr. Bajie. I was not planning on running back then. I was sitting just like you were sitting. I asked you questions that I did not get to respond to until I left. And then I went home, turned my TV on and I was like, yeah, Bajie did not answer my question earlier. Neither do Laos. So I'm going to challenge you guys because I know more about the community than they do. Bajie is already running a Sudanese community under the name of Project Bajie. So if you're going to go, if Tony or Bajie will tell me that he can go and convince governor on the page and say, hey, the Project Bajie is totally different and the Sudanese community is totally different. It is not going to work. Knowing that he is using the Project Bajie under my kiss name, which is we're still waiting for the Disney trip, my kid and I from his organization. And then he's coming back to try to get those kids that he has their information, their dad information, which is me. And I was like, it's not going to work. I will run against you and point out that you're doing the same thing as you're running for. Apparently the lady on the switch is hearing too. They have not done well since they started. I don't know what that has to do with. I don't know. But if I'm elected, I will stand behind him and make sure that the state know who's Project Bajie because it is running under our community name. And then Laos, which is like, never heard of him. I was at the store talking to people and they were asking me questions. Hey, who's running? And I was like, what is Laos? Is it John? And then who's Laos? And I was like, I don't know. I really did. That was my answer. I don't know. And then they were like, OK, well, who's John? And I was like, well, John is this young guy who graduated last year from Primington. Oh, is he here all this time? And I was like, yeah, he's here. And then they try to find out who his family is. I do know his brother for a long time. Because we used to play soccer together. So I was like, I try to link him to his brother. So maybe he would get a hold of who's John is, but apparently he didn't work out either. So I think I'm the only one here standing in front of my fellas that know each one of you. I may not know exactly where you're moving nowadays because of Section A that was provided by Mariana, his group, but I used to know where you all live. Let me come back to... I just want to get my motivation to review the next year. And then when I took all this into processing, I was like, well, you know what? I think I will be a better candidate. And here are my five things that I would like to do if I'm elected as the chairman. First, we have many, many, many, many citizens here. I'm one of them, and you are one of them. I will make sure somebody like Mr. Tom Millen, who's standing behind there, understand that my vote is considered. And I will organize that, take your vote and my vote, we'll talk to Mr. Millen and say, hey, are you able for me to support you? This is exactly my struggle. I will make sure you understand that part. Secondly, we have something called after school and before school program. Which is a lot of our mothers they use it. I will make sure that I talk to the school department to make sure that we have at least a student, a person that will be at the after school and before school and help our kids in any kind of way. Behavior, know that there's somebody that is related to him or his cousin working in the same department and reduce behavior. Instead of just having somebody that they would never meet, watching them. Third, and nevertheless, I agree with what I allow us to say. We need to look for some grandfathers to our students. They have done their best without any help and yet we've been here for more than 13 years. John is one of the examples of who really did it on his own. I agree that we need to find some way to help our young guys go through school. And the fourth one is, I'm sorry I'm taking it too long. I went to DHS one time and there was a lady who was standing there from 6 in the morning until 6 at night and she did not meet anybody. Yes, she was not a student of this woman but she was somebody who needed help. Imagine if one of us go through these things. I will make sure that DHS really understands that we need help when we call for it. That's my force. And nevertheless, we used to have something called a program for youth after the school off, which is school vacation, whatever, three months we have. That program used to exist and if somebody was here, he would tell us more about it. But if that, I will wake it up. Thank you.