 Thanks everyone for coming out on such a lovely evening here and welcome to community financial literacy six annual celebration. My name is Mike Wood, I'm a portfolio manager with RM Davis and I'm very proud to serve as CFL's chairman and again thank you all for coming out on such a lovely night. We're very fortunate to have this beautiful space here and we do appreciate all your support. I have a couple of brief comments and then we'll get on with our program. We all know from our history lessons how important immigrants have been to our country. America has been found was founded by immigrants many of whom risked everything they had to pursue a better life to enjoy the blessings of freedom or to flee oppression. This tradition continues as immigrants contribute much needed that vitality and entrepreneurship to our economy. In fact research indicates that our economy grows at a much faster rate than other developed countries due in part to our open borders and integrated society. So we are here tonight to celebrate and support Maine's newest arrivals. At previous CFL celebrations, economists Dr. Charles Colgan and Portland Mayor Michael Brennan explained how important immigrants are to our state and local economy. Maine is aging rapidly where the oldest state in the country and the pending retirement of baby boomers will soon cause a labor shortage. To help fill this gap today's immigrants are eager to work, become self-sufficient and compete in our vibrant economy. However these new majors these new main workers must have a basic understanding of our financial, legal and economic systems. This is where CFL is providing real value. In 2014 we assisted almost 300 students from 21 different countries including Congo, Cuba, Burma and Iraq. Over the rest of this evening you'll hear much more about the vital services CFL provides to our community and our state. Thanks again for joining us. Before we introduce the rest of our program I did want to recognize Gene Ardido. Gene are you here? You got around here. Gene is our outgoing chairman. He has served many years and continues to lead our organization. As CEO of Seaport Credit Union Gene has helped many new manors achieve their financial goals. I am honored to be Gene successor and please join me again in thanking Gene for his service to CFL. Good evening. My name is Clema Yombe. I am a program coordinator at Community Financial Literacy and it's a pleasure for me to introduce the speaker of the day. Our student speaker is Marie Francine Daishimie. She graduated in economics from the University of Ngozi in Burundi. Later she works at the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Burundi for six years as an administrative assistant. She arrived in the U.S. in 2011 fleeing from political persecution in her country. Marie Francine graduated from CFL, Basic Money Management in February of this year. I remember when she was coming to class she was nine months pregnant but she kept on coming until she got her certificate. Please help me to welcome Marie Francine. Good evening everybody. As Clema already said, my name is Marie Francine Daishimie. I'm original from Burundi. You can tell by my accent. I have been here in the United States since May 2011. I'm married and have children. The youngest one is just one month. Even though I have a bachelor's degree in economics, financial literacy was always a big challenge for me. In January 2015, I enrolled in Money Management courses at CFL. This course was very important and helpful to me. The course helped me to acquire new skills including how to successfully manage my personal finances. I also learned how to set goals, budgeting, even though I don't have much money, build my credit and much more. Before taking this course as someone who had a degree in economics, I thought I knew how I can handle or solve any financial issues but that was a big mistake. The American financial system is so complex and challenging for new Americans to learn on their own. Thanks to Clema, who was my instructor. Now I understand the basic of banking including how to track my money, how to save even how to get along if I need it. Basic money management, how important it is. However, it's given for free, so unbelievable. Have you ever heard or received any free money here in America? If you are a refugee or a asylum, don't wait. Go to CFL. They have a federal program which helps for refugee and immigrant with those issues. I was able to save $4,000 which was matched with another $4,000. This was through an IDA program and it's allowed me to purchase my first car. Now I have a transportation. It means to go work, take my children or myself to any medical appointment, do some groceries and other things. Again, thank you CFL for the IDA program. I think this is just the beginning. I promise you I have a goal that I plan to accomplish in the future. I will continue to save money beyond IDA to meet my other projects needs. Financial literacy is the key to understand the American financial system. It's so complex. I invite all my fellows, immigrants, to take this course because it's really important for us. Let me also thank the sponsors who continue to support this program. Thank you again. It's now my pleasure to introduce the man of the hour, Claude Roganji. I practice that a few times, Claude. Is that still still wrong? Claude is otherwise known as the most connected man in Portland. In leading CFL, Claude has met almost every politician, educator, business and community leader in Maine and throughout the Northeast. If you haven't met him yet, you will. We'll make sure of it. These leaders recognize and support Claude's vision for CFL. We are pleased and honored to have so many of you join us here in support this evening. Claude is a graduate of USM and recently received his MBA. He's member of the Portland Chamber Board of Directors, the Financial Literacy Advisory Council of the Finance Authority of Maine, and Avesta Housing's Home Ownership Advisory Committee. It continues to be recognized with awards, including the Bates College Award for Outstanding New Initiatives and the Spirit of Service Award from Bowdoin College. Please join me in welcoming Claude to the podium. Thank you, Mike. Thank you all for coming again this evening. Every year I try to think about what I will say and how I'm going to appreciate all your help. But it's always nice to see the same faces year after year coming to support our initiatives. I know you took much of your time from this busy schedule, nice weather outside, but you wanted to come and be with us. So it's a pleasure for CFL to have you this evening. A special thanks to all our donors, small businesses or big businesses, foundations, individuals who have supported community financial literacy since 2008. We thank you. We thank all our sponsors who made this event possible. I also want to thank our volunteers. You all know that there is no much you can do with a non-profit organization without using volunteers. They have put in about 700 hours in 2014 to support our organization. That includes board members, advisory board and those who come on a weekly basis to come and support us. I want to thank them. Also want to thank my staff. You know, we were in a meeting. They told me that we have different awards, but what is the award for the staff? I said all of you are the winner of the 2014 because they have done a wonderful job. I really want to thank all of them. Clema, who you saw here, Mark, who is our college access counselor, Mara, who is our office manager, and then also Kevin Carly, who is our professional consultant and also a personal mentor. Thank you all for doing what we are doing for the community. Thanks a lot. Again, as Mike said, every year, we continue to grow by serving more people and more people. Last year, we served more than 300 individuals in our financial empowerment. That's me in the financial training and also one-on-one financial counseling and financial coaching. And it was not only about me. It was about, again, our staff and the many wonderful board members that supports our organization initiatives and also through many of your financial support as well. We grew, as I said last year, that we were going beyond the financial literacy to talk about financial stability. By talking about financial stability, we mean including financial training, workforce development, that's what we have been doing in partnership with our partner Poland Dollar Education and the Poland Job Alliance, and also to support higher education and the small businesses as well. And we have grown beyond just financial literacy. I think you remember last year, I told the mayor that if we don't succeed, I'll blame him because he told me that CFL is a wonderful organization and should come out of a box, which is we were only financial literacy. Now we need to go beyond financial literacy, and that's exactly what we did. I'm happy that we're able to be to partner with FAME, a financial authority of Maine, to be able to provide higher education counseling for folks who are struggling either to pay for college or even after college where they go. I'm also happy that CFL was able to join the Poland Job Alliance, which is a project that was funded by the CDO Poland. I know we haven't reached our dream or our vision for that project. I wanted to say this today. We tried our best to help people find jobs, but one thing when we do the job training with our folks at PAE, sometimes they ask me to come and do some interviews with our student. When I ask them, what kind of job are you looking for? You know the answer. They say any job. Then I said, you know, in America, we depend on specialties. Don't go by any job. If I interview you, how am I going to give you any job? But some of these folks come abroad with a skill set. But what they need is just to have them a little bit transition from the old job to the new job. But I'm sure that they have skills and they can do it. And I'm looking forward with all our partner to see that these wonderful professionals won't only be making the beds or cleaning the restaurant, but they will be able to join their own career again. Lawyers will be practicing law and the doctors will go back to work in medical field. That's my dream. That's why we continue to work with our partner so we can get there. In high education, I was looking at the statistics. 36% of college degree holders from the immigrants are underemployed. So bed from PAE and the folks from PGA, for PGA, we still have work to do. But also, fascinating, 19% of college educated from the immigrants community are still poor. That's what they can't even afford to pay for post loan, even though they graduate. So we need to do something. So every year, we come here and try to tell you what we're going to do the following year. But the boy told me, Claude, you need to slow down. This time, we need you to focus on what we have already built. Build the capacity. Increase the organization capacity so that we can really provide our activity with excellence. And remember, I told you, I have my coach, Kevin, who will say, Claude, slow down. And indeed, we are. So one of the things that we decided to do this year was again build the capacity. I'm sure you saw wonderful annual report. If you haven't grabbed one, feel free to grab one. The beautiful, colorful, they match with the program. They match with the special thing we have launched today that probably many of you didn't know. We have launched a new website, CFLME.org. I'm not sure if we have internet here, we should be able to see it. But if you go to CFLMenda.org, it will still direct you to the new website. This website is great. Please, if you're really curious to go check it out. It was donated to us by one of the partners. And we're very happy that they spent, please listen to this, they spent more than 7,000 building this website and donated to us. You're going to hear more about this later on. Hold your applause because it's coming. And the other thing we want to focus on is to build technology is increasing everywhere. How do we move forward? Do we stay only providing courses in our physical classroom or can we also use technology? I don't want to promise many things but more things are coming. We want to continue to support our people who either come to our classes or those who won't be able to attend the classes, but probably can be able to navigate some of our training online. It's a project. Don't don't take me accountable yet, but it's a project. But we are also dedicated to have small businesses. A few weeks ago I was privileged to join a panel of our World Affairs Council when they asked me to speak. And I did. And one of our community member that we helped, she came forward and said, if it wasn't CFL, I wouldn't be running the grocery store that I have. It was an emotional for me to hear that message. But we want to help small businesses because we know that it's the engine of the economy. I know that in Augusta we have a problem. There is a crisis going on in Augusta, but there is a good news. Some of you who are still supporting the immigrants community understand why you need to do that. The governor has brought a war against immigrants, but thank you for standing up to support all our initiatives. I believe that we will win the battle. We have many people supporting us, including some of the city councilors in Poland, the state representatives, senators, non-profit organizations, individuals. We continue to count on you because you know the role of the immigrants and what they can do for the growth of the state of man in the economy. That's why in doing that, we have wonderful people who are supporting our immigrants and who want to continue to see the success of immigrants. Without, I want to introduce Charlie, who is actually the CEO of the Seedogs. I don't have his bio. He gave me his bio. I don't know where I put it, but it's very short. He has been the CEO of Seedogs for a long time. And today, he actually wants to welcome new menace, not the same message the governor is bringing. He has a special message for us. Welcome, Charlie. Thank you, Claude. It's a real pleasure to be here, and I got to tell you we're excited. We have a special event this Saturday, and we're honored that CFL is working with us, and it's an effort to bring new menace out to the ballpark and learn something about baseball. Now, a wise Frenchman by the name of Jacques Barzoon, and you'll have to bear with me on the pronunciation. I was a German student, not a French student. But anyway, Mr. Barzoon was a keen observer of American history and culture. And a while back, he said something that was of great interest, especially the people in baseball. He said whoever wants to know the hearts and minds of America had better learn baseball. So that's our effort on Saturday is to invite the new manors. We're working with Claude. We're expecting somewhere, what, two to 300 to come out, spend time in the picnic area, have a picnic lunch, watch the ball game. But we're even going to take it a step further knowing that many of these folks are new to the area, new to baseball, much as they are with the financial setup in our country. So we're going to try to explain it as best we can. Prior to the game, we'll have one of our players there who can answer questions and talk to the folks. And then during the game, one of our radio announcers will be in attendance. He'll be out of the radio booth for the day and he'll be in the picnic area explaining the game as best he can to everyone who is still learning. So we're really excited about it. We're doubly excited because Mother Nature has suddenly deemed good weather upon us and supposedly Saturday is supposed to be another good day. And we're really looking forward to this. And I want to make it clear that we hope this is the beginning of a long relationship with CFL. We'd love to do whatever we can to help you and we'd love to see this event become an annual event. So I told Claude I'd keep my remarks under 47 minutes, so I think I've done that. So thank you very much. Just briefly, Clemont reminded me that we have a number of graduates from our most recent basic money management course in attendance tonight. So if those graduates could stand up for a moment, we'd like to recognize you on this significant accomplishment. Congratulations. I'm pleased to welcome Dana Connors as tonight's keynote speaker. As president of the main state chamber of commerce, Dana leads the state's largest and most diverse business association. He dedicates his energy to enhancing prosperity for all main people. He oversees the chamber's broad range of activities, advocacy efforts, economic development initiatives, and workforce development. His writing and community efforts have long supported immigrants in Maine. A Maine native from far north, Presgyle, Dana received his BA in public management from the University of Maine. He's been appointed by the governor to serve on the Northern New England passenger rail authority and on the state of Maine governor's business roundtable. Other boards on which he currently serves include Maine Economic Research Institute and Maine MEP. Dana has also received numerous awards for service and leadership to the state of Maine throughout his career. We are very pleased to have Dana join us this evening. Please join me in welcoming him. Thank you, Mike. Good evening, everyone. And thank you so much for allowing me to be a part of this very special evening and evening of celebration. And congratulations to the recent graduates. Very nice. Can you hear me okay? Does this sound like it's reverberating all over the place? You may wish it would after you hear me speak. Who knows? But again, I thank you so much. I've been asked to speak among the workforce challenge, and I'm pleased to do that. I have chosen to use my time on that subject matter to talk first about the challenge, but also about the plan that would move us from the challenge to the opportunity and perhaps as much as anything to talk about the partnership that I believe to be essential if we are to be successful in what we jointly want to achieve. I probably would be best served tonight if I were sitting out there listening to all of you share with me your thoughts and how we can deal with this extremely important issue of the workforce challenge. The workforce challenge, if I were to choose a title for us tonight, would be the workforce challenge, but your place and mine in its solution. I want to focus on the partnership to begin with because frankly the workforce challenge, even though it would have been something the state chamber would involve then, I find that our role in it is far more sympathetic and significant because of a partnership that was created in 2009. That partnership is known as make and main work, and if you've seen our reports and I have actually one here, the workforce challenge make and main work looks like this, but it started in 2009 when Lori Lachance, who is now president of Thomas College, many of you know her, she was at Main Development Foundation. I was at the state chamber because we've known each other, we decided to get together and do something between the two organizations. Out of that came this concept, and our very first report was to really look at the state's economy, what were the barriers and what could we do to help? And believe it or not, we went through a process, we developed the brand, we presented it to the governor who was just, was candidate just coming in in the legislature, and they responded to it. They used it as a priority. That gave us great encouragement. We continued on. It was asked by the university main system, followed up by early childhood development, which you all know is important, led us naturally to the workforce issue. And I'm going to talk about that in a moment, but before we get there, I'd like to set it up in this way because I think as we think about where we are in the economy today, the workforce challenge becomes pretty self-evident why it is so critical at this time. We all know that in the world we live in, nothing works unless the economy works, and we're all trying our best to figure it out, but what we find today more than probably any time in our past is that we really don't know what our economy is. We're still trying to figure it out. That's a hard thing to say in front of a group, but to be honest we are trying to figure it out. We know there are certain things that clearly are not the way they were in the past. We know that there's a tremendous service element to our economy today, but more than anything else, this is what we know. We know it's knowledge-based, it's technology-driven. We know information rules. We know that productivity in innovation, in fact, innovation, 80% of our economy comes from new ideas. That's what innovation is. We also know that in Maine, the entrepreneurial spirit is probably there's more of a flame here in the state than most any other state in the nation, and that is a good thing. We know all that's played out on a global stage. What is the common thread in all of that? What is the tie that binds all of those elements together? It's the human capital. Human capital is indisputably the most important thing, the key to our economic growth and success. The human element, human capital. What that means is that we need more people with diverse skills, education, and training to not only meet today's needs, but create opportunities for the future. That's what brought us to the make and main work, the workforce challenge, extremely timely, and even though we may have been fighting the fight because of the report we did and the analysis that provided us, it gave us greater strength. It's what other speakers have reinforced, that information is vital. And if you don't think that workforce is one of our biggest priorities in the state, listen to this point. If Charlie Cogan was here today, as I think he was a year ago, I'll bet he shared this with you, that the success of our economy in the next 20 years depends on the quality and the quantity of our workforce. Think about the significance of that. The economic success in the next 20 years depends on the quantity and the quality of our workforce. That's what took us to this issue and that's why it's so important. And if nothing else, I hope that I leave here today and I do have an idea to share with you in a moment that proves that I do want to help. The state chamber and local regional chambers and the business community wants to be at the table. The question is, how do we make that happen? And that's what I'd like to share a thought with you regarding. But before we get there, let's look at our two reports. One report, there's two sides of the same coin when you look at the workforce challenge. One is about the supply. How are we going to grow our workforce? The other is about preparing our workforce, the skills side of the equation, the quality, if you will. On the first report, growing, to set it up in a way that the report brought forth for us, this is what we found. It's already been noted that we are already the oldest state in the nation. And I contribute to that. But here's the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say, if you were standing here. Between 1980 and 2010, our workforce grew from 500,000 to 700,000. That's a pretty significant growth, 40%. And in the 80s, that was the largest growth. And that was attributed to women in the workplace and a strong immigrant presence in our state. Each decade got a little less until you got to 2010, when it kind of stopped. That birth rate declined and went the other way. And in those last 20 years, between 1990 and 2010, those between 18 and 34, we lost 20% of that age group. That is a major issue for us. But let's start again, 2010 going forward. This is what you'd find. Not only are we the oldest, our birth rate has started to go the other way. We have 200,000 people that will be reaching the traditional retirement age. 200,000 people. We know conservatively. Document is over 20,000 people we lose. And if you look that out to 2030, it doesn't stop. As a matter of fact, under 21, we lose 15%. Between 21 and 65, we lose 10% by percentage. But over 65, the percentage of growth is 75%. So what do you do? You can't just do a report, because we know a report without a plan is simply a wish. And that's what so often happens with reports. This report, our reports, hopefully started not only a dialogue, but an active activity. What we did is we looked at our population in two categories. One, we're going to grow it from the... You know, hear me? We're going to grow it. That's another problem I have. I walk all over the place. We're going to address the problem of growing our economy by increasing participation within the sectors that we have, the populations. For example, the disabled community, the disadvantaged youth, those who do not necessarily want to retire, and the veterans. And we created a metric that was comparable to other states and set up a goal. We did the same thing by attracting. In that capacity, we looked at young people or families that moved away that wanted to come back, and we looked at the foreign worker. And in those categories, we set up a number in comparison to other states. New Hampshire, we attract about 1.14% of immigrants or refugees to the state. New Hampshire, by comparison, does 0.28. That's a significance. You have to wonder, why is that so? We're not welcoming hosts. We're not being very effective in our marketing. What is the problem? The point is, we set up that goal, and we meet regularly. But I want to share with you, as a result of talking with Claude, and thinking through my comments for tonight, we have failed in one of those categories. And I'll tell you what that is in a moment. When we looked at preparing our population, we know there's a skill gap, and we know why that is so, because they're in misalignment. But here, in preparing our people, we found more encouragement, because we realized that we don't have to create a new thing. We just have to better align our education and our business community. Does that sound familiar? We got a better line, our two sides. We also found that there are some incredibly good practices already going on that we don't know about. That if we shared with another, we could lean on, and we could use. We also found that there isn't one pathway to success. That education is fundamentally the most important thing. But we're all not going to be PhDs in human letters, or some other capacity. That there is a role, there's an importance in the trades, and the skills associated with that, and the credentials, and the certifications, and so forth. We found that in this instance, we needed to bring the people together, maybe have an annual summit in which we sat down and worked with each other. That's what the report calls for without getting into painful details, because I want to spend the couple minutes I have left in sharing with you what I would like to think our next step is. And this next step is not so much, and I hope this doesn't come across like, this is not being done someplace. Frankly, I'll admit to you that if it isn't being done, it's probably because, I mean, if it is being done, and I don't know about it, that's my problem. That's my fault. But here's what I'd like to offer, and you can probably find it in these words as much as anything, if I haven't already suggested it already. Whether you're a crusader or whether you're a good coach, these words, I believe, are always a part of their success. And that is when you come together, it's the beginning. When you stay together, it's progress. When you work together, it's success. So in this case, when we're aware of a challenge, a problem, and we try to turn that into an opportunity, that is representative to me of the beginning. When we sit down and we listen to each other to gain understanding and how we can help each other, that's staying together, and we're going to have progress from that. And once we start to listen and plan how to go forward with both of us at the table, that, I believe, will bring results. I don't want to insult anybody by suggesting it's not being done, but if it is being done, I would like to be a part of it in some way, and if it's not being done, this is what I would offer. I would offer that, Claude, you bring five to 10, how many you want to, of the immigrant, foreign worker, the new manor to the table. I'll do the same with the business community. We'll sit down, we'll talk and listen to each other, we will create a plan and a strategy. I'll even retain a company to help us do that. I already have, assuming that you accept the offer, that's industrial, I think you know the person in Quincy Hensel, that's a part of that, that would be helping us to not only keep us on task, keep us on mission, but also help to publicize so that others will know around the state that we're trying to do something to help others. That to me is fundamentally, I think, how I would like to proceed, and I'd offer that to you hoping you would take it up as a consideration going forward. One of the things I failed to mention that we overlooked, that I learned from you, among other things, that when we put our make and main work together to grow our population, and we looked at the two categories from within, and I named those four, like those with disabilities, veterans and so forth, the category that I failed to mention, because the other one was attracting, and in that capacity it was the new manors, the foreign workers, what I didn't mention was within that participation category, there's a number of immigrants and refugees already here that we can hold upon for the success of meeting that need to grow our workforce. So I leave you with this thought, if there's anything that we can do, if you're willing to take us up on that offer, I'm willing to bring people to the table. I know one guy, Dave Barber, who would be absolutely marvelous, who's on my board that could help lead it from our point of view, and I would hope that it will prove to be helpful. With that, I thank you very much. Thank you, Dana, much appreciated. Claude, are you ready for some awards? Thank you, Dana, for the offer. I'm going to evaluate the offer and see if I can take it, I'm just joking. I'm sure that we have many immigrants skilled in a room today who might be able to come with me and go meet with Dana to make this analysis and see how we can go to the next step. We appreciate that. One of the things that I learned also after meeting with you, I looked and said, this question has come not only from Dana, but also from Cress Hall, who is our original chamber. He said, which company do we really look as the example of the company that can hire immigrants that we can say, oh, this is one of the company. We are struggling to fund that company yet. We haven't seen it, but one of my friends to remind me that today's technology Harvard University, Stanford, even other companies are going overseas just because they want to expand their businesses. But our company's men cannot even expand the management to include some of the immigrants. That's the challenge that's one of the chamber to remember. So every year we come together to thank and give a special thanks to businesses individuals who have really done a lot for the organization and the community. Community financial literacy has three types of awards that it gives every year. One is the Volunteer of the Year Award. The other one is Commitment to Service Award and Outstanding Community Partner Award. So the awards are given annually to organizations, individuals, or businesses that have demonstrated excellence in partnering with the CFL entity to provide opportunities to refugees, immigrants, and asylume. These awards were founded to recognize and honor the vital role and the commitment of those organization partners. Our 2014 Volunteer of the Year Award goes to a hard-working student who has volunteered with the organization for more than a year. Daniela went beyond her volunteer time to coordinate the annual celebration. And I'll tell you that she didn't even know she was going to receive this award until now. So please, let's welcome Daniela Makuraza to receive the Volunteer of the Year Award. So I don't know what to say because I'm really surprised. I think it's motivating to know that I'm sorry. When we come here, we don't have working papers. So it can be very hard not to be productive. So it's a really good way to motivate us and to show us that we are doing something. And also learn by making mistakes. And I can see that the results of the work have been doing. So thank you. I hope I'm being brief, right? How am I doing so far? All right. I know we're hungry and we have wonderful food. So we're going to get to that. Our 2014 Commitment to Service Award goes to two wonderful businesses. You know, to be honest with you, it's always hard for me and my staff and the board to select these recipients. But again, we came to a conclusion that two businesses have supported CFL since 2011-2012. You may have heard from me in the past that I received a phone call from Poland Financial Planning Group asking me to come and receive a check for donation back in 2011. A thousand dollar check from nowhere. They told me that this was going to be a one-time gift. But this not only is one-time gift, it has turned to be yearly gift. Since then, and beyond that, some of the partners themselves became CFL donors. Thank you for Poland Financial Group for your support. And I will call you in a minute. I will call you in a minute. Just a minute. The second business has a similar story. They heard me speaking at an after-hour event and they decided to start supporting CFL. I will tell you that CFL hasn't purchased any toner, but don't ask me how because that's the cloud and CFL. Don't ask me if you can go and get free toner too. We haven't purchased any free toner, free ink, drum, from since 2012. In addition, this wonderful couple from Cartridge World, I'm having a hard time pronouncing Cartridge World and I told them that I would say that on podium, so that's why she's laughing. The couple from Cartridge World, not only they felt they wanted to support CFL, but they delivered these materials to our door at no cost to us. So please, let us welcome the Poland Planning Financial Group, Tom, Deborah, and Brian, and also from Cartridge World, Phil and Leend to come and receive the 2014 Commitment to Service Award. We would just like to thank Claude for his most inspiring leadership within the Greater Maine Community. He is just a wonderful presence in our mists and the organization's mission is vital to our future. We're proud to be a part of this. Thank you. Let me just say that I heard Claude speak one time, as he mentioned, at a business after hours, and I was just so incredibly impressed with his commitment to what he was doing that I just said, gee, there's got to be some way that we can help this group. And since that time, I've become even more impressed with his dedication and commitment, and it's a joy for us to work with CFL. So thank you very much. The last award goes to a friend, a member of the community, a dedicated person to CFL. The 2014 Outstanding Committee Partner Award goes to Gabby Marketing Company. Anna, who is the owner and her husband, Randy. This is what Anna told me. I was inspired by your presentation, same thing as what Phil said the same day, and thank to Cport Credit Union, that gave me the spotlight that allowed me to be a part of CFL. To be able to get all these wonderful partners. And she was inspired by my presentation and wanted to volunteer for CFL. She joined our Board of Directors in 2012, and since then has chaired the Marketing Subcommittee and continued to do wonderful work. She has done more than just being a board member. Her small business donated more than 100 hours to build our new website, which I mentioned CFLME.org. She didn't stop there. She said, I want to make sure that we brand all your materials. I hesitated when I called my staff that I should call her also my staff. Because every time when we have marketing material to do, she's there to do this work for us. She did the annual report that you saw. She did the program that we have. She did a slideshow. I don't think I have a better staff than Anna to do this kind of work. And she continued to say, my commitment and a passion for CFL come from my personal experience. The journey that every immigrant in America has experienced since the founding of our country. So please help me welcome Anna and the reindeer on stage to receive your award. Thankful that CFL recognized our work. And we're going to be posting it in our office. And we're very proud of it. And thank you again. 60 years ago, I started CFL. And the men and the women dedicated to support our mission joined me and work together. Some have left and some still work with us. You know, even your own child, you have some of the people that's really you connect with. During my 60 years, I had a friend on our board that's really touched me so much. I could go to that person anytime and call him whenever I needed any support. He dedicated even himself to drive with me. Sometimes when I was still struggling to find myself in a mix of CFL or in the community. But that person, as of last month, decided to retire because he said, Claude, as much as I love to work with you, I cannot hold it anymore because the health situation. But he is still a dear to my heart. I have known Scott Kerr for more than 10 years. He is a good friend of mine and I will miss him. I can tell you that I love to work with Scott. And Scott was not only a board member, but a good friend of mine. That's I want to thank him for his 60 years of service and ask him if he can stay to continue. So Mara finds a shirt which has a CFL on it. So he doesn't have to forget that he worked for CFL as a volunteer. So time to time we'll come back. One day Claude asked me to go with him to the main state housing authority and we went there and when we were done we were a sub grantee for about a $3,000 grant and this was a big deal. Claude has done a marvelous job of being able to bootstrap his way up. The big sales pitch then was because he had been teaching immigrants about financial literacy for Portland adult education. So in my business I was always trying to back bootstrap myself up from one position to another. Claude has done a marvelous job of that. He's a great person, great skills and it's been a great honor to have him allow me to help. Thank you. Thank you all. Really just quickly I wanted to thank everyone who has sponsored or supported CFL in the last year. We are a non-profit and if you are so inclined there are donation cards throughout the hall here. Or please go see our wonderful new website. I'd also like to take a quick moment to thank members of the Portland City Council the City Manager, representatives of the Portland Police and Fire Departments and guests from Senator King's office. Really CFL could not do as much as we have without the support of these key community leaders. We really appreciate it. With that there's plenty of food left, there's plenty of time to mingle. We thank you for coming and we thank you for supporting CFL.