 Hey, welcome to City Talk. My name is Ron King, Program Specialist with the Community Development Department. And I am Charmaine Clark, Community Liaison with Community Development. And we're here today to talk about the 2018 National Community Development Week celebrating the CDBG and home programs. Yes, Ron. And also, starting off to kick off CD Week 2018, we are going to have a press conference at the New Columbia Art Center, 1227 Lady Street. We would like to invite everyone to come to the press conference to engage and show the importance of CDBG and home programs. And also, we'll have a homebuyer workshop, and that's going to be at the Richland Library, St. Andrew's location, from 6 until 8 o'clock, and that's going to be on the 3rd and the 4th of April. We will be having some displays of booth, informational booths at three locations, City Hall, as well as Washington Square and Community Development Office. We encourage folks to check out our informational booths where we will have information pertaining to our home loan programs, any financial literacy workshops that we have coming up, any community development projects that we also have coming up as well. We have some information on that. So we encourage folks to stop at our informational booth at those three locations and just to get some information on community development. And we can't forget about the Start Fresh Financial Education Workshop. It's going to be held at the Richland Library, North Main location from 3 until 4. That's going to be held on April the 12th. And we'll also have our Speak Out conversation, and that's going to focus on racial, ethnic segregation and disability discrimination. That's going to be held at the Wood Forest Bank location on North Main Street. That's 3730 North Main Street. It's going to be held on April 26th from 8.30 until 10 a.m. On April the 27th and April the 28th, in conjunction with Fair Housing Month, the community development will be collaborating along with Richland County to have a civil rights, it still matters, conversation with different agencies as well as community leaders. This will take place at 2624 Decker Boulevard, Columbia, South Carolina. And we want to encourage folks that want to have that conversation or to listen to other neighborhood leaders or different agencies and directors from around the area to come and engage in those in-depth conversations. We are going to have our second annual CDBG Block Party. We're going to have a DJ. Hopefully we'll have some other radio stations there to help represent and also get the awareness out to community leaders that they can come and join us for hot dogs and hamburgers and things of that nature. So we also encourage community leaders, not only community leaders but different organizations, nonprofits to come out and help us celebrate by end of the week with the CDBG Block Party. The different programs are community outreach that community development does. We have our home division as well as our financial division as well as our neighborhood division, which encompasses economic development pretty much. So we encourage new home buyers to check out our home loan programs. If they need any financial assistance, as far as credit, things of that nature. You can see the guy right here next to me, Ron, came to possibly go to some of his financial literacy workshops as well. As far as encompassing of neighborhoods and getting those involved, you will see me, Charmaine Clark, the community liaison. So those three things encompasses community development as well as a whole list of things. So we as a department, we pride on that. We love doing community outreach. We encourage folks to come into our office to see the different types of programs that we have going on. And we just like to just do a lot of community outreach. Well, to put together everything that Charmaine just said, you know, that's the importance of having national community development. We celebrate those things that she just said, some of the things that we do on a sample size during this month. We want to celebrate those things. We want the community to be involved as well. That's why we're having the Block Party to invite every single person who can come out to have fun and celebrate and get some information about some of the things that we do. For those of you that are a little hesitant about participating in any of our activities, upcoming activities, we want to encourage you to come out. The community development block grant CDBG funds and home funds program is important to our community. You know, we live, we have businesses that are funded by these programs. So, you know, after hearing some of those things, I don't think you want to be hesitant about coming out and celebrating and it's not only celebrating but showing our legislators how important CDBG and home funds are important to the community. Thank you for joining us for City Talk. Again, my name is Ron King along with Charmaine Clark and we're with City of Columbia Community Development Department. If you want some more information about all those things we just discussed, again, our phone number is 803-545-3373. Or you can visit us on the website, City of Columbia's website, www.columbiasc.net.