Tag: 3BL

Agribusiness is an area that has undergone major technological developments in recent years. Decisions made in the field are increasingly being based on data management and digital processes. With that, the industry is looking towards a more efficient, technological and autonomous tomorrow.

Preparing the job market for these changes is essential and CNH Industrial brand Case IH is committed to empowering young people and adults to use new technologies and solutions in the field. As a part of its mission, the brand recently attended Tecnoshow Comigo, a fair held in Rio Verde, Goiás, Brazil. It brought its complete portfolio of machines and solutions. And offered free training courses throughout the event.

The classes were held by the brand’s aftermarket team in a mobile workshop equipped with special diagnostic tools. Topics included: “Automation of harvesters – concepts and applicability” and “Smart Planting Solution – XactPlanting”.

“These courses are a small demonstration of how we are preparing to train professionals who either currently or want to work in the field. We have face-to-face and distance learning courses throughout the year for our clients and we recently launched a major project in partnership with Senai and Senar in Mato Grosso, which we will expand to other states,” said Eduardo Penha, Case IH’s Director of Marketing and Communication for Latin America.

Case IH also brought a space totally dedicated to technological solutions to the show. A leader in the Digital Agriculture revolution, the brand created an environment with various demonstrations and experiences. These included augmented reality headsets to show its machines; simulators from its AGXTEND portfolio, which offers a set of applications, components and services with digital solutions for all stages of the cultivation cycle; and an AFS Connect operating room, showcasing Case IH’s data management and monitoring tools in real time.

Recognizing the importance of strategic procurement, Dutch chemical company Royal DSM – a global, purpose-led leader in health and nutrition, applying bioscience to improve the health of people, animals, and the planet – embarked on a global procurement transformation.

Royal DSM utilized SAP Business Network and SAP Ariba solutions to enhance the sustainability of its global indirect procurement. As a result, the company learned several valuable lessons that can be applied by other organizations looking to transform their procurement practices in a sustainable manner.

DSM has set ambitious sustainability goals, which include making a positive impact on people, the planet, and communities through its “purpose-led, performance-driven” strategy. This includes transitioning to a net-zero economy, fair supplier arrangements, and ensuring adequate access to healthy food for all.

To support these goals, DSM implemented a transformation of its global, indirect sourcing and buying operations. This was essential for the company to create truly sustainable end products. It is not possible to be a sustainable business without having sustainable partners.

buy.SMART Program

DSM’s buy.SMART program aimed to not only achieve cost savings but also digitize and automate procurement transactions to align its spending on indirect goods and services with its sustainability and supplier diversity policies. Through this process, the company learned several valuable lessons.

1. Leverage a Business Network

To achieve the buy.SMART vision, DSM integrated SAP Business Network with an upstream, indirect source-to-contract process. The company did this using SAP Ariba Sourcing, SAP Ariba Contracts, SAP Ariba Supplier Lifecycle and Performance, and SAP Ariba Supplier Risk. For the downstream, indirect procure-to-pay process, DSM chose the SAP Ariba Buying solution.

This setup offers multiple advantages, including faster identification of suitable trading partners in your supply chain, such as suppliers, logistics service providers, asset operators, and maintenance contractors. Thanks to automation, you can perform many tasks more efficiently or even automate them completely. Automation enables more efficient and even fully automated processes as well as increased visibility into all supply chain processes.

The integration of automation and sustainability in procurement can bring several benefits. For example, automation can facilitate the collection and analysis of supplier sustainability data, which can help in making more informed decisions when selecting suppliers. Additionally, automation can help in monitoring and tracking the sustainability performance of suppliers over time, which can help in identifying and addressing sustainability issues more quickly. Automation can also help in reducing the environmental impact of procurement activities, such as by decreasing paper usage and transportation emissions.

“Thanks to SAP Ariba solutions, DSM has strengthened collaboration with suppliers, improved the user experience of all participants, automated the transaction flow, and significantly reduced errors,” says Andries Feikema, global director of Procurement Digitalization & Transformation at DSM.

2. Leverage Independent Sustainability Ratings

Using criteria from external vendors is crucial for enhancing procurement processes with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations. Having transparency into the sustainability performance of your supply chain is crucial for modern business. DSM utilizes EcoVadis, which is integrated with SAP Ariba solutions, to provide the necessary sustainability solutions to enhance procurement processes with ESG. This allows DSM to obtain reliable ESG ratings on its trading partners and efficiently evaluate suppliers based on specific sustainability criteria. Additionally, DSM continues to expand its sustainability assessments to provide procurement professionals with greater insight into their business partners.

“Sustainability is in DSM’s DNA. It therefore plays a major role for our procurement organization. It is an important element in the selection of our suppliers, and we test that directly in SAP Ariba solutions. It is important that we select the right suppliers to do business with. This is directly embedded in our process design,” says Feikema.

3. Do the Pilot in the Most Challenging Market

It may be tempting to test a procurement solution in an easy market, but it’s not always the best approach. DSM adopted a different strategy: it started with the most challenging market. By doing so, it was able to identify and address potential issues early on. The company piloted the new procurement system in Brazil, which has a complex tax system. This approach helped it learn a lot about the solution and processes, making the global rollout much smoother.

Brazil has a complex tax system with multiple federal, state, and local taxes. The country has implemented several tax incentives to promote sustainability and environmental protection, making it an interesting pilot case.

4. Standardize Where Possible

Standardizing the pilot process design across all countries led to immediate efficiency gains for DSM. The design was only modified to comply with local tax or regulations. This standardization streamlined procurement processes globally, accelerating rollouts and increasing transparency and efficiency.

Procurement processes that include sustainability focus on buying products and services with positive environmental and social impact. This includes using sustainable materials, choosing suppliers with a strong sustainability record, and considering the entire lifecycle of a product or service. Standardization enables easy replication of processes and, by incorporating sustainability and standardizing their procurement processes, organizations like DSM can scale their sustainability impact.

5. Don’t Forget Change Management

Digitization relies on the implementation of new technologies and processes, and success in this endeavor is contingent on the participation of all employees. Without their buy-in, return on investment will be negatively impacted. Therefore, change management must be a key component of any transformation program.

To that end, DSM dedicated significant attention to change management by establishing an expert desk to support suppliers and assist with contract implementation, as well as a global team of 270 “champions” to help with adoption and guide users through new procurement processes. These champions were able to communicate in the local language and provide training to end users. Many young employees and the new generation of workers desire to be a part of sustainable business practices and goals, which has also contributed to the success of the adoption of these new technologies and processes.

“We made communication, training, and change management part of program management. We approached our program not as the implementation of a tool, but as a real business transformation. Users are central to the success of our transformation program,” concludes Feikema.

OnQ Blog

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become pervasive in our lives, improving our phones, cars, homes, medical centers, and more. As currently structured, these models primarily run in power-hungry, network-dependent data centers. Running AI on edge devices such as smartphones and PCs would improve reliability, latency, privacy, network bandwidth usage, and overall cost.

To move AI workloads to devices, we need to make neural networks considerably more efficient. Qualcomm has been investing heavily in the tools to do so, most recently showcasing the world’s first Stable Diffusion model on an Android phone. Bringing models like GPT, with its hundreds of billions of parameters, to devices will require even more work.

The Qualcomm AI Research team has been making advances in deep learning model efficiency for the past years with state-of-the-art results in neural architecture search, compilation, conditional compute, and quantization. Quantization, which reduces the number of bits needed to represent information, is particularly important because it allows for the largest effective reduction of the weights and activations to improve power efficiency and performance while maintaining accuracy. It also helps enable use cases that run multiple AI models concurrently, which is relevant for industries such as mobile, XR, automotive, and more.

Recently, a new 8-bit floating-point format (FP8) has been suggested for efficient deep-learning network training. As some layers in neural networks can be trained in FP8 as opposed to the incumbent FP16 and FP32 networks, this format would improve efficiency for training tremendously. However, the integer formats such as INT4 and INT8 have traditionally been used for inference, producing an optimal trade-off between network accuracy and efficiency.

We investigate the differences between the FP8 and INT8 formats for efficient inference and conclude that the integer format is superior from a cost and performance perspective. We have also open sourced the code for our investigation for transparency

Differences between floating point and integer quantization

Our whitepaper compares the efficiency of floating point and integer quantization. For training, the floating-point formats FP16 and FP32 are commonly used as they have high enough accuracy, and no hyper-parameters. They mostly work out of the box, making them easy to use.

Going down in the number of bits improves the efficiency of networks greatly, but the ease-of-use advantage disappears. For formats like INT8 and FP8, you have to set hyper-parameters for the representable range of the distributions. To get your original network accuracy back, you also have to spend some extra time quantizing these networks. Either in some simple quantization steps called post-training-quantitation (PTQ), or by training the network in a quantized way all together, called quantization-aware-training (QAT).

Given that most training in the industry is currently conducted with entire networks in FP32, or sometimes FP16 with mixed precision, the step to having some parts of a network run in FP8 is an appealing potential speed-up for the costly and time-intensive training procedures in deep learning. This topic has gained quite some traction lately, so we set out to find out what this development means for efficient inference on edge devices. Specifically, we look at both the hardware considerations for the formats and the effect of the chosen formats on neural network accuracy.

Our whitepaper shows that the hardware implementation of the FP8 format is somewhere between 50% to 180% less efficient than INT8 in terms of chip area and energy usage. This is because of the additional logic needed in the accumulation of FP formats versus integer formats. This seems like a broad range, but the actual efficiency depends on many hardware design choices that vary greatly. A similar conclusion was reached recently by Microsoft and Meta: Floating-point arithmetic is just much less efficient than integer arithmetic.

This means that FP8 will have to be significantly more accurate than INT8 to be worthwhile from a hardware-efficiency perspective.

Quantization-aware training (QAT) results 

Quantization-aware training is the quantization scenario most like how a format like FP8 would be used in practice, you train with the format while optimizing your neural network. We show the QAT results below for different tested formats. We see that all quantized networks get close to their original floating-point performance. In most cases, we even see an improvement over the baseline results of FP32. The reason for this is simply that training these models for longer generally improves results, even if we would train longer in FP32.

The results are quite clear: INT8 tends to perform better than other formats for most types of networks. It is only for transformers that FP8 performs better, but in the paper, we delve deeper into transformers and show that this difference is easily mitigated. The conclusion is simple however: there is no a-priori reason to believe that the FP8 format is more accurate for neural networks. In some cases, even when going as low as 4-bit weights with the W4A8 format (as indicated in the rightmost column of Figure 2), the accuracy is comparable to the FP8 format.

Can we convert FP8 to INT8 with good accuracy? 

Since there are some benefits to using the FP8 data format for training, we also investigated the performance when FP8-E4 (a FP8 format with 4 exponent bits) trained networks are converted naively to INT8 for inference. We found that INT8 can precisely represent roughly 90% of the range covered by the FP8-E4 format without any quantization error. The remaining 10% of the range close to 0 incurs a small quantization error.

The general conclusion is that for networks that were originally easy to quantize from FP32 to INT8, the conversion is expected to be smooth, and can in several cases be done directly.

For networks that were already problematic to convert to INT8 from FP32 with simple PTQ techniques, mostly networks with significant outliers, similar issues will arise when converting from FP8 to INT8. However, since these latter networks are trained to deal with the reduced precision of the FP8 format, the INT8 conversion results from FP8 are better when compared against INT8 simple conversion from FP32. Moreover, INT8 QAT can be further employed to recover more accuracy in such cases.

The path towards better AI inference on device 

Overall, integer quantization is still the way to do efficient AI inference. With varying effort levels, you can achieve significant efficiency benefits without sacrificing much accuracy.

For optimizing networks even further, opting for QAT can get the networks into the W4A8 (4-bit weight and 8-bit activation) regime. This is very achievable for a wide range of networks. Transformer-based large language models such as GPT, Bloom and Llama tend to benefit greatly from this jump in efficiency from 8- to 4-bit, as they are weight-bounded. Several works have shown that 4-bit weights are not only possible for large language models, but this is also optimal and possible to do in the PTQ setting. This is an efficiency boost that currently does not exist in the floating-point world.

To sum it all up, we see that floating-point format FP8-E4 is not a replacement for INT8 in terms of performance and accuracy. In most cases, they perform worse. Only in some extremely specific scenarios where layers have significant outliers, can the floating-point format perform better in terms of accuracy. We are confident that our proposed solutions will lead to a better and more seamless implementation of large AI models on edge devices. For this purpose, the Qualcomm Innovation Center has open-sourced the AI Model Efficiency Toolkit (AIMET). This allows developers to quantize their models more easily and implement AI on device more efficiently.

International cooperation has expanded efforts to promote air quality and respiratory health awareness along the U.S. border with Mexico.A new air monitoring station is the first product of an unprecedented bi-national fund for air quality improvement projects in a region that includes parts of Texas, New Mexico and Mexico.Marathon Petroleum funded the monitoring station with the first private-sector grant to the bi-national fund.

Representatives of governmental agencies in the U.S. and Mexico are applauding a milestone in a groundbreaking initiative to benefit air quality on both sides of the border. They recently celebrated the installation of a new air monitoring station that will strengthen data collection to support respiratory health awareness and air quality projects in the Paso del Norte Air Basin, a region of almost 3 million residents that includes El Paso, Texas; Juárez, El Paso’s sister city across the border; and parts of Doña Ana County, New Mexico.

Strength in numbers

The new monitoring station in Juárez is the first product of the Binational Air Quality Monitoring Fund, which was established by the Joint Advisory Committee for the Improvement of Air Quality in the Paso del Norte Air Basin. The fund is an unprecedented financial mechanism that combines monetary contributions from private-sector and public-sector sources in the U.S. and Mexico, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). Marathon Petroleum, which operates a refinery in El Paso, made the first private-sector contribution to the fund. This $100,000 grant allowed for installing the new station.

“This station will help provide better air quality data to enhance health risk communications and the effectiveness of air quality improvement projects for the region,” said TCEQ Border Affairs Manager Eddie Moderow.

Meeting future needs

The new station adds to three existing, strategically located stations in Juárez, bolstering monitoring capabilities to better keep pace with the basin’s urban and industrial growth. There are now 22 stations in the monitoring system across the basin. The new station includes an ozone analyzer, equipment for measuring particulate matter and meteorological sensors. 

“With hundreds of employees and contractors who live and work in El Paso, we are deeply connected to this area, so we have a vital interest in supporting this effort to advance public health and quality of life,” said Marathon ESG and Stakeholder Engagement Manager V.J. Smith.

In many countries, mobile money services have become an alternative to traditional banking systems. Data from Global Findex and FinScope studies show that in at least 20 low- and middle-income countries more women have a mobile money account than a bank account. In 10 of these 20 countries, the leading mobile money service is powered by the Ericsson Wallet Platform. In this special blogpost on International Women’s Day, we will discuss the importance of financial inclusion of women and how mobile money advances equity and equality for women, breaking down barriers which have in the past hampered female progression in developing nations.

The World Bank’s Global Findex Database 2021 shows that the world has made considerable progress towards female financial inclusion in the last 10 years. The gender gap in formal financial account ownership across developing countries has fallen from 9% to 6%, highlighting that women are getting closer to financial equality.  Growth in account ownership by women is much faster than men and 68% of adult women in developing countries are now included in formal financial systems. In many developing countries, this growth in account ownership amongst women is mainly driven by mobile money.

Financial inclusion of women is critical for economic empowerment and society

In many cultures, women face gender bias while using financial services. Women are dependent on men to top-up their mobile connections, pay children’s school fees, and with purchasing household equipment. Due to social constraints, it can be difficult for women to go out to pay utility bills get loans to meet an emergency need, or support their entrepreneurial ambitions. Mobile money breaks the bias and brings parity between men and women in the access and use of financial services.

If women have a formal financial account, government and non-government organizations (NGOs) can directly transfer money and subsidies of welfare schemes to women’s accounts instead of to a male member of the family. Crediting money or subsidies directly to women’s accounts eliminates intermediaries, reduces leakages due to corruption, removes duplicate beneficiaries and accelerates the pace of welfare programs. More importantly, this enables financial independence of women, allowing them greater control over their funds and spending money on essential needs like education, their family, and savings.

A study from Niger on monetary-aid distribution primarily to women after a drought found that social benefits paid directly into mobile money accounts instead of cash offered women greater privacy and control over their funds and boosted spending on nutritious food. Household diet diversity was 9% to 16% higher amongst households who received mobile money transfers and children ate 1/3 more of a meal per day. These results can be partially attributed to time savings associated with mobile money transfers, as recipients spent less time traveling to and waiting for their transfer. Moreover, the operational cost of mobile money transfers was 20% less than cash payments.

The Global Findex Report 2021 also suggests that low-cost formal savings accounts help women to improve their financial health, save on a more regular basis, and shift their spending to relevant household needs such as buying nutritious food, reducing their reliance on debt, and preparedness for financial emergencies.

Mobile money drives financial inclusion for women

Complex account opening processes and requirements of multiple documents prevent many women from opening a bank account, which means that women in developing countries are generally excluded from banking systems. Furthermore, opening fees, maintenance fees, and minimum balance requirements mean that many women can’t afford to maintain the regular costs associated with a bank account. Banks also have a limited number of branches and due to social restrictions, women are unable to travel long distances to access their accounts. 

By comparison, mobile money accounts have a simple registration process which requires less documentation and better affordability with zero fees and no minimum balance requirements. Consequently, in many developing countries mobile money services have become a leading alternative to banking systems. Data from Global Findex and FinScope studies corroborates this with reports showing that in at least 20 low- and middle-income countries more women have mobile money accounts than bank accounts. In 10 of these 20 countries the leading mobile money service is powered by Ericsson Wallet Platform, our global fintech platform. In three of these countries, Rwanda, Uganda, and Ghana, more than half of the adult female population has a mobile money account. Furthermore, in six of 10 countries, 30% to 40% of the female adult population has a mobile money account.

Unsurprisingly, in most of these countries less than 20% of the female adult population has a bank account. The numbers indicate that in these countries mobile money has contributed substantially to increasing the financial inclusion of women.

Mobile money helps to narrow the gender gap of financial access in some countries. For example, in Liberia the gender gap in mobile money account ownership is 8 percentage points, compared to bank or financial accounts where it is 19 percentage points. In Uganda, Ghana, Cameroon, and Liberia, more women than men have only a mobile money account.  For example, in Ghana 31% women have only a mobile money account compared to 27% of men.

Service providers encourage the adoption of mobile money amongst women by offering services focused on women. Examples include grant distribution for girls’ education into their mother’s mobile money account, insurance and monetary support for healthcare, subsidy disbursement to women for shifting to clean cooking fuels, micro-loans for women entrepreneurs running small and medium-sized businesses, and many more. Mobile money also digitizes traditional financial tools mainly used by women like savings clubs, burial societies, village savings and loans associations (VSLAs) making them more secure, transparent, and easy-to-use. In some countries, female merchants make up a considerable part of local markets. Mobile money enables these low-income merchants to go digital, accept mobile payments, and modernize their businesses at low-cost.

United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG 5) promotes gender equality. Mobile money is an important tool in achieving one of the SDG 5 targets of giving women equal rights to access and use of financial services.

Addressing the barriers hampering financial

Inclusion of women 

The trend towards female equity and equality is encouraging, but more needs to be done to close the financial gender gap. For this, we have listed four main challenges and suggested ways to address them:

1.Lack of documentation

Problem: A prominent barrier in financial inclusion is the lack of identity (national ID) and other documents needed to open a financial account. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 37% of adults cite the lack of documents as a reason for not having financial account.

Solution: Mobile money lowers this barrier as it requires less documentations than banks. Moreover, regulators and mobile money providers should adopt a flexible or tiered Know Your Customer (KYC) approach with no KYC, partial KYC and full KYC options to open mobile money account. A woman without any documentation can register with a no KYC option but will get limited services and lower transaction limits. Whereas, the woman providing all documents can be registered for the full KYC account having access to all services and higher transaction limits. For women without documents in areas like rural, tribal, or refugee settlements, regulators should permit alternative documents like letters from a village head, a beneficiary ID, or a refugee certificate.

2.Lack of money

Problem: The most cited barrier to financial inclusion is the lack of money. Another barrier reported mostly by women is that another family member already has an account, so they don’t believe they need their own account. However, women should be educated that a financial account is not only for savings but is also very useful in emergencies to receive money and grants.

Solution: To encourage women to open a financial account, governments should design female welfare programs focused on paying grants and subsidies directly into their account. Mobile money accounts are most suitable and affordable to be the first formal financial accounts for women as they do not require any minimum balance, account opening fees, or maintenance fees. Women can keep their mobile money account active even with a zero balance.

DestinationKigali CitySouthern ProvinceWestern ProvinceNorthern ProvinceEastern ProvinceNational AverageUmurenge sacco21:2545:3843:5541:4743:4238:86MFI’S22:7448:6847:1847:0147:9641:16Bank branch22:7850:2049:0348:0648:2542:85ATM22:0649:2348:6849:8647:6741:21Mobile money agent8:9623:6323:7622:3617:4918:78

Source: FinScope Rwanda 2020

3.The travel distance to financial institutions

Problem: Most often, the distance to banks or ATMs is too far for women to travel. Distance is a barrier for 31% of unbanked adults in developing economies.

Solution: Mobile money providers have established extensive agent networks, multiple times bigger than bank and ATM networks. Mobile money agents offer registration, deposit, withdrawal, and over the counter payment services, bringing these last-mile services closer to consumers’ homes and overcoming the distance hurdle. For example, in Rwanda the average time to reach a mobile money agent is 18 minutes 78 seconds, while it is over 40 minutes for banks and other financial institutions.

4.Lack of a mobile phone

Problem:Compared to men, more financially excluded women do not have a mobile phone due to reasons such as high cost, social norms, etc. However, most mobile money services are available on inexpensive feature phones through the USSD interface, putting mobile money in reach of women at the bottom of the economic pyramid. The focus should be on reducing this digital divide and providing mobile phones to more women.

Solution:To lower the mobile phone cost barrier, telecom operators and mobile money providers should introduce device financing or pay-as-you-go device schemes that can help women to buy mobile phones in installments. Governments and non-governmental organizations should work on providing refurbished phones to underprivileged women, to enhance the digital and financial inclusion of women.

In addition to overcoming the above barriers, there are a few other steps required to increase the mobile money adoption of women:

All stakeholders including governments, NGOs, regulators, industry bodies and mobile money providers should work collectively to roll out digital and financial literacy programs for women and create more awareness about the benefits and use of mobile money services.Raise the participation of women in the entire mobile money ecosystem. Mobile money providers should increase the proportion of female mobile money agents, enable more female merchants to accept mobile money, feature women in mobile money marketing campaigns and have more female employees at all levels of mobile money organizations from technology to leadership roles. This will create a more female-focused and female-friendly environment and generate more trust and comfort amongst women consumers.Governments and mobile money providers should enable a collection of more detailed gender-disaggregated data. A high quality of gender-disaggregated data can be a very useful tool to develop baseline targets, policies and programs to reduce the gender gap in financial inclusion.

It is encouraging to see that mobile money enables equal access to financial services and works towards increasing the financial inclusion of woman in many countries. However, this is just the beginning, and we need to increase the efforts multifold to fully close the gender gap in financial access. Ericsson Wallet Platform along with the mobile financial services it powers, will continue focusing on leveraging and enhancing mobile money as a tool to drive full financial inclusion for women.

References: World Bank’s Global Findex Database 2021 and FinScope Rwanda 2020

Visit Ericsson Mobile Financial Services page for more blogs, case studies and other content

As the two generations that will be most impacted by the effects of climate change, Gen Z and Generation Alpha are bringing fresh passion and creativity to the climate fight.

To support and empower these emerging voices, The World Around, a nonprofit architecture forum, has created the Young Climate Prize, sponsored by Meta Open Arts. For its inaugural program, a cohort of 25 finalists, ages 13 to 25, were chosen to be paired with a The World Around’s Design Champion for one-on-one mentorship to help further their projects.

From this group, three winners (and one honorable mention) will be feted at The World Around Earth Day Summit 2023, to be held on Earth Day (April 22) at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The winners are:

Young Climate Voice

Pamela Elizarrarás Acitores, Mexico

Young Climate Designer

David Foday Kamara, Sierra Leone

Young Climate Visionary

Namra Khalid, Pakistan

Honorable Mention

Aziba Ekio, Nigeria

Participant projects were chosen to represent today’s climate landscape across five broad themes:

Words Matter: Projects amplifying the voices of those whose stories are key to the climate conversation, yet are often ignored.Creating Connections: Young people seeing into the future of community building.Innovators & Investors: Engineers, architects, designers exploring new ways to approach the changing landscape.All About Waste: Researchers and innovators sharing their solutions to help solve one of the growing climate challenges of today.Radical Reuse: Projects examining how the management of materials from the beginning of their lifespan to their eventual decay are vital to combat climate change.

“Meta Open Arts is pleased to partner with The World Around on the inaugural Young Climate Prize. This program celebrates the power of community-building through creativity and brings critical attention to emerging climate voices of today and their visions for the future.”

TINA VAZ, HEAD OF OPEN ARTS, META

Meet The Finalists

Words Matter

Alfonse Chiu, 24, Singapore 
Researcher examining neocolonial flows of tropical fruitsAziba Ekio, 24, Nigeria 
Poet working on a collection of writings called “The Color Green”Pamela Elizarrarás Acitores, 24, Mexico 
Photographer and writer creating an ongoing lexicon about climate changeMangaliso Ngcobo and Sam Harding, 22, South Africa 
Writers and editors from South Africa who founded their own magazineNastia Volynova, 24, Russia 
Researcher examining changes in forms of labor due to climate changeAida Namukose, 23, Uganda 
Photographer documenting women in the food industry affected by climate change

Creating Connections

Marilita Quintana Molina, 24, Chilé 
Artist and climate advocate collecting plastic waste in her region and seeking to use it to improve her communityShariffa Amolo Anguria, 25, Kenya 
Activist and community leader educating on the negative impacts of traditional gold miningRaihan Rabbannee Hendrawan, 17, Indonesia 
Facilitator committed to engaging young people in the fight against climate changeSophia Tabibian and Lulu Goulet-Hofsass, 14, USA 
Community leaders who founded an online climate hub for global activistsSahithi Radha, 15, India 
Student and activist pioneering an e-waste collection and recycling initiativeHannah Segerkranz, 25, Estonia 
Product designer championing the use of hemp as an eco-friendly building material through an open source design

Innovators & Inventions 

Jin Gao, 25, China 
Researcher and maker focusing on the survival of bees in volatile climate conditionsDavid Andrés Vega Monsalve, 23, Colombia 
Digital artist using VR to raise awareness about the effects of recent flooding in Pakistán.Ichor Joshua Keghnen, 22, Nigeria 
Mechanical engineer who created a device to monitor pollution in boreholes and water wells.Chris Vrettos, 26, Greece 
Clean energy advocate championing the nation’s first all-solar community.Esther Olalude, 20, Nigeria 
An inventor creating affordable sanitary towels from recycled waste.

All About Water

Namra Khalid, 25, Pakistan 
Researcher producing the region´s first socio-climatic map to facilitate addressing floods in Karachi.Anushuka Shahdadpuri, 26, India 
A designer working on a network of ways to accelerate clean water.Joseph Nguthiru, 24, Kenya 
A chemist who invented a biodegradable plastic made from water hyacinth.

Radical Reuse

Gabriela Angelina Bernal Ibáñez, 19, Mexico 
An architect and engineer whose research into recycled panels is on trial in MexicoFoday David Kamara, 23, Rwanda 
An entrepreneur whose Ecovironment project is recycling post-consumer plastic waste into everyday construction materials like eco-bricks and paving tilesMoemen Sobh, 22, Egypt 
An architect pioneering new materials, including Visenleer, a fish-skin leather that makes use of bi-product and allows fishermen to make more money per fish soldMohammed Dimma Mawejje, 22, Uganda 
A social entrepreneur using textile waste like fabric offcuts and second-hand clothes to create bags, earrings, dresses, and other fashion merchandiseStanley Anigbogu, 23, Nigeria 
A designer providing access to clean light and energy alternatives for students and refugees in his region

“The World Around is committed to focusing on what is happening now and how it can change the future. This group of inspiring young activists, inventors, entrepreneurs, writers and poets have shown us where the world’s attention should focus. Their generation has a vested interest in finding solutions to our biggest challenges.” — Beatrice Galilee, director, The World Around

To learn more about The World Around, follow them on Instagram. Follow Meta Open Arts at fb.com/metaopenarts and @MetaOpenArts on Instagram.

Since P&G helped start the United Way of Greater (UWGC) Cincinnati, our people have contributed meaningfully to communities and people in need, especially in our headquarters’ hometown.

Recently, the UWGC named P&G number one on its list of 2023 “Workplaces That Care.”

Our commitment goes back more than a hundred years. Our founder’s grandson William Cooper Procter helped start the first community fund that would evolve to be United Way today.

“Being a large company and being able to do such a thing (as help to create the United Way) is amazing and very humbling,” said Emily Hickey, Research Specialist in Products Research at P&G’s Mason Business Center.

Today, Emily is part of the team that leads P&G’s Young William Cooper Society, young professionals who are galvanizing support among their organizations to support the United Way of Greater Cincinnati. She first volunteered with the United Way after learning about its work during a presentation at P&G.

“That really struck a chord with me — to want to make the community better and help out as much as I possibly can,” Emily told PG Daily News.

P&G Brand teams also support this important work:

The Always Confidence Fund. Currently in its third year, the fund was originally launched to find a deeper shared purpose between UWGC initiatives and the Force for Good work that our P&G brands lead every day. It also established a sub-fund of the UWGC’s Black Empowerment Works Program. The Always Confidence Fund invests in work that tackles societal barriers to period stigma and gender inequality, supports confidence-building of puberty-aged people with periods and provides access to period products and education.The Closing the STEM Gap fund is P&G Beauty’s investment dedicated to unlocking the potential of youth and young adults through STEM. The fund invests in solutions that help young men who have less access to programs and resources that help unlock their potential via STEM opportunities.

READ MORE STORIES ON OUR BLOG

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Whole Foods Market’s flagship store in Austin, Texas hosted an official SXSW event on March 17, 2023, to benefit Whole Planet Foundation, a Whole Foods Market non-profit dedicated to poverty alleviation through microcredit loans in the U.S. and around the world where the company sources products.

More than 2,000 attendees enjoyed a soul-nourishing convergence of music, technology, health-conscious gastronomy, connectivity and social engagement. The event was presented by Bitchin’ Sauce, KeVita, Andalou Naturals and Mineral Fusion and featured artists, brands and innovators converging to support an impactful cause.

“We are honored to support Whole Planet’s mission to alleviate poverty on a global scale. When we learned about John Mackey’s dedication and robust donations to the initiative, we were inspired by the authenticity that shines through one of our biggest partners and felt compelled to get involved” said Bitchin’ Sauce founder Starr Edwards. “Thank you, Whole Planet team and event producers for making a momentous initiative so incredibly inspiring and Bitchin’! We are eager to show support in 2024, and future years to come.”

Whole Planet Foundation funds microcredit – small loans with no formal contract or collateral – provided to microentrepreneurs who want to create or expand a small business to generate income for themselves and their families. Joy Stoddard, Director of Development and Outreach for Whole Planet Foundation, emphasized that, “These funds will support an additional 1,000 people – women entrepreneurs and their family members – with income-generating opportunities.” The current Whole Planet Foundation-supported average first loan size around the world is $180, with a 97% repayment rate, across its network of microfinance partners in Africa, Asia and the Americas, including the United States.

Presenting sponsor Mineral Fusion’s Brand Manager Stephanie Marks says, “Women’s empowerment is a core value at Mineral Fusion, which is why we are thrilled to sponsor organizations with like-minded missions like Whole Planet Foundation and support our long-standing partnership with Whole Foods Market.”

On the music front, this year featured a carefully curated lineup showcasing the depth and diversity of modern music. Getting things started was NYC singer-songwriter Jessica Carter Altman, then performances throughout the day by rising SoCal alt-rock trio L.A. Edwards, German dream-pop stylings of Philine Sonny to NYC-based hyper-pop duo Frost Children to Catalonian folk-pop composer Núria Graham to Alternative K-pop collective Balming Tiger (known for their collaboration with RM of BTS) to gregarious Canadian TikTok sensation TALK, acclaimed Filipino indie-pop duo Dream, Ivory and legendary alternative Southern rap group Nappy Roots (heralded for their infectious smash “Good Day”). Rounding up the eclectic lineup include SLC indie rockers Krooked Kings, esoteric AZ power popsters Ponderosa Grove, Gibson Guitars’ endorsed punk blues rocker Devon Thompson and nouveau disco rap prodigy Ric Wilson who just dropped the EW&F/Arrested Development-inspired heater “Pay It No Mind” featuring Chromeo and A-Trak.

Presenting sponsor Andalou Naturals’ Chandler Seed, Assistant Brand Manager, shared “Andalou Naturals is a proud supporter of women entrepreneurs every year with our Andalouminary scholarship, so we’re thrilled to join forces with Whole Planet Foundation and build on our joint mission of empowering women.”

The event was supported by more than forty brand partners sold in select Whole Foods Market stores including EVOLVE Plant-Based Protein, Gimme Seaweed, MaryRuth’s Organics, Nova Naturals, nutpods, ORIGIN Spring Water, RightRice® Veggie Rice and RXBAR.

Supporters sampling products at the event included Applegate, Betty Buzz, Bubbies Ice Cream, Cleveland Kitchen, Culture POP Soda, Death Wish Coffee, De Lune, FAGE, FLOW, Forager Project, GoGo Squeez, GoodPop, Grandy Organics, Honey Mama’s, lil’gourmets, LOVE CORN, Mauna Loa Macadamia Milk Ice Cream, Mayawell, Mother Kombucha, MUSH Overnight Oats, Oishii, Petit Pot, Repurpose, Shire’s, Spinster Sisters Co, Sunwink, Tia Lupita and WishGarden Herbs. Other supporters include ALO, Bluapple, Bossa Bars, D’Angelico Guitars, Health-Ade Kombucha, Hiyo, Lopaus Point, Mad Hippie, Saint James Tea, Seattle Gummy Company, SweetLeaf and Tea Botanics.

Event producers Allison Shaw of Manic Monkee and Mark Nguyen of Planet LA Records, among the original co-creators of the Quantum Collective which first organized the showcase in 2012, raised the most funds to date of any music showcase supporting the Foundation. They remarked, “So glad we were able to bring this SXSW Official Event back to the Whole Foods Market Lamar flagship store to benefit Whole Planet Foundation. As a collective group with a shared mission, we were honored to help others realize their greatest potential, whatever their passion or circumstance.”

Special appreciation to the Whole Foods Market Lamar store at 525 N. Lamar Boulevard in Austin, Texas, to D’Angelico Guitars for donating guitars to support Whole Planet Foundation and the amazing artists who performed on its rooftop.

Updates: #WholePlanetSXSW, @WholePlanet 

Learn more at wholeplanetfoundation.org.

Fleet management in 2023 is more complicated than ever, but one universal truth remains: fleet managers continue to search for cost savings wherever they can. They may not realize that cost savings can be hidden in plain sight — buried in the methods by which fleets source their fuel. In a recent article for Work Truck Magazine, CEO and Founder of Booster® Frank Mycroft explores how fuel costs span much more than just the price of each gallon.

“You’re likely spending much more on fueling than you realize,” writes Mycroft. “The time, fuel, and wear and tear associated with endless treks to and from the gas station add up quickly, adding significant stress to already tight budgets.”

Rethinking Fleet Fueling

Most fleets depend on gas stations when filling the tank, requiring drivers to take time out of their shifts to travel to the pump and fill up. As Mycroft points out in Work Truck Magazine, each trip to the gas station takes around 20 minutes, which equates to about 61 hours per year per driver. Not only is this a significant time burden, but it also adds up to $1,436 annually per vehicle in labor costs.

More hidden fuel costs lie in the fuel burned traveling to and from the station. For vehicles that deviate from their planned service or delivery routes by adding gas station stops, traditional methods of fleet fueling may reduce efficiency.

Mycroft explains that vehicle wear and tear present another opportunity to save on fleet fueling. Each fleet vehicle can expect around $160 in depreciation on average annually due to fueling errands alone. Extra miles also require more vehicle maintenance, affecting fuel economy.

Implementing a Fleet Fuel Management System

To avoid losing money to hidden fleet fuel costs, fleet owners should consider implementing a fleet fuel management system like mobile fuel delivery by Booster. In this model, fleet vehicles are fueled on-site in one session during fleet off-hours. This way, drivers begin each shift with the fuel they need, and the labor costs that would have gone toward fueling at the gas station can be redirected toward more productive tasks.

Mobile fuel delivery also eliminates the extraneous fuel burn and wear and tear associated with gas station errands. To enhance holistic fleet management, the service includes a fleet portal, which provides a glimpse into fleet performance and fuel spend to help managers keep up with fleet maintenance and better understand their fleet fueling operation.

Reducing Fuel Costs for Fleets

Fleet managers wondering how to reduce fleet fuel costs should take the time to analyze and manage their fueling expenses by considering the hidden costs of labor, fuel burn, and wear and tear. By implementing a fleet fuel management system like Booster’s mobile fuel delivery service, fleets can realize significant cost savings over the long term.

As Mycroft writes in Work Truck Magazine, “Fleet managers looking to balance tight budgets amid rising fleet costs should implement telematics and data analytics, teach safe driving practices, and consider adopting mobile fuel delivery to streamline fueling and save on costs.”

RAHWAY, N.J., April 11, 2023 /3BL Media/ – Merck (NYSE: MRK), known as MSD outside of the United States and Canada, has earned a place on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list for the second time in the past three years. The company also made the list in 2021.

“Our talented, diverse team is foundational to our ability to deliver on our purpose of saving and improving lives around the world,” said Steven C. Mizell, executive vice president and chief human resources officer, Merck. “We are honored by this significant recognition, which is reflective of our vibrant and inclusive culture, where employees feel seen, heard, valued and set up for continued success.”

This year’s Best Companies to Work For list is based on the feedback of more than half a million U.S. employees, who responded to a nationwide survey from Great Place to Work®, Fortune’s research partner and a global authority on workplace culture.

About Merck 
At Merck, known as MSD outside of the United States and Canada, we are unified around our purpose: We use the power of leading-edge science to save and improve lives around the world. For more than 130 years, we have brought hope to humanity through the development of important medicines and vaccines. We aspire to be the premier research-intensive biopharmaceutical company in the world – and today, we are at the forefront of research to deliver innovative health solutions that advance the prevention and treatment of diseases in people and animals. We foster a diverse and inclusive global workforce and operate responsibly every day to enable a safe, sustainable and healthy future for all people and communities. For more information, visit www.merck.com and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. 

Forward-Looking Statement of Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, N.J., USA
This news release of Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, N.J., USA (the “company”) includes “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of the company’s management and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. If underlying assumptions prove inaccurate or risks or uncertainties materialize, actual results may differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements.

Risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to, general industry conditions and competition; general economic factors, including interest rate and currency exchange rate fluctuations; the impact of the global outbreak of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19); the impact of pharmaceutical industry regulation and health care legislation in the United States and internationally; global trends toward health care cost containment; technological advances, new products and patents attained by competitors; challenges inherent in new product development, including obtaining regulatory approval; the company’s ability to accurately predict future market conditions; manufacturing difficulties or delays; financial instability of international economies and sovereign risk; dependence on the effectiveness of the company’s patents and other protections for innovative products; and the exposure to litigation, including patent litigation, and/or regulatory actions.

The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Additional factors that could cause results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements can be found in the company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022 and the company’s other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) available at the SEC’s Internet site (www.sec.gov).

Learn more about Merck’s Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) approach by visiting merck.com/company-overview/esg.