Latest news with #Nevill
Axios
2 days ago
- Business
- Axios
Fast-growing local startup offers $3 eco-friendly rides from Plaza Midwood to NoDa
A homegrown microtransit company is gaining momentum in Charlotte, offering $3 rides between some of the city's coolest neighborhoods. Why it matters: Forget Uber. JUMP Transit is offering low rates in all-electric vehicles — and it's all local. For just a few bucks, JUMP will take you all the way from Legion Brewing in Plaza Midwood to Independent Picture House near NoDa, for example. By the numbers: JUMP is expanding quickly, especially since the return of warmer weather. Founder Justin Nevill says the service saw about 40% week-over-week growth throughout March and more than 50% growth from April to May. With demand rising, JUMP is eyeing an expansion to South End this summer. The fleet has grown to five low-speed, zero-emission vehicles. Nevill partners with local businesses to station the vehicles. You'll often see one outside Moxie Mercantile, for instance. The big picture: Transportation is the leading source of climate-changing carbon emissions, and ridesharing has been found to contribute to the problem nationally by replacing climate-friendly mass transit. Follow the money: Traditional rideshare companies are known to raise prices once they capture a market. But Nevill says that's not his plan. He doesn't want to mess with the "magic" of their flat, predictable rates: $3 per ride or $7 for a day pass. While the fares help break even, JUMP generates revenue through advertising. Vehicle wraps currently promote several apartment complexes in the area. Backstory: Nevill comes from the world of tech startups but says he got burnt out and bored with Zooms. The idea for JUMP combined his skills with his passion for connecting with people and sustainability. In late 2023, he hung flyers on doors around NoDa to survey neighbors' interest in a service like JUMP and pricing. The feedback was encouraging. He bought his first two vehicles and launched JUMP in August 2024 as a fixed route around NoDa, Villa Heights and Optimist Park. Riders began requesting more specific stops, so Nevill pivoted to a full rideshare model after a couple of months. "It wasn't until I was fairly into it when I was like, 'Oh, this is a thing. It's called microtransit,'" Nevill says. Zoom out: Mictrotransit is popping up throughout Charlotte. The Florida-based company Freebee runs the SouthPark Skipper and the Ballantyne Bolt. Plaza Midwood piloted Jaunt, a Texas-based company, before JUMP entered the neighborhood in February, expanding its footprint to include Commonwealth-Morningside and Belmont. How it works: Riders can call a JUMP ride through its website. Nevill says it was important that he matched the convenience of Uber and Lyft that people are used to. The average wait and trip times are both about eight minutes. JUMP currently runs Friday from 5-11pm, Saturdays 12-11pm and Sunday 12-9pm. The vehicles travel up to 25 miles per hour and can only be on roads with speed limits of 35 miles or less. Drivers are employees, not contractors, who keep 100% of their tips. There are also memberships, starting at $19 a month for eight rides.
South Wales Argus
29-04-2025
- General
- South Wales Argus
Objections to expansion of council's Caldicot Pil Row depot
People living close to Monmouthshire County Council's Pil Row depot in Caldicot have lodged objections to the plan that would see around one third of a recreation ground taken over for a compound for the authority's waste tippers. Residents say the area is used by children for playing, is an important area of open space close to the Newport to Gloucester railway line and fear increased noise and smells from the depot expanding towards their homes. Caldicot Town Council has also objected to the proposal while Monmouthshire County Council's own landscape officer Andrew Nevill has issued a holding objection as he said too little information has been provided about the loss of an amenity area and public open space 'on the doorstep and serving nearby residential areas'. Impacts on the environment, biodiversity and bats have also been questioned by Mr Nevill. There have already been 20 objections received by council planners from members of the public, many stating they are local residents. One letter said the area is important to people living along Orchid Drive, Railway View and Estuary View the residential streets closest to the recreation ground where there is also a children's play area with basketball hoop and football goalposts outside of the land earmarked for the compound. The letter stated: 'The proposed development is to be built on the only local green space in the area, which has been used for recreation by local residents for many years since the houses were built. The field and the adjacent play park is always in use with the local children and walkers, and is much valued by the local residence as a tranquil safe space.' Another objection stated: 'Your proposal would result in the loss of a beloved field, which serves as a crucial recreational area for the entire estate. It is a place where children play, dogs exercise, and elderly residents, who may not be able to walk long distances, can enjoy the outdoors and breathe fresh air.' Objectors have also suggested the expansion could be accommodated within the council's existing site or the wider industrial estate or lorries should be kept at its Five Lanes depot near Caerwent. Plans submitted on the council's behalf show trees and hedgreows would be planted along the border of the compound and an existing large Sycamore tree retained. The application states: 'Overall, it is considered that the proposed development would be in accordance with Wales' and Monmouthshire County Council's Green Infrastructure Strategy.' The application is being assessed by the council's planning department.
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Cuts to food aid put more than 3 million malnourished people at risk in Ethiopia
Food aid for Ethiopia is set to be cut in half in 2025 compared to just last year, with more than 3 million currently facing the loss of life-saving food assistance, according to the World Food Programme (WFP). 'This is not normal. We have not faced such a drop in our funding in a long time,' WFP Ethiopia spokesperson Claire Nevill told The Independent. According to Nevill, WFP's operations in Ethiopia have around thirty key donors, including USAID, who have – unlike in other areas – exempted Ethiopia from its programme of cuts. But aid cuts from other donors mean that Ethiopia is facing a funding gap of $222 million over the next six months. Unless that new financing is urgently found nutrition support for the 3.6 million people that WFP currently supports in Ethiopia is under threat, said Nevill. Earlier this week, WFP Ethiopia had announced the suspension of malnutrition treatments for 650,000 malnourished women and children due to funding problems. These treatments are a form of nutritional medicine – in the form of peanut paste or corn-soy porridge – that help bring malnourished people back to health over the course of weeks. Speaking to The Independent, Nevill said that WFP has managed to source commodities to treat malnutrition, which should be on their way to Ethiopia from Djibouti in the coming days. These should be able to protect WFP's malnutrition programmes 'probably until the summer', said Nevill. But those treatments represent only a fraction of WFP's operations in a country where 10.2 million people are coping with food insecurity. Other programmes include the provision of daily school meals to about 470,000 children, and the delivery of food assistance to populations totalling more than three million people over the first quarter of 2025. The squeeze in funding means that ration cuts in food assistance are already the norm, with severely food-insecure Ethiopians receiving 80 per cent rations, and refugees receiving 60 per cent rations. 'Those are cuts to food levels already deemed the minimum possible food assistance for people,' said Nevill. But even those food supplies look set to dry up if new support is not urgently found. 'It looks like by June we might not be able to support the influx of refugees coming into the country,' said Nevill. 'We are really badly in the red, and it looks like we won't be able to maintain our current response.' WFP is not the only organisation in the country feeling the squeeze, with Oxfam country director in Ethiopia, Yodit Zenebe Mekuria, telling The Independent that their programmes are also feeling the squeeze. 'People living through unthinkable circumstances have now been deprived of lifesaving food, water, medical and hygiene support,' said Mekuria. 'As programmes are forced to halt and scale back, their suffering will grow exponentially as needs rise.' Recipients of WFP nutrition support in Ethiopia include 22-year-old Segen and her 14-month-old daughter Kisauet, from Tigray. A subsistence farmer with no formal occupation, Segen described to WFP on a recent fact-finding mission how insufficient food during her pregnancy and subsequent low levels of breast milk had left Kisauet malnourished. 'There was wasn't enough food while she was inside my womb,' she said. 'When she was born, she was 2kg. It was just scary to hold her, she was just tiny.' The malnutrition treatments that the family has received - which are currently under threat from budget pressures - have been transformative. 'She has changed so much, I didn't think she would stand up and walk away as a human being at all,' said Segen. 'Now I find her running around.' 32-year-old Desta and her 8 month-old daughter Capital also receive food aid rations and malnourishment treatment. They currently reside in a camp for internally-displaced people after losing their homes during the Tigray War, the two-year civil war in the country's North that ended in 2022. After the war ended, they were allowed to return home, but found soldiers living in their house, forcing them to remain in the camp, Desta said. 'We are in a very bad situation here. We were good [back in our old home], we had jobs, we had agriculture, but there is no work and no agriculture here,' she said. 'Here we just sit around. If we could get it, we would work,' she continued. 'All we have is enough food.' According to Nevill, the situation facing Ethiopia represents a 'perfect storm of overlapping crises'. Communities are still recovering from a prolonged drought which saw multiple seasonal rain failures across 2020-23, while the story of Desta and Capital attests to how much of the country is continuing to recover from the affects of war. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of refugees are fleeing into the country from neighbouring countries, including Sudan, while difficult economic conditions, including high inflation stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic aftermath, remain a problem. Recent months have also seen several earthquakes internally displace tens of thousands of Ethiopians. At the same time, crises in territories including Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, and Afghanistan have pushed food needs up globally, said Nevill, while many donor countries are now making the political decision to focus their spending more on domestic priorities. The Horn of Africa is also one of the most climate vulnerable regions of the world, and is highly susceptible to challenges including prolonged droughts, devastating floods, and desertification. The WFP would like to be investing in more climate resilience programmes to help support communities through the climate crisis, for example in pushing climate-resilient agricultural practices, or in developing novel irrigation schemes. Around 30 per cent of spending in Ethiopia goes to such programmes, with 70 per cent going towards emergency responses. 'Humanitarian food aid should be a last resort, and we want to shift things even further towards helping people to strengthen their resilience in the face of climate shocks and ultimately build long term food security,' said Nevill. 'But any reprioritisation of funding this year is currently looking very unlikely.' This story is part of The Independent's Rethinking Global Aid project
The Independent
25-04-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Cuts to food aid put more than 3 million malnourished people at risk in Ethiopia
Food aid for Ethiopia is set to be cut in half in 2025 compared to just last year, with more than 3 million currently facing the loss of life-saving food assistance, according to the World Food Programme (WFP). 'This is not normal. We have not faced such a drop in our funding in a long time,' WFP Ethiopia spokesperson Claire Nevill told The Independent. According to Nevill, WFP's operations in Ethiopia have around thirty key donors, including USAID, who have – unlike in other areas – exempted Ethiopia from its programme of cuts. But aid cuts from other donors mean that Ethiopia is facing a funding gap of $222 million over the next six months. Unless that new financing is urgently found nutrition support for the 3.6 million people that WFP currently supports in Ethiopia is under threat, said Nevill. Earlier this week, WFP Ethiopia had announced the suspension of malnutrition treatments for 650,000 malnourished women and children due to funding problems. These treatments are a form of nutritional medicine – in the form of peanut paste or corn-soy porridge – that help bring malnourished people back to health over the course of weeks. Speaking to The Independent, Nevill said that WFP has managed to source commodities to treat malnutrition, which should be on their way to Ethiopia from Djibouti in the coming days. These should be able to protect WFP's malnutrition programmes 'probably until the summer', said Nevill. But those treatments represent only a fraction of WFP's operations in a country where 10.2 million people are coping with food insecurity. Other programmes include the provision of daily school meals to about 470,000 children, and the delivery of food assistance to populations totalling more than three million people over the first quarter of 2025. The squeeze in funding means that ration cuts in food assistance are already the norm, with severely food-insecure Ethiopians receiving 80 per cent rations, and refugees receiving 60 per cent rations. 'Those are cuts to food levels already deemed the minimum possible food assistance for people,' said Nevill. But even those food supplies look set to dry up if new support is not urgently found. 'It looks like by June we might not be able to support the influx of refugees coming into the country,' said Nevill. 'We are really badly in the red, and it looks like we won't be able to maintain our current response.' WFP is not the only organisation in the country feeling the squeeze, with Oxfam country director in Ethiopia, Yodit Zenebe Mekuria, telling The Independent that their programmes are also feeling the squeeze. 'People living through unthinkable circumstances have now been deprived of lifesaving food, water, medical and hygiene support,' said Mekuria. 'As programmes are forced to halt and scale back, their suffering will grow exponentially as needs rise.' Recipients of WFP nutrition support in Ethiopia include 22-year-old Segen and her 14-month-old daughter Kisauet, from Tigray. A subsistence farmer with no formal occupation, Segen described to WFP on a recent fact-finding mission how insufficient food during her pregnancy and subsequent low levels of breast milk had left Kisauet malnourished. 'There was wasn't enough food while she was inside my womb,' she said. 'When she was born, she was 2kg. It was just scary to hold her, she was just tiny.' The malnutrition treatments that the family has received - which are currently under threat from budget pressures - have been transformative. 'She has changed so much, I didn't think she would stand up and walk away as a human being at all,' said Segen. 'Now I find her running around.' 32-year-old Desta and her 8 month-old daughter Capital also receive food aid rations and malnourishment treatment. They currently reside in a camp for internally-displaced people after losing their homes during the Tigray War, the two-year civil war in the country's North that ended in 2022. After the war ended, they were allowed to return home, but found soldiers living in their house, forcing them to remain in the camp, Desta said. 'We are in a very bad situation here. We were good [back in our old home], we had jobs, we had agriculture, but there is no work and no agriculture here,' she said. 'Here we just sit around. If we could get it, we would work,' she continued. 'All we have is enough food.' According to Nevill, the situation facing Ethiopia represents a 'perfect storm of overlapping crises'. Communities are still recovering from a prolonged drought which saw multiple seasonal rain failures across 2020-23, while the story of Desta and Capital attests to how much of the country is continuing to recover from the affects of war. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of refugees are fleeing into the country from neighbouring countries, including Sudan, while difficult economic conditions, including high inflation stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic aftermath, remain a problem. Recent months have also seen several earthquakes internally displace tens of thousands of Ethiopians. At the same time, crises in territories including Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, and Afghanistan have pushed food needs up globally, said Nevill, while many donor countries are now making the political decision to focus their spending more on domestic priorities. The Horn of Africa is also one of the most climate vulnerable regions of the world, and is highly susceptible to challenges including prolonged droughts, devastating floods, and desertification. The WFP would like to be investing in more climate resilience programmes to help support communities through the climate crisis, for example in pushing climate-resilient agricultural practices, or in developing novel irrigation schemes. Around 30 per cent of spending in Ethiopia goes to such programmes, with 70 per cent going towards emergency responses. 'Humanitarian food aid should be a last resort, and we want to shift things even further towards helping people to strengthen their resilience in the face of climate shocks and ultimately build long term food security,' said Nevill. 'But any reprioritisation of funding this year is currently looking very unlikely.'
