Latest news with #SFSD
CairoScene
21-05-2025
- Business
- CairoScene
Yousriya Loza-Sawiris Named on 2025 TIME100 Philanthropy List
TIME honours Yousriya Loza-Sawiris in its 2025 TIME100 Philanthropy List, recognising her leadership in advancing equity, education, and development through the Sawiris Foundation in Egypt. May 21, 2025 Yousriya Loza-Sawiris, Chairwoman and Founder of the Sawiris Foundation for Social Development (SFSD), has been named on TIME's inaugural TIME100 Most Influential People in Philanthropy List. The list highlights 100 individuals who have dedicated their resources, knowledge, and time to advancing equity, development, and dignity in communities worldwide. Loza-Sawiris is the only Egyptian included among notable international figures such as Oprah Winfrey, Melinda Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, and Prince William and Princess Catherine of Wales. Established in 2001 with the support of the Sawiris family, the SFSD has become one of Egypt's leading philanthropic organisations. Under Loza-Sawiris's leadership, the foundation has focused on evidence-based, impact-driven initiatives across sectors including education, healthcare, economic empowerment, and emergency relief. Through strategic partnerships with government, private entities, and civil society, the foundation has worked to implement sustainable development programs throughout underserved regions of Egypt. "This recognition is not a personal achievement—it represents years of collective effort, shared vision, and deep partnerships with individuals who truly believe in the power of social change,' Loza-Sawiris tells CairoScene. 'What we've accomplished is the result of honest collaboration among those who see development not as a project with an endpoint, but as a moral and human obligation that demands consistency, knowledge, and deep respect for those we serve.' The full TIME100 Philanthropy list will be published in the June 9, 2025 issue of TIME Magazine, and is now available online at the TIME Magazine website.
Yahoo
04-05-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Manhunt continues, restoring McCook Lake, warm week ahead
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) – It's a warm, sunny Sunday, let's get a check on the latest in news and weather for KELOLAND On The Go. The search for the suspect in an officer-involved shooting in western South Dakota has entered its third day. Manhunt ongoing after suspect flees officer shooting Dozens of volunteers gathered Saturday at McCook Lake to resume the overwhelming task of cleaning up from last summer's flood. Resurfacing hope throughout McCook Lake Many students in the Sioux Falls School District are ending the year with money still leftover in their school lunch accounts. SFSD gives families option to donate lunch money Thanks to high pressure holding serve for a little while longer, we'll all have a great day to enjoy with plentiful amounts of sunshine and a breeze to go with it. It may get a bit windy at times West River, but that may be the only blemish to an otherwise great day. Storm Center AM Update: Warm Week Ahead; West River Rain For the latest in news and weather, use the KELOLAND News app. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Project Prison Reset begins to meet
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Project Prison Reset, the group of lawmakers and other leaders taking a new look at how and where to build a new men's prison in South Dakota, has met for the first time. The task force visited a rural section of Lincoln County between Canton and Harrisburg where the state was planning to put a new men's prison until a bill to appropriate money to build the facility failed in February. SFSD cell phone survey results are in The group also toured the current state penitentiary in Sioux Falls on Wednesday. Minnehaha County State's Attorney Daniel Haggar is not mincing words on what he saw. 'I think everyone would agree, walking through those facilities this morning, we have a lot of people in there,' Haggar said. 'We have a lot of people packed in there. It's not safe.' Republican State Sen. Ernie Otten, who's also on the task force, lives around 10 miles from the Lincoln County site. 'One thing I think is a given, no matter where you try to put this, you're going to have resistance from folks,' Otten said. 'Nobody wants a prison next door to them.' And he's heard a lot from people who live nearby. 'They're not happy,' Otten said. Even though the state had focused on a putting a new men's prison at the Lincoln County site, when announcing the task force's creation. Otten wants to hear about other spots. 'We have to find out what were the other sites that they looked at, and so we'll take a peek at those,' Otten said. After all, in more ways than one, the new look at a familiar question is about what comes next: not only for the state and its Department of Corrections, but for the people behind bars, wherever that might eventually be. 'We need to have a plan to address how we're going to incarcerate folks safely, but also that other big component, have the spaces for rehabilitation, for preparing for reentry,' said Republican Sen. Chris Karr of Sioux Falls, who sits on the task force. The group will gather at the Military Heritage Alliance in Sioux Falls Thursday for discussion, presentations and public commentary. KELOLAND News will have a camera there so viewers can watch the afternoon session live on our website. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Looking back at March 2020, COVID-19 impacts 5 years later
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — They say hindsight is 20/20, but that's also a year many people don't like to think back to. The early months of 2020 brought COVID-19, a virus that is still impacting people's lives today. In March of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic turned people's lives upside down. While the entire world was affected, doctors say that South Dakota's location and population gave us an advantage. Not-so simple cattle industry 'When it first hit the coast, we still didn't see much for cases. We didn't know that much about it. And what it gave us was actually a three month lead where we could start preparing and start getting ready for what we knew was already in Washington and already in New York,' Chief Medical Officer, Sanford Health, Dr. Jeremy Cauwels said. While social distancing was one of the ways to slow the spread of the disease, 5 years later, you've most likely had it. 'Whether you got vaccinated or not. Your body has probably seen 1 or 2 different versions of that coronavirus. And so the body's ready and more capable of dealing with it,' Cauwels said. But the virus continues to mutate and change. Over the past 5-years the disease has claimed over 3,000 lives in South Dakota. Dr. Cauwels says there is good news moving forward. 'What we're not seeing as often is those horribly ill folks who end up in the intensive care unit on ventilators long term end up with permanent lung damage. And because that has tapered off. Our advice now is to treat it very much like any other infection you have, but certainly make sure you're under your doctor's care so they can help you through the highs and the lows,' Cauwels said. While that is great news for people living in 2025, that doesn't change what we went through in 2020. When the virus first came to the United States, it sounded like students were just going to get an extra long spring break as everyone quarantined for 2 weeks. However, those 2 weeks turned into the rest of the school year for KELOLAND. This was a situation teachers had never dealt with. 'We played it out like any other illness or bird flu and just be cautionary. But then once we shut down and schools closed, then we had to quickly build lessons for kids,' SFSD assistant superintendent of academic achievement, Kirk Zeeck said. The Sioux Falls School District gave students and their families the choice of what they wanted to do in the fall of 2020. 'We allowed some students to learn virtually that we had a virtual academy, which had thousands or over a thousand students who learned remotely and, otherwise students came in, they took desks and separated desks,' Zeeck said. That 1,000 students the first year turned into around 100 the second year. While online learning provided an alternative option, it still came with challenges for some students. 'What happened when the pandemic hit, and from the test scores and our attendance and our graduation rates across the country and in Sioux Falls and in South Dakota, we saw a dip. So we saw a dip in all of those,' Zeeck said. But thanks to the COVID funds the school district had received, those numbers have gone back up. While the pandemic had a large effect on schools, it also affected churches. Many churches opted to have online sermons during the first stages of the pandemic, which happened to be over Easter. 'Easter's the happiest time of the year in the church, it is the promise of God that our sins are forgiven and the resurrection of Jesus and it's the most joyful time. And yet we were recording services in an empty church, preaching straight at a camera,' Pastor at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Michael Johnson said. Learning to switch everything to an online format wasn't an easy task. 'We had zero digital footprint. We didn't stream our services, we didn't have much of anything. Suddenly, we were overnight figuring out how can we stream our services? How can we provide online worship?' Johnson said. While the church leaders had their struggles, the congregation also felt the effects of lockdown. 'When COVID first hit, we as pastors talked about what's this going to do to our congregation? We talked about that isolation, the cabin fever, and how we would be needed even more in counseling and the tensions that can arise when you're cooped up together. And that certainly happened,' Johnson said. Another way that COVID hurt people was when they were unable to work. At Granite City, for around half of the year, they only had a skeleton crew. 'We had to close down for a little bit, and it was just left with a few managers to run the place, make sure we had to-go orders ready. We couldn't really let a whole lot of people in, so we had to run all the orders out to the vehicles. And, we were basically just management staff from open and close,' Granite City general manager, Shane Bauer said. Bauer says since COVID, it seems people don't get too upset when heading to work. 'People love coming to work and, you know, seeing their friends, seeing their coworkers and just, you know, having a great time and once again, appreciating their job a lot more because, you know, it's nice to be around people,' Bauer said. In the winter of 2020, Granite City was one of the restaurants that put ice fishing shacks outside their restaurant, so that people could social distance, while also eating out. While the pandemic is over, Bauer says people still call asking if they're going to bring back the ice shacks. 'It was kind of like having your own little restaurant and, you know, even if our employees had to put on a jacket, which we allowed them to do, you know, to serve people out there. The employees actually kind of loved it, too, and it was just so much fun to have them,' Bauer said. Showing that even though COVID-19 changed the way we lived, maybe something good could have come out of the situation. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Yahoo
Sioux Falls School Board discusses AI use in classrooms
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — A lot of businesses are turning to artificial intelligence to save money and time, so it's important for students to learn about it. But how should AI be used in the classroom? It's a topic the Sioux Falls School Board took up Monday afternoon. 'Every time I turn on the TV, every time I turn on my phone, it's just all about AI. It's growing all over, not only in the schools, I imagine, but banking, health care, all over the place. It's really accelerating,' SFSD assistant superintendent of academic achievement Kirk Zeeck said. That's why the Sioux Falls School Board is looking into just how much guidance students should receive from AI on an assignment. In October, Jefferson High School English teacher Michele Wheeler asked her students to write about a scary character. Then, she asked them to recreate the story using AI. Wheeler says the AI generated a similar story for multiple students. 'What happened is the students actually started to get angry because they had some autonomy about their stories when they were writing them handwritten. Then they're seeing, wait a minute, why is it creating the same story for all of us? Then we got to talk about that AI can create, but it is not creative,' Wheeler said. Which helped students see one of the downsides of AI. 'They really began to understand that human element piece that needs to be a part of it, that interaction from the beginning to the end in order to keep their voice in it,' Wheeler said. 'If all we do is tell kids, 'You can't use AI,' then it becomes sneaky. If we can help them use it, use it responsibly and be able to think critically about it, I think we're going be worlds ahead then if we try to have this 'You can't use that, that's cheating mentality,'' Sioux Falls School Board president Carly Reiter said. A few of the common AI tools used in classrooms include Chat GPT, Magic School and Diffit. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
