Fun-filled event to raise funds for children
JADE & Velvet will be hosting their annual get-together to raise funds for the Fast Forward Fund – a charity initiative that provides support for children who suffer from Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS).
This year`s theme for this special event is “A little goes a long way”. Attendees can look forward to a fun-filled morning of entertaining and informative talks, as well as a delicious tapas brunch.
Well known actress Helene Truter will be the MC, and the guest speaker at the function will be Elsabe Aldrich. Guests can also look forward to viewing the latest Jade & Velvet outfits in a special fashion parade, and the super-talented Gerald Clark will be performing at the event.
Jade & Velvet owners Susan Louw and Magda Malan were the 2016 South African winners of the International Women’s Entrepreneurial Challenge in the “Mentorship” category. They were subsequently invited to attend the IWEC conference in Brussels in October last year, and they also receive mentorship from three of the previous winners in this category. Susan and Magda enjoy giving back, and this initiative has been close to their hearts for the past three years.
The Fast Forward Fund differs from other funds such as the Beyers Truter Foetal Alcohol-Syndrome and interrelated Treatment Help Fund (Faith). While the Faith Fund concentrates on educating expectant mothers on the dangers of using alcohol during pregnancy, Fast-Forward focuses on providing equestrian therapy for youngsters suffering from the effects of the illness.
Horse riding has been proven to be an excellent form of therapy for individuals with special needs. It improves balance, posture, muscle tone and joint flexibility, as well as developing attention span, reasoning, memory and other cognitive functions. By working with programmes like Equitots, the fund gives FAS sufferers access to this excellent form of therapy.
Event details: September 2 at 9.30am for 10am.
Tickets: R300 (includes tapas meal, goodie bag, fashion parade, entertainment)
Tickets can be bought at Jade & Velvet stores: 28 Oxford Street, Durbanville (021 976 1382), Tyger Valley shop 56, Tyger Valley Centre, Bellville. (021 914 6878), Somerset West Mall, shop 37 (021 852 7692). Contact details to book if not able to visit one of these outlets: 021 981 0195 or e-mail info@choclatelace.co.za FACEAPP, an app that uses neural networks to transform your selfies in some rather eerie ways, has now introduced filters that promise to change your racial appearance.
The filters, available in the free version of the app, allow users to upload a selfie and select an Asian, black, Caucasian or Native American filter.
Considering that in-app filters have long struggled to contend with “digiplease give a careful read and post; feel free to change the category if needed. tal blackface”, these new filters felt to many like a strange escalation of the racial insensitivity that’s already plaguing face swopping and transforming apps.
In fact, FaceApp itself had to pull a “hot” filter in April, after users discovered that the filter was lightening skin.
The app didn’t use a diverse enough data set while training the filter to define “hotness”, which essentially meant the filter tried to make everyone look whiter to make them look more attractive. The company apologised.
FaceApp’s new additions were first discovered by a Mic reporter who, unlike me, had not deleted the app from her phone after its brief surge to popularity this year.
FaceApp sent a push alert to its users about the new filters on Wednesday in order to promote them.
As face-swopping apps such as FaceApp have got better at transforming the faces of their users, the debate over what, exactly, they permit has intensified.
When Snapchat introduced a Bob Marley filter on April, 20, 2016, a ton of people pushed back and said the filter was (a) racist and (b) specifically disrespectful to Marley’s legacy (Snapchat said at the time that the filter was developed with the co-operation of Marley’s estate).
And later that year, Snapchat introduced (and pulled) an “anime”-inspired filter that had quite a few similarities to racist caricature drawings of Asians.
In a statement to The Washington Post, FaceApp chief executive Yaroslav Goncharov defended the new filters.
“The ethnicity change filters have been designed to be equal in all aspects,” he wrote in an e-mail.
“They don’t have any positive or negative connotations associated with them. They are even represented by the same icon.
“In addition to that, the list of those filters is shuffled for every photo, so each user sees them in a different order.”
We asked Goncharov if he had a response to those who said the simple existence of the filters, and not the specific way FaceApp executed them, were the issue. He didn’t immediately respond.