IGF 2017 - Day 3 - Room XXII - WS141 Equipping Populations with Skills to Shape and Secure their Digital Future

 

The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Geneva, Switzerland, from 17 to 21 December 2017. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record. 

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>> MODERATOR: Thank you.  We have a little confusion because we're missing speakers.  We have equipping populations with the skills to shape their digital future.  This is a relevant issue for IGF this year.  It is at the intersection of what governments, businesses and civil society do best, which is to help adjust ‑‑ adjust skills ‑‑ to allow people to really work together to function well in what we see as a new and burgeoning technological future.  This is something my company BT has done a lot of work on in the U.K.  We focus on enabling teachers to teach classroom subjects on computing to school students.  You will hear about that from one of the online participants, Jon Chippindall.  I would like to introduce our speakers on the panel with me today

      We have Virat Bhatia from the Federation of Indian chambers of commerce and industry.  Elizabeth is joining online.  Jon Chippindall from the barefoot computing will join online.  Edward Choi is a net mission ambassador and Kenta Mochizuki is from Japan.  And Seurata.  Since we have a number of directors, we have to be conscious of times.  We will have a breakout discussion, we'll report back and conclude with key take aways.  Then more insights from panelists, including online.  And then we'll conclude. 

      Do you know if Jon is on the line yet?  Or should we move ahead? 

>> (?) This is from the government of Mexico.

>> MODERATOR: We have Jon, we should be able to hear him on audio, if you use your ear piece.

>> JON CHIPPINDALL: Can you hear me okay? 

>> MODERATOR: We can hear you okay.  We are bringing you up on video, we got you. 

>> JON CHIPPINDALL: Good morning from Manchester in England.  To my left, you have to shout over in Geneva.  This is Mia on my left.  And on my right?  Edwina.  We have prepared a couple of minutes to tell you what computing looks like in the classroom.  Do you want us to go straight into sharing that with you? 

>> MODERATOR: Yes, that would be great.  Thanks, Jon. 

>> JON CHIPPINDALL: Would you like to share what you prepared for us? 

     >> CHILD PRESENTER: (Not able to understand audio)



     >> JON CHIPPINDALL: There is a scratch game.  It is one of the languages to find the keyboards.  So this is the desert island to avoid the sharks, collect the coconuts game.  Do you want to tell us the making of it. 

>> CHILD PRESENTER: (Not able to understand audio)



     >> JON CHIPPINDALL: Thank you for sharing.  This is the native, this is to be a creative event here.  This is actually a piano that you can play.  So that is the top end of it.  And briefly from our key stage, I will swing this around to Abraham.  Abraham here is kind to share with everyone what he's been working on.  What programming language is it that you used?  If you didn't hear that, it is brax junior.  Tell them what ‑‑ it is an animation that you did. 

>> CHILD PRESENTER: (Unable to understand audio)



>> JON CHIPPINDALL: If you didn't hear that, this is some where you are supporting in the great world of London.  The example of the computing we do that is cross curricular.  So just briefly, I wanted to share the means to how our peoples kind of really engage with the nuances of competing.  Given that a lot of this stuff is available to use online, it is to partly ignite their curiosity and they go away and share it in their own time.  I hope that is a useful couple of minutes of what it looks like in our schools here.  Is that okay? 

>> MODERATOR: That is perfect, Jon.  Thanks.  Thank you for joining us.

>> JON CHIPPINDALL: I will give them house points to say thank you.  Wave, guys. 

>> MODERATOR: Indeed.  All right.  Okay.  So that was just a brief overview of some of the results of something that we, as in BT have been doing.  We created a program called barefoot computing two years ago, we took responsibility from the government for teaching teachers how to teach the computing curriculum.  It is something that we're really invested in. 

      We will shift gears slightly to Virat Bhatia from the Federation of Indian chambers of commerce.  Virat. 

>> VIRAT BHATIA: Thank you, Thomas.  Good morning.  I will try to represent the situation from India.  One of the most populous countries in the world.  Literacy is a problem, literacy itself is a big problem language is the issue, a dialect that changes every 10 or 12 kilometers, and no access to foreign devices.  There is literacy challenge and fairly serious increase because of the basically to see also the diversity of languages.  In the middle of all of this, the government of India has launched one of the ambitious ‑‑ one of the largest literacy programs, the (?) (Speaking non‑English language) it literally translates into the Prime Minister's rural literacy program.  It is a schema, proved by the cabinet in February.  It is allocated several million dollars to bring literacy to 16 million households by March 2019.  The basic program that they'll be taught will be adoption of new methods of cash actions, digital wallets, mobile banking, and structured data.  And how to work with national unique program.  The scheme is to launch 250,000 already by March 2017.  After 60 million targets, 28 million will be trained in 2018 and 30 million in 2019. 

      It is a fairly ambitious program as you can imagine.  But a drop of the ocean with the size of the population of India is concerned.  I think the pieces that will help get over some of the challenges that we have in terms of digital literacy and skills will be video.  I think the video is a big boon.  That will help people get the skills faster than they would if this is given out on text.  In the form that you and I normally consume data.  Lots of new innovations, national programs underway to build out this program and make sure that the bottom of the pyramid, which is all of India is being brought up.  The penetration of Internet in India is still about 350 million, which is about 25%.  The mobile telephony is about a billion subscribers.  We have the basic platform in place.

      Also the education system is such that there is a strong S.T.E.M. education, but it is the hulu portion that needs help.  This done in collaboration with the private secretaries, NGO, they would hopefully deliver the results in some ways, by 2019 and the next over 2019.  Thank you. 

     >> MODERATOR: Thank you, that is useful and good perspective from India.  It is interesting to hear you emphasize the multi stakeholder groups.  When we move to our breakout groups that might be interesting to discuss more.  Next on the line to Elizabeth Maya, if she's on. 

>> ELIZABETH MAYA: I'm ready.

>> MODERATOR: So if you can put on your ear piece.

>> ELIZABETH MAYA: Thank you.  Thank you very much.  As you are all aware, technologies change how we communicate and work.  The Mexican government introduced the reform that aim to digitalize the country, such as telecommunications reform.  Mexico has more than 121 million (?) 65 million act here in which 19 million are minors.  In this context, the (unable to understand audio)



Which allows the coordination efforts they're making to develop the skills and computation of thinking in skills to teachers in the full participation in experiencing the eccentric society.

      Moreover, the new education of mobile comes with the development of skills as part of the key learning in the new query.  And for the first time, teachers can incorporate in their planning or workshop that is providing.  (Unable to understand audio)

here, we have been trained more than 20,000 teachers, so they can (?).  Second, where we have been last on the platform, that is available online 24 hours, and have more than 2,000 sources.  In this inclusion initiative with the development workshops, that it is more than 10,000 students and teachers to promote the education awareness.  And we have a practical guidance for teachers to identify technology, for children to be facilitating and the participation of the international program to include women in ICT, promoted by the international communications area.  Regarding equipment and connectivity, we have developed the kind of projects that has allowed us to define the digital connectivity.  Finally, with the regulation complement, we have 32,000 students identify in the majority comparative skills at the basic level. 

      So we need to work on this.  Finally, with the (?) We are developing the Internet on the internship with the participation of more than 12,000 students.  That will be developed in the next year.  This is what we are doing.  Thank you very much for your attention. 

>> MODERATOR: Thank you.  That is excellent.  Just a question, if I can.  How have you gone about developing all of these education resources?  Did you consult with civil society and businesses?  How have you sort of structured your fact‑finding efforts in that area? 

>> ELIZABETH MAYA: Thank you for your question.  We have contracted with civil society and private company in order to have a quality process.  We are trying to ‑‑ it is a big ‑‑ a big front in which we cannot include content.  So we need to verify.  And we're doing it with a specific group.  And we have a big collaboration of others within the history.  In order to evaluate this content and activate this content and to ‑‑ of course, to (?) In the levels of education it is important for them today.

>> MODERATOR: Thanks.  That is helpful, Elizabeth.  Thank you.  So now I think we will move to breakouts.  We're actually going to do the breakouts in the middle of the session.  Then we'll come back and hear from a few more speakers. 

      So what we'll do in the breakouts, is I've got some sort of statistical paradoxes that I want you to look at and consider.  And the question should really be sort of how do you think digital skills training can work to help fix the paradox, and if the paradox was fixed, do you think that people would benefit? 

      So I'll break you up, if that's okay.  It looks like we're slightly uneven, but I think that would be fine.  If we can get Edward to maybe take the first group, which would be these guys on the right‑hand side.  And Kenta, if you want to take the first half of the middle section.  And then I'll take sort of the back half of that middle section.  And then Virat, if you want to take the left‑hand side here.  And then we'll reconvene in a half hour and we'll share insights from the discussion.  Thanks.

 

(Breakout discussions)



     >> MODERATOR: Okay.  Great.  Let's start back up.  Edward, did you have somebody from your group that wanted to present? 

>> EDWARD CHOI: Just me.  Okay.  In the U.K., many are using tablet computer, but actually only 4% of people.  They want to be the engineer or computer scientist in the future.  Is it a bad thing or negative thing?  No.  We are not having all people from U.K. or in a country to be the scientist or be an engineer.  We have to equip the digital skills on the basic skills, like C++ or software to decide a poster or generate the future.  So on the other hand, talking about education. 

      We don't need the university to be jobs oriented.  We want to have whole person development into a broader sense, not just about specifically engineer, but we have some about humanity, provocative, provoking stuff.  I think university is also the place that we learn how to learn, but not just only about to be a scientist or engineer.  Although there is some trend, some effort to be done is changing the ideology of the state by the government.  Because just only a few people want to be the engineer or scientist.  It is not healthy for the whole structure.  We hope by the pressurized of the government by the civil society and we hope that such phenomenon can be improved later.  Thank you. 

>> MODERATOR: Kenta?  Did you have somebody? 

>> KENTA MOCHIZUKI: Okay.  Thank you.  We talk about the survey, you know from the companies, the executives.  That is from Egypt, Japan, Italy, and U.K.  We talked about in some of the questions we said here, the first one, you know, according to the first ‑‑ maybe it is not just here, but companies in 2017 (?) Over 90% see it is important for their companies.  We discuss whether this sentence is true or not.  It seems like it reflects each country, but still, we need to identify more concrete, you know, meaning, you know, what kind of things they, you know, have in mind.  You know, when answering these questions.  So it's quite difficult for us to answer correctly these questions.  It seems like it reflects in our companies.  It depends on, you know, either or in the data, in countries or developing countries, you know, whether it is another region or northern or southern part of the region.  It depends on the geographical implication.

      The second question is kind of, you know, what implication of the products for society and also young people as well.  Actually, it is quite difficult, but, you know, one point that was mentioned is how to recommend the diversity to (?) And also, we have to think about, you know, how to educate, you know, children in this manner and get some necessary idea skills of how to defend from the (?)

      Actually, you know, I got another question.  Like, how does lack of this play in the products of the country or region?  Don't have the answer.  So we skip this question.  And the last two questions, another one is what concept is stemmed from the products?  It is a simple answer.  So one is equality, you know, employment, I mean improvement of employment, innovation and also economic growth.

      The final question is, you know, the role of different stakeholders.  So we talk about, you know, governments, business, civil society, technical community.  So maybe, you know, governments think about how to support, you know, a startup or some small event in crisis by setting some kind of policy or rule‑making on that.  At the same time, you know, businesses should cooperate with other schools or issues, you know, how to say improve the educational system or you know, just educate the student there.  So that is the business.  Civil society, this is a discussion that wasn't in depth, but it seems like it is in the business sector and also academia, and this is supposed to be to educate civil society to understand what we are doing, you know, when providing services to them. 

      The typical community, as I said, it is similar to the business sector.  Still, the technical community sometimes includes academia, teachers, some other things.  That's it.  Thank you. 

>> MODERATOR: Okay.  Thanks a lot, Kenta.  My group.  Do you want to introduce yourself and give a summary? 

>> SAMAR BABA: Hello, my name is Samar Baba, I am the CEO of a project called to vaso.  Okay.  Through our discussion, we discussed the gender in terms of accessibility of Internet, and how can we create learning environment so we empower women by using technology.  We give some examples about that.  We shared some thoughts and we had some overviews from different countries from Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Europe, et cetera.  And yes, I think that there is a big gap between the use of Internet between man and woman.  And we have to make them aware about the importance of using technology.  That's it.  Thank you. 

>> MODERATOR: Excellent.  Thanks.  It sounds like a lot of the same thoughts were shared across each of the groups, but sort of at different levels, and depending on whether you are talking about a developed or developing country and what the remedies for some of the issues might be. 

      So we're going to jump back into presentations from some of our panelists.  I will pass it off to Edward. 

>> EDWARD CHOI: Good morning everyone.  Edward Choi here ‑‑

>> MODERATOR: I'm sorry.  Virat, do you mind summarizing your group's discussion? 

>> VIRAT BHATIA: I thought I had done something wrong.  I had one of the most amazing groups.  We had Sweden, Switzerland, China, Afghanistan, Bolivia, India, we make up the whole world and a great representative from ‑‑ she's Dutch and is going to present right now.  Go ahead, take it away.

>> ATTENDEE: Yeah, we had a very diverse group.  We had a discussion on the paradox between the people who have access to the Internet and those who don't.  The paradox is seemingly that those who don't have much more to gain from the Internet.  We were wondering first whether this is a paradox or this just makes sense?  (Chuckling). 

      What we talked about is that access can have very different meanings and opportunities.  And the interaction between access and skills is that when people have access and use the Internet as a daily complement of life, the skills they might be able to get skills either by ‑‑ through the use itself or before using it.  Because a lack of skills can also be an obstacle to access.  And we discovered that access to the Internet and use of skills is important to be invoked in society especially from an employment angle.  But we saw that Marcus might not be responding to the right needs when thinking about interventions to improve digital skills, also for employment in the developing countries. 

      We were thinking about okay, what kind of skills should be taught?  We were focusing on language quite a bit.  And also because language might allow everyone to unleash their intelligence, so to say, on the Internet and we might all be benefitting from that.  And also someone pointed out that education should not be perceived as just something to be done when you're young, but that this ‑‑ it doesn't end at a certain age, it should be lifelong.  And maybe also very importantly, we also because we were looking at this divide, but we thought digital skills and awareness is needed, not only for developing countries, but also in developed countries.  But especially on issues like how could children use the Internet in a responsible and safe way or how to be aware of security risks?  These kind of issues.  Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Excellent.  Thanks.  I agree your observation that that is probably not a paradox, but does seem to make sense.  Perfect.

      Okay.  Now Edward with apologies to Virat. 

>> EDWARD CHOI: That is on Hong Kong and Internet in Asia.  I would like to talk about the Internet in Hong Kong.  90% of youth having mobile phones or iPad, but not much people get involved in the Internet governance stuff because they have no incentive and no awareness about this.  Although they're a native speaker, but have no fundamental skills about the ICT.  It is because of the curriculum of the education system.  It is not compulsory for people to learn the ICT subject.  There is no C++ program taught in Hong Kong for the secondary student.  So they have no concept about this.  I think the main skills we should focus for youth to ensure their digital future is by the C++ society input into the governance about how many stakeholder involved in our IGF.  Or other skills like the data analysis.  And to discuss how to engage those people, the youth in Hong Kong to have better capacity about the Internet governance issue.  So I would like to introduce our initiative, net mission DotAsia.  Is an ambassador program supported by net mission DotAsia. 

      We hope to have volunteers to get devoted to improving Internet inclusion.  We think it is a hot topic throughout the world, actually in Hong Kong, not much people know about this.  It is for the tertiary student, from the university or higher institution in Hong Kong, and we have to promote the Internet governance issues such as digital inclusion, like the economy and other concept.  We hope to have youth teach that to other youth in Kong Hong.  We have youth internet forum.  It is for secondary student.

      If we don't improve such knowledge for youngster, they will not have incentive to go into that fora.  It is our goal to have a secondary stun, to have a competition about how to use the Internet more effectively.

      I hope that ‑‑ we hope that those experience can push the people to have more knowledge base about the Internet governance issue.  That's what we have done for the past two years.  And actually, I think about ‑‑ apart from this corporation of different stakeholders, we have the youthful right, that is the initiative for many difficult issues impacting them.  It is a multi stakeholder initiative.  All in all, we hope in Hong Kong, we are doing a youth‑led initiative, but not about people from the older stage.  Because we think and we believe that our generation is native user of the Internet.  It is a bottom‑up approach to learn how to get involved in the Internet governance issue and also to have in the capacity building for the Hong Kong youngest people.  Thank you. 

>> MODERATOR: Excellent.  Thanks.  Samar, do you want to give your thoughts?  Microphone. 

     >> SAMAR BABA: Oh, yes.  Sorry.  Sorry.  So I'm going to start introducing the project that we're working on.  Like I said, it's called TAO ASU.  It is TAO ASU.  We want to do this by investing in youth, technology and S.T.E.M. for means of empowering connection and problem solving.  In two ways.  We will connect people publicly by providing Internet access.  We will try to build a process to foster interaction between communities. 

      And we do ‑‑ we are doing this to create a new community oriented mind‑set where social connection and change are the most as a key value.  Just so you know, in Tunisia, we only have 40% of schools that are connected.  So in classes that you don't use Internet at all.  The government now is starting an initiative to go along with the project.  They're trying to start smart schools that use technology and trying to provide tablets and computers, but for the next five years.  With our project, we are starting this and we have the support of our government, and with the support of I triple E, too.  So we're making it happen.  We're providing workshops about how to use the Internet between kids.  We teach them how to code, through scratch for the kids, C++, java python for the older one.  We recognize competitions to motivate them.  We are providing content that contains information about the fields of study, videos that facilitate 200% what they're studying, so on.  So we're trying to raise awareness on the meaningful activity to empower youth.  So that's what we are doing in Tunisia through our project.  Thank you. 

>> MODERATOR: That is excellent.  Sounds like a fantastic initiative.  Great to hear about that.  We will go to Seurat is from one world connected.

>> SEURAT: We're doing a project that is trying to innovatively connect people to the Internet on supply and demand side.  With respect to this session, I want to focus on the project that we have that is tied to building capacity.  We have 153 country case studies.  We have done interviews with the projects and a third are literacy or have additional literacy side in the skills training competence to them.  37 to 40 of them, if I am not wrong.

      In our work, the research we're doing right now from the 37 odd interviews we have conducted, we realize skills training takes two key forms.

The first form that we catalog is basic literacy training with respect to how to use computers and basic applications with computers and basic applications on the Internet, such as e‑mail. 

      We notice another form that is also predominant in our research, which is in terms of teaching specific ICT skills.  And coding is more often than not across the world.  I want to give two themes that are emerging since I have a short time to talk about this.  A lot of the case studies engage in engaging the local communities to understand local context and trainers to build trust and create an environment where learning can happen.  This is especially true in instances where we are bringing the Internet for the first time.  Where people are more often than not aware of the technology they're being introduced to.

      We realize that the digital skills training benefit from having local engagement, not just from large civil society organization, at the national level, but often local village leaders or community level participants and training the trainers is often a skill that ‑‑ it is a process that has often yielded results.  I want to point to a couple of examples.  One in India, a program called digital squares, that is led by the NIT foundation in American tower.  Which tends to have learning stations installed in about 51 village squares in India where they collaborate and coalesce with the local community to identify one trainer that can get training from the NIIT foundation.  That goes into the national digital literacy initiative.  That leads to more update than the foreign who are doing the same with the curricular that is not tailored to the particular need.  In Rwanda, the trust works on a program called ambassadors program that is trying to, like again, train digital ambassadors in Rwanda to go to villages and create hubs or schools where they have groups that coalesce with each other and do not just skills training, but skills training for businesses. 

      If they are primarily agriculture in nature, it is not really how to use Word and e‑mail training, but how do you use your mobile phone for access to the nearest market price.  Or how do you use the products better online, if you are a handicraft company.  These are ways in which digital skills training are leading to ‑‑ creating more impact than just training us with the tools.  These are just a couple of examples of stories.  We have more at our booth.  Drop by, share more about our work.  Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Awesome, thanks.  Kenta? 

>> KENTA MOCHIZUKI: Thank you.  (?) I will show a brief snapshot on the situation in Japan.  We have a 120 million population.  But in 2015 our population will be over one hundred million.  At the same time according to the statistics our labor productivity is the poorest among the G7 countries.  We have to improve this populational problem and labor productivity problems.

      So now government sets the one agenda, the 5.0 to chive a high convergence between cyber space and (?).  This year, the cabinet of Japan approve the strategy called investments for future strategy of 2017.

      There, you know, that document is very lengthy.  There are several points, you know, strengths in the ‑‑ like, education and I.T. human resources.  Now because of limited time I cannot explain here.  If you are interested, I can share some of the information with you.  Please speak to me after the session.  Our company taking efforts in the government.  You know, we are in cooperation with the cyber university in Japan, providing on‑site and online costs where students can run how to, you know, sell the products online or open the store in ‑‑ actually a platform from providing the code, that is the e‑Commerce website.  The students can learn how to, you know, open the store and also how to deal with kind of a transaction that is apart from the customers.

      Again, limited time.  So if you need information on this, please reach out to me after this.  Thank you very much. 

>> MODERATOR: Thanks, Kenta.  We have 10 minutes, maybe under 10 minutes to do questions.  Anybody have a question for a panelist?  Sure, up‑front.

>> QUESTION: Briefly, I wanted to say thank you to ICC for organizing this and the panelist.  We work with IPT and large companies.  I want to get in contact with all of you afterwards.  I wonder OTC would organize something like in the future.  I would be happy to participate in that.

>> MODERATOR: This is an area that is of interest to us.  I found in particular our breakout discussion interesting.  As Virat said, was amazed at the variety of stakeholders and some of the common threads in our discussion.  I at least, and I'm sure ICT would be happy to facilitate the discussion. 

>> QUESTION: Thank you very much.  This is Dr. Suvichy.  Your calculations would be very interesting.  We found digital literacy to be a key pillar in terms of opportunities and barriers.  Have you been able to look at large clusters where you're classifying data vis‑à‑vis funding is concerned?  What kind of impact you are looking at?  If you could speak more to that, I'm fascinated.  Congratulations again, it is a fantastic initiative. 

>> SAMAR BABA: Thank you very much.  I am happy to share preliminary insights from the study already.  What we realize is a lot of programs tend to be periodic IE, like event oriented.  We're trying to see if those event oriented studies can have a long impact.  For instance, we have several studies that we saw in the 740 database that were ICT for X day.  Or X for these days or camps that happen every six months but aren't a sustained engagement overall.  We have had much in terms of showing that they have a long‑term impact.  We realize if you pair them with mentors they can have after the coding camp or after their session, more often than not, the relationships tend to last.  This is anecdotal.  Because the case studies are in terms of the context they deploy.  I wanted to point out that the formulations of the relationships tend to have more of an impact on the long run.  With respect to large programs, one of the programs that we studied in India was the learning modules created by Intel in 2012 that are no longer being updated.  We felt that one of the basic steps that were created by Intel for use were useful and used in collaboration with the national literacy mission.  A lot of work needs to be done to tie the tools in application to actual outcome.  And we see that that is something that is happening in a lot of other case studies wherein we learn not just to use Word but build a resume.  We see more impact ‑‑ when I say "impact" I don't mean quantitatively statistical impact, but I have gotten a job because I attended this program where I was taught how to do a resume and e‑mail it out to employers and get access to job portal.

      Those are two or three take-aways that we have.  Digital skills have to be tied to outcomes, not just processes.  And barriers often end up being you are training them in process without really looking at the end outcome.  Peer learning networks that are created around digital skills tend to last because these people look for a communities, when they come online, you look at areas, where communities are searching and becoming part of the community.  This is often a stepping stone for them to engage online for a long‑term.  This is something that do well.  Tend to bend a specific focus.  Especially true if you are trying to do gender‑based initiatives.  We realize that this is something that happened.  The she will connect initiative, also a study we did in three countries in Africa, Kenya design.   (?) It is an application that people can create and share opportunities and also have like opportunities to network with respect to entrepreneurs, training in Africa.  If that is helpful. 

>> MODERATOR: Excellent.  More questions?  In the back? 

>> QUESTION: Hello?  Hello?  I'm Esther.  How do you navigate the cultural constraints when it comes to dealing with different cultures and what a woman can do or is not allowed to do?  Because I am working with a youth organization, digital grassroots to reach out to local communities who are not aware of Internet.  And as you mentioned, there is some type of ‑‑ not everyone is open to new things.  So how do you ‑‑ how do you address the culture, specifically for gender based.

>> MODERATOR: Do you want to take this one?



>> PANELIST: I can provide research insights from the research.  With the cultural specificity, we found including that member of the community in your program as a champion of the program helps.  Creating local champions that can take forward to the community with the already set network really helps.  We have noticed this is something that worked not just with gender based initiatives but connectivity issues overall.  I would point to Carlos Ph.D. where we talks about the communities broadly and the success of community networks often tends to pivot around having one local champion that can get the idea and socialize the idea within that community.  We have one in ‑‑ a remote island is being connected for the first time.  An indigenous community of about 2000 people.  And like the local champion in that instance is a peace corps volunteer who realize the people have to travel two days to get to the nearest hospital and wanted to use telemedicine and get Internet there and socialize people within that community to the Internet and build capacity there.

      We have members of the community here at IGF this year.  We're grateful.  We had to understand it mattered forward them to understand the concept initiative.  The way it was pitched is that we're in a community with a high incidence of death by virtue of lack of access to medicine.  If we get the Internet and I teach you how to use the Internet to be able to access a doctor, would you not be using it more?  That has led to 100 lives being saved in the last year in that context.  So culturally, I think use the current context.  Identify the need.  And like, intervene at the right level using a person that has already got trust networks or already got a social structure that they can socialize the idea into.  I think identifying the champions might be valuable to your work.

>> MODERATOR: Let's check.  I think we have time for one more question, maybe.  Let's check to see if we have anything online.  Any online questions? 

>> There was one response from online.  If you would like, I can read it.

>> MODERATOR: That would be great. 

>> Just a second. 

So Chris Ojunoko wrote that many in my country, and many of the educated or well to do look uninterested in ICT.  This adds to those that are interested but can't make sense of content and languages of the Internet and other ICTs.  And he also wrote I initiated, organ iced and am coordinating a teaching project for lecturers to teach them how to adopt ICTs as teaching aids for enhancing learning.  Most were skeptical, seeing only the dark side of implementing technology.  Electrical supply, some other issues students may have, there is absence of failing list to accept change, and make sacrifices to get things done.  Lack of commitment.  This made them present nothing in the sense of affordable approaches in the success given to them during the kickoff training.  It is being redundant after being acquired.

>> MODERATOR: Thanks.  We will wrap up.  I would like to say thank you to everybody being for participating.  I found it useful.  I think we achieved our objective on the digital skills and tech issues.  There are threads that cut across those.  Make sure we train the trainers, providing access, skills training at the same time.  The benefits of early youth engagement.  You know, the need for basic literacy skills and tech literacy.  And so on.  But I just want to say thank you very much.  Hopefully we'll have a chance to continue this discussion soon.  Thank you. 

(Applause)



(Session concluded at 11:43 a.m. CET)