 Hi there, everyone. I'd like to welcome you to our webinar for the Edmund Hillary Fellowship. I'm Andre Bate, and I'm joined by our content and communications lead, Alina Siegfried. And by Paula Nimmi, who is our operations assistant, who will be helping out in the background, answering a bunch of questions. And on that as well, there are two ways that you can communicate with us at the moment. One is via the Q&A, and we'll ask if you have questions for us about EHF. If you could ask them in there, that would be a great way for us to see and respond to your questions. The chat window, which a couple of you added in when we asked the question, can you hear us? That is more for just things like, oh, we can't hear you, or those kind of logistical type things. But if you have particular questions around EHF, if you could ask them in the Q&A box, that would be great. Okay, so thank you so much for joining us, and we're keen to let you know more about the Edmund Hillary Fellowship. We're bringing together a group of world-changing entrepreneurs and investors who are gonna create global change from New Zealand, and we're excited to tell you more about that. As you can see from this slide here, we're keen to bring together the best of humankind's entrepreneurial potential to tackle global challenges from New Zealand. I'm gonna unpack that for you here in this webinar. Just to add as well, something I forgot to mention is that I'll be handing over shortly to Alina, who will tell you more about her first cohort around the support that we provide. Then towards the back end of the webinar, I'll be talking more about our selection process, and I'm the selection lead, so hopefully I can fill you on on that. And then at the very end, there'll be a chance for questions. So if you have any questions for us around the Edmund Hillary Fellowship, if you could please add them into that Q&A box, which if you click on that option should be down the bottom of your screen. You can bring that up. Thank you. And we can answer some of the questions as they come up, and some of them at the end, so don't be shy. Okay, so let me tell you here a bit more about the fellowship. So we're wanting to build a platform that helps entrepreneurs and investors who are doing innovative things from New Zealand, as well as being a platform. It's also building a community of people. So we're interested in people who are gonna contribute to other fellows and help them to succeed. Part of the benefit of EHF is the ability to access the global impact visa, and it's a very attractive entrepreneurial and investor friendly visa. And we'll, with a path to permanent residency and we'll cover that in more detail as well. So in terms of numbers, every year we have up to 100 international and 20 Kiwi fellows per year. And one thing I'll say about that is that that's not a target. The number that we take will end up depending on the applicants who apply. So for example, in our first cohort, we had around 30 applicants apply, sorry, 30 applicants who became fellows. And in the future, it could be smaller or larger than that, it really depends on the mix of people that we have. The fellowship is a three year fellowship. And then after the three years, we want to connect with people who've been fellows as alumni, and so we expect an ongoing connection with people beyond the three years. Let me tell you a little bit more about the global impact visa. So there are 400 visas that we can potentially issue between this year and 2021. And as mentioned earlier, that's a maximum, and we're not necessarily gonna issue that many. It depends on the quality of people that we find and the fit with the program. The visa is very open and flexible, open in terms of enabling you to spend time outside of New Zealand. There are no minimum requirements in terms of the number of days that you need to spend in New Zealand. So it's really designed with global citizens in mind. People who want to build a meaningful connection with New Zealand, but equally people who, in many cases, have strong connections overseas as well and need to spend time building and nurturing those. And that could be connected to the ventures or investments that they're connected to. Beyond global impact visas for people who are fellows, there are additional visas available for family members. And you can find more about that on the Immigration New Zealand website. There are guides around that. So say, for example, if you're applying as an individual for a global impact visa, your family might be eligible for partner or family type visas. They wouldn't be a global impact visa, but that'd be another visa type that could give them access to live and operate in New Zealand. As I alluded to earlier, the global impact visa gives a pathway to residency. So after 30 months of your having your global impact visa, you can apply for permanent residency. And the steps towards that are simplified if you've come from having a global impact visa compared to if you applied for residency from scratch. And the last thing to say is that being part of EHF is the only way to qualify for a global impact visa. And how it works is that the people that we accept into the Edmund Hillary Fellowship, you then go on to apply for a global impact visa. Okay, now I'm gonna hand over to Elena to talk more about the Edmund Hillary Fellowship. Fantastic, thank you, Andre. So let's jump on to the next slide. It's just a quick agenda of what we're gonna be going over and we're gonna try and get through this reasonably quickly so we leave lots of time at the end for questions. So in a nutshell, we really are looking with EHF to build a global community of change makers that are based in New Zealand, but they're really quite globally focused on one of the big issues that the world is facing and how can we create scalable models to solve some of those problems. This infographic gives you a bit of a summary of our first cohort of fellows. So our first cohort of fellows are due to join us in New Zealand next month in October. We had about 658 expressions of interest, so people just getting in touch by our website and telling us about their idea. That turned into 311 applications and from that we took 30 fellows in the end. So as you can see here, it is a rather competitive process. Andre's gonna tell you a bit more later on about our selection process and about how we make those decisions of who gets into the cohort. But yeah, we really do assess each application on its own merits and against the others in that applicant pool. You'll see also there we have a pretty even gender split in this first cohort as well, which is fantastic to see. Just gonna give you a bit of a sense here of some of the fellow profiles that we've got in our first cohort. We've used pseudonyms here. Some of our international applicants are still in the final stages of getting their global impact visa issued, so we can't name them at this point. But these are all real people that have been accepted into our first cohort. And just a note, you can actually read all about our first fellows on our blog at the moment. The URL there will be at the end of this webinar, we'll have a screen, but it's stories.ehf.org is the address to look up if you wanna read about it fellows. So Mark co-founded one of the world's leading cryptocurrency exchange platforms. That valuation has in fact more than doubled since we had this slide, so we need to update that. He's now looking to New Zealand to build another generation really of blockchain companies here in New Zealand. June and Kathy have applied as a team, one being a NASA engineer turned entrepreneur and one leading one of Europe's sort of really top level festivals that focuses on the sharing economy and on collaboration. They are evolved with Inspiral who you can see in the next profile, which is a network I'll talk a little bit about in a minute. But Anaheira, one of our fellow profiles here is a Maori entrepreneur here in New Zealand who's really helping to empower Maori communities and really apply indigenous wisdom and indigenous ways of thinking about the economy and the world to the work that she is doing. Wang is an investor, splits him's time between Hong Kong, Silicon Valley and China. He's launched a couple of venture capital funds, has invested a bunch of companies, including the platform on which we are doing this webinar today, Zoom. He's a real global citizen who's got connections in a lot of different countries and spends quite a lot of time traveling and talking to entrepreneurs. Maria is an education entrepreneur and enthusiast, co-founded a non-profit organization that works with hundreds of thousands of teachers across Latin America and she's really looking to expand that program into New Zealand and the Pacific region. This is a good point to introduce the idea that EHF is open to a lot of different business models so there could be very much traditional for-profit businesses right down through the social enterprise spectrum to non-profit organizations. The key is that they are scalable models that can be replicated elsewhere. May is a leader in clean energy and sustainability in China and has had a lot of influence there in terms of making China's cities more green and educating China's policy makers about climate change and what they can do. She's also very passionate about education and is looking at an education-based venture for kids around nutrition and how our eating is connected to climate change and what we can do in that regard. So what we're looking to do here is take people from a variety of different backgrounds and at different stages of their entrepreneurial career and really help them grow as passionate leaders for the impact entrepreneurship space. We do that by bringing together our fellows and our wider community quite regularly with live events. We obviously host online ways for them to communicate with others out there in the world but a lot of what we do is focused around really connecting in person. So we twice a year hold an event called New Frontiers. This is where some of those photos were taken where we bring together not just our fellows but some of the wider innovation community from around New Zealand and also from around the world to really come together and have the space to talk with each other about ideas for how we can improve the world and make it better. This is just a few shots from our event back in February. This slide gives you an idea of what our fellows are actually doing. So this is from our inaugural cohort. The obviously the bigger the word, the more people we've got involved working in that space. And this is by no means exhaustive. So it just gives you an idea of the industries that our fellows are working in and the yellow or orange text is the actual challenge areas, the global problem areas that they're working in. So it just gives you a real good overview of the diversity of our cohort. This gives you an idea of where our fellows are all have got business connections to. So each of those lines represents a country where our fellows either have lived for more than a year or consider that they have solid business connections within. Next slide please, Andre. What we're looking to do is build a world-class support network. As I said a moment ago, it's really about the network around our fellows. So you'll see in this circle here, we've got the inner circle of the immediate people involved in the fellowship, the fellows themselves, the teams, the alumni of the program and Immigration New Zealand is quite involved there, obviously with the global impact visa. But around the outside, we've got a lot of different support organizations or the wider EHF community that are really supporting our fellows and helping them grow their work beyond just the core. So that includes organizations within New Zealand, on the right-hand side there, incubators, accelerators, economic development agencies, government organizations that are focused on innovation, as well as the global network around investors, entrepreneurship networks, ambassadors and an independent EHF selection panel as well. This gives you just a little bit of an idea of the kind of organizations that our fellows have been associated with. These aren't organizations that we have partnerships or anything like that, but they rather just gives you a sense of the kind of reach and the kind of wider communities that our fellows represent. Can I talk now a little bit about New Zealand and why we see this really as an ideal incubation nation down here at the bottom of the world. We think of New Zealand's amazing place to live. A lot of the international research supports that idea. We have really strong political rights and civil liberties in New Zealand. We were the first place in the world to get women the right to vote. We legalized same-sex marriage a couple of years ago and we're consistently ranked as the least corrupt country in the world by transparency international. Famously, Nuclear Free, where the second most peaceful country in the world. Also, somewhat of a leader in the world with indigenous relationships and rights based on the Treaty of Waitangi. As I've mentioned there, we gave women the vote very early and we have, obviously, often cited as one of the most diverse, creative and generous nations in the world. We're also a really great place for building ventures and doing business. So the World Bank has ranked us for the last few years as first in the world for ease of doing business. We're uniquely placed between East and West so we have good relations with both of those and we have a really well-educated workforce as well. Really great place for innovation. So Glenn Martin was a guy who invented the world's first personal jet pack here in New Zealand. Facebook is regularly using New Zealand to test new features and roll new features out here before the rest of the world. And Google as well, test products here. They've launched Project Loom, which is their project to put wireless on weather balloons and take it out to less developed countries. Here, we're just gonna tell you a little bit about some of the organisations that have come out of New Zealand. Weta Digital is well-known for their work in blockbuster films like Avatar, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit movies and King Kong. So really leading storytelling firm there. Zero is working in finance and one of perhaps the biggest success stories to come out of New Zealand, personal accounting software. Lanza Tech are a really innovative organisation who are turning basically waste industrial gas into useful fuels. Excuse me a moment. I'm happy to take over for a little bit, Alina, if that's helpful. Yeah, so you mentioned about Lanza Tech basically using waste from the steel making process to power under great jet fuel using some very smart catalysts. So that was some homegrown New Zealand science which has now partnered up with some of the world's biggest steel companies and airlines, for example, Virgin Airlines are a partner. Okay, Rocket Lab, very interesting story of a Kiwi guy who loved blowing things up and trying to get them high into the sky. So he got a bunch of venture capital funding for developing a civilian space industry. So for example, getting those satellites and other things that need to go up into space. And one thing to note about that is that he worked with the New Zealand government and they helped develop legislation that enabled his venture to be able to access space. So legally and otherwise to be able to access that. And they've also worked with local government to find a place that worked for them as a launch site which is on the east coast of the North Island. Two more stories to talk to you about here. One is Sunfed Meats which is making plant-based meat alternatives which tastes as good as meat without the associated environmental effects. Then over to the right, we have Inspiral which is a group of socially minded entrepreneurs which started in New Zealand and now attracts people from all around the world. And it's the way that they organize themselves and lead themselves is in a radically decentralised mode. Just seeing a question there about whether Kiwis and internationals can be part of a team. So the answer to that is yes, if you're an international, so either if applying as an individual or as a team it can either if you're an individual, sorry, even if you're an international or Kiwi or you have a team that has both, that's all fine. Okay, I'm gonna talk a little bit more here and just to say as well, Alina, if you're feeling better, feel free to jump in but I'm happy to keep going. Okay, so here's just a bit of a recap about EHF. So it's a community of people who are change makers. So the community side is important. So getting support from other people who are doing like-minded things. It's a platform to collaborate and grow. So we're helping connect you with institutions and people in New Zealand and globally that will help your venture to grow. A world-class support network. So helping link you and support you and with the potential for a long-term connection to New Zealand, both with a global impact visa but then the option for a permanent residency or a process for permanent residency after that. Okay, let me talk a little bit here about how fellows create global impact. So the first one there called building is through creating a venture that's gonna scale. So maybe you create a venture and it goes from operating in one place to something that scales globally. Secondly, there's investing. So providing funding to other ventures which are gonna go on to create global impact. Thirdly, experimenting. So could be that you're developing new ways of approaching a certain problem and maybe potentially you're not quite at the scaling phase but you're able to develop new things that others can learn from to help grow. Connecting is the fourth one. So if you're able to connect New Zealand entrepreneurs and investors who are part of EHF or otherwise to global networks, that can be a great way of leveraging New Zealand's ability to create global impact. And then finally, helping support New Zealand's innovation community. So that could involve you getting to know people and finding out what's happening and finding ways to help New Zealand's innovation ecosystem continue to grow and thrive. Just gonna answer a few questions while we've got them there. So one question is around if a venture has a husband and wife, do they apply as one? So if you're applying with the same venture, then that's a team. So if your husband and wife who work together on a venture then applying as a team makes sense and that's one application. And another question is first-time entrepreneur, is a first-time entrepreneur eligible for the fellowship with limited financial resources in hand? So what I'd say on that one is that I'll come to that question actually a little bit later in terms of our selection criteria. So maybe I'll cover that up there. And then there's a question around do you encourage reapplying? Someone who's an entrepreneur and an investor, should they apply, which one should they apply for? Okay, so we'll come to criteria a little bit later on. So whether it makes sense for you to reapply completely depends on your context. So it's completely up to you. It's not for us to say whether it makes sense for you to reapply. So when we come, both of those two questions, when we come to our selection criteria, I think that I'll help explain those that way. And if it doesn't sufficiently answer your question then feel free to come back to us with another follow-up. Okay, well this is a good segue actually. Thank you for both of those questions in terms of what we're, or who we're looking for. I'll cover that off. First thing to say is that we're called the Edmund Hillary Fellowship based on Sir Edmund Hillary. So Sir Edmund Hillary along with Tending Norgay were the first to successfully scale and return from Mount Everest. And Sir Edmund also conducted or participated in Antarctic explorations as well. And beyond his adventurous mountaineering, he was involved in helping build a number of schools in Nepal and hospitals. So let me talk about our values. So the first one is boldness. So we want people who are gonna do bold things, people who are gonna do things in a new way, things that are gonna create big impact. Second one is interconnectedness. So people who are going to be, help New Zealand connect with other parts of the world. So if you're someone who has a wide array of contacts that you can help connect people to, that's an advantage. Third one is around excellence. So the value there is to be doing things not just so-so or okay, but to be really at the top of your field. Fourth one is around global impact. And we've been talking a lot about that here. So doing things that are gonna create positive systemic change that will create cultural economic or social benefits. Authenticity is important, so being vulnerable and bringing your whole self. Stewardship, both of your own talents, but also of the earth's resources. And lastly, humility. And that was linked to Sir Edmund Hillary as well. He was a very humble person. Selection criteria for the fellowship is as follows. And we're looking for, this includes both investors and it includes entrepreneurs. And thank you for both of you who ask those questions. So and hopefully I'll help answer your questions in context to these selection criteria. So the first criteria here is that you have a bold vision to solve systemic challenges in society. And as I mentioned before, to create large scale positive impact for New Zealand in the world. That could be environmental, social, economic, cultural. So systemic solving systemic challenges, it means changing the system basically. So creating a venture that's not just gonna do things the same way but it's gonna change the system in a way that's gonna lead to positive outcomes. A second criteria is around the driving capability to deliver on your vision. So we're not just interested in people who have great ideas. We're interested in your ability to actually turn it into reality. And so to that question around from someone who was a first time entrepreneur, what I'd say is that experience as an entrepreneur is always will help in this in terms of demonstrating your ability to deliver on your vision. If you are a first time entrepreneur, you can demonstrate your capability through your first venture. So we'll definitely be looking at what kind of progress have you made on your venture. What I would say as well is that when we selected our first cohort, a key thing that distinguished people who got accepted from those that didn't was people who had demonstrated their ability to make progress on their projects. And as the second criteria is there, people who could deliver on their vision. The third selection criteria is the ability to form long-term connections with New Zealand and leverage our unique advantages. Ways that you could do this would include things like having spent time in New Zealand, having done research on how your venture or investment opportunities would work in New Zealand, and having built connections with people here could be industry partnerships or suppliers. So the more you can do to show that you have a viable long-term connection with New Zealand. Number four is your ability to actively and positively contribute to the EHF community. So we're looking at how we think you'd be in the context of a cohort. Do we see you as someone who would contribute to others? Do we see you as someone that we see ourselves working with over the next 10 to 20 years? And so I guess we're looking at people who are interested in contributing to others, but also your ability as well to what you would provide, what are your next skills or perspectives or networks that you would bring that would contribute to a thriving cohort of other change makers? And then finally, we're interested in people who can embody EHF's values and be great ambassadors. And we talked about the values prior, so that should hopefully give you a sense of that. They're on our website as well. People who'd be great ambassadors for New Zealand, so people who are gonna represent as well. Okay, so there was an earlier question about someone being an entrepreneur or an investor and which of those would make sense for them. Once again, that one is completely up to them and we have some people, for example, who have been entrepreneurs and now at the stage of the life that they're at, they're interested in being investors. So it's completely up to you, but we have had people in the past who have had elements of both and they applied for one of the two. And we will look at your application against the selection criteria that you can see here on the slide. And we've got another question here about whether it's mandatory for applicants to have an established or registered business and how does it work if you have a bold vision but without an established venture? So what I'd say here is that we'd be looking at the selection criteria number two, which is your ability to deliver on your vision. So that'll be something that we're looking at. If you can demonstrate your progress with a particular venture or previous ones in the past or other experience that's highly relevant in terms of starting and scale innovative ventures, then that can contribute to your answer in number two. But if you've not got a lot that will help demonstrate your ability to deliver on your vision, then that will be something that limits your ability to be a fellow. I'm gonna talk now about the criteria for getting a global impact visa. And how it works, as I mentioned, I alluded to earlier, is that once, if someone's accepted to the fellowship, they've then given the opportunity to apply to Immigration New Zealand for a global impact visa. And what we're talking about in the bullet points below is around Immigration New Zealand's criteria. And we look at these as well because if someone is not gonna meet Immigration New Zealand's criteria for a global impact visa, then there's little point in us having them as, you know, accepting them as fellows because they're not gonna get the global impact visa. And that is to say as well, this is for people who are applying from overseas who don't already have New Zealand permanent residency or citizenship. So if someone is wanting to apply who already has a New Zealand citizen or permanent resident, then they don't need to worry about this in terms of global impact visas. Okay, so acceptable standards of health and character. So there'll be questions asked around your medical status and there'll be medical checks required there. There'll be questions asked around character in terms of police checks and in terms of whether you have, for example, been bankrupt or been involved with fraud or other types of things like that. The second one in terms of criteria here from Immigration New Zealand is looking at your language, English language proficiency. So and the team at, selection team at the Edmund Hillary Fellowship will be able to contribute to this as well. So if we, through our interactions with you have confidence that you have sufficient English to do business well in New Zealand, then our recommendation on that will assist in terms of showing that you are proficient at English. The third one is around maintenance funds. So you need to show that you either have New Zealand dollars 36,000 or the ability to earn that per year. And that's so that we can be sure that you'll be able to support yourself financially once you come here, especially in your first year. Fourth question, so fourth criteria is that this is for investor's only actually that your funds that you're bringing to New Zealand are legally acquired. And you can learn more at the Immigration New Zealand website. And they will have more details unpacking each of these criteria in more depth. We have a question here saying that a hundred percent of students especially professionals like engineers study in English mostly fluent in English. In that case, do they need to take IELTS tests? So I would say no. So if you are selected for an interview then we'll have the chance to talk to you and we'll get a sense of your English ability. So I'd say no need for you to do IELTS if you think that you'll be able to in the context of talking with us that we'll have sufficient confidence that your English is up to scratch. There's a question there around what's the criteria for a team member? I'm unsure whether that is for EHF's criteria or for Immigration NZ's criteria. But what I'd say is that we would consider it in a similar way. So for example, Immigration NZ would look at these criteria for each of the people that are team members. And similarly for, okay it's for EHF I can see the question there. Similar for EHF we'll be looking both at individuals. How do they meet these criteria but also as a group? So I guess it's both team and individual that we'll be looking at how do you stack up individually and as a team. Next we're gonna look at how you can get involved. And there are only a couple more slides there and then we'll have a space for answering questions. We've got another 25 minutes. So if people have other questions feel free to add them into the questions and answers box. Here are some key dates for our selection process for the second cohort. Applications close on the 1st of October. So if you think that it makes a good fit for you to apply you need to do that before 1st of October. Then after that the Edmund Hattery Fellowship has its selection process and that happens in October and December. And in the next slide I'll give you a bit more colour on the various steps there. And we will announce the results to people who the Edmund Hattery Fellowship once as fellows will announce that to them in December. Then they'll have the opportunity to apply to Immigration New Zealand for a global impact visa and they should get results from that in early 2018. So February's mentioned there but it will depend on when you apply to Immigration New Zealand and it will depend on the information that you provide so whether there are any gaps and your medical or police checks. There's a question there about age parameters. So that's not something that we or Immigration NZ consider. Okay, so in April next year we welcome our cohort two fellows to New Zealand. Then after that your three year fellowship starts and beyond the three years you'll be an alumni of the Edmund Hattery Fellowship. You have the opportunity to keep connecting with your fellows and other cohorts as well as having the opportunity to apply for residency. I'm gonna give you more colour on EHF's selection process. The first step is for you to apply online and there are recent questions there as well as a chance for you to record a video. And the video that you record is just a four minute video and it's answering a few questions that we've got. So at EHF with our selection team we'll be reviewing the applications that people submit and we'll be going through and we'll be identifying who is shortlisted for a video interview. What I'd say there is that we're not gonna interview everyone and yeah, we only have certain resources through the process so we'll be interviewing people who we think have a chance of being a fellow. Then after we've interviewed people we will identify after that whether we see a fit with the fellowship and for some of those we'll do reference checks. So we'll have conversations or ask questions in written form for references that you identify and we'll ask for those that are offered the chance for a video interview we will ask you to provide references at that point. So you don't need to provide references now we'll follow up later if you are selected for an interview. Then once we've done reference checks we will put forward a preferred or final shortlist to an independent selection panel and they make the final decisions about who's offered a place in the Evan Hillary Fellowship. What I'd say about that is that it's an independent group so it's separate from the team including myself who'll be doing the first three steps you can see there of reviewing applications, videos and reference checks. So it's an independent group who are separate from the day to day operations of EHF. I'm just gonna keep going through the slides and we'll come to the questions at the end but if people do have any other questions feel free to add them in and we've got time at the end we should be able to cover them up. As mentioned before, one October is the magic day in terms of getting your application in by and welcome week is in April 2018. So how do you apply? You can go to ehf.org forward slash apply and there is an application that you can fill out there and you can also, if you just go to EHF's main page you can find an apply button off on the right that's a blue button off on the right top of the page. Also you can express interest on our website and that will give you updates from us like you'll get details about our webinars you get details about different events that we've got coming up and it's a chance for you as well to tell us a little bit about yourself. So we'd recommend doing that as a way to keep in touch with their fellowship. In terms of fees, four entrepreneurs who are applying from overseas, the fee is 850 New Zealand dollars. Four investors, it's 3000 New Zealand dollars. There are scholarships that are available on the basis of need. Unfortunately, the deadline for submitting your application, sorry, the deadline for applying for a scholarship has now passed. So that's no longer an option for this cohort. Finally, there is a discount of 75% for New Zealanders. So the fees you can see both for entrepreneurs and investors of 850 and 3000 New Zealand dollars, those are for people applying from overseas. If you are a New Zealand citizen or permanent resident who's applying as an individual, then or as a team where you've got all New Zealanders, then there's a 75% discount. Okay, now there is a chance for questions and we have a couple in there already and where we can answer those but also feel free others to jump in with other questions. We've got another 20 minutes in theory or nearly 20 minutes. Okay, I can make a stab on the first question. So our question is if successful, how much time does a global impact visa recipient need for EHF-related activities during the three-year fellowship? Oh, that's a good question. So the key thing is that we have retreats two times a year and now about one week each. So it's mandatory that people who are fellows are part of those retreats. So that's two weeks a year and they're in New Zealand. Beyond that, we expect that there'll be a number of informal gatherings. There might be hiking trips or there might be people who are having a workshop or a seminar on a particular day at a particular place. All the other things beyond those retreats which are compulsory, all those other things are voluntary and up to people to organize and there'll be stuff that's organized by the fellows themselves. Also, we've got more links here for people to follow up on with more information. And you might wanna write down some of these to follow up afterwards or you might look at them now. We have one other question, we have a bunch of other questions, but the first one in the list is how many shortlisted candidates did we video interview before selecting the initial 30 in cohort one? So we interviewed about 50 out of the 300 who applied. And what I'd say on that is that it's EHF's description about how we do that. So it's possible that we'll do that differently in the future, it depends on circumstances and the number of people we see as having a good fit with the fellowship. Now the question is if we've received a scholarship in the first cohort and been re-invited to apply, will this discount or the feed paid still stand? Okay, so if someone got a scholarship in the first cohort and you haven't been given a discount for this, the second cohort, you'll need to pay the full price. If you had applied for a scholarship in the first one and then applied again in the second or then you would be able to access that. But if you didn't receive one for the second cohort then you'd need to pay the regular price. And just to chime in there as well, if you reapply, you will have to play a new application fee each time that application fee covers or goes some of the way towards covering our team's cost of assessing the application. So each time we have to do that, we do need a new fee page. We have one other question about whether there's a chance to form a team or start up a new business in New Zealand. So what I'd say there is that, I would refer you back to our selection criteria. So that's what we'll be looking, that's how we'll be assessing you. It may be that some of our fellows who come here end up working on different ventures once they're in New Zealand than they might have expected. So it's possible that people who go on to become fellows will end up building new ventures from New Zealand. But in terms of what we consider when we select people, we'll be looking at those things that we mentioned. We'll be looking at your bold plan that's gonna create systemic change. And we'll be looking at your demonstrated ability to create systemic change. So we'll be looking at things like, what have you started before and how have you grown it? And what are the other relevant things that have shown that you've got what it takes to build a new venture that's gonna grow and create global impact? There's a question there about communicating to previous fellows to get guidance on how to apply. So I would say no to that. What I would say is that we have frequently asked questions on our website. So if you go to ehf.org, you'll be able to find frequently asked questions. And I think that that'll be a good help in terms of getting a steer on the types of questions that people commonly have. But what we'd say is that it's up to you to describe what you're doing in a way that makes sense for you. And we ask that people prepare their own applications rather than have others prepare it for them. Another question, is it possible to do some research or study PhD and support the business at the same time? What I'd say is that we are interested in people's ability to execute. So people being able to commit full-time to the venture is definitely a positive in terms of being able to commit the necessary resources to get it off the ground. So that's a general view. I mean, it is possible that it could depend on your circumstances potentially as well and how you've demonstrated your ability to create global impact in the past. If I can chime in there, Andre, some small amounts of study are permissible, as I understand it, up to three month courses OK. But something like a PhD, we certainly wouldn't be wanting people to be coming and doing that. There are other study visas that are available for New Zealand. So if that's what you're looking to do, then perhaps there are other better immigration pathways for you. Yeah, and just to add that the key focus of the global impact visa is people who are going to launch world-changing ventures and or invest in world-changing ventures. And usually that requires a large amount of time and energy to do. We have one other question. We have two more, but the next one is, what's the difference between investor and mentor? Example, an investor would meet up with startups to join them, slash invest in them. What would be the role of a mentor? So OK, so what we have is we have two categories. We have the category of an entrepreneur and the category of an investor. For, so which of those makes sense for you? It depends on your circumstances. For people who are investors, we're interested not just in the dollar amounts that you'll be invested investing, rather we're also interested in the connections that you'll open up, the mentoring that you could do. So in short, mentoring is relevant when we look at people who are investors. But what I'd say as well is that for people who are entrepreneurs, we're interested in people's ability to contribute to others in the fellowship. So for example, if you're an entrepreneur, if you can demonstrate that you can help others in your cohort, then that's a plus as well. I guess it's a balance as well between focusing on your own venture or your own investing and contributing to others. One other question is, is there a way we communicate to any previous fellow to get guidance on how to apply? We've had that one already. Sorry. But feel free to open up if others have other questions that they'd like to ask. Add them into the question and answers box. We'll give it a minute or so. But if you have any questions, please add them in. Also, Alina or Paola, are there any other questions in the chat window that are relevant for us to cover? I haven't seen any come up. There was a question that I answered in there around building an enterprise outside New Zealand and leveraging New Zealand's startup ecosystem to help build the enterprise. We're really not looking for that. We're looking for people who would like to maintain some sort of significant presence here in New Zealand. So it's a possibility if you have a venture and you'd like to open a business, or sorry, an office in New Zealand and you'd like to start a team here that are part of your venture, that would be okay. But if you're looking to base your venture entirely offshore and just come into New Zealand to leverage that existing business without contributing to the local ecosystem here, then that's probably not what we would be looking for. Thanks, Alina. We have a couple of other questions. The first one is, are there any other topic, are there any topic categories that are given preference, for example, food education? So I would say no to that. We're looking, it goes back to those five selection criteria we mentioned earlier on. So you could be working in education or food or climate change or whatever area. The key thing is that you're working in something that's a bold new idea that's gonna create systemic change that will make a positive difference and that you're able to show that you've, you're able to achieve and demonstrate progress on your vision. Do you sign nondisclosure agreements or idea protection if the project's in development stage? So what I'd say there is that if you have particular sensitivities around privacy, if you could mention that in your application and we'll be aware of that in terms of what we are considering, we won't be prepared to sign nondisclosure agreements and also given that we'll be having a number of different people from the EHF team that will be looking at it, in terms of reviewing your application and also people on the selection panel, we won't be able to, my understanding won't be able to sign nondisclosure agreements but we will be sensitive to your, to your protection around privacy. And certainly there's a, we have a privacy policy which you can also view on our website and that identifies how we, what we do in terms of privacy and we take it seriously as well. How many more opportunities will we have to apply for this visa in the future? I believe I have to undertake more of my projects in order to meet the criteria for which I need time. So what I'd say on that is that we have, we have opportunities to apply twice a year. So if it doesn't suit for you to apply now and if you're identifying actually it doesn't seem a good fit for me now, then you will have the option to apply again in the future. And it's completely up to you to decide which cohort makes sense for you to apply to. And if you do apply and are unsuccessful you can still apply again for EHF in the future. What we'd be looking for is that you can show us what progress that you've made on your venture in the meantime and perhaps what has changed or grown since you last applied. We have one other question around whether individuals can take employment while they're a fellow with EHF. So the short answer to that is yes. So in terms of what the visa permits you to do you're permitted to work in New Zealand, you're permitted to work on your venture, you're permitted to invest in terms of how we'll review your application. As mentioned before, we're interested in people who will be bringing either their existing ventures or starting up new ventures. So we're interested in people primarily who are gonna grow their own venture from New Zealand that's gonna scale globally. Having said that, there could be some circumstances where people who have demonstrated significant progress and track record with their projects where working for a brief amount of time in New Zealand for another employer to get to know the local environment could make sense in terms of them building their own venture. The key thing that as I mentioned before that EHFs get up for us to help support people who are building their own ventures or investing in other ventures, it's not primarily set up for people who wanna be working for someone else. But as I mentioned before, there can be an odd circumstance where a brief amount of contracting can help you or working for a short period of time for others can help you build your venture. One other question, is there an area in the country that's conducive to the process where is the whole country open to a venture? So the answer there is that gives you access to start your business anywhere in the country from the top to the bottom. So that's permissive in that respect. Another question is what support are you gonna get from EHF, for example, funding and supplies? So what I'd say there is that New Zealand, the Evan Hurley Fellowship can do a bunch of things to help connect you into New Zealand. So one is when you first arrive, we can help you to assist you in the process of moving. I'm not talking about moving your boxes for you, but rather talking about helping you identify which city could make sense for you to live in, what kind of, how do you get your children into a school, those kind of things to know about New Zealand as you transition here. So that's number one, some kind of support and advice around you settling into New Zealand. Number two is connecting you to people. And there was a slide earlier on about the different organizations that EHF is connected to, both New Zealand and overseas. So helping connect you, for example, to universities or research institutions or angel investors or different groups that will be relevant for your particular venture or your investing. And we would talk to you and say, what are your needs, how can we assist? Then the other one is in terms of, there might be others who are in the fellowship who are investors who might be able to fund your venture, but that's completely up to those investors. EHF directly doesn't fund any ventures and doesn't provide supplies for ventures. That's where we're here to help support you arrive and to help link you to others. And a lot of the support that you get will also come from your fellows. And there'll be a lot of shared learning across the fellows as well. And just to add on the flip side of us not funding any of the ventures, we don't take any equity in any of the ventures that come through the fellowship either. So we're just basically here as a support network for you. We have a question around circumstances in which a fellow is asked to leave the program earlier than a three year period. So we're developing a code of conduct. So there could be situations where people are operating in ways that are unhelpful to the team at EHF or to their fellows and we could ask you to leave the fellowship. And for those who become fellows, we can let you know more about the code of conduct. But it's kind of the kind of things that would be common sense in terms of how to treat other people and contributing to others in the cohort. And things like coming along to retreats that happen twice a year. Just for a time check as well, we've covered all of the written questions that we've got. We've got a couple more minutes. So if others have any other questions, they can add them in. Someone asked, do you have a list of possible ventures to invest in? Or do you have to apply already knowing what to invest in? So we don't have a list as such that here are the ones that you could invest in. What we do have, however, is we'll have a growing set of people who are entrepreneurs. And so if you were an investor, you'd be able to look and say, okay, here are all the people who are fellows who are doing entrepreneurial stuff. And you could ask us about it as well. You could say, who are the people doing things that could fit with the experience that you might bring as an investor? And we could also potentially connect you with other groups that would help you identify investment opportunities. But it's certainly not limited. It's not like we have a pre-approved list and you must invest in these. It's open to you and we can help give some guidance as well. Is the question is, is the residency a step towards NZ nationality at a later stage for someone who's interested? Okay, so just to recap as well. So the global impact visas for three years and then there's the chance to apply for permanent residency. Permanent residency gives a lot of the benefits of citizenship. It's one step removed from citizenship and you might know better than me, Paula or Alina, but I think there might be some process going from permanent residency towards citizenship. Yeah, the processes that you have to be here for a number of years and still be actively living for most of your time in New Zealand. So definitely it is a step towards nationality provided that you seem to be genuinely putting down deep roots in New Zealand and so you haven't done anything serious or broken the law or done anything that would expel you from the EAC program. We have another question about whether we have any profit targets for business to be maintained in the program or what are the criteria to evaluate a business? It's a really good question actually. So what I'd say is that I'd refer you back to our five criteria mentioned earlier on and you'll notice that none of them directly mention around profit targets. If people are working on a venture and the venture doesn't work out, we're not gonna kick you out of VHF because of that. In terms of question around profit targets, what we'd say is that we look at your ability to sustain your organization to achieve your mission. So if you're profitable and that's gonna enable you to grow and achieve more impact that way, then that can enhance your impact. In terms of timing, it's been an hour now, so we'd like to draw this towards an end and thank you very much for your time. We hope it's been helpful for you. Thanks for your interest in EHF and New Zealand. Thank you everybody and thank you for bearing with me through my little coughing fit earlier on. Thank you, Andre, for taking over at that point. Very helpful. You can get more information on our website. All of those links are there on the screen. And we look forward to hearing from you and seeing you. Applications come through. Thank you, everyone. And just to remind you as well, so applications close on the 1st of October. Thank you very much. And if you have any questions, you can email us at applications at ehf.org. That's applications at ehf.org. Thank you very much.