 very much Marta. Hello and welcome to the site event organized in the framework of the 11th International Conference on Sustainable Development, the ICSD. Indeed, my name is Maria Cortes-Puch and I am vice president at SDSN where I lead the networks program. We are delighted to be hosting this webinar on transformative solutions for achieving gender equality with our partner, GIZ and with the support of the German Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, the BMZ. Today we will present several examples of successfully implemented solutions to help advance SDG5 at the local or regional level. These solutions have been selected amongst SDSN member institutions and also we've invited one of our newest members from Ukraine to join us as a guest speaker. Thank you to the SDSN team and very specifically to Marta Garciaro, who has greatly led this project to fruition and to our network managers in Africa, America and the Black Sea region for their support in identifying and selecting these wonderful solutions. Before we listen to them, let me introduce you to Marta Getacheu Bekele who will be framing our session with some opening remarks. Marta is the delivery quality and impact lead at the VNIT where she leads a team of researchers who are working on development themes including poverty, disaster risk, resilience, climate change and public expenditure, among many other topics. Marta has extensive work experience in the development sphere in East Africa and she is a very valued collaborator of SDSN who join us periodically to help us think through some of our work. So we're very grateful for you to be here once again. Marta, the floor is yours. Thank you, Maria and thank you to the NSTSN for the opportunity to deliver opening remarks in this ICSD specialization on transformative solutions for achieving gender equality. We're here to hear from experts around the world as they present how they are implementing local solutions that are advancing the SDGs in the risk countries context. And I hope we all agree that gender equality is a fundamental human right. Every individual regardless of their gender deserves equal opportunities, opportunities but also rights and protections. Gender equality ensures that everyone has access to education, access to healthcare, employment and decision making processes without discrimination or bias. Gender equality is also closely linked to sustainable development that's why we are here. Empowering women and girls has a multiplier effect on social progress and economic growth. When women have equal access to education, to resources and opportunities, they can contribute fully to their community's development leading to improved health, reduced poverty and enhanced overall well-being. Today in this session we will hear about Black women researchers in oceanography in South Africa, building more inclusive development in the tourism industry in Bolivia, empowering women to cope with the effects of climate change in Mali, empowerment in women in the Sahel region of Africa and women empowerment in science from Ukraine. All these presentations are about local solutions based on local research by local actors. A common thread in all this is the crucial role of data and that's what I want to focus on today. For example, it is impossible to understand the interaction between economic and climate actions with a strong feminist focus without comprehensive sustainable gender data. There is a need for stronger data ecosystems that include and recognize gender. Less than half of the data needed to measure progress against SDG-5 is available, less than half. And women and girls face barriers to inclusion in even the most fundamental data collected through what we call CRBs or civil registration and vital statistics. This missing data can negatively impact countless outcomes, livelihoods and well-being including access to basic services. Again, to emphasize a reliable, timely, well-disaggregated and inclusive data can tell us the intersectionality of gender with poverty, intersectionality of gender with geography, intersectionality of gender with race and ethnicity, intersectionality of gender with disability and so on. We need to identify and work against factors of inclusion, exclusion, sorry, and for that we need data. Without data, there is no research. Without data, there is no effective program. Without meaningful, timely, relevant and disaggregated data, it is impossible to carry out development planning and monitoring. Another issue that I want to raise in this opening remark is to highlight the localization aspect of data collection and analysis. Local solution based on research. That's why we are here. But whose research is it anyway? It does matter. It does matter who carries out the research as we use them for planning, programming and policies. This is crucial for local researchers who are often left out at some point in the data value chain. Studies show local researchers in remote areas or even in major towns in less developed countries are often brought in once the research design is finalized. Locals are relegated to primary data collection before being removed from the data analysis and write-up, which is studied out by international organizations and experts. Imagine now how difficult and complex it is for women local researchers. In short, for any transformative action for achieving gender equality within the actionable research ecosystem, be it in climate change, empowering women in the tourism industry, empowering and mentoring women and girls in the labor market, there is need to strengthen data systems that tell us where exactly the challenges are, the root causes of those challenges such as inequalities and factors contributing to exclusion. We need to invest in gender responsive and inclusive data ecosystems that are vital to tackle current national and global challenges, ensuring inclusive responses and recovery to crisis, understanding policy outcomes, as well as allowing the resources to be better targeted and to deliver better intersectional gender equality outcomes. So to conclude, I want to emphasize once again, it matters who does the research. We need to enable our women local researchers to be able to collect their own data, carry out analysis, interpret their findings in a manner that makes a difference in achieving gender equality. Thank you very much. Maria, over to you. Thank you very much, Marta. What insightful questions you've launched to the panelists. So the importance of data, of course, but not just of any data, who is collecting that data, who is conducting the research and who is analyzing the data and the results of the research. So as you all know, SDSN has 1,900 academic member institutions that are organized in 55 national and regional networks, covering 140 countries. So precisely, we're trying to have this diverse and regional reach across the world. And these vast network together with some of our partners are contributing to the progress of SDG5 with very innovative solutions that we are very delighted to give visibility to today. In particular, today, we're going to be listening about solutions that come from our networks in the Sahel, in South Africa, the Black Sea, Mali, and Bolivia. And let me introduce you to one of our first speakers, Katie Altieri. If you could perhaps open your camera. She's going to be presenting the initiative called Ocean Womax. She's a senior lecturer in the oceanography department at the University of Cape Town and has received several awards, including the UCT College of Fellows Young Research Award only last year. Katie, over to you. Thank you so much. I will share my screen quickly and excellent. Thank you so much for the lovely introduction. Today, I'll be presenting on Ocean Women, seeing a change in the demographics of oceanographic research in South Africa. This was a program developed in response to a call by our new Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor Monkety Peking. And this was a specific proposal called Targeted Towards Women and Transgender Researchers at the University of Cape Town. We had to focus on training post-graduates and post-doctoral fellows and emphasized building capacity amongst Black South African women. Now we responded to this by developing the Ocean Women program. The aim of our program was to develop a prestigious research and leadership training program for Black women that focused on recruiting, retaining, and enabling success for the next generation of Black women oceanographers. You see here below a snapshot of our website with our tagline here supporting a new generation of Black oceanographers. And we really wanted to focus on the fact that this was not a remedial program in any way, shape, or form. This was a program aimed to develop the next generation of oceanographers, which is a field of research in South Africa that's very, very hardly regarded due to our unique location between the South Atlantic, the South Indian, and adjacent to the Southern Ocean. The objectives of our program were threefold. The first was to identify and overcome barriers to recruitment, retention, and success. The second was to create an environment that enabled Black women to succeed in their postgraduate degrees and to eventually become leaders in the field, both nationally and internationally. The third was to develop and evaluate our training program so that it could be applied more generally to other marine science programs in South Africa. And what we've discovered is actually it's really universally broadly applicable to other universities and training environments around the world. I want to spend a moment to talk through a few of the barriers we identified. The first was financial barriers, and this included things such as from the very beginning of a student being accepted into the university that we had to provide relocation expenses. We provided additional years of stipend for the fellows so that financial pressures for their degree was not a concern. We paid for tuition and fees for the students. We gave them whatever computing resources they needed, and we provided travel funds to support their development, whether that be through summer schools or other training programs around the continent or in Europe or beyond. The second set of barriers we identified were professional. These are related to issues around networking. So our department at the time had zero Black women oceanographers at the University of Cape Town. And so, of course, we were not capable of providing the networking and mentoring that our fellows needed. And so we set up opportunities for our fellows to network with other Black female scientists from further abroad in the continent. We also provided additional training opportunities for the women, opportunities for them to shadow us, the PIs of the program as we represented South Africa internationally. And orientation was a key component of when fellows and students were brought in, making sure they were properly oriented to their degree, to the university, and to what the expectations were of them. The third set of barriers we identified were in the personal category. This included the importance of mentoring, building the students, the fellows together as a cohort so they could rely on one another, providing also things that many take for granted, a passport, the funding to get a passport, the appropriate field gear for doing work in oceanography, and things such as swimming lessons or skipper diving certification or a skipper's certification, things that make one feel that they belong to the culture of oceanography. We also focused on creating an environment for success. We brought in professionals, a consultant team that specializes in diversity and transformation, to help us identify what were the issues in our department and university and how could we make sure that this was a space where Black women could thrive. The results of this initiative highlighted that you really need to have a serious intent to transform and identify and confront uncomfortable issues. Lastly, I want to focus on some of the key lessons learned in this program. The first is the importance of financial investment. If you're going to seriously take charge of something as large as trying to increase diversity, reduce barriers to success, and really foster an environment and change the environment, you have to financially invest in the program. We also found that it was very important that this program was initiated from the Vice Chancellor at the very top of the university, highlighting how important the issue was and also providing important credibility to the program. We found co-production was a really important component. We had to let the fellows play a role. As I mentioned, you need uncomfortable conversations, and you need to really focus on where your sphere of influence is. What can you as white staff members do to make Black South African women feel more comfortable? With that, I want to close and highlight that the success of this program really comes from the Ocean Women Fellows themselves. Here, you can see a photo of our first cohort of six women with our Vice Chancellor of the University in the middle, the woman who initiated the program. And all the success of Ocean Women comes from the fact that these fellows are absolutely outstanding. I encourage you to join us on social media and learn more about the program. And I thank you very much for the opportunity to share our work. Thank you very much. What a wonderful solution. I think we're going to move to our next presenters, but there will be time for question and answers later. Make sure to use the chat function, and I am going to give the floor to our next speaker, Andres Aramayo, who is the Director of Orbita, the Bolivian Observatory for Sustainable Tourism Industry. This is precisely the initiative that we will be listening to. Andres has worked in tourism as a public official in the municipality of Bolivia's capital, La Paz, and as a Director at the Vice Ministry of Tourism in Bolivia. And throughout his career, he has led several tourism technology and innovation initiatives. Andres, over to you. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. So I'm going to present you our initiative that is named Orbita. This is financed by the IDRC, by the way, and implemented by the SDSM Bolivia and Fundación ES. I'm going to make you just a quick review of what are you going to see here. You're going to see a collection of photos, because if we're going to talk about tourism, I want to try to show you Bolivia, my magical country. And we're going to start this road giving you some idea of what Bolivia is. Bolivia is in the heart of South America. As you can see here in the map, it looks like a small country. But for you to make just an idea of the size of Bolivia is three times bigger than Ukraine. And Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe. So it's a really big country for the size population that we have. Moreover, most of the time people tend to think that Bolivia is an Andean country, and that is not totally true. As you can see, Bolivia with the forest areas that makes that 3.5% of the planet's forest in home between 45 and 55% in world biodiversity within over 3,000 species of mammals, reptiles, fishes, amphibians, and more than 1,400 birds. That is extremely impressive. It's an economy based on gas production, gold, and zinc. And in the fourth place is tourism. I'm going to go deeper among why I'm trying to explain to you how we are trying to achieve the GDS-5. And as you can see, this is like the picture of the people who is trying to make a certain economic impact or try to improve their economic and financial situations, trying to empower women. Nine out of 10 jobs depends on informal economy, that it's low quality jobs, dependence of international prices. And that model, it's attainable. About the population labor in Bolivia, you have the following data. In Bolivia, we are around 12 million population size. Our last census has been released 13 years ago. The 50.5% it's in working age and only the 5%, 3,100 are employees generated by tourism. And from that number, 75%, around 75, 72, depending the year that you take, these employees have been taken by women. So in Orbita, we established the following idea and it's through academic research, all the information that we can disseminate or we can share not only with the tourism sector, but also with government, also with other areas of the economic impact. We could send the idea that we cannot stay depending on natural resources, basic on. Moreover, information is not magical. We need to teach to the companies, to the corporates how to use information to improve and to improve and increase competitiveness with all these tourism change, global change that is extremely competitive and digital. Moreover, we have been working with around 17 universities all around Bolivia, financing thesis, specifically for tourism, gender equality and economic development. And finally, we established the observatory to continue to keep providing data for all Bolivia, not focusing on tourism, but we have actually a working paper that established that tourism in Bolivia impacts in the 17 SDGs in all over Bolivia. So all the municipalities that have been working with tourism, they have a better performance in 17 SDGs, not only one, two or three, but 17. So just to give you a quick idea, tourism sector have been wrote during the last 13 years before pandemic and 10% average and our GDP has been growing 3.5, 3.3. So tourism has been growing three times, maybe four times. Moreover, tourism is the fourth currency attractor, but it's not true because it's the first because of exportation of services. Bolivia depends on natural resources and commodities. So when you start to see that Bolivia could bring fresh currency, foreign currency, it is something that is extremely important because the money of the future we could have it now. The third indicator is the fifth formal job generator. As I told you before, we are 90% informal and low quality jobs. So this is a really great indicator. And the 75% of employees have been occupied by women. During pandemic, 65% of the jobs have been disappeared. And that is around 100,000 formal employment. That is a really critical situation because this crisis is not overwhelmed yet. Moreover, I want to show you, most of the time people tell me, but in tourism, there is just a few people working over there. And I want to show you that here we have more people working in tourism than in the mining sector. And something that I want to contrast with you is the national minimum wage. As you can see, around the 35% of people have been working in Bolivia in agri-economic. It's around a half or maybe one fourth of the national minimum wage. And that is most of the time, with some consequences of some external factors that we cannot control, international prices, open markets, maybe rainy season and many other things. So here in tourism, as you can see, there are more women working than in the mining sector and with better conditions than in the agri-economic sector. And more important than that is that women not only can encounter opportunities over there, but they create opportunities. They lead companies. They lead associations. They lead corporations. And they are the ones who are leading tourism in Bolivia with no support of the government. This is an analysis of three decades where you can see that women in three decades are creating and generating businesses to improve the tourism ecosystem and to generate jobs. So now this is kind of common in some countries and it's easy to see. But now I want to show you something that we have been working in, communitarian tourism that doesn't reflect the previous data. So what I'm trying to tell you is that the key factors of tourism to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls in the private formal sector is the low entry barriers to get connected with global providers. Most of the time, if you are able to read and to speak to two languages, you could have six months or three months of training and you can be part of this industry. The entry level jobs are considered an extension of home economy and women have more competitive advantage than men in service-based economies. So moreover, key factors for rural or countryside and communitarian tourism, women are not natural decision makers. Most of the time, they are just living over there with less opportunities than men. Most of their rural territories depends on low quality jobs. Men support their agricultural business. And third, economy of survival where men, most of the time, are trading goods on cities or urban environments. I want to show you two interventions that we have been establishing here in Bolivia. One is in Luribai and the other one is in Astukupecha, as you can see, pretty, pretty places. And this is something of the findings that we have released in our work. First of all, we identified three levels of development. When they only have the idea and the initial development, they don't have governance. When they are in intermediate development, they could create an offer, a touristic offer. They must establish a governance, but most of the time, because they don't have formation in tourism, they have a lack of knowledge of operation. And where we're trying to develop them is develop the offer, establish the governance and make them possible to operate. Just in these final slides, I want to show you what is the change of when we establish a communitarian tourism in these communities. First of all, women complete their studies in elementary and high school. Just a few achieve technical and possibly bachelor's degree, that is something extremely, extremely good. Increase the financial resources that support the home economy, children's studies and other expenses, and they become decision makers and have influence among the community. And I want to share with you these six lines of operative lines. Andres, yes, just one more minute, please. Yeah, this is the last slide. Thank you. Excellent. We start with collective actions. We start in the second instance, we institutionalize and create governance. Then we develop the idea, sharing with all the community. In the fourth place, we establish touristic potential and possible benefits. And finally, we establish integration to touristic attractions with their cultural resources. And finally, we start to think in income generation. This is one of the most common mistakes. People start to think that we have started with income generation, but if you want to try to work in tourism, you have to do these previous steps. That's all. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you so much, Andres. And I think you've made a very clear point of what Marta was saying at the beginning of the need of data with these graphs where you show the importance of the mining and the tourism sectors compared to each other when in mining, of course, it's mostly men led jobs and in tourism, 75% of them are women are held by women. Let's move to our next solution and we'll have time to discuss all of these things further in in a bit. Dr. Aisa to see Soco, if you could turn on your camera, she's a senior manager at women, women mentoring and employment network in Africa, an initiative by the Association of Women Leadership and Development in Africa. She was worked as a consultant for several international organizations, such as the African Development Bank, as well as the Mastercard Foundation and the German International Cooperation, GI said, where she has developed sustainable solutions for the protection of the environment and sustainable development in Africa. I said to over to you, we look forward to hearing from you. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. So I will share my screen quickly. So thank you. I will share the presentation of women, which is women mentoring and employment network in Africa. Our main objectives in women are to mentor 10,000 of women and girls in the journey of social economic transformation by end of 2025. We also want to empower 1,000 sublet girls of women in rural areas with access to digital skills and vocational training and empower and mentor 1,000 women and girls through an entrepreneurship incubator to create their own businesses. Here in this slide, I will talk about our solution to promote gender equality. In women, we educate and empower mentor women and girls on societal issues impacting their life. We use the power of digital to empower women and girls to have access to information technologies and sensitize uncealed marriage and old forms of discrimination and sexual harassment through culturally acceptable mentoring because in Africa, cultural aspects are very important. And in women, we promote to education to be gender-sensitive through mentoring and empowerment. We raise in our organization aspiration of women and girls and their parents through mentoring and empowerment, empower women for social economic development. So how can our organization involve gender equality in the community? We empower communities to an old form of discrimination against women and girls. We support events that highlight or celebrate women's achievement and we engage men because in Africa, it's important to engage men in old aspects so we can get a good impact with a good reason. Here, I will talk about our steps of transformative learning. Disorient dilemmas through empowerment, have some self-examination through mentoring. In women, we explain options of new behavior through mentoring and empowerment. We build confidence in new ways through mentoring and empowerment. And we empower women and girls to plan a course of action for their social economic development. How we can overcome gender equality challenges by mentoring and empowering women, girls and rights awareness of men to support women in their journey. We develop contextual mentoring programs for women girls based on their cultural context and priorities and finally be sensitive on the importance of having local authorities to enforce laws to protect women, girls through empowerment. So we hope that it will help our organization to help young women and girls in Africa in their journey for social economic transformation for a better world. This is the end of my presentation and thank you for your kind attention. Thank you so much and I think you've highlighted the importance of mentoring, of having reference, which also came up in the first presentation with this initiative that had the support of the vice chancellor and her herself as a role model. Let's move to our next presentation. Aida Keita Mbo is the president of Energy Amali. She will be presenting a project to create sustainable resources of income for women to face the effects of climate change. After spending over 20 years working on environmental and sustainable development issues with UNDP in Mali, in 2017 she was appointed minister of the environment sanitation and sustainable development. She's currently the chair of Energy Amali Network and Association whose mission focuses among other things on gender and energy and she's also an esteemed I should say member of our SDSN Sahel's executive board. Bonjour madame. I will ask you to turn on your camera and we can move to your presentation. The floor is yours. Unfortunately, I think you're muted. We can't hear you. Let's see if our colleagues in the technical side can unmute you. Is it okay now? Yes, perfect. Okay, thank you very much. I have to speak in English but I am really a Francophone person but I will try to do my best in English and I'm not very useful with technology. So I have to click on partage l'écran. Is it okay for me to present it? Yes, that's correct madame Keita, partage l'écran. Is it okay now? Yes, we can see it. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. My presentation, we have six points. The first one is a presentation of Energia Network. The second point will be a presentation of the project area and we will talk about the Keila project and the main activity carries out and after we will see some outlook and we will have a conclusion. So concerning Energia Network, it's a maliant gender and sustainable energy network organized by some individual and some commitment to remain the gender disparity in access and use suitable energy service is obtained is what we say the Accord card in French. It's an agreement between NGO and the government of Mali and we are a member of several other networks, such as Rezo Clima Mali, national platform on maliant civil society actor on climate environment sustainable development, member also of climate and development network and member of gender security and challenge coalition climate and so on. The vision of Energia Mali is taking into account the energy sector must contribute to mitigation gender-related vulnerabilities. Energia Mali intended to promote equitable access and control of sustainable energy service for women and men as an essential right to development and it is commitment to achieve SDG7 and SDG5. Main mission is to contribute building capacity of women and promoting consideration on gender in access to energy and sustainable development. Main goals I will not read all the goals to facilitate networks between its member and exchange information between user and energy service provider promote consideration of the differential need of men and women in energy policy strengthen capacity of its member and different actor support communities in development and evaluation of the local program for development integration of FDG and the consideration of the objective of national determined contribution monitoring and evaluation and project and so on. Another thing we cannot start we promote sanitation and improving living environment policy for population and promote good self-sufficiency and empowerment of women through income generating activities. About the project we are talking about now the project area is less than 100 kilometers from Bamako you have the city of Kela here the city of Kela is one of the 11 villages that make up the rural commune of Minigian it's on the road to Guinea in half 2000 more than 2000 inhabitants according to report 2019 and it is important that we know that Kela project is based on economic empowerment of women from renewable energy project it is it has been initiated by women of Kela through our NGO and submitted to semi-improved foundation it's the flow of concern women of Kela in order to fight against climate change and laying a solid foundation for promoting agricultural and market gardening production this generating income for their own economy autonomy it aims to create sustainable source of income for a definitive women empowerment from renewable energy it aims also to achieve gender equity and power for women and girls and aim to end all form of discrimination and violence against women and girls so more than 1,000 women are directed beneficiaries 1,000 men are indirect beneficiaries with 29 people we live with disabilities with all the entire population to slow down the exodus of young toward home planning IRA and illegal immigration on the city the main activity of the project is we have done a selection of solar equipment a freezer dryer ice make projection making battery charging public lighting we have done also information on climate change and its effects a strong participation of women and young people during awareness and information session and we have to note that the women express themselves freely and clearly pose posing the real problem the fast on the land for example lack of virtual land technical and specific and sufficiencies to carry out resilience activity scarcity firewood lack of source of income the proposed solution of to all the problem raised during the debates commitments we are made by the municipal council namely the integration of action seated by women in for their local plan as well as their participation to its formulation this is a very important highlight on the project buzz on Kayla these highlights in the perspective the integration of women in the decision making process at the village level and during this process we not an awakening of awareness among women regarding the degradation of natural resources because we are committed to develop resilience activity in the face of climate change and one of the activity was the production of ice we know Mali is a very cold country so they have one activity projection and making of ice so it is to better benefit from this activity women have set up a management committee within the group whose different member are identified identified with function each in its role is organized by linking household activity to the activity of the group within they are not affected in their own work which is very beneficial beneficial to in the daily management of women a beginning accountability in the programming of activity that women carry out on a daily basis another activity was installation of solar street lights that enable the development of income generating night activity and approving the living environment activity in the village one activity was also installation of a battery charging unit so the system although women and all the village women to obtain financial resources for this activity which benefits to entire village which thus has a place to research its elephant instead of traveling five kilometers to make the research of telephone and one important activity is training install solar equipment for the installation after installation women see this person of the village was trained and three women including the president of the association and three men including a person we living with disability was trained for this equipment I finished excellent yes yes one minute thanks yes one minute but I think that conclusion I will go to conclusion because I have two slides but the main important is conclusion but on perspective just one word to say that we will organize the inclusion of the woman to the preparation of the local plan and women want to develop a business plan for them but on conclusion the project was successful in advance over aspect of equity and human right we it benefits from a support and accompaniment of all local communities administrative authority with constituencies of a nice event of integration of women in the development process women and men understand that to fight against if effect of change my climate change need to join effort so I think that I will stop here and try to respond to vacation thank you very much thank you for these comprehensive presentation and it's definitely a very holistic type of network providing a number addressing a number of challenges that are indeed interconnected let me pass the floor to our last speaker who is Olga Iermkova from the SDSM Black Sea Network Olga is a professor doctor of economics and head of the department of economic and ecological development of seaside regions and she's the head of the council of young scientists of the state organization institute of market and economy and ecological researchers of the national academy academy of sciences in in Ukraine welcome Olga unfortunately Olga we can't hear you there seems to be a problem with your mic no no it doesn't seem to be working let's try again no it's not working we can see your screen but we cannot hear you and it seems to be something on your computer because we hear something but not clearly Olga please check if your computer is muted the the pattern of uh yes we can't we can't quite hear you so maybe would it be uh okay for you to uh re-initiate your computer one second and and maybe we can pass over to the questions and have you come back does that make sense let's give that a try all right uh so let's move to to our Q&A with the audience but we've also invited uh a few um experts um in particular Michael Schank and Ines Sanchez de Madariaga um Michael is the director of engagement for the carbon neutral cities alliance and the urban sustainability directors network welcome and thank you for joining us uh one more year Michael and Ines is currently the chair at the at the advisory group on gender issues at AGGI at UN habitat among uh other responsibilities and positions thank you so much Ines for joining us too um Michael um I see that you're the first one who has turned on your camera so do you want to I'll I'll put you on the spot do you want to ask any questions to our colleagues yes thank you for having me and I'll just quickly add in chat something I think about all the time in my work with cities as well as in my teaching at New York University which is the scaling up of this work in communicating it out to the world to the public to the press to policymakers etc and so what I was most interested in in reviewing the presentations in advance is how we share these solutions with the world and Maria knows this well because we're former colleagues and this is something that I drumbeat all the time but this is also to the audience out there in terms of taking these good solutions and part of that scaling up of solution is sharing it with everyone and why I put these links in chat is because one aspect of gender equality work is making sure that we've got these voices in the press in all the kinds of press tv radio print online etc so that we're balancing a gender unequal past in the press too and so I very much wanted to include those links so that it inspires us to better balance the gender inequality of past publishing and so it's it's more a call to action for all of us but if any of the panelists want to address this in particular which is perhaps a quick solution in how you've scaled up in the social space either social media or print media or tv media or radio etc this works so that these solutions can be seen and heard elsewhere I'll also put some links in chat but I'll stop here to see if anyone has any responses thanks Maria thanks so much Michael and I think you closed the cycle very well of what Marta kicked us off with no who is doing the research who is telling us about the research who are we listening to I don't know if any of our speakers wants to jump in on this question how do you make your your solutions known how do you communicate about them and how do you try to create a space for yourself in this world that is more crowded by men anyone wants to jump may I can you hear me now fantastic Olga yes we can because I was so waiting on my presentation in my presentation I raising up this question about promotion women through social networks professional networks and social networks like facebook where we present not only our academic personal academic achievements but also our personal life like hobbies traveling etc also we published a set of articles in mass media international mass media representing women research and and showing their impact in community development as a region of our region our city our country and international economy as a whole so publication and social media and participation in networking events but I hope I will have possibility to make my presentation great Olga so I think you've linked very well to Michael's question do you want to do your presentation now you'll you would have three minutes but we do want to hear about this because creating that space for ourselves in the public sphere is is very important go ahead please so I'm happy to greet you from Odessa Ukraine it is a great honor for me to be present on such a global event thank you very much for your invitation I'm a doctor of economics professor and beside my scientific professional work I'm also actively involved in the social activities as a head of council of young scientists and the my institute of the my institute here you can see some numbers of the council we have 20 members and perfect at the moment we have perfect gender equality 10 women 10 men and tools for empowering women in science that we use can be grouped in three groups promotion mentorship and networking before I move to these tools I would like to say about some numbers about women in science in Ukraine as you can see about number of researchers we are close to equality men are 54 percent and women 45 percent in science but you will see about percentage of women involved in the doctors titled as doctors of science here we see sharp decreased only 29 percent the same in top management scientific establishment not more than 36 percent the untapped potential of brilliant women who might be interested in science but choose not to pursue degrees and their careers in science because of different life obstacles represents an important lost opportunity for both for women themselves and for the community for the society as a whole so our mission is to attract engaged women into working sites by personal example and networking for further career development so about tools that we use promotion through social and professional networks we developing our profiles in professional networks like or seed and academia net that is a european database which currently more than 3000 profiles of highly qualified women in academia also we developing our profiles in social networks like facebook where to present not the person not only personal academic achievements but also other aspects of life life hobby traveling etc so this helps us to inspire each other to help to create an identity and to develop our message and and public presence and next instrument promotion in mass media as I told we're organized publishing of the series of articles that present the popularized the research of young women scientists of our institute and their impact on the social economic ecological development of the city and the Odessa region Ukraine and international economy it is an international journal the Odessa Journal it helps to raise awareness of the research of women scientists and their impact on the community development also we organize meetings of experienced women scientists with school girls and young women scientists at the beginning of their career such meetings are aimed at provoking the just interest in science and their desire to pursue career in science by demonstrating real examples of successful career and opportunities that working in science gives to women next group of tools it is a mentorship providing mentorship to the young woman scientists at the beginning of their career by experienced women scientists in research in a project implementation in a career development and we have successful stories about this so it helps to transfer experience among experience women scientists and younger colleagues to provide them with advice and professional support and finally the last group of tools networking instruments organizing networking events at different levels and with different communities scientific community business community we collaborate with club of young business women in our city and informal collaboration that it is also important not only professional collaboration informal collaborations through participation in cultural events exhibition of creative hobbies dancing classes trips it helps to strengthen collaboration among women scientists that leads to increase of joint scientific projects publications scientific events research at the local national and international level so the mission of our community of women science scientists is not only to attract engaged women into science but also to support them in the development of their scientific career considering work life and balance thank you for your attention thank you so much Olga and again your solution was perhaps even better listened to after Michael's question because he addressed some of some of his some of his comments um I think there's one question Marta Bekele I believe that you also have a question for the panelists if everyone is able to stay just five more minutes we can we can address these Marta I'm happy to give you the floor thank you so much uh yes one of the comments that I have is for Andres uh in your statement you said we are not natural decision makers I'm hoping that this is an issue of language translation because we see women making decisions every day as as small scale farmers as you know playing a bigger role in the home care economy another comment that I have one of the panelists uh Asiatou is that great presentation like everyone else um involving men I really liked that I hope I wish that the how was explained more but maybe because of time but we know that uh if there is anything this feminist movement of ours has taught us it is including everyone and not leaving anyone boys and men because it may lead and we've seen it in major towns at least uh leading to double responsibilities of women in the boardroom as well as at home with chores and finally uh with uh intervention Michael made I really liked that the only comment that I had was instead of saying why are opiates are still mostly written men we should have at least you know why are opiates are still mostly published by men because we don't know who is writing those opiates thank you yes and Michael I think you had already reacted in the question and answer agreeing with that part but this question of engaging the whole community and going beyond the beneficiaries of the projects is something that also came up in the chat I don't know if anyone wants to respond to that point how do we engage families that are of the beneficiaries who are being a part of these projects how do we engage the communities to make sure that these changes have the support any of of our of our panelists wants to take these questions okay I don't see anyone jumping at this question Aida do you want to but I think that there was a question about uh communication how to communicate about all the result of project and so on I think that we have a lot of mechanism but in our case we have Facebook of inertia we have also a member of a number uh some networks so we we will have to to create a kind of network on this specific case and share it with all the members we have also we can write it in the the press document and we have also to to organize the kind of conference on what the project is doing for contributing to SDG 5 and 7 so we we have planned this before the COP 2028 thank you so much madame Keita and and of course SDG 17 is very dear to SDSN's heart given that we are after all a big network and we think that we need to work in in partnerships anyone else wants to share some final thoughts or else I think it's time for us to close our our event I want to thank our partners in this event once again so that would be GIZ and BMZ I want to thank our panelists for their work and for working with us over the last few months when we were selecting the solutions and then on these presentations and once again Michael thank you so much for joining us for your insights and Marta thank you so much once again for giving us those very insightful opening remarks and to everyone else I see as these only starting today so please share make sure to go to our website to see all of the events that will be happening in the next few days and we hope to see you there in the coming days have a good rest of the week bye